Tales from the Batcave (RX-7, rallycross, misc. stuff content)

cghstang_chris said:

Charles looks happy :)

He was ecstatic when he found out I was driving The Car at the national challenge.  Somewhat amazed on Sunday when he realized that I drove it there, no trailer.

Well heck, I want to drive a car, and the SWVR site is only 225mi from my house, basically straight shot down I-77.  Same distance as Smoke & Mirrors and other WOR sites.

Speaking of which, I may flip my SCCA region to OVR.  There was an OVR only group photo and Orion shooed me in, saying I was "honorary OVR" and that got me to thinking.

On the car front.  Trans makes a weird high pitched growl under high load in 2nd and 3rd gear only.  What is weird is it sounds like it is coming from the rearend direction, not the trans.  It does not make the noise in 4th or 5th, which would make rearend sense due to the lower torque on the driveshaft... except it also does not make the noise in 1st, which puts max torque on the driveshaft.

Odd.

I wonder if the little snout bearing between the input and output shafts is failing, and the input shaft is flexing away, causing gear mesh to go wonky.  The transmission is not racking, so I know the main output bearing is good, and being limited to only those two gears leads me to to believe that the countershaft bearings and input shaft bearing are good.

Getting stuck in 3rd that time makes me wonder if a piece of one of the shift key springs broke off and got into something, or if something got into it.  Hmm.  Not going to pull it apart now for all sorts of reasons.  End of season is coming soon, want to enjoy the car as much as possible before then.  I think it may be time to line up another transmission to be ready.  I have like six smoothcase transmissions and they are all kinda junk, this is the one I'd rebuilt in 2020.

So the other morning, I had to stop by The Batcave before work to pick up some tools I would need that day at work, which is now a shop a half mile up the road.  Stopped at a light, pull up next to a blue Fox body Mustang.

Okay, here we go.  I am in the heavily bestickered '81 and he starts blipping the throttle at me.  Happens a lot.  Dude, srsly a first gen Prius is faster... but then he rolls down his window and asks if I'm going to rallycross at Nelson Ledges.

Uh?  Brain reboot time.  I mumbleshout some sort of vague affirmative as he drives off since his light just turned green.

Who was that?  I know/thought Frank Coletti lived in the vicinity but I thought much further southeast.  Confused.  Didn't recognize someone from 20 feet away in a moving car.

So, I go to NEOhio SCCA website to get contact info.  Find this.

Er, yeah I rallycross at Nelson 

Speaking of the black car.

Through some incidental searching, I found that Erie Vo-vo has some Volvo RN cylinder heads ready to go for less money than it would take to have my existing RN head rebuilt, if it can be rebuilt. (allegedly it has .017" of warp)  I have a S60R block and the 2.4l T5 block that I rebuilt, wrapped in plastic.

Then I found that I can get a whiteblock to RX-8 bellhousing adaptor frighteningly cheap.  I have a rotary to Mustang T5 adaptor and trans on the shelf courtesy of a GRM member.  That leaves the clutch and flywheel, which are hideously expensive for this engine because they incorporate the 60-2 trigger wheel.

Found that I can buy these parts cheaper in Europe and ship to the US than to buy them in the US.  This engine was used in the Mk2 Focus RS after all.

Hm.  Patrick's RB26 sounds great but Pete likes the 5 cylinder howl even more and a R or T5 engine is good to 600 at the crank according to the Internet.  Plans coming together.

Went to Summit to buy some Milwaukee stuff and push me over the edge to get another Summit gift card. There was some sort of C5 convention happening in the parking lot, and as I got out of my car a guy started his up and it sounded like complete popcorn popper.  Very nice.

Perusing the discount shelf, found a bunch of Chevy spline 9.5" clutch disks, which would be needed to mate a Chevy gearset to a Volvo clutch and flywheel.  That would be additional expense to change gearsets, maybe cheaper to get a Ford disk made.

Then I saw this.

Pat knows exactly what it is, why it is useful, and why I bought it.  It was his idea, after all.

Automotive ADD is a cursed thing.

Back to working on Colin, which has a minor yet major change in direction, which is a subject for another thread

...realized i need to head back to summit for something.  Saw something interesting on the racks, bought all eight of them.

I would say that I am at the point where I am buying engine parts for a project that has not started yet, but I have had the oil pan for about four years already, so... too late?

