snakeeyes1 Posted March 27, 2012 Report Share Posted March 27, 2012 ...that's no glory hole. That my wastegate dump. That may be the single greatest statement ever made on this forum. There must be a punchline, or at least a t-shirt, in there somewhere. Link to post
RavynX Posted March 27, 2012 Report Share Posted March 27, 2012 John, your tires are almost 4 years old by the way. =P I scraped the hell out of the front of the S2000 on Saturday at H2R on an off-track excursion. :( In better news, I ordered a MegaSquirt 2 v3 last week for the Miata so I can finally tune the damn thing correctly. Stupid Hydra crap. Link to post
hustler Posted March 29, 2012 Report Share Posted March 29, 2012 Moar info please? Where do we find these fancy things? robert www.aielectric.com Link to post
hustler Posted March 29, 2012 Report Share Posted March 29, 2012 I finally got my car back from my exhaust guy. Looks great, kinda crazy, but track ready. Hope it's not too loud when i'm at the track. ( with my helmet on) def. not harris hillable. Before you get all excited hustler, that's no glory hole. That my wastegate dump. Matt's car wasn't too bad and it was similar to that. Link to post
savowood Posted March 29, 2012 Report Share Posted March 29, 2012 When I first drove the 911, I wasn't really happy with the bounciness of it. I figured I had been driving the Boxsera with the Grand-Am suspension so long my judgement was off. As I drove it through the break-in 1000 miles, I came to the conclusion it wasn't my imagination. Sure enough, I found some new Bilstein inserts for the front and some Bilstein rears and installed them today. Additionally, I had a serious oil leak that needed tending. I had lost 2 quarts of oil since I started driving the car. As it turns out, the main high pressure oil feed was not tightened down enough. The motor is not clean again. Finally the crank pulley was wobbly. It's now fixed. The car is wonderful to drive now. With the busted dampers, it was a bear to drive. With the new ones, it's fantastic. The turn-in is crisp (as it can be with a 55 sidewall) and the car sits like I remember my old 74 doing back in Germany. It looks like I'm all set for the BMWCCA event at H2R this Saturday. -Michael Link to post
robertcope Posted March 31, 2012 Author Report Share Posted March 31, 2012 Post event inspection. Everything looks good. As mentioned earlier in another threat, my front bumper cover has a rip in it now. And my rear tow hook is bent a little. Otherwise it all looks okay. Replaced the crappy lug nuts from Tire Rack with new 949 lug nuts. This gets me back to where I was before my wheel theft and now I'll be even faster. Installed IOPort seat brace on the driver's seat. I believe I am now 100% NASA TTE legal. It feels good not to be able to rock the seat getting settled into it. That always bothered me. I'll do the passenger side at some point down the road, before I ask anyone to get in the car with me. This afternoon I am thinking about draining the coolant out of the car and going to a pure water and Water Wetter mixture for the summer. robert Link to post
robertcope Posted March 31, 2012 Author Report Share Posted March 31, 2012 This afternoon I am thinking about draining the coolant out of the car and going to a pure water and Water Wetter mixture for the summer. Ended up using Royal Purple's Purple Ice because that's what NAPA had. <shrug> I wish I liked Royal Purple more, Texas company and all that. robert Link to post
robertcope Posted March 31, 2012 Author Report Share Posted March 31, 2012 Wired up the TraqMate's RPM input. Now I have RPM data being recorded! robert Link to post
hustler Posted April 5, 2012 Report Share Posted April 5, 2012 I had some strange happenings with my turbo car after the Corvette track day a couple weeks ago, the turbo was smoking externally. For some reason I was weeking oil through the CHRA/turbine housing, but not blowing smoke out the exhaust. After a conversation with TiAL, they let me know it was the gas piston ring, apparently they melt or deteriorate after 100 hours or so on the track. Rather that do a CHRA exchange, I'm getting a favor and the turbo is going to Europe to get an M50 bearing cartridge with a silicon bronze retainer. This way it's an insanely hard metal that will not deteriorate. I'm also getting Inconel gas piston rings which will also last forever. The shop doing the work services turbos for WRC, lol. They say I'll have a 1000+ hour life as they are now running an entire season on a single turbo without rebuilds in WRC with these new parts. Basically, it's now a motorsports turbo, with GT2860rs "expanders". I can't really complain about the turbo lasting 100 track hours, but its still irritating. This is the first time I've had to put a wrench on the drivetrain in two seasons. Link to post
Megahellastylin Posted April 7, 2012 Report Share Posted April 7, 2012 ^^^ Baller turbo Hustler! Some say that even Inconel cannot withstand the combustion temperature of his 'wastegate gases'. And that the Blue Flame Club cowers in fear whenever he bends over holding a lighter. All we know is, he's called The Hustler. that's no glory hole. That my wastegate dump. I agree with Bob. In for the T-Shirt I pulled my car out of the trailer and put it on jackstands in the garage. Nothing to see here, move along. Link to post
hustler Posted April 7, 2012 Report Share Posted April 7, 2012 Yesterday I installed an LC-1, installed MS2, road tuned, cracked a header, replaced the header, then woke up and drove to Houston and got 28mpg, 4mpg better at 80mph than usual. Link to post
hustler Posted April 10, 2012 Report Share Posted April 10, 2012 Still fine tuning, about to wire in the 99 throttle-body and IAC, then do the "final road tune". Link to post
