2010 Rallycross Pilot

[bmwe21]

I have a 2003 Honda Pilot 4 WD , it has electronic clutchs on all four axles, if one wheel starts to loose traction it starts locking in axles until it gains traction. If the new models are built like this you may not have to do anything!
I sunk it almost to the frame the other day in Mississippi while pulling a trailer that weighed probably 1800 lbs, rocked it back and forth , came right out , not the first time I have had it in the mud, these things will really go, especially to be as nice as most cars on the road!

[hondamaint]

I wish that were the case for us. It has an open diff. in the front.

[hondamaint]

Update on some progress we have made.
1-Here are a few things ready to put in this and another car.

2-We are moving the battery from the front to the right rear



3-Here are the seats we will use. The stock Pilot seat is on the right and we will use an Accord seat that is on the left because of several reasons,it's free,better support, driver sits 2 inches lower and it weighs almost 10 lbs less.

4-Here is the dash we pretty much have done. We will still have to cut some when we put the cage in.Also we removed all melt sheets and will paint the floor when we paint the cage.

5-Speaking of the cage here is what we bought for that project.if anyone needs some I have a good hookup to get it at $2.77 per foot.

We are looking at a suspension drop of 3 inches.We will start there and see how that works.
Also we have secured another transmission so we can weld the diff. to test that.

[Jedi1]

Awesome.

Did you get those harnesses off of this site?

[hondamaint]

Yes ,I got the Corbeau set from Marc. They wil go in the red Odyssey and the other ones are a SFI approved set with a dec. 07 date a friend gave me for free. They will go in the Pilot.
Sean is this the same size of tube you need?

[bmwe21]

If that's D.O.M. at that price you got a great deal?
Unless it has came way down in the last couple of years. Where did you get it?

[hondamaint]

It is DOM. I know it is a good price and I can get some for anyone that needs it , just PM me and I can give you all the info or I can help you get it.Both of my brothers worked there. I am not sure if that is the normal price or a brother's price.

[Jedi1]

You must have beaten me to those by about 3 seconds!

We'll get with you about the tubing next week. Definitely want some. If you can make it to the Polar Bear Run tomorrow, we'll see you there. If not, see you soon.

[hondamaint]

Here are some pictures we took last night while we worked. We were putting a kill switch to cut power from the battery and kill everything from the fuel pump to the motor. We decided to put the switch on the fender to be easy to get to from outside incase of an emergency. We drilled a hole in the fender and then secured some alum. over the hole to make it strong
Jeromey working here.

Here is what it looks like from the backside..

Everyone wanted to get in the picture so here is Chris finishing it up.

Here is how it turned out.Works great and shuts EVERYTHING off in the car.



It took us about 2 hours to do and we are happy with how it turned out. I will order the elec. sticker and on and off stickers for it on Monday.

Next week we will work on the rear suspension. We will drop it 3 inches by cutting the springs(I know not the best way but no one makes any for this car) to get them stiffer and the drop we are looking for. Bradley is HMA's chassis engineer and he has it figured at our current weight how much to cut. We will not just use a torch on them we have ways we can cut them here at the plant and not mess the spring up.We will use the stiffest shocks we have that come on a Pilot to help the rear end rotate. I will post pictures as we do it in case anyone wants to follow us.

[hondamaint]

We have been working pretty hard to get as much done as possible.
Here are a few pictires.
Each of our cars we try to run a black bumper and hood blended with the fender painted. Here we painted the fender to blend it in.


We put the car up on the lift to start the suspension lowering work.


While we are here why dont we take all the 2 wheel drive stuff out and make it a 4wd.


Most of this stuff will go in the trash.


Installing the new rear diff.From where I am standing it is not heavy at all.


Cool , we will have some traction now.


We installed our shorter and stiffer rear springs. We have a set of one off adjustible ride height struts for the front we will install to lower the front and also we will run softer springs in the front to help the rear rotate.
We also cut an Alum. sheet ,painted it and filled in the sunroof hole.

We have been doing a lot of checking and we will be below the line on the scale that the SCCA uses for a SSF of a vehicle. I know some have voiced a concern that there may be a roll over issue (and that just shows they have NEVER been in one of our cars), I am sure we will be fine but if we need to get it inspected before hand whoever makes that call please let me know and we will do what ever we need to do. I need to know because if it is not welcome in the Alabama region then I can contact TVR region or some one in GA. or Fl. to have it checked out so we can run there. We just do not want to make plans for ALA. SCCA events and build a car for that and not be able to run them.

[dirtdog]

Hey paul I don't know who is questioning your ride, but they may not know what they are talking about. The only people that can make that call is Edwin or the regional safety steward that's me and I have not seen your project but it sounds interesting. Stay tuned for a school/test N tune/mini event, would be a great time to try this bad boy out.


dirtdog

[hondamaint]

Hey paul I don't know who is questioning your ride, but they may not know what they are talking about. The only people that can make that call is Edwin or the regional safety steward that's me and I have not seen your project but it sounds interesting. Stay tuned for a school/test N tune/mini event, would be a great time to try this bad boy out.


dirtdog

Thanks for the reply. We are just getting very excited about doing the rallycross and what ever we have to do to get this vehicle legal we will do, it will be low enough. We could have used an Accord we currently have ( and may still do that)but that would be boring. We were talking today about doing the 4wd in one of our Accords for rallycross.

The Pilot comes with 250hp and 253lb.ft of torque which is a good start but we have a 300hp and 270lb.ft of torque MDX J37 motor that will bolt right in sitting in the shop an could do this if we do not have enough HP. A good exhaust and ECU tuning may be good for 325-330hp. This car is a test car for another Pilot we have ready to build. What we learn from this we will us on it.We still have not decided if we will build it as a Road race/autocross car or a Rallycross car, I guess it depends on how much fun we have doing Rallycross .It started out as a pig but I think will be pretty fun car when we are done.

[chuck schultz]

I think it's pretty clear that this car will meet the intent of the rules concerning high-profile vehicles. It's lightened, lowered, and will have a cage.

The Solo rules say "This chart is for Stock, Street Touring, and Street Prepared categories vehicles." There's no obvious reference to excluding these types of vehicles from Prepared or Modified category, in either the Solo or the RallyX rules.

[Jedi1]

That 's come a long long way since Sunday!

I am certain the Pilot will be absolutely legal and more than likely quite quick!

From 1 wheel drive to 4 in how many steps? It is as they say "ON"!

[hondamaint]

This afternoon we finished putting all of the 4wd stuff under the rear. Here is a picture with the springs to lower it and stiffer shocks. We only have the rear done so far but it is 67in tall. Stock is 71in and a Evo X is 58.3in. We could if needed go a little lower. I know it looks heavy still but there is really just a shell there. It still weighs less than a stock Evo x even with the 4wd stuff in it just to give an example of how much we took out of it. There is still a little more weight we can pull out of it if we need to.

After we finished we put it back on the lift and started dropping the subframe to put the new transmission in and lower the front suspension.