V6 powered Mazda 323

So I have been doing more autocross racing over the last couple of months.. This includes a couple trips down to packwood.. One trip was for the NWR race #2, the second was for ORSCCA race #6..

NWR event was my first time ever running down at packwood. I must say wow, what a great venue to race at. The town is full of wonderful people as well who seemed to embrace and support our sport. My girl friend decided to come down and co-drive with me which was great. It was her first event back driving since she was rear ended a little over a year ago. She was quite nervous since I had made a lot of changes to the car since the last time she drove.. After a couple runs though she started finding her confidence again and had a blast.. Both her and I were a long way off the pace though. We finished up the day close to the bottom in the standings but over all we really enjoyed our experience..

For the ORSCCA event I went down by my self. For this event I was meeting up with a friend of mine from Oregon so that we could have a little grudge match. This was a very exciting event. Mark drives an mx3 with similar modification to my 323. He usually does well locally where as I had been struggling so we were excited to get together and see who was faster.

For our morning runs we decided to co-drive Marks car. I struggled my first 3 runs to get a feel for the car. On my 4th run Mark came for a ride along and pointed out that I was being to gentle with his car.. I needed to drive it more aggressive in order to get it to stick. With this advice in hand I was able to narrow the gap between him and I considerably. In the end though Mark was faster then me by almost 0.3 of a second.

For our afternoon runs Mark and I took his r-comps off his car and put them on my car. We then co-drove my car. With a lot of people leaving after the morning run groups the afternoon was very quite. This ment Mark and I were hot lapping my car. My car didn't end up liking this as it started to over heat by our 3rd runs. 3 runs was all we needed though to prove who's car was faster. By the end of Marks 3rd run he laid down a time that was 1.4 seconds faster the his own car. Mark also proved that he is the better driver by beating me by 0.162 seconds..

Overall we were both very excited the way the event turned out. I found out that with some fresher tires my car is actually pretty competitive renewing my drive to continue developing the car. Mark also picked up a lot of good ideas for building his car and what he can do to make it faster.

I haven't processed all my videos and pictures from the events, hopefully I will get threw them soon and be able to post them up..

This morning was a local event with VCMC. Since VCMC is hosting canadian nationals in august for this event they were really gearing up to get ready for it. The event drew in 109 drivers which was pretty close to being a record for the club. We got 5 runs in plus some fun runs at the end. This was my first event on a new/used set of V710s that I picked up a couple weeks ago. The car felt really good on them.

The course was fast and very well designed leaving lots of room for various driving line options. I was very impressed with how the car handled and how I managed to put down some blazing fast times. At the end of the day when the dust settled I finished 7th overall in raw time.. 14th in pax time and first in my run group Non stock 2.. Needless to say I am very happy with how this event went..

I managed to get some great video from under the car pointed at my rear suspension.. If you watch closely you can see both ends of the rear sway bar and watch how it works.. Rear suspension autocross video.

Great work! Glad to hear that you are enjoying the car a little more and having some success. Keep it up!

I like the video! Tire seems to spend a fair bit of time off the pavement. Maybe a little less rear bar?

NOHOME wrote: I like the video! Tire seems to spend a fair bit of time off the pavement. Maybe a little less rear bar?

Maybe, but I am not sure why I would need to. Any explanation would be great..

The cars handling feels really good, I am not having any problems keeping the back end under control. The car doesn't feel like its pushing. I can adjust my shocks to dial in different levels of lift off over steer and control how loose the back end is..

Well I hit up the local 1/4 mile drags tonight... It was suuuper hot out today. This really affected the car. I ended up almost 2 seconds slower then last year.. Over all it was a fun night though. Not to many cars out so I got lots of runs in. I took the time to compare how the car did on my street tires and my V710 autocross slicks.. The slicks were a bit faster but not by much..

My fastest run over all using my V710's.. http://youtu.be/ZUciArrqO8I

My fastest run on my street tires... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUgUq...ature=youtu.be

If you don't want to break your transmission don't shift like I was.. I pretty much flat foot shift when drag racing.. Its really hard on the transmission.

Today was spent as a garage day working on the car.. It was HOT out, so work was slow.. I heard we got up around 30 - 32 deg C today with the humidity being in the 70's up to the 80's %... I am soooo glad my garage faces west and the sun doesn't hit it until 6:30 - 7pm..