ChrisKearns Posted April 13, 2012 Report Share Posted April 13, 2012 Nearly done reassembling everything after seam welding and redoing the paint work on the interior. Got the dash back in and fired the car last night. I put in a different switch panel that has positive and negative bus bars built in (instead of having a bunch of pigtails to keep up with) and includes circuit breakers and LED's (left the cool suit pump on overnight before and killed the battery) for all the electric systems that are still in the car that are user controllable - wipers/washers/windshield blower/cool suit pump/lights. The TNS lighting circuit uses a switched ground to trigger the relay so I've got to reverse the LED on the switch panel because that whole circuit is built backwards. The mounting panel is also beefier aluminum so a kill switch and fire pull can be mounted up there in the future. Seam welding is done in the tub and rear shock towers - a few notes notes on seam welding: Full penetration is easy to get A good looking weld is not The slower you go the better the welds look - need to let the seam sealer that's between the panels burn itself out or it will gas out into the weld puddle - more heat and more wire won't fix it A grinder with a good flapper wheel is your friend It's not a fast process It's going to make a mess You'll be tired of seam welding when you're only half way finished. For the paint work, everything was taken down to metal or scuffed factory primer and then shot with rattle can primer. The white bits done with rattle can flat white and covered with a rattle can satin clear. The bottom portion of the tub is done with an oil based enamel that's much harder than acrylic paint. Mixed in some traction additive and a little shot of Japan Drier to speed up the drying process so it only took 2 days rather than 5. Hopefully this stuff is more resilient - the acrylic i had on the floor scratched too easy and looked like crap after a year. Shot the ebrake handle, center section of the dash, the door bars, and various hardware in flat black as well - once there's paint on your fingers there's no reason not to change colors. The sonic cleaner from HF is very handy and does a good job of prepping nuts and bolts along with other small pieces for paint. Plans for this weekend are to finish re-installing the interior door bars/seats/harnesses/data logger/rear deck panel and to install a new-to-me 949 Racing 7.25" single organic disk clutch - saw a good deal on a used one so I jumped on it. It's going to be interesting to see how much quicker the little 1.6 will rev now - it was already quick with a lightweight clutch assembly on it. I'll be taking out a perfectly good Spec Stage 2+ with Fidanza lightweight flywheel and aluminum pressure plate that's got 10 or so track weekends and under 1k street miles on it. It'll be for sale as soon as it's off the car. And I'll be doing a bit of paint work on the inner doors - they look horrible now in comparison so they're in need of some attention. And if all this gets done quickly, there's more seam welding to do under the front fenders. Wooohoooooo! Link to post
robertcope Posted April 13, 2012 Author Report Share Posted April 13, 2012 Looks really nice, Chris. Lots of work. Interested to hear whether the seam welding can be felt or not. The only car I've ever driven that was seam welded is Ju's Rabbit, and it feels really tight. Update: I, uh, washed my car today. Yeah, it compares to some seam welding. robert Link to post
hustler Posted April 16, 2012 Report Share Posted April 16, 2012 Chris, The car is looking more awesome. I'm pretty impressed. My daily now has a 99 IAC valve and I'm still working on PID fast-idle AC switchpoints and faiilng miserable. It pushed me over the edge on Saturday and I literally walked out of the garage, picked-up the gun, went to the range and ran through 175 rounds, lol. Link to post
ChrisKearns Posted April 16, 2012 Report Share Posted April 16, 2012 Had a bit of a situation crop up when putting the interior back together. Laid down rubber cement to fix the heat mat to the drivers foot well - about the time the last of it went down, the first stuff to get painted on had done a nice job of blistering the paint. The white acrylic was fine - the gray oil based stuff is what puckered and lifted. Ho Lee Sheiit. What a mess. About 6 hours of sniffing Xylene fumes and going after the puckered paint/rubber cement mixture with a wire brush resulted in the foot well returning to it's original state of a mix of bare metal, factory primer, and some other stuff that's become quite firmly attached over the last 22 years. The intermediate state was this foul smelling goo was about the consistency of peanut butter that stuck to whatever it touched - hands, clothes, floor, whatever - it became gray and sticky. This was the first time I've ever used Xylene and it's definitely some pretty potent stuff - weak brain cells beware! (I checked after about 5 hours and found that an organic cartridge on a basic respirator works to knock down the fumes if you're working right over it). So, while it was pouring rain on Sunday and too humid to do anything I took the opportunity to bust up the two remaining tar patches (the xylene melted those too, but just managed to smear a light coating of it all over the place) along with the last remnants of seam sealer around the body plugs that remained in the foot well. Once the weather blew past, all the holes and gaps got sealed up, a new coat of rubber cement was laid down, the heat mat was installed, and then I had a beer. Can't even tell something bad happened. What a wonderful 1.5 day setback. At any rate, the