For the suspension, the MME Civics uses the same proven components as last year's class winning DC5 Integra Type-Rs - Aragosta coil-overs with Swift springs. I was told that Swift springs are chosen because they are available in very fine spring-rate increments and this allows the car suspensions to be set up very accurately. The suspension components (arms, etc) are carried over from the DC5 ITRs, including the 5 lug wheel hubs and bearings and the DC5 front suspension aluminium lower arm assembly.

The wheels are 5-lug Enkei rims mated to Michelin racing slicks. The two cars actually used different rims - Enkei ES Tarmac and Enkei RPF-1s, specially imported by the local Enkei distributor for HMRT for the race. Of the two, RPF-1 is slightly lighter than ES-Tarmac but both are super-light designs, one of the lightest on the market outside of exotic material alloys like magnesium rims. Actually they are available for purchase for road use but as expected are horrendously expensive !

To 'tune' the chassis for racing, the stock anti-roll bars were replaced with the green Mugen anti-roll bars for the front, though the rear still retains the stock unit. Sharp eyed enthusiasts have noticed that the engine bay of the Civic does not feature a strut bar but the HMRT engineer smiled and told me there is one - "It's located at the bottom". This black coloured unit is bolted to the chassis in front of the steering rods and just clearing the exhaust manifold/headers. I think they are standard items and will be found on the road versions as well.

As a race car, the MME Civics of course uses bonnet pins to hold the bonnet securely closed during the race. Sparco blue anodized bonnet pins are used. Not commonly known however is that besides the bad luck of a broken wheel stud, HMRT MME Civic no 26 also encountered the misfortunate of a broken bonnet pin, specifically the right side (driver's side) pin. This occurred quite early in the race actually, around half-way through. Initially HMRT simply taped the bonnet closed but this gave them extra work towards the end of the race where the bonnet needs to be opened to allow the engine oil level to be checked during each pitstops. So there's an extra step of frantic re-taping back of the bonnet at the end of every one of car no 26's last few pit-stops. In the photos here, the tapes were originally intact but they were then cut in order to open the bonnet as I wanted to take special photos of the engine bay after the race.

The brake system was carried over from the DC5 ITR as well and ABS is active during the race, permitted by the MME regulations. The rear are stock DC5 while the front prominently features red 2-pot Brembo calipers. While these looks similar to the stock DC5 ITR items, they are actually race-spec Brembo calipers. The rubber brake hoses are replaced by steel braided teflon hoses to prevent bulging from prolong usage and are further wrapped to heat shield them in order to avoid the brake fluid boiling. The brake pads are Project Mu racing pads. The brake rotors however are original DC5 ITR items. I asked about the rationale behind upgrading every component of the braking system but using the stock brake discs. Drilled rotors are avoided because of fear of them cracking while slotted discs were deemed unnecessary. I was even told that the stock DC5 rotors will actually wear better than the slotted items. The stock DC5 discs are confident of lasting the whole 12-hours eventhough they give away a little bit in braking efficiency. For endurance racing, brake cooling was achieved by opening two holes at the bottom of the front bumper and routing cool air to the brakes via flexible ducts. 'What happens when it rains ?' I asked. 'We will have to pit for wet tyre change so we will simply close off the holes as well !' came the matter of fact answer !

Inside the cabin the roll-cage is made locally, Malaysia having people who are able to make them to comply with FIA regulations. The seat is a Sparco racing bucket seat, FIA approved. The harness is a Sparco 4-point racing harness, also FIA approved. While some have derided all these FIA approved items as over-kill, they are viewed as necessities by HMRT. In the heat of trying to meet a tight budget, it is often forgotten that these items are meant for the safety of the race driver and safety to Honda Malaysia is of utmost importance, even higher than the objective of winning the race. On the subject of the safety of the drivers, I was told that the cars were originally built with hand wound windows but the drivers explicitly requested for power windows instead.

The middle dash of the cars still uses the stock Civic 2.0 i-VTEC panel and knobs but modified to hold the various switches, engine start switch, etc. The pedals are aluminium items and there is a metal plate at the floor of the driver's seat.

On the cabin floor, a single 'racing battery' is used, the positive terminal attached to a central wiring harness that runs along the middle of the cabin and the negative terminal simply connected to the bare chassis nearby. This is why there is no 'power earthing' system in the engine bay unlike last year's DC5 ITR's prominent system. I also did not notice any extra earthing done to the engine or other items in the engine bay so obviously the common grounding provided by the bare painted chassis is more than enough for the race. The battery sits just behind the mandatory fuel extinguisher on the left hand side of the driver which incidentally is also a Sparco item..