Made a couple mistakes that cost me some seconds, and I was sure I was going to run a 49.x on my fifth run but one of the yahoos at corner four was holding the red flag up over their head, unfurled in both hands, but all I know was I saw "RED FLAG" so I stopped.  They waved me through, I asked what happened on course for the red flag, because I saw nothing happen, and I was told I was the cause of the red flag because I stopped on course.

So, long story short, I got a rerun.

i also stuffed up my fourth afternoon run (we ran five and four) after hooking a rut or something. Need to watch the incar.  But, I cannot say that any one mistake cost me the win: I was simply outdriven.

To be honest, running this close to a more powerful, lighter, better handling car, on ancient rock hard tires, feels like a moral victory.

And the courses ROCKED.  Very flowy with some mildly technical sections.  I was keeping the throttle pinned through three linked corners and not really slinging the car around, just finessing it through the corners.  I am starting to click with the car.

First rallycross of the year is in two days!

(The one a couple weekends ago did not count, as it was a Very Important Weekend for personal reasons so I couldn't be there)

RX-7 has a larger '83-85 radiator and an FC front mounted oil cooler to hopefully keep temperatures in check.  Also has a side mounted Dellorto 48DHLA carburetor to hopefully increase power beyond 100hp because there has to be something wrong with the Nikki.

Yep, got all those parts sitting on the shelf waiting to go on.  Haven't even touched the RX-7 since driving it on a road trip in the spring on my birthday weekend, and THAT was the first time driving it since November.  All of my focus has been on Colin.

Rallycross prep so far has consisted of verifying that it can start and that the gravel tires still have air.  The engine still has oil in the pan (changed in March) and a coolant like substance in the radiator (mostly water since blowing a hose apart in Michigan a couple years ago).  Should be good enough, we're just here to have fun.

I do have spare belts.  Probably should pack the tools to change them.

Driving around today, thinking.  Which is where problems usually start.

Y'know, what this thing needs is a turbo.

I have a lot of Volvo turbos, what are the specs vs. what are the specs of, say, a Hitachi turbo from a Turbo II?

Short answer: compressor is almost identical, turbine is slightly lower.

I don't like that answer.

Aaaand the gopro is officially dead

This car really needs better tires.  And more power.  And maybe a better suspension but I can't pin down exactly what it isn't doing as well as it could.

But at least I am out here out standing in a field, eating gas station food

There's something magical about a nice oily, vinegary pasta salad on a hot day.

Event over and halfway home.  The afternoon course was the same as the first course, but with some apexes pulled in and a right into hairpin left turned into a left, that I found that I could get through without lifting at all thanks to banking and a lack of outside cones.  I picked up a lot of time elsewhere with some judicious corner entry strategy at a certain corner with a deceptively late entry - turn in when you think you should and you screw up the next two corners.

If I were running in Mod, I would have placed 4th.

Draco destroyed MR with a PR car.  He was second overall.  Jeez.

I have a tire durometer now!  If you think I'm going to take it to the next rallycross and poke peoples' tread... you're right.

For funsies, two year old Bilzzaks are about a 45.

My 13" Black Rockets are about a 75.

Maybe that's why they grip like a hockey puck.

*googles "magic tire softener 30 points durometer"*

Driving around on the street again with the '81.

Feels nice.  Nostalgic.

Slightly annoying, though, that the black car made more power at 3000rpm than this does at peak.

And the exhaust smell is getting irritating.

Wonder if Ford still makes Ecoboost controls packs.

Let's finish Colin first before we go down that rabbit hole...

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

For my TVR project I got one of the last Ecoboost 2.0 control packs that Ford made - that was back in 2018.  From what I've heard, there's a guy in Europe (Portugal?) selling cleaned-up ECUs for the 2.0.  Could be an option.

Ford still sells the control pack for the 2.3.  Lots more of those engines are out there now too.  Probably not too bad finding a good used one.  I've got a Mustang 6-spd trans sitting around if you go that way.

In reply to TVR Scott :

Oh, the idea would be to use a NC five speed because that is a bolt in proposition that allows the use of a cable speedometer (it's the same transmission as '81-91 nonturbo RX-7, and Mazda never stopped machining for a speedo drive gear, just swap a series 2/3 RX-7 tailhousing onto it) and a Ranger/Explorer engine because the HPFP is on the top of the engine and not in the firewall.