This last event at the Firm was very successful. I took 2nd in modified RWD. The car is holding up pretty well. I did have some issues with oil pressure and a bit of valve clatter when at low RPM in the pits.
To remedy this I changed the oil out to 20w50 and added done STP oil treatment. Pressure comes right up to middle of the gauge and all the valvetrain seem happy and quiet.
The aem filter was dramatically better in the keeping dirt out of the engine. I pulled the filter and it was spotless inside as well as the AFM. While I had it off I cleaned it with some compressed air.
If you find that the window weld eventually shifts and falls out of those mounts (happened to me, YMMV), I had a lot of success with hockey pucks in My Infiniti G20. Theyre pretty brutal at low RPM idle, but since your idle is a little high, youre probably alright. Bonus, theyre super easy to modify with hand tools. Since theyre vulcanized rubber, no worries about contact with oil or heat.
I've heard of those being used as well. Pretty good idea. I still need to do the left and right side mounts right now only have front and back.
Weighed the MR2 today it tips the scales at 2160lbs with about 1/2 tank of gas.
Getting little things done day by day. I have a clunk from the engine I need to investigate and I still fear I'm hearing some valve clatter. I'll probably need to replace the oil pump at some point. Hopefully its not too hard to do. I did take care of my trunk latch situation. I had been using a bungee cord around the spoiler but it pulled the spoiler up off the trunk lid. So I bought a couple latches from Amazon. We'll see how well they do hopefully they hold without breaking.
The clunking noise I started to hear was found and its quite the pickle.
That is the rear motor mount. It bolts into the frame and the bolt decided to leave. Now why would a bolt decide it didn't want to be there? If you guessed it stripped the nut going in you'd be right. The fun bit is either the other one was also a problem or.. the weight of the engine being on the one remaining bolt broke the retaining nut off as well and sheared the bolt. As you can imagine the back 1/2 of the engine being held up by 1/2 a bolt was the source of the noise.
So I will have to get a nut in there to replace the captured nute. The biggest hurdle is the section of the chassis it bolts to is sealed on all 4 sides. I can go in from the side but I don't want to weaken the area that much although if I do go through the side I'll weld a plate across the access port. What I'm hoping though is I can go through the top. And I might even be lucky enough that its not covered once I cut through the trunk floor (hint the trunk floor is now made out of the side of a stove.
So I'll pull my home made plate off and see if I'm lucky enough to gain access so I can get a nut tightened onto a bolt so the engine stops trying to run away from the car.
All better now it wasn't as hard as I had feared. I pulled off the home made plate to reveal that I do in fact have access to the top of where the mount bolts to if I remove the floor.
So I cut an access point into some of the remaining trunk floor.
I figured rust was the main culprit it got into the trunk and ate the floor away and then into the chassis rail. The damage seemed localized to to the captured nut so I vacuumed out the rail and hit up the top and bottom with some rust reform.
The plate the capture nut was welded to seems to still be in good shape so I decided to just bolt the mount back into the current metal. I went to NAPA and got a couple grade 10.9 bolts and nuts with flanged ends. I decided to mount them with the bolt part facing downwards and put a bit of JB weld on the head of the bolt. Hopefully if I ever have to pull the mount the JB will keep the bolt in place and I won't have to dig into my trunk again. If not I'll just have to pull that part of the floor back up again.
Here she is all bolted back together again. I'll give it a good test drive to make sure it holds and then rivet the home made panel back into place.
Test drive was successful. Everything stayed where it was supposed to be. It also cleared up what I had thought might have been bad shift cable bushings and the valve clatter noise. Car feels way more solid and stable and without the motor shifting around is even better on the road than ever.
Yep, thats why I made the hockey puck mounts.
The stockers failed on my G20. This allowed the oil pan to rattle against the bottom crossbrace, which drove me insane.
Replacing the 2 failed lower mounts with pucks not only put the motor back, thereby removing the rattle, but improved shifter-feel as well. So, inspired by that win, I pucked my upper 2 mounts as well. With all 4 mounts upgraded, I not only had incredible shifting, but burnout induced wheel hop was GONE (on 80k suspension), and I was able to chirp 3rd if I really tried - a feat which was impossible previously.
It was bonkers how poor the car had gotten performance wise over time, without me noticing (in fairness, I didnt own it new, so I had no idea what it couldve been capable of). Upgrading the OEM structural rubber went right to the top of my list after that. As soon as the factory warranty is out on the Cruze, thatis going to be one of my first activities...
Working on a new exhaust for the MR2. I didnt like the dual tips that came with it. They were crooked and hung too low. So I'm replacing it with a simple Cherry Bomb muffler. Its not welded in yet but I just shoved it on to see what it might sound like. Welp... here it is along with some fun video of what my car is doing when it backfires on the overrun. Cherry Bomb Video
New exhaust installed. Had an old friend bring his welder over when the one I was borrowing ended up being NFG. He's a welder by trade and did amazing work. I'm so happy to be rid of that heavy, complicated, lopsided, low hanging pile that was on the back of the car before. New exhaust looks great, sounds great, and spits flame visible in the passenger mirror when it backfires.
hhaase
Reader
4/16/17 9:39 p.m.
Definitely sounds right for autocross and rallycross, glad I heard it though before I did my own. Would be rough to listen to for an hour a day in my commute.
The welded up version isn't quite a bad as my test fit version but it is fairly loud and commute usually see's you at 3-4k rpm and it would be really annoying.
I've wanted to do a livery calling back to the 80's toyota race cars. There were two main options the Celica rally car which ties into the Marlboro livery and the Celica track car. I'm not a super big fan of replicating the Marlboro livery so even though that was the rally car I decided to work off the track car.
Here was my inspiration. I still have some details to work out I want to get the red Toyota on the rear fenders and some TRD badging. I figured with the car washed I'll take some all around shots to kind of base line where I'm at now.
