Spoolpigeon wrote: In reply to RedGT: I was codriving the yellow MR-2 spyder in ES and won the class. It was a good weekend!
Nice!!
Spoolpigeon wrote: In reply to RedGT: I was codriving the yellow MR-2 spyder in ES and won the class. It was a good weekend!
Nice!!
At an event last weekend I left the busted diff center section with a friend who has rebuilt a few RX7 ones. He tore it down and found this:
which is quite an unhappy rear pinion bearing. That is $30, plus a new crush sleeve, front seal, lock nut and shipping come to about $65. Can't buy a used VLSD for that any more apparently, so we'll try a rebuild. Ring, pinion and VLSD lump still look good.
As for that event, eh, I forgot how to drive. Just didn't have the discipline to not overdrive some tight entries. I thought maybe I found the end of the tires but pulled everything together on the last run to put down a time that I considered respectable so if the tires are off the pace it's not by much yet. I also discovered that the stock exhaust is a way bigger detriment to power than I had thought based on street driving. The course featured a 0-52mph (At miata-speed anyway) uphill straight launch as well as two other long acceleration runs later in the course. That may have caused some of my struggle to find time against CSP, ASP and SM cars at the top of PAX but most of it was driving.
Here's the front seal my friend pulled from the bad-bearing diff:
And here's the one I pulled from the leaking diff:
His took half an hour on the workbench, mine took 5 minutes under the car. Go figure. Might actually be easier with the diff firmly anchored.
New seal is in and seems to be working. The car is gonna smell like burnt gear oil forever though. Still stock exhaust and rubber bushings, ran out of time and I'd rather go racing this weekend than fix it again.
Parts are all here to rebuild the busted one as well. Leaving them with said buddy on Sunday. The rebuilt diff will probably go back in the car soonish because it beats swapping bushings again, and the one in the car now is really annoying me with its whine. I am getting mixed feedback as to whether it is typical or not but I don't think it is 'right' and it is certainly not 'sanity-preserving'.
So the hillclimb car still has not moved and Duryea clearly ain't happening so instead of spectating there I drowned my sorrows in two days of autocross this weekend.
Saturday was fun. First FTD for me, though I missed top PAX by 0.1 sec which irks me a little. I had it by 0.001 after the morning session. The PM session...did not go so well. First run was slow on cold/old tires. Fair enough.
Second run, the throttle pedal jammed on the carpet and stuck wide open. I didn't realize this initially, completed a fast slalom, went to brake for the first turn and just smoked the hell out of the RF tire. Immediately back on the gas, I just figured I misjudged the braking zone and/or tires were still cold. Through a series of offsets and a section with a small lift....and that is when I realized the car ain't lifting. Threw it into neutral first, it bounced around on the limiter for a few seconds as I found the key to shut it off. Pulled off the course, checked under the hood to find the cable jammed tight, wide open. Back into the car and notice the pedal has worn a slot into the carpet and caught in that. Once freed up, all was back to normal. But that RF tire was DONE. Thunka thunka all the way off course. I had a spare in case something corded (I am running these tires to their death, more on that later) so I threw it on for the drive home. So...maybe I could have got the PAX win back if I had 3 runs, maybe not.
The funny thing was the tach went haywire and was now hanging on the wrong side of the rest pin, 'revving' up to 0 when the car was running.
Drove about 20 minutes like this, at which point I happened to wind it out a bit leaving a stop sign before shifting, and around 5000 rpm-ish (going by ear) the needle twitched, jumped, wiggled, and proceeded to unwind itself counterclockwise and settle back into the correct reading. It's been fine ever since.
Carpet trimmed, plastic mounted behind it, full pedal travel verified and no chance of getting stuck. I'll have to get a new carpet for this car eventually.
Now for the second event on Sunday. I said I'd run these worn tires of various ages until I felt they were holding me back. That turned out to be right about now. A few very fast people were there in STS (snyder, baker) and I was looking forward to the battle. First run was atrocious....I got the balance of the car to be just fine after some minor shock changes but the grip just was not there even with drastic pressure changes over the next 3 runs. The thing was a handful at every turn. Asking it to do the most simple changes of direction resulted in 4-wheel drifts. I ended up about a second out of 1st - and 1st/3rd had dirty runs another 0.5 faster so really I was 1.5 sec off the pace IMO. Time to change the tires. The set currently on the car is comprised of two original ones from early 2015 with 200 runs on them, one that spent most of its life on a mazda3 and is now at 180+ runs, and one off the front of an ES MR2 with 150+ runs. I think that last one is still fine, but one good one isn't enough. 
Then on the way home it poured and my top speed was about 42 mph before the front end got light. Fine. New tires it is.
Interestingly, I didn't think the tires were bad at all on Saturday. I mean, come on, 1st of 70. Small region or not, they certainly were not slow. I don't know if they really need heat in the pavement when that worn (sunday was cloudy), or if the competition saturday was really that much slower and I didn't know how much faster I should have been going, or if they can fall off literally overnight but something sure changed in about 14 hours. Wow.
