infernosg said:It looks like we're going to miss eachother most of the year. I'll be at VIR next weekend (3/18-19), hoping for Dominion in May, Pitt Race in July and then Summit Point in Sept, Oct and Nov.
I'll probably see you at the November Summit event if it's the NASA MA fall finale. What's the Pitt Race event?
Once the new hub was pressed in, the knuckle was re-installed and I set preliminary ride height. Man this thing looks good! I was never able to drop much lower than stock height without running out of shock travel on my old setup.
I borrowed some Paco Motorsports hub stands from a friend, and used a co-worker's scales again to properly corner-balance the car.
These stands are so awesome that I got a few friends together and we all chipped in and bought them! This video by Flyin' Miata helps show how to use the features built into the hub stands to do your own alignments as well!
Here's how the car was set up on the old suspension. I was told to think of it like a table with uneven legs. Find the short leg and lengthen it, or the long leg and shorten it, to keep the table from wobbling.
This video by Flyin' Miata is super helpful showing how to approach corner-balance.
Here it is after corner-balancing: a massive improvement in cross weight with nearly perfect 50-50. These weights are with me sitting in the driver's seat. After that, I did my first DIY alignment and was ready to take on Summit Point Shenandoah Circuit!
Alignment specs: Front camber -3*, Front toe 0, Rear camber -2*, Rear toe 1/16" in
Shock settings: 3 clicks from full soft on all corners
Looking at the forecast I knew that it was going to poor weather most of the day Saturday. Fortunately the actual precipitation mostly stopped right after the morning driver's meeting, but the track was absolutely drenched for half the day, with parts of it starting to dry by the last couple sessions after the sun finally came out around 3pm.
After the last session was finished, we headed out to walk the track. I've only ever had the opportunity to walk NJMP, so I was eager to do the same here. Shenandoah is basically a gigantic go-kart track with tons of road crown and road camber change, so walking it is pretty darn helpful.
Of course the most notable feature of this track is the scale replica of the Nurburgring's famous Karussell turn - a banked concrete left-hander. Getting the entry drop-in on this turn is tricky!
Saturday ended on a much brighter note than it began. What started out as a freezing, rainy mess turned into quite a nice day at the very end. It was also quite a day of firsts for me - first time on Shenandoah, first time on track in the rain, and first time driving on the new Fortune Auto 510's. I think the slower pace for the rain ended up being quite helpful, as it helped me learn the track and the handling characteristics of the new suspension at a much lower speed.
Sunday was a stark contrast to the previous day, with bright sunny conditions allowing for fun all day. I was able to apply everything I'd learned in the wet slippery sessions and dial up the speed, which was very fun.
The Karussell - or Carousel, depending on how pedantic you feel like being - presented a unique challenge as the bumpy surface would certainly let you know if you didn't have something in your suspension torqued to 110% of spec. At one point both RH strut bolts and the height adjuster collars for the coilovers started to loosen and required some extra torque to make sure everything stayed tight.
The Fortune 510's feel absolutely fantastic, and were worth every penny. I really feel like the car responds in a much more predictable way now, especially under breaking. With my old setup, the car always felt like it was sitting on top of the springs, rather than actually using them, if that makes sense. The 510's make it feel like an actual car, not something that was cobbled together from scraps.
In all, it was an absolutely fantastic way to start the season. There was one session in particular that had some of the most fun laps I've ever had on track, chasing a Fit and a Miata. I have to give a shoutout to the Washington DC Region SCCA folks for throwing a great event. This was my first time running with them and it certainly will not be the last!
Here's my fastest lap from the weekend, a 1:52.4, not too bad! The next event up will likely be either a trackcross or DE at Dominion in April, followed by Hyperfest at VIR in May. Hope to see you out there!
In reply to TheDailyDownshift :
I'm running Pitt Race with a group called AutoInterests. They mainly run tracks in the Mid-West and Great Lakes regions and I have some friends from my time in Ohio that instruct with them. I've run with them at SP in the past and had a good experience. More technical instruction than NASA-MA or WDCR SCCA but not as intensive as I remember NASA-GL being. Speaking of, I'm glad you enjoyed your session with WDCR SCCA. I usually go to their Dominion and SP events.
It's ironic you posted about hub stands. I'm seriously starting to look at those. I'm fortunate/privileged enough to get a yearly bonus and I think this year's may go toward a set from Paco Motorsports and some scales.
After a very successful first drive on the Fortune 510's at Summit Point Shenandoah, I decided to go ahead and swap the rear springs form 6k to 7k, more in keeping with Fortune's initial recommendation for this car. The car felt so planted that I felt that the extra rate in the rear could help make the rear a little more lively, as well as reduce the tiny amount of rear tire rub at full compression I was hearing when tackling curbing especially hard. With a quick alignment refresh, the car was ready for Hyperfest at VIR!
My friend John arrived extra early and saved me a good spot in the paddock on Thursday evening. It turned out that this event in particular was "early bird gets the worm" as Friday morning would bring absolutely insane lines to get into the event as registration seemed to hit a series of hiccups. There were reports of people waiting in line for 3 hours just to get in. Hopefully VIR/NASA/Hyperfest staff learned some valuable lessons and next year goes more smoothly. There were a lot of very disgruntled guests.