The ECU is a Mugen ECU, with the standard disclaimer 'Not for Road Use', written in japanese, plastered on the cover. MME rules do not permit any piggyback system for this year, so a full replacement ECU which uses the original wiring harness has to be used (this is explicitly stated in the MME Supplementary Rules for Class A). The Mugen ECU has dynamic parameters setting and HMRT fitted a Kenwood LCD display for use with the ECU. HMRT has a whole stack of the K20A ECUs which are of course field-programmable. According to HMRT, the ECUs are fine-tuned here at the Sepang circuit by Mugen themselves. Mugen already has prior experience running a K20A for endurance racing based on last year's DC5 effort. From that, they already had a few different mapping done for the MME race. Race driver H. Katoh was responsible for evaluating the different mappings. Mugen would program the ECU with one of the mappings and Katoh-san will be sent out to run the car for a few laps. Returning to the pits, he would give his feedback to the Mugen engineers who will then decide which of the mappings to be used for the race using the feedback. According to HMRT, the actual Mugen engineer who does the ECU mapping is none other than the same person who tuned the now famous Mugen Fit Dynamite ! I was told he actually feels more power can easily be squeezed safely from the engines and offered to do so but for the sake of reliability, they (HMRT, Mugen and Team Kunimitsu) collectively decided to race with 'only' 230-240ps. After finalizing on the mapping to be used for the race, a few ECUs are then programmed with the mapping, two for use in the race cars and the rest kept as 'back-up'.

During race-time, the LCD displays the Mugen virtual dashboard which comprises tacho, speedo and various engine parameters including a lap time counter at the bottom left hand side. There are two 'versions' as shown in the photos, one showing standard analog dials and another using number displays and a 'climbing scale' display for engine revs similar to that used on the Honda S2000. When the ECU initializes during start-up time, the Mugen logo will flash briefly on the screen before the selected mode is displayed. The multi-LED device above the LCD is the shift-light but was not used for the race. The drivers were actually short-shifting most of the time in the race, especially when in 5th, they will short shift early into 6th to try to preserve engine health as much as possible. Interestingly I later learned that only 1 car, car no 26 actually raced with the LCD display. The LCD for car no 27 failed earlier and the regular DC5 instrument cluster had to be used for race day. This was sort of 'shoe-horned' into the standard Civic 2.0 i-VTEC's dash and the ill-fitting instrument cluster glass can be clearly seen in the photos.

The radio used for car to pits communication is supplied by Kenwood, the radio antenna very prominent on the roof of the cars. The MME runs for 12 hours, from 10am in the morning right until 10pm at night. Indeed the final and probably most crucial last 2-3 hours of the race is run in darkness. The headlights are still original Civic 2.0 i-VTEC items and I was surprised the DC5 ITR HIDs weren't swapped over. MME rules forbids any form of flashing lights on the cars so to identify the cars during the night portion, both Civics were fitted with red identification lights on the roof.

MME rules permits the use of an alternate refueling system over the original one that comes with the car provided the system (including fuel tank) is FIA or ASN approved. HMRT fitted their Civics with an Aero Tec Laboratory (ATL) 'Dual Dry Break' system as used in JGTC race-cars and the like. This system is fully FIA compliant and uses two side-by-side nozzles. Fuel is fed in through one nozzle, the 'dry break nozzle' while at the same time vapours escaping from the fuel tank is collected by the other nozzle and fed through a hose back to the overhead fuel reservoir tank, thus the dual nozzle-dual hose design. The 'male' (fuel feed) and 'female' (vapour collector) halves of the ATL Dual Dry Break system are precision machined to be self-aligning for fast bind-free action. This system of course gave HMRT one of their biggest advantage during the race, in the pit-stops. The original fuel tank was maintained and an auxilliary fuel container was added to prevent fuel starvation during cornering. The racing fuel pump is a Borsch racing pump and features prominently inside the boot area of the cars.

Like the DC5s of last year's MME, the MME Civics this year are also equipped with an integrated compressed air jacking system according to HMRT, sourced from the U.K. A 3-point jacking system was adopted; 2 points in front and 1 point right at the rear of the car just beneath the boot cover. The compressed air intake nozzle is mounted on the front of the car, near the front grille. I was told the 'speed' of the air-jacks are a little bit too 'powerful' for the Civic's weight, i.e. they operate too fast but after some local modifications, were useable. In the race, this along with the special refueling system allowed HMRT to conduct very fast and effective pit-stops and are one of the key advantages over other teams most of who had to resort to the standard lever operated hydraulic-type ground jacks.