seats and harnesses are back in, I rerouted some of the camera wiring going to the data logger and got all the wiring all tied down. The hard top and dash can now both be removed without having to take any of the chassis harness loose. Also swapped out the rear deck panel I've been running that was all ragged/pitted/rusted and nasty looking with one I picked up last summer but never got around to installing. The old one was guaranteed to cut wires or skin if one wasn't careful around it. This new one was cut in two pieces so the notches for the roll bar could be much more form fitting. The doors are all masked up for spraying the interior sheet metal that same flat white that's on the trans tunnel. Verified some technical bits on the new-to-me clutch and will be starting the tear down for installation tonight. Hope to be finished before the weekend so there won't be a thrash next week to finish getting ready. Link to post
robertcope Posted April 19, 2012 Author Report Share Posted April 19, 2012 Too subtle? robert Link to post
Just_Hayes Posted April 24, 2012 Report Share Posted April 24, 2012 Had a bit of a situation crop up when putting the interior back together. Laid down rubber cement to fix the heat mat to the drivers foot well - about the time the last of it went down, the first stuff to get painted on had done a nice job of blistering the paint. The white acrylic was fine - the gray oil based stuff is what puckered and lifted. Ho Lee Sheiit. What a mess. About 6 hours of sniffing Xylene fumes and going after the puckered paint/rubber cement mixture with a wire brush resulted in the foot well returning to it's original state of a mix of bare metal, factory primer, and some other stuff that's become quite firmly attached over the last 22 years. The intermediate state was this foul smelling goo was about the consistency of peanut butter that stuck to whatever it touched - hands, clothes, floor, whatever - it became gray and sticky. This was the first time I've ever used Xylene and it's definitely some pretty potent stuff - weak brain cells beware! (I checked after about 5 hours and found that an organic cartridge on a basic respirator works to knock down the fumes if you're working right over it). So, while it was pouring rain on Sunday and too humid to do anything I took the opportunity to bust up the two remaining tar patches (the xylene melted those too, but just managed to smear a light coating of it all over the place) along with the last remnants of seam sealer around the body plugs that remained in the foot well. Once the weather blew past, all the holes and gaps got sealed up, a new coat of rubber cement was laid down, the heat mat was installed, and then I had a beer. Can't even tell something bad happened. What a wonderful 1.5 day setback. At any rate, the seats and harnesses are back in, I rerouted some of the camera wiring going to the data logger and got all the wiring all tied down. The hard top and dash can now both be removed without having to take any of the chassis harness loose. Also swapped out the rear deck panel I've been running that was all ragged/pitted/rusted and nasty looking with one I picked up last summer but never got around to installing. The old one was guaranteed to cut wires or skin if one wasn't careful around it. This new one was cut in two pieces so the notches for the roll bar could be much more form fitting. The doors are all masked up for spraying the interior sheet metal that same flat white that's on the trans tunnel. Verified some technical bits on the new-to-me clutch and will be starting the tear down for installation tonight. Hope to be finished before the weekend so there won't be a thrash next week to finish getting ready. Uhhh yeah, xylene is not the stuff you want to play with. That stuff will dissolve just about anything with an organic component. Link to post
Megahellastylin Posted April 24, 2012 Report Share Posted April 24, 2012 I have been working on a new mount for the new (to me) rear wing. It is coming along nicely but I still have some work to do before I take the car to TWS this weekend. Considering that the T1 entrance is 140 mph I want to be sure the wing is well mounted. Link to post
RavynX Posted April 24, 2012 Report Share Posted April 24, 2012 Zzzz, still waiting on the MegaSquirt EMS to be completed and shipped... Link to post
robertcope Posted April 27, 2012 Author Report Share Posted April 27, 2012 Yesterday I took the car down to replace the water pump, timing belt, and drop in an MSM cam. I love valvetrain porn, so here you go: Not surprisingly, it is very clean. robert Link to post
RavynX Posted April 27, 2012 Report Share Posted April 27, 2012 I washed the Miata last night; no pics though. Link to post
robertcope Posted April 28, 2012 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2012 Yesterday I took the car down to replace the water pump, timing belt, and drop in an MSM cam. Finished this job up this morning. So far, no leaks! My initial impression of the cam is, well, I'm not sure. I want to say it pulls harder after 6500 or so, strongly to 7000, but that may be wishful thinking more than anything else. I'm going to shower and take it for a drive out to the track, perhaps I'll know more then. Of course, top end at TWS will tell me more than anything else. robert Link to post
robertcope Posted May 1, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 1, 2012 Put new plugs in the car, NGK (4091) R5671A-7 gapped at 0.043". The old plugs looked fine, but it has been a year. robert Link to post
ajay Posted May 1, 2012 Report Share Posted May 1, 2012 Safety Safety Safety... Added a battery cut-off switch to the inside of the car and a fire extinguisher. Link to post