The rest of the crew arrived and set up camp in the traditional spot we have occupied since Hyperfest moved to VIR years ago. This year marks the twelfth consecutive year that this friend group has had representation at Hyperfest, going back to 2009 at Summit Point. Friday was mostly spent hanging out and checking out the sights the event had to offer, as the NASA driving didn't happen until Saturday/Sunday.
Unfortunately this is how most of Saturday went. On the fifth or sixth lap of the very first session on Saturday morning, I put the throttle down to pull out of Oak Tree, and had zero acceleration. Fortunately there is a super handy pit lane there for South Paddock, so I was able to pull in there and remain safely out of the way for the remainder of the session. A flat tow back to the paddock later, the crew was on their way up from South to lend a hand diagnosing the car. The obvious issue was lack of fuel pressure, but it seemed that the relay was functioning, and power was being sent to the pump. The only way to dive deeper was to drop the tank.
After a lengthy struggle of trying to get the extremely full fuel tank to a more manageable level, we were able to get the tank out pretty quickly. Fortunately, the issue was immediately apparent once the fuel pump hanger was removed: the ground wire connecting the pump to the hanger was broken.
I have to give a shoutout to Steve, Clayton, and Brian who did a bulk of the work getting the tank prepped for removal while I was out sourcing a new pump just in case.
Once the broken wire was re-made and repaired, the pump went right back in, and the tank went back up into into the car, and it started right up!
VIR has a policy that I had not previously heard about where placing jackstands directly on the paddock pavement can land you a fine. We borrowed some wood to place under the stands from a neighbor, but to get the car up that las 1/100th of an inch to get the stands under the frame rail, one of the guys was gently lifting up on the rear fender. In the process, he accidentally leaned too hard on the rear quarter glass which was popped out in the vented position. It immediately exploded into a zillion tiny pieces.
At least with the fuel pump fixed, I was able to get the car back out for the last session on Saturday. For this particular event I signed up in HPDE3 which allows passengers. I really enjoy taking people out on track, as it was just such an experience that got me into this whole hobby to begin with. Usually at this high-speed track I would prefer to register in the slightly slower DE2 group, but at Hyperfest it's worth giving all the point-bys.
Every now and then I would be fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of a point by, but those opportunities are few and far between. VIR is a huge track and 102 wheel horsepower is just not enough to keep up with faster traffic.
The new retina-scarring yellow gloves did their job and communicated point-bys clearly - something the old black gloves occasionally did not do well. The car performed well all day Sunday, but there wasn't much chance of setting a new personal best with all the traffic, old tires, and extra weight in the passenger seat.
The very last session of the day ended early for me. I was finally getting good rotation out of the car going into Roller Coaster, and tried to replicated it in Hog Pen. However that turn is in a compression zone and the extra grip did not let the car rotate as I had hoped, and I went straight off through the dirt, hitting a bump and absolutely wrecking my splitter.
The eBay Civic mounts held up incredibly well, as did the hardware store turnbuckles. However the mounts punched straight through the ACM sign material, deforming the whole piece.
This will likely be remade in a similar fashion with similar materials. RIP to a real one. Not the ideal end to the weekend, but it could have been worse!
Within a few days, 1/8" polycarbonate was in hand, ready to replace the rear quarter windows. I started by tracing the remaining intact window. and then cutting/test-fitting/cutting again until the replacement polycarbonate panel fit well.
To mount the window, I drilled 21 holes in the window flange for M5 riv-nuts.
I re-used the OEM seal, slightly trimmed to fit around the bolts and riv-nuts.
I masked, scuffed, and sprayed a black border around the edge of the polycarbonate to replicate an OEM look and cover up the ugly seal.
And there's the finished product. I repeated the process for the other side and it came out just as nicely. Unfortunately these don't pop open to vent like the factory glass did, but the glass is hard to find and is heavy, where the polycarbonate is light and readily available.
Up next: a new splitter!
Once the gaping hole left by the broken window had been filled with polycarbonate, it was time to move on to rebuilding the splitter. There was basically nothing usable left from the original, so new ebay Civic quick release brackets, sheet of ACM, a piece of house siding, some brackets, and a bunch of rivets all went together to make an entirely new splitter.
I started with a 72x36 sheet of ACM (aluminum composite material) and cut it in half lengthwise to make two 72x18 sheets.
The two sheets were glued together with a whole tube of construction adhesive, riveted, and clamped for good measure. This massively increases stiffness over the fairly flexy single layer of material.
The old splitter was used as a template as the new one was cut to shape.
Once the brackets and house siding air dam were added, the whole thing was painted black and mounted back up for a final test fit.
While the new splitter lacks the diffusers of its predecessor, it's stiffer and smoother. All the rivets were installed from the bottom up, allowing for a much smoother surface underneath.
A couple weeks later a bunch of us went to an SCCA track day at Dominion. This was Tom's first time on track in a car, and the first outing of his new-to-him Porsche 944 Spec car. It was also Jacob's first time on track in his turbo NA Miata. This was by far the most people we've had on track at one time in our friend group and it was a bunch of fun.
