The autocross season ended three months ago, and I’m starting to get cabin fever.  I’m finding increasingly large chunks of my day are spent searching desperately for some kind of challenging road within a few minutes of Lawrence and obsessively checking MokanMotorsports for next season’s schedule.  I have a potential co-driver for next season as well, which will be fun if she can make it to a few events.  However, with a hefty chunk of money on the way from Uncle Sam (take that, you overtaxing bastard) and paychecks rolling in from my campus job any day now, my thoughts have turned to the CRX and how it could be improved.The most pressing issue, and one that has become increasingly evident in a couple months of winter driving, is that the rust issue needs to be addressed.  The  trouble here is that, to do it properly, I need to find somebody to weld in new metal.  Finding somebody who can weld on thin Honda sheet metal is pricey, and on top of that I’d need to paint the new stuff.  Paint is expensive.  So I may just hope against hope that there won’t be too much snow, and put this off until summer.

Second on the the list of Things To Do is getting the suspension sorted.  I bought a  swaybar from Tim Herron towards the end of last season, and getting it installed took several trips to the hardware store, half a can of PB Blaster, and finally a trip to the repair shop to have a couple of stubborn bolts drilled out.  In the process, I discovered that my RTA bushings are all but torn out. So, when I get my Ground Control/Koni combo,  I’ll have to get new bushings from Honda and have them installed.

Finally, tires.  I’m awfully interested in the new Kumho XS in 205 width; since these are a bit wider than the 195 width tires that dominated the Street Touring S and 2 last year, I think it’d be worthwhile to get 7.5-inch wheels to mount them on.  949racing’s 6ULR, due out in July, looks like it’s a pretty darn good fit for what I’d need.  Unfortunately, I’d have to wait until July, and they’d be every bit as expensive as the current king-of-the-hill Enkeis.  I think I’ll probably try to scrounge around for somebody’s cast-off tires and wheels for at theast the first half of next season.

Looking into the distant future, I think my plans to migrate from Stock to STS and then through to CSP are more or less cemented.  The CSP move would be a couple seasons away at least, and could itself be just a transition to SMF should that class become a reality (by that point, I’ll have a real job and probably another daily driver, so it’s not out of the question!)  I enjoy working on my car, and STS is a good place to learn, but a DX will just never be competitive in Street Touring.  But all that’s beyond the horizon.  In the near term, I’m looking to have some fun…