Mazda2 on $100 a week

I have to admit that seeing that lithium battery in your engine bay immediately made me cringe...I may be out of my lane in that I specifically have never used the LiFe chemistry type battery, but I am very familiar with the LiPO lithium polymer variety for R/C. Your car's circuitry is specifically not balancing the cells as they charge, so if you are using a 3S or 4S pack, one of those cells in series may get further and further out of line with the others in terms of charge, and may get overdrawn. Once lithium poly's get overdrawn, they get volatile with the next charge.

I have started a LiPO fire previously in my house -- the battery went from zero to fireball in about 45 seconds. I never charge them unattended, and normally only outside the house, but on that day it was cold and I compromised. I had to kick it out the back door and shovel some dirt over it while it ran its course.

I still use them - the power/weight ratio can't be beat - but mine are stored in a fireproof sack inside of a sealed metal ammo can on a stone back patio. Again, I have not fully explored LiFe for automotive applications, but please be careful.

Two things:

I have that same annoying rattle in my 2 and I keep forgetting to pull it apart and figure out how to quiet it down. Good idea with the command strips. I have to get me some of those!

To potentially stop your car from turning into a Roman candle, have you considered permanently mounting the battery inside a fire resistant container? For example, a friend of mine told me that his RC batteries (again LiPo not LiFe) to charge the battery inside a bucket of sand. Might not be a bad idea to get a metal (or other fire resistant box) and mount it in the stock battery tray, then hard mount the battery in the center of the box (floating off the bottom) and fill with sand. It will obviously add a few pounds but might be good insurance.

ok guys, LiFePO4 batteries are a huge safety improvement over Li polymer batteries of the past. They are very abuse resistant and it has been shown repeatedly that you can pound a nail through one and not cause it to burn. additionally, they are chemically stable enough to take a lot of charging abuse, even being able to take a charge from a lead acid battery charger and not heat up. There are literally thousands of motorcycle riders riding around with LiFe batteries re purposed just like mine and they're not dead. I'm not breaking any new ground here, I'm just doing it publicly so that others can see what's going on. I'm not burying the battery in a bucket of sand in my engine compartment. I should get a load balancer to see what's going on in the battery and hopefully improve it's life. I'll continue to use the battery where it's class legal and let everyone know how things work out.

mazdeuce wrote: A second place in PF was enough to get me a National Challenge trophy and some contingency money from Mazda. Winston drove my car great. I think the only reason I was ahead of him was because he spent the first half dozen runs getting used to things. After that we were pretty much swapping fast time. He's a good co-driver. He gridded the car when was doing my safety duties, he helped change tires, he didn't break anything, and he let me win. He is also one heck of a friendly guy.

Congrats on the 2nd place finish, man. No way did I let you win -- I was trying to beat you You drove the heck out of that car right from the start, and it paid off. You certainly kept me pushing for faster times, and I appreciated your insight on the course. Thanks again for letting me share your ride, consume your consumables, and enjoy your company.

More people rallycrossing is always good. I had a great time and I really enjoyed having a co-driver for the first time. Winston made the experience fun enough that I'm definitely inviting more people to drive my car. Now I just have to figure out how to file with Mazda for the money. It's not a problem I ever expected to have.

Driving in the dirt is fun.

I like this one. It makes me look fast.

I like the photos! You got me all excited because I know the mazda2 Will do some rallycross action in June and possibly July since the rx7 engine and chassis will be going over a major overhaul...

Depending on what tires/wheels I use I will be PF or SF

I'm going to go all NASCAR on you for a moment.....
Dustless Air Filter Company in Houston donated a years supply of home air filters to a lucky randomly drawn person at the National Challenge event last weekend and I was the lucky guy. I rolled down there this morning and picked up a filter. Thanks for supporting rallycross.

Too bad they dont make one for your intake lol. Looks very dusty out there.

They do, kind of. The guy who runs the rallycross series works for Dustless and he will make anyone a pre-filter out of this matting that they use to protect multi million dollar turbines. It fits in the box ahead of the regular paper filter and stops about 90% of the dust before it gets to the paper. I need to get a couple. Thanks for reminding me.
In other news, the filter I won had a value of $5. I'm in control of the accounting around here so I'm adding that back into my car budget. That gives me $105 to add to the budget this week leaving me with $311. The hitch is that it looks like the Porsche is going to have to share the car budget if want to stay married long term. I'll be doing all of my accounting in this tread which might be confusing, but that way I don't clutter up the Porsche thread with things like budget caps and spending limits. Nobody likes that in a Porsche thread.
So, I spent $870 at the mechanics getting the valves adjusted and the AC diagnosis started. It hurt, but I'm over it. I also spent $84 on other stuff at Pelican. That leaves me with $-954 for the Porsche. I'm going to try and dedicate half of the money each month toward chipping away at that. I should theoretically be able to get it down to zero sometime within the next year. Theoretically.
Ending this month with $311 in Mazda money and -$954 in Porsche money.