One takeaway I had from looking at pictures after the event was how the car leans and dives more than I'd like. The 7k springs in the rear seem to be doing a good job, but the 10k up front could use a little more beef.
A quick email to Fortune Auto and I soon had a pair of fresh 12k springs for the front.
Soon the day came for Gridlife's NJMP event. Steve and I once again set out to tackle one of our favorite tracks. The trip there was fairly uneventful, and we even arrived before sundown which was a welcome change. However much like last year, my weekend at NJMP would be marked with mechanical failure and a scramble to find parts.
When Thunderbolt's infamous long left hand turn - the "Octopus" - claimed my right front wheel bearing only two sessions into the weekend, my heart sank. While I was able to find a bearing locally, the hub was much harder to get. I was not looking forward to a repeat of 2022 when we had to drive all the way to Connecticut for a replacement knuckle to finish out the weekend. This time it was a more palatable 2.5 hour trip to meet my friend Clay in Maryland who brought up a set of AW11 MR2 rear knuckles for me to cannibalize a hub from.
Even that proved to be a bit of a challenge. When I go to the track, I remove the rear seat bottom cushions from the 4Runner to allow for more head room with the air mattress in the back. In order for Steve to tag along in the trip to MD to pick up Clay and the parts, we borrowed a seat bottom from a total stranger in the paddock who also happened to have a 4th gen 4Runner, as well as a really cool EK Civic.
We got back to the track from MD at around 2:30AM Sunday morning. After a few hours of sleep, I woke up and immediately set to work. Clay lent a hand while I used the mini sledge to press the bearing and hub into the knuckle. I absolutely couldn't have pulled this off without everyone's help. Steve disassembling the car while I was out getting the bearing, Clay providing the hubs last minute, Isaac letting us borrow his fancy garage space, Chris letting me borrow his 4Runner seat, Ross keeping our spirits up, and Joe cooking a bangin' breakfast - everyone lent a hand. Track people are just the best.
With all hands on deck we were able to get the car back up and running for the first session of the day Sunday. I can't thank everyone enough.
Even with an eyeballed alignment, the car has never driven better. The 12k springs were a massive improvement in how the car felt on track. Though I did seem to continue experiencing front pad knockback, so I suspect the left front wheel bearing will also need replacing before the next event, as well as the front brakes given a thorough going-through. It seems like front bearings are going to become an annual maintenance item regardless of actual wear.
The rest of Sunday's sessions went well and, aside from a bolt going missing on Steve's Miata and Ross' Fit breaking two wheel studs, nothing really went terribly wrong. I was able to set a personal best first session out and then beat that again by the end of the day, even on what were by then very tired tires.
It was also the first weekend that I got to use the Garmin Catalyst and man is that thing impressive.
As for the rest of the year I'm not 100% sure what is to come. I'd really like to finally pull the trigger on a proper brake kit for the front, as well as replace all the wheel bearings on the car as preventative maintenance. I suspect a Dominion event in September is on the table, and I'm really hoping to make my first trip down to Road Atlanta for an early December event, but we shall see.
After the hub/bearing failure at NJMP, I decided to add those to my stock of spares, as well as making those an annual service item. However I quickly ran into some issues with the aftermarket hubs. The stud holes are a smaller diameter than the OEM ones, so to fit the OEM-sized ARP studs the holes have to be drilled out to 35/64" per ARP's website.
Another issue I ran into with the aftermarket hubs is that the OD of the wheel hub flange necks up 1-2mm for some reason, which interferes with rotor fitment. I purchased several new hubs and had them all turned down/drilled out to the correct diameters. I took the opportunity to replace the left front bearing so now both sides up front are on fresh parts.
With those fresh hubs replaced, I decided to go ahead and adorn them with some upgraded brakes from Fastbrakes.com while I was at it. I had been running the MR2 brake setup up front with good results for a few years, but I wanted to go ahead and upgrade to a Wilwood setup for a couple of reasons.
1. Serviceability - Toyota calipers are becoming more difficult to source, and I got a full set of spare seals, bleeders, and retaining clips for $30 for these Wilwoods. Parts are readily available and CHEAP.
2. Hardware cost - A set of pads in the 7112 shape these Dynalite calipers require is a hundred bucks cheaper than the same pad in the OEM Toyota shape. Also the Mini Cooper rotors are a larger diameter but the same price as the MR2 rotors, and easy to get.
3. Brake bias - in the past I'd had significant struggles with locking up the rear brakes on this car, to the point that currently the bias valve is turned all the way down, and cheap parts store pads are installed back there. Even then I still had issues until the Fortune Auto coilovers went on, which helped quite a bit. Having a larger rotor with 4-piston calipers should increase the braking torque of the front, which may allow me to feed more rear bias back into the system, greatly improving braking overall which has been my number 1 insecurity on track.
The 11" Mini Cooper rotors are the same thickness, but nearly and inch larger in diameter than the 87-89 MR2 rotors I had been using. They are still very cheap to replace, and pretty widely available.
One thing I did not like about the Dynalite calipers was that they use a single-use cotter pin to retain the pads. I found that Wilwood made some nice retaining pins for use on some of their other calipers (part number 180-3862) and with some slight cutting/grinding to the "hook" end, they fit like a dream!
I suppose an additional benefit of this brake setup is that it looks wicked cool!
