NCM IS One Month Out: The #86 Discovers Computers, Communications, and Commitment Issues
NCM is about a month out, which is traditionally the point where a preparation list starts getting shorter. Ours has decided to do the opposite. Every item we cross off reveals two more underneath it, and what began as routine pre-race maintenance with a few small improvements has grown into electronics, fabrication, communications, data acquisition, steering-column surgery, and aerodynamics—most of which looked considerably smaller when we were discussing them at work instead of doing them.
We have learned that “we should probably do that before NCM” is not a planning statement. It is an aspiration with a deadline attached.
Nobody has yet said the sentence every race team eventually says. We are, however, standing uncomfortably close to it: we can finish that at the track.
The honest version is that the #86 is making real progress. It is becoming steadily less like the 2007 Accord that left the factory and more like the increasingly complicated answer to a question Honda never expected anyone to ask.
KTuner Finally Enters the Relationship
The biggest step of the last few weeks was getting the KTuner ECU set up.
We have been running the K24 RBB3 since the rebuild, but we have been running it on logic written for the engine that came out of the car. The RBB3 has different cams, different compression, and a different appetite than the K24A8 it replaced, and asking a factory calibration to make sense of that combination is a reliable way to leave performance sitting on the table—particularly at the top of the rev range, which was most of the reason we wanted the RBB3 in the first place.
KTuner gives us flash access, real datalogging, and an actual view of fueling, timing, and cam behavior under load. It also gives us the ability to make things dramatically worse in a very short amount of time, which is why we are moving carefully.
“I changed a couple things in the tune.” It has a remarkable ability to make everyone within earshot suddenly very interested in what happens next.
For us, this is another step toward understanding the #86 as a complete system rather than treating the engine as a large aluminum box that accepts gasoline, makes encouraging noises, and occasionally expresses displeasure by ejecting its internal components. We have already taken that class. The final exam was at NOLA. No refresher is required.
Getting Handsy With the Ignition
The steering column is currently apart in preparation for a removable wheel.
On paper the job is simple: pull the factory wheel, install the correct hub and quick-release, bolt on the new wheel, and enjoy getting in and out of a caged car without performing gymnastics. In practice it requires becoming far better acquainted with a nineteen-year-old Honda ignition and column assembly than anyone volunteered for. The ignition switch, the immobilizer ring, the wiring behind both, and the hardware holding all of it together share the same few inches of real estate, and none of it was designed with the expectation that someone would remove the steering wheel every time they got out of the car.
It is the kind of job where you start by saying “this should be pretty easy,” and a few hours later you're holding a part you don't recognize while somebody searches the internet for a photo of how it all looked before you touched it.
So we are working through how the hub, quick-release, horn wiring, and surrounding hardware coexist safely and reliably. The emphasis is on safely. A steering wheel is a poor place to discover that a connection was good enough.
The payoff is faster driver changes and the elimination of most of the contortions currently required to get a helmeted driver through the cage and into the seat. Those contortions have already cost one of our drivers a racing suit. At some point, modifying the car becomes cheaper than re-outfitting the crew.
The #86 Gets a Radio
We have also been building out the Baofeng radio system, including its interior mounting point and external antenna mounts.
Race communications sound straightforward right up until you decide where everything actually lives. The radio has to be reachable without becoming a projectile. The wiring has to be protected and strain-relieved. The connectors have to survive a weekend of vibration. The antenna needs a solid mount and a real ground plane rather than optimism and a magnet. All of it has to stay serviceable, and none of it can interfere with the steadily growing population of systems we keep adding to the Accord.
That means designing proper mounting points instead of introducing the radio to the dashboard with duct tape and telling everyone it is temporary. We have learned what temporary means on a race car. Temporary means you are still looking at it seventeen months later while explaining that you are probably going to redo that soon.
The same standard applies to the antenna system: secure, serviceable, replaceable, and removable without anyone disappearing beneath the dashboard for half an afternoon. What we get in return is worth the effort—fuel status, traffic, mechanical concerns, and strategy changes communicated clearly, instead of a driver trying to describe a vibration in hand signals while passing pit lane at speed.
And Now the Car Has a Raspberry Pi
Because the #86 was evidently not becoming complicated quickly enough, we are also developing a data-collection system built around a Raspberry Pi reading the car’s CAN bus through the OBD-II port.
The concept is simple: pull information directly from the ECU so we can see what the car is doing during a race instead of reconstructing it afterward. The implementation has been less simple. We are working through polling, logging, timestamps, file handling, power that comes and goes with the ignition, and the broader question of how to keep a small computer alive inside an environment specifically designed to shake things apart.
Driver feedback is still enormously valuable and always will be. Data adds a second layer to it. If we can log a full stint reliably, we can compare what the driver felt against what the ECU recorded, evaluate changes with something better than a hunch, and ideally catch a developing problem while it is still quiet rather than after it becomes an expensive noise.
It also builds something we have been working toward since our first race: an actual record of what happens to this car over the course of an endurance event. We are no longer just bolting parts onto the #86 and finding out. We are measuring, recording, comparing, and learning from what happens next. That is a meaningful difference.
The Team Is Growing, Too
The most important development this month is not hardware. Black Flag Racing is welcoming new members to the team.
That means more hands, more perspectives, more people learning the car, and more individuals who will eventually develop extremely strong opinions about where the 10mm socket belongs. We are genuinely glad to have them.
This team has always been built around learning as we go. Nobody arrived knowing every answer. The car is still teaching us plenty, racing has taught us considerably more, and occasionally the two collaborate on a lesson expensive enough that everyone remembers it permanently.
The team that shows up at NCM will know more than the team that showed up at Carolina. The car will be better understood, the systems will be more deliberate, the communications will be clearer, and there will be more data available and more capable hands in the pits.
One Month, Counting Down
There is still a lot to do. NCM is close. The #86 is partially disassembled. Project Zephyr Prime continues developing. Electronics are multiplying, the radio needs a home, the data needs collecting, and the steering wheel has commitment issues.
The list is longer today than it was several weeks ago. Increasingly, though, it is not growing because we are chasing problems. It is growing because we keep finding possibilities.
One month out. Still learning, still building, and the #86 is getting better.
Welcome to Black Flag Racing. Here’s a wrench. All the Way.
