The Fall of my Integra Type R

If you go back to the beginning of this blog you will find quite a few entries explaining all the stuff I'd been doing to my UKDM DC2 Integra Type R, it was all in aid of making it a reliable track weapon and something to truly be proud of!


Well I'll be honest... it didn't end well! So in case you've wondered what happened to it, and why I haven't spoke about in ages, here is its final story...


It's taken me a while to gain the encouragement to put this post together, and its honestly for my own benefit as well as for all you readers out there :)


So first of all here are some shots just before its last voyage, to remind myself and you guys what she looked like in what I felt like was its prime!

So anyway the deadline to have my DC2 track prepped for was early June 2010, our yearly trip to the Nurburgring. I had spent so much time, effort and money on sourcing all the right parts to get it all sorted as well as a fortune on labour with Tom at TGM Sport in Fleet, whose expertise meant that a last minute oil leak was fixed 12 hours before the boat out to France :S hehe cutting it close.

This shows the crack in the cam cover that was causing an oil leak and pooling around the head gasket area on the B18.

One of the last minute additions was the cam cover going from crinkle red...

To Championship white! :D

So we arrived at the Nurburgring, actually I have to say the Integra did so well on the drive over! 350miles to a tank! Amazing lol
So we set up camp and settled down for a week of tracking, taking pictures and banter among mates.

Even though my car is not actually in this pic, I love it :D 

The trouble started early on that first day as a few of my friends were saying that I was popping some small blue clouds on gear change once we were driving around the area of the Nordschleife on the first day, I kept checking the oil throughout the day between each little drive, and it didn't seem to be affected by this at all so I carried on driving it cautiously.

One of the last pictures of it in working state, just before heading out onto track.

So with the possibility that I was burning oil I decided to only go round the track that evening on a sight seeing lap, as I had driven all that way so why not at least have a look around and see how the car feels after all the effort that had been put in :)

Well... I made it to Adenau Forst bend and a big BANG came from the front end followed by tractor noises for the next 10km, I luckily managed to crawl off the Ring so as to avoid recovery fees, and the damage to the cars engine was contained within itself so no fluids were dropped or anything dangerous like that! Wouldn't be able to forgive myself if I had endangered other people.

At first even though it limped off the ring and it was making a hell of a noise but it still wasnt smoking and the warning lights had still now showed up to show me that oil pressure was lost and that the engine was in ruins.

In the Nur car park we also noticed the lower H Brace had snapped and was tapping against the underside of the engine, which added to the awful noise, but anyway I knew, and my friends knew that something was definitely wrong...

So we towed it back to the camp where it stayed for the next 5 days. 

That is me on the left looking very sorry for myself once we realised the noise was definitely the bottom end.

Whilst it was there I found out that the £70 breakdown cover I had purchased for Euro cover was fake... and I had been duped by a fraudulent company. 


Luckily thanks to my brothers running a Caterham car rental fleet at the time, I was able to get someone to bring a trailer over for me and bring it home, but still it was a massive panic at the time. 


So she died at green hell.

I later found out it lifted a bearing on Big end 3, and was not oil starvation or surge as was first suspected, I could therefore stop hitting myself about not fitting the baffled sump I had in the garage before leaving for Nur :)

Inspecting the damage from underneath once it was back in the UK.

A couple of pictures of the chewed up crank which suffered the damage from the bearing lifting.

Now the story doesn't end here sadly, I mean I wouldn't be that bothered if that had been it! I mean yes the damage was expensive and the trouble it caused for my holiday sucked but at the end of the day its a car and these things happen...

No it got far worse from then onwards.

Once back in the UK I took it to what I thought was a respectable engine builder in Swindon, at first I was definitely taking it back to TGM to be sorted out by Tom, which I should of done really, but I was persuaded otherwise through being recommend to go with this other engine rebuild specialist by a few people and told he had many years of experience on B series engines and there was nothing he couldn't do with them...  you know the usual blurb.

Well anyway he lied and delayed for 3 months, this is how I found the car... I was so gutted.

Tidy workshop...

Damage to the bonnet from where he'd been moving it about.

As you can imagine, I was extremely upset by all this and gutted that I had been made to look like a fool by a scammer.

and after being chased up and threatened with legal action he shut down his company and disappeared, he did put my engine back together in a half arsed attempt to keep me happy though.

Ended up running absolutely awful, some major bolts missing including the crank pulley bolt.... and around 5 sensors were also damaged and needed replacing.

I sadly had lost all hope with the car by this point, and sold it to a family friend, who has since restored it and is absolutely loving it! So not all is bad and the car still lives on to this day with someone else which is just fantastic to know.

You live and learn... and these things happen so you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off and realise your better off after the hard lessons. 

But I definitely had ups and downs with this one, and I don't regret the time, money and effort I put into it, or even that I took it to the Nurburgring, I simply regret the way I was played by someone else when I was vulnerable, always the way isn't it... 

I just found a bunch of old footage I put together from 2009 of the Integra, I've put it together very quickly, and they are only short low quality clips taken with the help of my Go Pro.

They were merely practice back then for me with the GoPro but it did manage to capture the noise of my old DC2 quite well, so I'll leave you with this.

Well anyway I hope that answers the question of what happened to my old DC2! All I can say is that I've learnt from this experience, and I'd like to think that I will not be stung like this again! 

Onwards to the next toy I reckon ;) time to move on! 

Thank you for reading!