Speaking of brakes, I had received some feedback that even with the LED's my brake lights were hard to see on sunny days. I took the opportunity to go completely overboard and install a Lifeline FIA rain light as a third brake light. These things are bright as hell and will be good to have in the event that this car goes into more serious run groups in the future, as a small controller can easily be added to make use of the flashing rain light function.
I wanted to mount this at the bottom of the rear window, so I took the easy route for a mounting solution and made a polycarbonate hatch window to match the quarter windows. Visibility is not really effected by the aluminum angle support, and the light is crazy bright. I also added flash pattern modules to the inner brake lights, so when I hit the brakes it's extremely obvious.
To give the new brakes a good test, I decided to do a single day DE at Dominion. It just so happened that we were blessed to have a tropical storm coming through that day, so what followed was by far the wettest and windiest track event I have ever participated in.
I was definitely glad I upgraded the brake lights, as visibility was pretty poor due to the spray. I also learned that polycarbonate rear window is in desperate need of some Rain-X, as rearward visibility was essentially zero.
The very tired RT660's did their best to cope with the crazy amount of rain, but the car overall felt pretty good. I felt like I was very slow, but I got a couple point-bys from some much faster cars so that was encouraging.
Unfortunately in the second session things got a bit squirrely in turn 3. I held the slide for what felt like forever, before the car snapped left off the track, through a ditch, and into the field. I was able to drive the car back to the pits steaming like crazy, but nothing mechanical was broken. Water from the ditch had soaked the header wrap and was the cause of the steam, not radiator damage.
RIP Splitter 3.0, we hardly knew ye. Shockingly the ebay Civic quick release brackets look like they are totally good to re-use!
After removing the splitter and making sure there was no further damage, I went back out for another session after lunch. By then, the central mass of the storm had moved in, and the rain was extremely intense. Even with 100hp, I was spinning all the way through 4th gear on the straights, with the various little puddle causing my open diff to shoot power left to right, threatening to toss the car at any moment. Anything over 80mph felt downright dangerous. I decided to call it quits after that.
I learned a valuable lesson about Hawk DTC60 brake pads. Not only do they dust horrifically but that dust, when mixed with water, turns into a concrete-like substance that is very nearly impossible to remove from your wheels. It also is extremely ferrous and rusts. It is going to take literal hours with heavy duty cleaner and scotch-brite pads to get this junk off.
Looks like that cheaper pad benefit is getting put to use a bit early. I'm going back to Ol' Reliable Porterfield R4 pads. So much for trying new things.
Looking forward, I need to build another splitter, as well as re-align the car and add RainX to the rear window. Once that's done, the car will likely make an appearance at the Fortune Auto open house on 10/15, and then it's pretty much done until December 2-3 which will be my first time at Road Atlanta. Very excited for that!
I ran into the same problem with the hub flange diameter, unfortunately I tried to fit a set of rotors first, felt just a little odd going on, but that feeling was the rotors getting cracked wide open...
Your latest spring rates are similar to mine, I'm running 11.5kg/mm front and 11 rear on my AE92.
In reply to TheDailyDownshift :
Get some iron remover. It would get that brake dust off. Make sure wheels are cool to the touch. No need for Scotch Brite pads
After the off-track excursion in the tropical storm at Dominion, I hastily threw together yet another splitter just in the nick of time to make it to the Fortune Auto show, then focus on preparing for the trip to Road Atlanta.
Before tackling Road Atlanta however, I wanted to start with a clean slate from a tire standpoint. I also decided to try something new: Kumho V730. I had heard that while the Kumho might be a little bit slower than the Falkens in overall lap time, they are much more consistent and longer-wearing.
Once the time came, I packed up everything and met up with Steve and Clay to roll down to Road Atlanta. With the three of us going, it was by far the most stuff I've ever hauled at once. We even managed to squeeze Clay's pit bike on my tiny trailer with the Corolla. Even with the 4runner's rear airbags leaking, and this being the farthest distance I've ever towed, it hauled everything like a champ!
When we arrived Friday night we knew there was going to be rain in the forecast, but what we didn't expect was the intense fog that covered the track Saturday morning. With the corner workers unable to see what's happening on track, sessions were delayed until after lunch. NASA SE did a fantastic job working the schedule to maximize everyone's track time despite the weather delays.
Starting the weekend on a damp-but-drying track was actually a huge help to learn the track. Speeds were low due to the wet conditions, and as the track dried, the racing line dried first so it was like following the yellow brick road over the hill in turns 11 and 12. Speaking of the hill, video games cannot do it justice - it is so steep, blind, and fast that upon reviewing my in-car footage I realized I was literally screaming my way through it on every lap for the first couple of sessions.
This was also the first time I've ever seen another FX16 in the paddock at a full track weekend. Nic's FX is a former SCCA race car (I think) with a 7AGTE under the hood and a big old 9 Lives wang on the back.
Unfortunately as is often the case, more power equals more problems, and a good portion of his weekend was spent on jack stands.
Clay let me take his Coleman pit bike for a spin around the paddock and I have to say I'm pretty sold on these little guys. They are too much fun!