Nice! Although now I suddenly find myself upset by the blasphemous nature of the bottle caps.
Then again, I did spend countless hours looking specifically for Toyota parts to hang on my AMC. LOL
Hmmm what if I told you my rally tires are on VW rabbit wheels... I guess thats not really much better. The Bottlecaps are an approximation of the rally wheels from the 80s era. This is the Marlboro livery I was considering but eventually rejected which shows the wheels. I would love to find some legit 4x100 rally wheels from that era.
The VW wheels don't bother me quite as much, though probably just because they're not as easily identifiable as being the wrong make. Those wheels on the car you posted are rad. I mean, the whole thing is, but those wheels are perfect.
I got some time to wrench on the MR2 again. There isn't anything I need to address to make it to my next event so today was about long term goals.
I eventually want to make some lightweight door cards to cover the bare doors. This keeps you from cutting you legs and arms all up on the bare metal and helps keep some of the dirt out of the window mechanisms.
To that end I started swapping from Power windows to manual windows. I bought a couple manual window regulators and put in the drivers today. I also realigned the window so it seals much better and doesn't rattle as much.
I also want to use the area that used to house the radio and A/C controls for switches and gauges. I created a little plate to mount to the existing structure in the car and drilled holes for the fuel pump, and light bar switches from earlier. I used the top of a dryer for the sheet metal employing the CAD (Cardboard aided Design) method. Here we use all pieces of the dead appliances before discarding the carcass.
So home again and that means videos. I think one of the batteries for my camera is bad because it only lasts one run before being dead.
Eventful day, one of my competitors broke something major in his subframe. I snapped a shift cable on my last run, have a giant clunk somewhere in the rear and my alternator is doing weird things to the voltage.
I only have the 1st, 5th and 6th runs because of the camera issues but they are really good. The new camera system is pretty nice. The morning was fairly sloppy with mud the afternoon left foot braking finally clicked.
Thank you CFR Rallycross
7-22-17 RallyX Run 1
7-22-17 RallyX Run 5
7-22-17 RallyX Run 6
I've been neglecting this thread a bit so time to catch everyone up. I've been happily competing in the CFR events mostly going well and learning a lot as a driver. I don't believe the car is holding me back against the wave of very strong Miatas and other Modified Rear competition. I have a lot of growth needed as a driver.
After replacing the window regulators I came back to my passenger window shattered. I'm currently looking for a replacement window but for now have permission to compete with it broken.
I've been working on a camera mount for my runs. I have created a rotating camera mount that works like a weather vane. This allows the car to rotate while the camera points towards the direction of movement. That is how I captured the footage from the previous post.
I'm still fighting an issue where after my 2nd run the car doesn't want to idle. Now if it dies it doesn't want to start for a couple minutes. I'm thinking oil in the pickup of the distributor or possibly coil issues.
After this last event I have some work to do. I think I broke the shift cable on the last run. There is also a large clunk in the rear and my voltage is doing weird things. I'll keep you updated as I figure out what is wrong.
Dug in and found out that I definitely have a broken shift cable. I had the fun job of backing the car off the trailer w/out being able to shift in reverse. A simple strap attached to the trailer and some tugging got her going enough to let gravity handle the rest. It is really nice working with a light car.
Luckily I had a spare cable to replace the broken one. So that is fixed.
The source of my clunking was the passenger side motor mount. There are 3 bolts that hold the two halves of the mount together and they had worked their way loose. Luckily I didn't lose any of the nuts or bolts and was able to tighten them down. I'll have to see if I just didn't crank down on them enough when I put the engine in or if the vibration is working them loose. A little loctite will solve that if need be.
I still haven't dug into the voltage issues. My alternator belt squeals when I start up but it quiets down. The belt is new but the alternator isn't. Its starting to have a bit of a supercharger whine which I expect is dirt getting into the alternator. I may be replacing that soon as well. When I pulled the car off the trailer the voltage was doing ok though so perhaps the movement of the engine from the motor mounts was causing issues. I guess I should check my grounds before the next event as well and make sure none of those pulled free.
Well that was a brutal day. I had tried to test drive my MR2 after replacing the shift cable and still had a nasty clunk. I had my Dad look at what was going on and the engine was rotating only when in reverse though.
I pulled the driver side motor mount and decided I am going to fill it but that mount doesn't prevent rotation of the engine. So I checked out the transmission mount near the passenger compartment. Bingo 1 bolt missing the other one sheared right off.
I was able to extract the sheared bolt with some vice grips luckily it hadn't welded itself to the transmission. The other bolt went missing because the threads were stripped. Well E36 M3.... I got to do something I had never done before. Tap a new bolt hole.
Thanks to the die and tap set my wife got me for xmas I was able to match up a larger bolt and tap the hole. This was my first time attempting this and I was doing it upside down, under the car, with the transmission still in place.
Luckily with the advice from AvE on Youtube, just the tip and only for a minute, I was able to successfully tap the hole. Now its Gutentight. So the transmission mount is back in full operation.
I pulled the driver side mount so I'm soaking it in some Dawn to degrease it and will be filling it once it is dry.
Wow do I feel beat up today. I came home and checked the footage I got. Still having battery issues and only have the 1st half of the day. I thought something was speeding up the footage with how frantic the camera movement was and how much my helmet was banging around. Turns out that's just normal speed. Here's the runs that I got from today.
Run 1
Run 2
Run 3
Run 4
Run 5
Run 6
Found some footage of the afternoon runs. Still not happy with the way the camera mount is working.
Heres the runs I decided to just mash em all up in one video. Missed one of my morning runs but everything else was there. Finished decent really pushing things now and getting comfortable with the car but I missed some gates which gives a big penalty.