Not much going on with the Mazda. Driving kids to school, hauling the paint striping equipment up to the soccer fields to get them painted, autocross this weekend. Just car stuff. Even though I'm not actually doing anything to the car I'm still spending car money. Add $100 for this week but take away $30 for autocross, $48 for BMWCCA membership which enables me to autocross with them too, and $90 for two years of PCA membership. They say that membership has it's privileges, we shall see.
That leaves me with $243 in Mazda money and still -$954 in Porsche money. God I hope my wife never finds this thread.

If you're going to track Porsche AND Mazda spending in this thread, it's going to get tough (boring?) to follow. No offense intended, I enjoy following this thread as I'm planning on doing a new, budget racer myself...soon. I already know Porsche maintenance costs way more, you're not supposed to count pennies with them. Maybe consider an open spreadsheet like Google docs or something to keep track of itemized stuff and just keep tabs on the running total in the thread?

Also, Porsche and budget caps don't play well together. You already knew that, though. It kind of spoils the fun of the cheap car thread, but also puts things into perspective on the contrast between Porsche budget and modern econobox budget.

Bryce

You're absolutely right. I need to figure out how to do this better. More car stuff and less accounting moving forward.

I like the accounting for the deuce in this thread, it shows how much things can add up if you're not paying attention.

Do you keep the stability control on when you rallyX?

fidelity101 wrote: Do you keep the stability control on when you rallyX?

No, I turn it off for everything, rallycross, autocross, getting the mail. I also use the super secret starting technique so that I can left foot brake without the stupid throttle override kicking in. I don't know what Mazda engineer wrote that piece of code, but I love him (or her).

Two weeks and no updates. Not cool. The problem is that I haven't been doing much with the car aside from driving it. Two weekends ago was autocross. I was attempting to learn to LFB better and it didn't go so well. I can't seem to get the brake override to shut off consistently and that's messing with my head. I finished 6 out of 6. Lots of sadness.
Rallycross last weekend was better. We had the largest turnout ever for a rallycross with 51 registered drivers, 25 of which were in stock 2wd with me. I was not totally unhappy with my third place finish all things considered. It was a good finish, on the rostrum and all of that. I invited another driver to co-drive the car again and that had us gridded third in line. Couple that with some confusion in grid and we ended up driving our runs quite early in the session. Because of the surface, the course itself was getting faster as it was swept of the loose stuff on top and the race line developed. It was pretty much impossible to get ahead of the two guys in front of me with the run order. Rallycross is funny like that.
Add $200 for two more weeks and I'm at $443. I think I might still need to subtract $45 for the rallycross which I actually paid for back in January, but missed the event due to my son being in the hospital and then having the entry fee bumped to this event. Anyway, I'll put my budget at $398 for now.
Mods are sort of on hold for now. I'm waiting to see if the street class rules for SCCA autocross are adopted as written for next year. It's a good ruleset for my car and how I like to drive it. Shocks and sways bars and I'll be built to the limit of the class and should still be able to successfully rallycross the car.

LFB messes with my head. If I don't position my foot just right I over power the pedal right at the end of the braking zone.

Hell in traffic hehe.

I know it can be faster if I can learn to do it well. Of all the corners at the last autocross I think I did it truly right three times. When that happened the car was startlingly fast out of the corners. I can practice it on two corners driving into my neighborhood but can only do it at maybe 70% without being an shiny happy person so I'm not sure how much it's helping. I'm going to ruin a lot of autocross runs before I get it right, that's for sure.

Two more weeks? More autocross, I did well this time, finished 2nd out of 5. The fast car is still fast, and the 2 is not, but I did well against the mortals and PAX'ed in the top quarter. I'm a permanent announcer for my work position and am loving my time on the microphone. I'll add another $200 and take away $30 for the autocross. That leaves me with $568. I'm still waiting for the rules to solidify for next year before purchases. Also saving up for HPDE in the fall and a new set of rubber in the next six months or so. Rallycross practice weekend is rumored for the end of the month. Hopefully I can get in a lot of runs. I'm seriously needing massive amounts of seat time.

More rallycross? Yes please!

I made it back to Texas for the next round of the Texas Rallysport rallycross. I invited a friend who I know is a better driver than me and he proved it by beating my by 6 seconds after 7 runs. The good news is that I finished second behind him. Feeling the glory of my success, I went home and registered for rallycross nationals. It's time to learn some humility. It's also time to undo some of the things that have been done to the car. To be nationally legal in stock fwd I need to pull the camber bolts, the motor mount, and swap back to the stock bump stops. I also have a few other things to do before then and I'll go over them as I do them.
I need to calculate what's in my budget, but I think it's a lot. Something like $2500. I'm sorting out the schedule for getting my NASA road racing license in the fall/spring with the b-spec mazda2 of a friend. That should eat most of the money.

Epic thread

Mazdeuce , I'm curious about the Zippy LiFe battery. How do you figure out the correct size? I have a 2.0 Civic.

There was a thread, here maybe? Somewhere, it popped up on a Google search and someone a lot more knowledgeable than me dropped by to explain the nomenclature of the batteries and how they are sized. I ended up going with the one I have because it was recommended for mild small engines, and that's pretty much exactly what the 2's 1.5 is. If you were near me I'd let you try the one I have to see how you liked it.
Edit: found it - http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/cheap-lightweight-battery-suggestions/57030/page1/