Each session over the course of the weekend showed improvement over the course of the weekend with the last session Sunday providing a 1:56.21. I'm pretty happy with that, and I can see tons of place where I can be a bit more aggressive to make up some time.
What we had anticipated being a soggy mess of a weekend actually turned out to be really fantastic. Road Atlanta may very well be my new favorite track and I will absolutely be coming back. The Kumho tires were extremely predictable and held up to abuse wonderfully. I also finally got to put the Wilwoods to a proper test and have nothing but good things to say. The car has never felt so confident under braking.
Clay let me take an extended loan of his pit bike so I decided to add a cross ramp to the trailer to make it easier to load and strap the bike down. Before it was a two man job to load it, now it's easy to do solo.
A few weeks after Atlanta, I dropped the car off at my buddy Paul's place so he can take that 4-point roll bar he originally made and transform it into a full 6-point roll cage over the winter.
At the time of this writing, the cage is still a work in progress but it's looking very good so far! I'm very excited for this to be done as there is still quite a bit of work needed before the car will be ready again. I'm shooting for trackcross at Dominion in mid-March with Summit Shenandoah at the end of March being my goal for first HPDE of the season. Here's hoping!
Enjoy reading your write-ups here and on roadraceautox! Who cares that you don't make a ton of power? You're constantly looking for ways to improve and maximize the chassis you have, which I really appreciate
When we last left off, the A-Pillar bars had been tacked in place, fitting tightly enough in places to be welded to the pillars.
The next thing to go in was the door bars. These bend into the door shells to allow maximum room inside the car, and easy ingress/egress. They also fit tightly enough to be welded to the B-Pillars.
After the reinforcements were added to the door bars, the cage was basically complete.
While the cage was being built, I put in an order with Racebred Components for one of their heel plates. The uneven floor of the Corolla had been a source of much ankle strain, as well as becoming quite slippery when rain was involved. I scored this plate on scratch and dent sale and wrapped the whole thing in grip tape for maximum anti-slip goodness.
With the cage in place, both seats received revised mounts, lowering them around 2-3" and reclining them a bit more. The steering column was angled down, and a longer steering wheel spacer was added to match. The lower seat position, new steering wheel position, and the heel plate completely changed the feel of driving the car. I'm no longer sitting "on" it, and finally feel like I'm sitting "in" the car. For the dashboard, I cut up my spare, poor-condition dash to fit around the cage. I really like how it turned out.
While checking for any wheel bearing issues before venturing out to Summit Point, I discovered that an inner tie rod had developed a bit of play.
I was a bit surprised to find what appeared to be an original part, complete with original "TEQ" Toyota stamping. That tie rod may very well be nearly 40 years old with over a quarter million miles of service.
I also wanted to check on pad wear before the next event. The Porterfield R4's seem to be holding up very well, with around 75% pad thickness remaining. Porterfield doesn't seem to be concerned with the slight cracking in the pad material, as some cracking is normal under heavy use. If it gets worse I'll replace the pads, but they are fine for now.
With the cage in place, there was no more room for the window regulators. I still wanted to be able to have windows while towing and overnight in the paddock. I used some paracord and some tarp cinch clips to hold the windows in place, and was extremely impressed with how well this worked.
One final mod I wanted to do before venturing to Shenandoah Circuit in March was to make that Lifeline rain light I'd been using as a 3rd brake light more functional if the skies should open up. Tulay's Wire Werks makes a super handy little pigtail module that allows you to use the 3rd brake light function while also allowing it to flash with the addition of a rain light switch signal. Even while flashing, application of the brakes will make the light go solid.
This came in extremely handy as Saturday ended up being extremely rainy for most of the day. Sunday cleared up nicely and we were finally able to turn some proper dry laps. The ease with which this car rotates under trail-braking is just magical.
The car didn't feel all that different with the cage, but it definitely seemed to stiffen the chassis a bit as I saw some lift on the front end as well, which I didn't notice while I was driving but sure seems to indicate a stiffer chassis.
Looking forward, I am starting to slowly accumulate parts for a proper transmission build that should really take this car to the next level. That build will likely happen later in the year, and I'm going to just run the car as-is as much as I can before August when our second kid will be making their grand entrance to the world, which will likely result in taking a bit of a break from track things. Stay tuned!
Spotted this guy at hyperfest, hope all is well with the feisty rolla. Congrats on the expanding family.
I've been happy with the Porterfields as well.
In reply to johndej :
That's my good buddy Clay. He has quite the stable of old Toyotas - that particular FX has a silvertop 20-valve 4AGE in it!
After a successful weekend at Shenandoah Circuit, I noticed a bit of play coming from both front corners of the car. At first I thought it was either a ball joint or a loose strut mount bolt, but in both cases it was lateral play where the shock shaft meets the shock housing. There was no fluid leaking out, but there was definitely some lateral play there.
Both front coilovers were removed and stripped down, then sent over to Fortune Auto for a warranty rebuild. Love those guys! If these wear out again that quickly, I'll likely be looking at upgrading to an inverted setup of some sort. Hopefully that won't be necessary, but it's definitely an option on the table.
A few weeks later the coilovers went back on and the car was once again corner balanced to as close to 50-50 cross weight as I cared to chase. That's 50.11% final cross weight balance, with total car weight with me in it at 2390.
