Dailying the EK for the last week has been an interesting experience. on the streets its noisy, interior pieces rattles, a spider calls my driver side mirror home (the cobwebs gets bigger every time I brush it off) and I think there’s a cricket living in the in boot ( every time I wind the window down it chirps and whistles). But it’s effortless in traffic. It has no problems overtaking; see a gap and its yours, take off at the lights; part throttle and your already doing more than the speed limit. Being the sleeper that it is , it has also amused and shocked cars that has lined up against it ( sti, dc2r & s15 ) and you dont get to appreciate all this until you jump back into a stock D-series EK; its all wtf, where’s the power, why is it so quite, oh man why wont anyone let me in that lane. A K-swap EK starts to make sense.

Through the hills, the EK even with its rubbish $100 tyres ( that’s for 1 set, count them 1,2,3,4) and unknown pads went surprisingly well. It always amazes me how fast, no how capable a car is even with stock/ rubbish parts. The K20′s mountain of torque compared to a B18 is a nice little feature to have. There were a couple of times I could have been in a lower gear but the torque off vtec was enough to help pull me out of corners and when you are in the right gear and in vtec, the chasis comes alive. Two things I notice were the brakes and steering feedback. Brake pads were shot after a couple of hard tight sections where I was left foot braking to control the cars body roll and turn in, getting off the brakes and letting them cool down on the straights help remedy the problem, only to overheat shortly after another set of corners. The steering feedback could have also been more direct and quicker, now I’m not sure if its because of the cheap-ass tyres or its steering rack + front wheel alignment settings but it was very touch and go, unlike the DC2R’s point and shoot accurate steering.

So yes, lots to think about. On the 20th of this month, some of boys have a booked out a private track day, though the EK wont be seeing any track work yet, seeing what lap times it can punch out would be nice. Brakes, wheel alignment, tyres and a working water temp gauge first me think!

A worthy mention : The DC2R I found a lot more stable and tamed through the hills. Whereas the EK got a little tail happy through a couple of hair pin styled corners, which I’m sort of glad now; especially when the choices you only have is understeer into a tree or have it oversteer a little and help turn the car into the corner. I choose oversteer.