October 6th, 2024 - The 2023 Season's Wrap Up Post - Better Late Than Never

October 6th, 2024 - The 2023 Season's Wrap Up Post - Better Late Than Never

Like with anyone, sometimes my energy needs to be focused elsewhere in life. I never did make an end-of-the-season post for 2023. To be fair, the season ended with an electrical short in the CR-X during her final drive of the season and I thought she was going to catch fire on the side of the road, so I wasn't ending it on a high note. (Don't worry, I'll get to that story in a minute) Coupled with some family health issues and other life stuff, blog posting just kept getting put off until the wrap-up had been essentially forgotten. I don't even know if anyone missed it either. I don't think many folks read blogs anymore. Sometimes I think I'm mostly writing this for myself so I can remember and reflect on the journey some day.  

Anyways, when I was prepping for the 2024 wrap-up I realized that I hadn't finished off 2023 yet, so here we are. My last post was shortly after the 2023 Village Honda Show and Shine and the CR-X's birthday at the beginning of September. I'll pick up where we left off and share what happened next...

End of Season

The weather in Calgary was phenomenal throughout September and well into October. I finally decided to check out a long-standing impromptu car meet that happens every Friday in the parking lot of a Tim Horton's, near an industrial park in the city's Southeast. Car meet at Tim Horton's... How Canadian, eh? I'd heard lots about it, but had never been to it, and thought I should check it out at least once. The cars were amazing, but the scene really wasn't my cup of tea. There were lots of stunting and reckless driving in and around the meet, and I generally wasn't feeling the vibe. So, like a smart Diddy party-goer, I left before things started to get too out-of-hand. 

A couple weeks later on Thanksgiving weekend (Canadian Thanksgiving is in October), the weather was so nice I was able to go on a couple drives locally, and even take the CR-X out to the mountains, to an area called Kananaskis, or K-Country, to some spots I'd had on my list to visit with the CR-X for about 3 years or so. 

Made an investment in the future of the CR-X by way of some 15" steel wheels. I want to swap the MR5s for the steel wheels for taking into repair shops for longer term work. Think: body shops where it can take several weeks or months to get repairs performed. For $75 Canadian they're not bad. A little rusty but will work fine for my needs. 

I ordered some more parts from Japan, including a Spoon rear upper strut brace. I'll see what I can do to get modified brackets to allow installation without cutting the rear side linings. I think this might be easier with the Spoon rear brace than the OBX one I currently have because it's a single bracket attachment, as opposed to a dual one. And it came with a SPATS front upper brace as well. 

An extra bonus is the Spoon decal on the brace that matches my Spoon decal on my ECU. I think I'll have it replicated and once I refinish the bar, I'll re-add the decal for more of a 90's flare. 

Picked up some decals - some Mugen ones for various purposes, and another set of prefecture decals that use the prefecture borders to mimic a racing circuit. I, of course, picked up Aomori where my CR-X was originally sold to its first owners. I also grabbed a Spoon Mirror as well as a used and new-in-the-box Parking Pole and a dash mat to protect the dash from the summer sunshine if a body shop needs to store the CR-X outside while in their possession. 

Final Drive Of The Season (Fire)

The final wash and drive of the 2023 season was October 19th. It was a Thursday. A very normal type outing, off to our usual car wash for a final wash before the anticipated first snowfall in the next day or two. After the wash, I decided to take the long way back home to help dry the car further and because it was the last drive of the year. 

As I reached the shopping complex near my house, I could smell a very bad burning smell and I assumed it was just something at the shopping complex or something happening in their parking lot. As I turned the corner onto a side street, smoke began billowing from under the CR-X's dash and I knew there was a problem. I pulled over immediately and hit the hazard lights. I jumped out and looked under the dash. I saw what looked like a candle flickering near where one of the control units for the anti-theft unit was installed. 

I popped out the fuse box cover and yanked out the wire for the anti-theft system and the flickering stopped. Luckily I had a screwdriver in the hatch so I removed the center console and sure enough, the anti-theft unit wiring somewhere and had shorted out and melted an associated control unit. I pulled the car into a nearby parking lot and called my wife to come and follow me home in case I had more issues. 

When I got home she told me that I had no tail lights and I'd already noticed that I had no instrument cluster lights on the short drive home. I know that they're on the same circuit but they weren't at all related to the short or the damaged control unit that I could tell. I was in no condition to be troubleshooting with all the adrenaline and stress but to be safe, though, I disconnected the battery until I could look into the problem further. 

A few days later, I checked and it turns out I'd blown the fuse for the instrument cluster/tail lights. Don't know how since that circuit was completely unrelated, but I bought all new fuses and replaced all of them anyways, including the ones in the engine compartment. Better safe than sorry; after all, some of those fuses could potentially be 34 years old. The flickering I saw wasn't a fire, but actually the wiring shorting out. Upon further inspection, there was no serious damage. The short may have been caused by thin insulation on some wires rubbing on some metal under the dash. The odd thing was that the inline 3a fuse did not break. It was still attached and when I tried to remove it from the holder the one blade remained in the holder and the fuse link portion remained intact. In hindsight, I should have snapped a photo of that but I didn't. I think it may have been a cheap Chinese-manufactured fuse that didn't perform as intended. 

Let that be a lesson: always replace the in-line fuses in electronics or wiring harnesses ordered online (even from reputable sellers/stores) with something of known good quality. 

After the way the last drive of the season went, and the family health issues that we were dealing with, I took a bit of a break from the CR-X until well into 2024 when I started installing the Fujitsubo header... and this is largely why my end of season wrap-up post for 2023 comes in October of 2024. Haha

Odds and Ends

Some minor odds and ends completed were the bulbs in the hazard switch and defog switch on the dash and adding the Mugen license plate bolt hardware to the underside of the rear bumper.

Some more of my favorite photos of the year:

Remember, this blog was written in chronological order so, you will need to click OLDER POSTS to move forward in time, and click NEWER POSTS to go backwards.