One thing I'd notice with the new, lower seating position is that the crotch strap on my 5-point harness was now too far forward, causing me to slide down in the seat while driving. I took the opportunity to upgrade to a GForce 6-point harness and relocate the crotch belt mounts to the more rearward opening in the seat bottom. This harness has a few key advantages over the old Racequip. The design of the pull straps and hardware make adjustment much easier. The 2" to 3" shoulder belts fit much more comfortably on the HANS device, and 6 points is generally better than 5.
I also used the downtime between events to start accumulating some parts for the upcoming transmission build. The first of which being an MFactory final drive. This will significantly shorten the gearing from the current 4.31 ratio gearbox to a 4.928 final drive. MFactory lists this as an AE92 application, but the internal differences between the C50/51/52 gearboxes are minimal enough that I should be able to use this in my spare C50 no problem. Worst case I'll have to put it in the C52 currently in the car instead.
Here is what change in speed at redline will look like with the new gearing. I am very excited for this, as I never get out of 4th gear as it is, and the extra acceleration boost will be very welcome with the limited power available from the 4AGE.
The next piece of the puzzle is an Exedy Stage 1 clutch kit. I've been using an OE-replacement Exedy for years and while it's been fine, some extra bite in the clutch department will certainly be welcome.
To accompany the new clutch, a replacement friction disc for the aluminum flywheel will also be going in. It's super cool that Fidanza makes these serviceable and not too terrible on the wallet either.
After taking a couple of months off between events, I went back out to Summit Point in late June - this time at Main Circuit.
The car drove flawlessly all weekend, and I got to take some passengers around as well - perks of HPDE3 in NASA Mid-Atlantic region.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc42YHnCn9o
By the end of the weekend I was able to actually keep pace with my friend Steve in his ND Miata for a lap, driving the car as hard as I possibly could, with some helpful encouragement from my friend Doug in the passenger seat. I set a new personal best chasing Steve, and was completely exhausted at the end of that session.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4cDmiqG7PA
The next session out I was able to shave another tenth off which was a great ending to the weekend.
Going into the weekend I had set more camber than usual, running -4* up front. However I notice in pictures that even with all of that static negative camber, the outside wheel still appears to be losing tons of camber under roll, with tire wear backing that up. I think some geometry correction may be in my near future.
With June out of the way, and plans for GridLife Pitt Race in October falling through, it would appear that I'll likely be taking a pretty long brake from the track until November when I hope to go out to CMP for the first time, and Road Atlanta in December. We'll see what happens between now and then, but that's the plan at the moment.
I have a question for you guys. I have acquired an MFactory clutch-type LSD, set it to 1.0-way, and am now looking at how aggressively to configure the clutches. My initial thought was to go full beans with every clutch plate active, as this is a 99.9% track car. However I want to make sure this won't make it a complete understeer machine on-throttle. The diff came with the following clutch configuration:
This is effectively 66% clutch surface area. My initial thought was to set it up like this for full engagement:
With only 100hp on tap, is full beans really the way to go? Or is the gentler setup too much of a compromise? Someone here check my work and slap some sense into me.
On a 1-way setting I'd recommend setting it pretty mild, just enough to keep the one-wheel-peeling in check without causing it to resist rotation too much while on the gas. On my AE92 I've only ever felt the need for an LSD for launches, I've been hoping to get a Quaife QDF15E for it some day.
I have an Exedy Stage 1 clutch in mine and it's worked well, the pedal's a little stiffer than stock but still fine to drive on the street.
At the end of the last post I was commenting on how in photos it looks like the car is losing quite a bit of camber under roll. The above picture was taken with -4* of static camber, and it looks nearly 0 in that picture. So off I went to find a solution.
Amazingly, someone actually makes a bolt-on solution for this car. I cannot overstate how rare it is to find a performance part specifically designed for the AE82 chassis, but Mannon Racing Products (MRP) out of New Zealand had these on the shelf.
Here you can clearly see the difference in the joint length. These joints are extended by 20mm over stock. Since my lower control arms were pointed ever so slightly "up" at this ride height, these should drop them back down to level or slightly below, improving the camber curve through the suspension stroke.
Since these joints sit down closer to the brake rotor surface, I wanted to add some heat protection to preserve the rubber boots as well as the grease inside the joints. The first step was to make a little protective boot for the boot out of some DEI heat reflective tape, secured by safety wire.
Then as an extra precaution, I whipped up these little aluminum heat shields to protect the joints themselves. Air gap is a phenomenal insulator, and keeping the radiant heat at bay should theoretically be a large improvement.
Here's how they fit around the joint, bolting in at the two outboard joint mounting holes. I was very happy with the fitment on these, right up until I actually test drove the car. Turns out when you add steering angle that clearance goes away very quickly, and a bit of massaging with a pry bar was needed. Now they seem to fit nicely without any annoying screeching at full lock.
Once everything was installed, I did some testing with a laser pointer and my camber gauge to measure differences in toe and camber change through the suspension stroke. I found that toe change before and after was about the same, with some toe-out under compression. However while I'd lose around half a degree of camber before, now the change is almost non-existent. Definitely a "win" for these RCA ball joints from what I can see.