My main goal was to solve my over heating/air pocket issues... I had gone to the junk yard on saterday and picked up an over flow set up from an mx3.. The plan was to do a little custom plumming to get it to work.. Well the fancy little pluming had me cursing my brains out.. I had to make 2 smaller 5/16" lines adapt to a 3/4" line.. Welding up a little fiting to make that work proved more challenging then I thought.. My 4th attempt was finally successful... I'll post pictures of the new coolant set up tomorrow..

Once I got to a point where I was just painting and doing some little detail work I decided to attempt to test fit a new front bumper.. With some custom mounts it'll fit about 90% of the way.. It will still need some tweeking to get it to line up properly to the head lights.. Body work is beyond what I know how to do though.. Hopefully Rob can make it out to have a look and give me some input..

Here's a picture of the new bumper.. I'll give anyone who can guess what it is a cookie..

crazycanadian wrote:

NOHOME wrote: I like the video! Tire seems to spend a fair bit of time off the pavement. Maybe a little less rear bar?

Maybe, but I am not sure why I would need to. Any explanation would be great.. The cars handling feels really good, I am not having any problems keeping the back end under control. The car doesn't feel like its pushing. I can adjust my shocks to dial in different levels of lift off over steer and control how loose the back end is..

My main concern was so you can keep the tire on the ground where it will contribute to the grip.

In very simple terms, I look at sway-bars as adding roll stiffness to the end they are attached to. They make that end of the car loose. So,if you are understeering, add a rear bar, OR remove front bar.

You indicate that the car is not pushing, and oversteer is availble. Maybe try to go down on the bar and see what it does?

The real challenge for any of us when doing suspension mods is how to baseline and measure change. If you can mark out a big circle in a parking lot and do a steady state test (cruise control helps) before and after, then you can get an idea of what the mods do.

Smokey Yunik mentions in his book that "Any suspension will work if you don't let it" and adding too much bar, or spring, to a car has this exact effect.

Interesting... I might try this next weekend.. There is a double header event on saterday and sunday..

The rear bar I have in the car is a smaller 19mm white line bar, its only a slight bit bigger then a stock mx3 gs rear bar.. I have a stock mx3 rear bar I can try, as well as play with the adjustment that I have on my control arms..

Last year I was running the same same coil overs but with a softer spring up front.. One of my end links in the rear ended up getting broken, so I removed the rear bar all together.. This really made the car tail happy.. I ended up having to really soften the rear shocks up to settle the car down..

Well today I finished off modifying my cooling system.. I am happy with the results so far.. I wont know if it solves my air pocket/over heating issues for a while but for now everything is working like it should.. The nice thing about converting over to this system is that it frees up room to mount my eaton m90 over top of the transmission and create a shaft drive system..

New engine bay look..

I just had to mock up the supercharger to check it out... I will need to relocate the over flow tank/coil pack and do some fancy work with the lower rad hose for clearance, but that is all going to be a lot easier then what I was trying to do before..

I picked up a new toy yesterday... This weekends autocross double header is going to be very informative..

My new toy.. Not the phone but the program on it... Solo Storm by Patrel data. :)

This program has been developed by a local autocross racer. It uses a blue tooth GPS tracking button to plot out your run.. It logs your autocross run, capturing video, g forces, speed.. If you have a blue tooth OBD 2 dongle it can capture rpms and throttle position as well.. The program allows you to quickly compare 2 runs, break the course down into section and analize all the data quickly while you sit in grid waiting for your next run..

crazycanadian wrote: My new toy.. Not the phone but the program on it... Solo Storm by Patrel data. :)

WANT

Autocross was a blast again today... I took a tone of video.. The data logger worked great, it helped me pick up almost 1/2 a second in time between my morning and afternoon runs.. I am going threw all my video, but for now here is a fun one.. My front suspension in action..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i43xkRD3p6w&feature=youtu.be

Some new shoes for next season... :)

205/50-15" Hoosier A6, mounted on Konig Monoblock Ultralight weight rims.. Only 1 run up knox mountain, and 2 laps around mission race way on the tires... At 700 buck I feel as though I got a good deal.. :)

So I am getting ready for this weekends final autocross race of the season for the VCMC car club... The new r-comps I picked up needed to be driven on a bit to get rid of some ORP (Other Peoples Rubber) if you have ever known anyone to race at nationals in lincon or packwood you will know what I am talking about..

I decided to take some comparison pics..

