Hello all, just a quick update.
After about 12 hours of towing round trip, and spending a night sleeping in the back of the suburban at a truck stop.. I got the car home safe and sound with a bunch of the spares and wheels etc.. I unloaded the car in the dark and did some quick laps around the back roads with the wife and several of my 4 kids. Neighbors are gonna love this thing if i keep up the late night testing lol.
The car and I seem to have bonded rather easily, within a few minutes I could drive the thing near the limit with confidence and it seems to be very predictable. I love how the tight LSD will bring the car around a bit on fast corner entry when you lift and once pointed the car settles into a tight neutral slide that is easily adjusted with throttle. there's maybe a touch of low speed understeer but that's fixable with more aggressive braking. I like it, i think with a few adjustments and some stage time to gain my trust it could be a quick enough car within the 2wd crowd.
After a good nights rest, I just couldn't stay away from figuring out the engine troubles. it was very hard to start, especially hot, and wasn't making power under boost. Other than that it seemed to run ok once going and at lighter loads. While waiting to pickup the car I read this thread (all of it..) and came up with the theory that the fuel filter was not fine enough which can cause injectors not to close tightly. I pulled the fuel rail and did a quick test. Indeed a few injectors were dribbling when they should be closed. Spray patterns and whatnot seemed ok, although these are apparently disc injectors, not a very good choice for this car. I put it all back knowing I had found an issue but that it shouldn't run as bad as it was just due to that. Before I got the car i ordered a 5 micron fuel filter, new injectors, aftermarket fuel pressure regulator, and a megasquirt 2 setup for it. so when that stuff arrives I'll fix the injector issue.
It drove like a timing issue to me so I started just going back to basics and checking things over. Long story short the installed cam position just didn't seem right to me and all the timing marks are gone with the removal of the timing cover and having an adjustable cam gear. I reviewed a few pictures online and noticed that even though I don't have the alignment marks for cam timing, the keyway of the cam typically points down when the crank is at TDC. so I popped off the timing belt and moved the cam maybe 30 degrees or 10-12 belt teeth to get the keyway pointing down. Lo and behold, the car fired right up and ran much better. Since then I've tweaked the cam to about 4 degrees retarded with the adjustable setup and it's running quite good.
Good enough that I submitted an entry to Hardwood CUP rally, on August 22.. yes, this August.. It's a crazy short time to pull things together but it's also the last NASA rally of the year on dirt/gravel, and it's a blind rally which is better for my wife's first time codriving, and what the heck you only live once. So now I need to pull together two peoples worth of racing licences, medical forms, fire suits, head restraints, helmets, etc... in about a week. I'm making good progress and have most of it already.
Tonight to celebrate I put the speedline wheels on it with old track day tires, terrorized some isolated tarmac with a friend from work, and degreased/pressure washed the car under the hood and outside thoroughly. Tomorrow a couple of my kids are gonna attack the inside of the car with rags and spray bottles to try to clean things up some more.
The list:
-oil pressure drops too low from the rx7 oil cooler so I'm going to remove the oil stat or drill a hole across the thermostat to let the pressure stay up for now. I may put a different cooler on it if I get ambitious in the next few days and the parts store has something suitable. Another possible fix is to TIG another AN fitting in the other end of the cooler and flow all the oil across it once (instead of across and back) to cut the restriction in half.
-I noticed there's no wrap of the belt on the water pump, which could explain it running hot on stage, I'm gonna change belts around to provide more wrap. I'll have to post a couple pics to show what I mean later.
-It needs a touch of negative camber all around and some toe in on the rear for gravel use, it's a bit "floaty" on gravel compared to what I'm used to. With limited time I may just leave it as is since it's not really adjustable and i'd have to create something. It works rather awesome on tarmac as is (foreshadowing future event possibilities).
-there's an oil leak somewhere near the oil filter, need to pull the skid and look that over. In fact, for the oil cooler changes and to look things over I'll probably pull the front bumper and skid etc.. tomorrow.
-I found a few other little things on the injection that I don't like, but since it's all getting ripped out in a couple weeks after hardwood rally I will do my best to ignore these things and just run it.
-if the kids seem particularly helpful I may hand them some white rustoleum and a brush for inside the car and try not to pay attention to whatever attrocities they commit in there.
-oh yea and I'm gonna replace the plastic side windows if I can get it all done quickly enough so I can give Chris and Sara back the ones with their names on them.
Perry
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