Back on the transmission parts front, I sourced a rebuild kit with new bearings, synchros, and seals that should hopefully all work with the spare transmission. It's a bit of an oddball as I'm pretty sure it's originally out of a Chevy Nova Twin Cam which could be either a C50 or C52 with no good way to tell externally. Hopefully the only difference is the depth of the output shaft bearing and we will cross that bridge when we get there.
Finally the last, most important piece arrived - an MFactory clutch type LSD.
This is their 1.0/1.5-way offering. The nice folks at MFactory went ahead and set the diff up to 1.0 way as I had requested. My understanding is that in a front wheel drive application, you may not want diff lock under deceleration conditions as it could hinder car rotation on turn-in which is definitely not what you want. This way, the diff will only start to lock on throttle.
The next mode of adjustment you can play with is how the clutch packs are stacked. The diff came set up at 66% lockup with some of the clutches not engaging.
Initially I was under the impression that I would want to go "full beans" and set the clutches to 100% engagement. However after seeking out some advice from more knowledgeable people, I ended up putting it back to the original 66% configuration, contrary to the notation in the image above.
Next up will be getting this thing built/assembled/broken in which will hopefully be happening in early October with enough time to prep for Carolina Motorsports Park in November. Hopefully all goes smoothly but if not, I'll just run the car in it's current drivetrain configuration. We'll see!
Ever since I first got this car back in 2017 or 2018, the only things on the dash that have worked reliably were the tachometer and the low fuel warning light. I added three auxiliary gauges soon after I got the car, but the reliability on those has been spotty, sometimes reading impossible figures, or jumping around randomly.
I've always wanted a nice modern solution, but for the longest time I was under the impression that an aftermarket standalone ECU was required to take advantage of a digital dash. Turns out that is not true, and Haltech has a very handy off-the shelf solution to adapt basically any vehicle to use their very cool IC7 digital dash.
I picked up the IC7 along with a couple additional parts to make installation as complete and simple as possible. Additional parts include the mounting bracket with shroud (HT-060071), GPS speedometer module (HT-011310), and semi-terminated wire harness (HT-060300).
With Haltech's semi-terminated wiring harness (HT060300), you can just use existing signals to your stock dash to run things like turn signal indicators, hand brake light, high beam light, auto-dim when headlights come on, and tach signal. The first step is to locate these wires on your stock dash harness. Here's the pinout for FX16 and FX16 GTS gauge clusters.
Next you just tap into those wires to run signals to the dash. The Haltech harness comes in super handy here as all the wires are clearly labelled and everything is already loomed very nicely.
It can be tedious, but if you take your time and plan your wire routing well, you can make this a very clean install as far as wiring goes.
In addition to basic dash functions, the IC7 has four analog voltage inputs (AVIP) for you to use. Out of the box, the Haltech harness has these labelled as Oil Pressure, Fuel Pressure, Water Temperature, and Fuel Level, with each input pre-wired to a connector that is compatible with Haltech's sensor kit. I opted to skip on that kit for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I don't care about fuel pressure on a stock engine. I'd much rather use that input for Oil Temperature instead, which means one of the sensors in the kit would be extraneous for me. The second reason is that their sensor kit is almost $500 which is comically expensive. Instead I opted to grab some sensors and connector kits from a local source - Ballenger Motorsports - for a fraction of that price. I picked up an AEM 0-150psi pressure sensor and two Delphi GM-style temperature sensors. I did have to re-wire two of the three connectors on the harness, but that was no problem at all.
One of the initial things that had me thinking about this dash solution in the first place was the fuel level gauge. The stock sender is notoriously junk, and even the previous owner of this car indicated that it never really worked for the decade or so he owned the car before me. Replacements are not available, so being able to use a universal tube-style sender and just configure the dash to read it was a huge selling point. I did have to modify the bolt holes on the aftermarket sender slightly, but otherwise it was very simple to mount up. It's a KUS brand 5" sensor that uses a 240-30 ohm operating range.
Haltech also has a GPS unit (HT-011310) that is direct plug-and-play with the harness! All you have to do is mount the antenna and off you go! While not absolutely necessary to have a speedo on a track car, it's still extremely nice to have for those few times the car goes out on public roads.
Once I whipped up a custom mount to stick it on the steering column, and clearanced the cluster to fit around it, the dash was mounted up!
With my seating position combined with the steering column height, I couldn't see the stock cluster anyway. With the Haltech mounted directly on top of the column, I now have perfect visibility to all that vital information. This dash will now warn me if temperatures get too high, or pressures get too low. It has shift lights in the form of a whole row of color LED's along the top that have completely customizable function. It's so much stuff! And perhaps best of all, if/when I do finally go with a standalone ECU in the future, this thing will interface with that as well over CAN network. I can't wait to test it out properly at CMP this weekend!
In early November, Steve and I drove down to Carolina Motorsports Park to run with NASA Southeast. It was my first time at that track and I had a blast. I even got to meet up with Nick again, who has the only other track-prepped FX I've ever seen in person.
We met at Road Atlanta last year but we were in the same run groups this time. With his turbo, slick tires, and more aggressive aero package, I can't really keep up but it's really cool for those few times we are nose-to-tail on track together.