This is how they looked starting Saturday:
Yeah it was a little sideways-y
I'd say you got your money's worth out of those. How hard was the front seal? Mine seems to be lightly misting my subframe with diff oil.
In reply to cmcgregor:
It was a piece of cake, with the caveat that I didn't really care if I messed up this diff somehow. You do have to remove, with an impact, the main nut that locates the pinion, crush sleeve, etc.
It was under an hour total, given that I already had the car up high enough to easily roll under it. I think I took the exhaust off too but that's standard procedure every time I put it in the garage lately.
Are you still planning on going to the Pocono event the 17th-18th?
In reply to NickD:
Yep. You gonna come down? I believe they are going to offer it as individual days too, if that matters.
I got vacation time to use and no particular plans in mind, plus a couple people in my chapter highly recommend it. I may swap tires before then, as my Direzza ZIIs seem suspect (they're very hard and don't get sticky when hot). I'd like to go R-compounds but that would require a rollbar and a seconds set of wheels and a tire carrier to transport them, so I'll likely get the RE-71Rs. Just wish they offered them in a 225-width.
In reply to NickD:
Come on down, you'll have a blast. And if you are on old star specs you will be impressed plenty by RE71...or try the maxxis ones if you must have a 245 on there and have 9" wheels to actually use the extra width.
In reply to RedGT:
I saw the Maxxis but all I have are the 15x8s, and even with rolled fenders, I think 245s would be a tight fit. Discount Tire has the RE71Rs for only 9 more dollars than what I paid for my ZIIs on Tire Rack 2 years ago.
I would recommend the RE71 because the compound is better than the Maxxis for autocross and they are easier to drive than the RivalS, which makes the 205 RE71 >/= the wider choices IMO. On a 7.5" wheel in STS, absolutely. But I kinda stopped saying it because everyone wants to cram more tire onto their 6-8" wide wheel. If you're leaning toward the RE71, heck yes, go for it.
Ok, this may be why the car wouldn't brake worth a damn on Sunday.
The junk tires are finally where they belong.
"New" free ones installed. These have ~5/32" of tread and are heat cycled out, says the previous owner. I'll give them a shot. If these suck I will finally mount up the brand new set but I hope to save those for 2017.
The 'new' tires with 5/32" of tread work juuuuust fiiiine. Here's the CRX guy I lost to by almost a second last week. This time we were within 17 thousandths and we both had faster dirty runs that would have won PAX. I made some driving errors but the car feels great again. Back on pace and ready for Pocono next weekend.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/q458fl2jbwA
I started playing with the 3d printer a little more. I would like an SPX straight intake like this. I do not want to spend $250 for it.
So.
Test run with eyeballed dimensions and an inch or two shorter than I want. Worked pretty well. After acetone vapor bath the inside is plenty smooth.
So I measured a bunch last night and will print another with the right dimensions today and it should be ready to install by tomorrow morning. Man. That was easy. Should have done it two years ago.
In reply to RedGT:
Ordered up some fresh RE71Rs for this weekend. Hope the weather forecast for down that way is better than up here.
In reply to NickD:
Ehhhh. Sunday is looking a little wet. Okay, a lot wet. You'll make good use of the new RE71Rs. At least Saturday looks absolutely gorgeous, 75 degrees and sunny. Should be fun.
Yeah, here at home they are saying 60% chance of rain both days. Looks like there are only 3 other competitors in C/SP and they appear to be co-driving the same car. Either that or I missed the memo where you have to run a purple '95 Miata in C/SP.
RedGT wrote:
Uhhhh wanna make another one of those?
I'd make more. Note that the $250 kit comes with a simple bracket to mount the afm in its new position. You guys would have to make one. Not hard. I think i could print, test fit, vapor wash and ship for...$40? Is that something you'd be willing to pay? That covers material, shipping, and listening to the dang printer run for 6 hours.
Test fitted on the rallycross car below. It works for its intended purpose which was to be able to play with rotating the AFM without running one of those awful round-to-square flow chokers that put the filter right at the AFM pulling hot air off the header :-/
I need to do more work to make it fit on my STS car because that has the tall NB-style shock adjusters that get in the way of everything.
How confident are you that it will hold up to rallycross abuse? If it's a good printer, good material, and good adhesion between layers it should be pretty strong, but I'd still worry about cracking once its' been cooking in the engine bay for a while.
In reply to ¯_(ツ)_/¯:
Second version is higher resolution and larger radiuses. After the acetone vapor treatment it seems pretty solid. The gt temp for abs is north of 220*F and i will have it wrapped in reflective tape. We'll see!
I almost had myself convinced to pony up the $250, so I could definitely stomach $40, even if it doesn't last forever. Do you have pics of the bracket you made?
I would also be interested in one. If I could take delivery this weekend, that would be real cool.
What intake do you guys have now? What ID filter? I can change the diameter of this easily so if you have a certain filter already you don't have to pony up for a new one. At the moment it is sized for the K&N ones that come with a Racing Beat elbow intake. 3.375" ID, give or take. But that one is hard to find for sale on its own for some reason. 3" ID is more common. I have one I bought and never used (didn't fit the RB) that I need to measure.
Fit to the AFM. Good enough for me.
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