205/50/15 Hoosiers and Konig 15x6.5" rims.. 29 lbs... :)

225/50/14 Kumo's and Nissan Sentra 14x6" rims.. 35.5 lbs..

205/50/15 Kumo SPT''s and Mx3 GS 15x6" rims... 31 lbs...

Last but not least.. Test fitting the new Konig rims and Hoosier tires.. I think the car looks pretty sexy with its new shoes..

Interplay bumper?

Swank Force One wrote: Interplay bumper?

Nope... Its a toyota Corolla front bumper..

Hahahahha no E36 M3? Does it fit well/easily?

The body lines match up pretty close... But I have to fab up a new bumper support.. Its not bolt on by any means but doesn't require a lot of body work to make it look good..

Its my winter project to get it all set up and installed...

Looks like I haven't updated this in a while... Autocross season wrapped up last year with a bang... I had lots of fun... I ended up winning first over all in my class.. Mazda canada also paid out enough cash to cover all my entry fees and general costs of running all the events I ran last season.. Its wasn't a lot of cash, but it helps...

The trophy I got for my class win..

A shot of the car out running the cones with the new hoosiers...

Over the winter its just been some maintenance related stuff mainly... This summer should be fun.. A friend of mine is stepping in as a codriver... This week we are getting measurements to have some custom 15x10 rims made for the front.. This way we can run some 275/45 hoosiers on the front... We all ready have the date booked off and the details being planed out so that we can run nationals down in packwood this july...

Had my son help me take the head liner out of the car.. It had come unglued and was hanging down in the back..

I managed to peel it apart and re-glue it back together...

I also scored a good deal on some new shoes for the car... 205/50/15 Dunlop ZII... They only had 2,000 km on them.. The guys selling them decided to switch to Toyo R1R's...

Last but not least I scored a really good deal on a new daily driver... My new 88 Mazda 323 GTX... Feels great to be back in the BF world and have a GTX again.. She needs some tlc but over all she is in good shape... She only has 80,000km on her and she is 100% bone stock, unmolested... The only plan I have is to do the maintenance work and then driver her..

Such a cool project.

First, I want to say that this car is fantastic! Great build! I know it's way late, but can you or someone else shed light on the front tire video? Do all front tires roll that much on the rim at speed? It doesn't appear to roll over that much on turns to the left (assuming filmed from the front), but sure looks like it rolls over 3 inches when turned to the right?

Makes we want to film my tires during an autocross..

In reply to 4Msfam: Hey bud glad you have enjoyed the build. .. To answer your question there are 2 parts... first part has to do with what tire you are looking at and where on the car it is and what direction you are turning... I was filming the left front wheel in that video.. so when I turn right the car rolls over and puts a lot of force on that tire... When I turn left the car rolls to the right and the force on the tire is lifted (very little force on it).. This is why it rolls more when I turn one way vs the other way...

The second part on how much the tire rolls has to do with many different factors... The biggest ones being the type of tire..stiffer or smaller side wall/less grippy tire = less roll... softer or larger side wall/stickier tire = more roll.. tire pressures.. weight of the car and it's position on the car all play important parts as well..

Well a couple races have come and gone this season... The level of competition has been stepped up this year putting my co-driver and I out of the running for money... The car is fast and I believe it can compete but it needs more power, tire and better brakes.... This season my co-driver and I were attempting to tackle the tire and brake issues...

We borrowed some 6UL from a friend of ours for test fitting.. A lot will need to be cut out of the fender and even the bumper to make a set of tires this big fit..

The test fit session really helped us figure out what offset and everything we would need to run so afterwords we were on the hunt for rims.. 6ULS in a 15x10 are almost impossible to come by right now.. We wanted to avoid diamond racing steal rims due to their weight.. We settled in on a set of Jongbloeds Areo 500... 15x10's in the front and 15x8s in the rear.. Unfortunately it looks like the date when these are going to be released has been pushed to an unknown time frame..

Braking issues have been solved on the car now.. Boy does it stop well now.. My codriver got a great deal on a set of Hawk HP+ pads for the front.. I picked up a set of Portfiel R4S pads for the rear and set of Goodrich steal lines and new rotors.. We spent a full evening cleaning up the calipers, getting everything installed and flushing out the old brake fluid.. It took both my codriver and I a few runs to get used to the new brakes at the last event..

Well enough chat for now.. I'll post up a few more random pictures of the cars progress..