Here's the best lap I managed that weekend. It was extremely hard to get clean laps with all the traffic due to the... unique... way the weekend was scheduled.
I had been noticing increasing rasp and volume from the exhaust for a while, but after CMP I poked around and found a rusty, holy mess on the exhaust.
This mild steel setup had been on the car for years before I bought it back in 2017, so I could only be but so upset about it. It seemed like a good time for an upgrade anyways.
Did you know you can get stainless pipe kits on Amazon for under $100? This pipe kit, muffler, hangers, v-band, and tip was less than $250 total.
Sure, welding stainless with MIG isn't the most perfect way to do it, but it definitely works if you have the right wire. This new setup isn't 100% stainless, as the little squiggle bend at the front section is taken from a scrap 2.0T Accord exhaust I happened to have laying around, but it's good enough for my purposes. The mandrel-bent pipe kit should flow quite a bit better than the old crush-bent pipes.
I'm pretty pleased with how it all came together. With the extra v-band flange in there, having the exhaust be multiple sections should make serviceability simpler in the future if needed.
It fits nice and tight to the floor without contacting even when I grab it and wiggle it around.
I even added a little resonated tip on there just as icing on the cake. It looks so much nicer!
I think it's actually slightly quieter than before from the outside, and significantly quieter inside. Not too bad of a tone for a normally-aspirated 4 cylinder either!
I started looking ahead towards off-season maintenance items and this car is due for a timing belt. I figured "while I'm in there" I may as well add an MRP belt stabilizer pulley since it will come in handy once there are cams and higher redlines in the picture.
However because I have no patience whatsoever, I went ahead and put it on with the old belt for now. I had to clearance the timing cover a bit, but otherwise it was pretty straight forward. These stabilizers basically keep the belt from vibrating on the long run from the crank sprocket up to the exhaust cam, especially at high RPM throttle modulation and bouncing on the rev limiter.
While I was working on the car I also noticed that my radiator and oil cooler were getting pounded pretty hard by rocks/rubber/other debris kicked up on track. I saw a video where Eric Kutil put some of this Allstar honeycomb stuff on his oil cooler and it was cheap enough that it was worth trying.
Apparently this stuff is used pretty often in dirt track applications, and one of my buddies that races Lemons said good things, so let's see how it goes.
Oh, and because I have zero self-control and friends that are enablers, I picked up a set of Silvertop 4AGE throttles when a good deal came up on Facebook. There are quite a few major engine modification steps needed before I can use these, but I'll squirrel them away for a BAWP-filled distant future.
Up next is Road Atlanta in a couple weeks, followed by a private day at NCCAR to round out the season. My goal over the winter is to step up the safety game a notch with a fire suppression system and a proper killswitch, plus hopefully install the LSD gearbox when that's finished.
Next year I'm hoping to step up to more advanced run groups (SCCA Advanced and NASA HPDE4) and try to hit some new tracks as well. Pitt Race and Mid-Ohio are high on that list, but we shall see.
I'm assuming the Road Atlanta event is the NASA weekend (12/7-8)? If so, are you also running the Friday HPDE with Just Track It?
In reply to toonarmy :
I'm just running NASA, not JTI that weekend. It's a pretty long haul from VA so I usually take Friday and Monday as travel days.
A month after a great weekend at CMP, we made the long trip down to Road Atlanta for NASA Southeast's Santa's Toy Run event.
Even though I had made minimal hardware changes to the car, and was on the same set of tires and brake pads as last year's event, I was able to shave 4 seconds off my personal best.
That still put me around 5 seconds behind Steve in his ND1 Miata, but honestly that's not too bad considering it has 50% more power, 245's, ABS, huge brakes, and 40 years newer suspension design.
In all it was a fantastic event with no real issues for either of us, and the vibes hanging out in the paddock were immaculate. Corey and Mitchell even drove all the way down with us just for the hangs. Corey's trackside french toast is not to be missed.
After Atlanta, I didn't even unload the trailer as 4 days later we were at NCCAR (North Carolina Center for Automotive Research) for a private open track day. This was the first such event we'd been to and I have to say having an open track with a very limited number of participants is so very nice.
I turned something like 55 laps that day and burned through the last of the tires and brake pads, perhaps a little too aggressively.
In the last "session" of the day, I got a little extra spicy through turn 5 (counter-clockwise) and dipped two tires off the right side, leading to a slide to a stop from around 78mph. I went two feet in, but rather than just flatspotting the tires, it ripped huge chunks out all the way down to the cord. One more thing to toss onto the "to-do" pile.
I had used the Christmas bonus gift card from work to order a Lifeline fire suppression system and that came in shortly after the NCCAR event. I knew the Zero FK (new version of Novec) used smaller bottles than foam, but I was still a bit shocked at just how compact this bottle is. This will be going in over the coming weeks of the off-season.
Techno Toy Tuning had a too-good-to-pass-up Black Friday sale on the adapter to use the Silvertop throttles on my 16v engine, so that came in as well. Hopefully by mid-year I'll be accumulating parts to be able to use these babies.
For those interested, here's the video of my new PB at Road Atlanta:
And here's the best lap I could manage at NCCAR. My optimal was like 2 seconds faster, but I just couldn't string it all together in one lap.
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