You're never going to unsee the pinion being off center, now 
You're never going to unsee the pinion being off center, now
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
oh yeah, clear as day here lol. I guess I never noticed before
Where'd you get the aluminum driveshaft? I got one of the Mazdatrix ones years ago. Thought I had balance issues and bought what I think is a S4 N/A driveshaft to test - it has that weird cup/damper thing on the front. Turns out the OEM piece was ~1 lb ligher and about ~1 in. less in diameter than the aluminum one. I'll take less weight and rotational inertia any day so I sold the aluminum one and never looked back.
In reply to infernosg :
Larger diameter will have a higher resonant speed, though. Not sure where that is on an FC but on an SA/FB it was frighteningly low. About 80mph or so, which is about 60-65 after you swap out the 3.91 gears for 4.78.
Mazda's road race bible described how to convert to a 2 piece driveshaft, to eliminate that issue. Large diameter aluminum driveshafts did not exist, I guess
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Before the stupid loud exhaust I always noticed a drivetrain vibration that started around 50 mph, peaked somewhere between 60-70 mph and decreased beyond that. It was really only noticeable in 5th gear. It was still there in 3rd and 4th but nowhere near as bad. I rebuilt the transmission, had the driveshaft re-balanced, swapped driveshafts and it never completely went away. I'm sure it's still there but between the stupid loud exhaust and various other vibrations and noises it just gets drowned out in the noise. I always thought it was some kind of resonance...
In reply to infernosg :
shaftmasters
they are local to me in the Detroit area, their website is super old which is why they do great work. Kinda like great mechanics can't spell at all.
its a 3" aluminum tube, look under their miata selection they basically charged me a miata driveshaft price but in general their custom shafts are 425-450 to start. Its only a few lbs lighter than the stock one I modified to work with the rx8 swap which is only 3/4" shorter. This actually may be a miata driveshaft as the later years share the s1 transmission so the yokes and splines should be the same for that era. The flanges we already established are common across the board.
I don't know if I had a bad driveshaft or the old s2 transmission really had a bearing issue and went go bad because I no longer have that growling box of rocks cruising little throttle steady speed.
event recap to come but here is the best stage on the circuit IMHO.
lots of high speed blind and tight twisty fun, I stuff it briefly playing with the wipers switch and get distracted. Car felt great the conditions were prime but my balls needed to sack up a touch - everyone has stepped up their game it seems. 4th gear corners and higher speed corners need better notes and commitment but were a work in progress.
the ring and pinion made 3rd gear extra perfect and was very drivable, the changes to the cooling system were very noticeable and now the car stays extra cool, even the hood scoop shows that I am grabbing some cool air, would be curious to see once it gets stuffed under the hood how high that will get instead...
we took 5th in class due to penalties related to blowing 2 tires but had we not had that there was a definite battle for 3rd on our hands but thats rally!
lost fastest 2wd by 2 seconds on this stage, maybe if I didn't grab 4th I would made it to #1 but a hell of a run:
fidelity101 said:The thought behind all of this is the added force of the electric power steering and the shortened knuckle pickup points are causing more force/stresses in this area. The dodge ones are greasable too which is nice and has ALOT of depth to have the outer tie rod end eat up:
I've wondered how hard the electric steering pulls on the tie rods. I would love to know just HOW hard it does pull. You raise an important issue. Tie rod failures are scary and can definitely kill you so I think you can't be too safe. I only install greaseable ones unless there is no other option.
Working on some small updates to get ready for the 2024 "season" (lets call it, more of an exhibition year I think honestly) which means how to get more power out of this hunk of metal.
One theory is the intake manifold and with some rule changes and annoyances I will be putting it back under the hood and adding possibly a very tiny scoop just to poke fun at the rules.
but what does that mean exactly?
so here we are, unfortunately the cool long runner printed/fabricated manifold will go on the shelf as nice eye candy but progress is being made, however not all hope is lost. I will still use some metal 3d printing to enable idle control like the OEM manifold uses and can be controlled by the haltech:
and utilize some fancy polymer printing to make this heater hose re-route (thank you nonack for the design help/task) so now it will clear the airbox and move coolant hoses from rubbing against the intake manifold.
this also eliminated an extra connector/reducer so I could just 1 size hose to go to two different fittings.
and while we wait for UPS for the throttle cable I can get working on the plumbing:
I can't shove the FPR on the rail like I had it before due to packaging space so in efforts to re-plumb it; does this make sense? it still return from out of the regulator but the regulator is now much further from the fuel rails however with pascals law, it shouldn't matter since its a closed system? right now it is mimic-ing the factory setup. Fuel goes into the primary rail then to the secondary and out the FPR back to the return line to the tank. everything is inline, so to speak...
As far as this season goes I am planning on skipping LSPR - I will likely just do McReary rally and Central UP rally, I will be at sno*drift and LSPR though but likely in a heavy sweep capacity only.
oh man I'm an egg head I think I stumbled upon a problem that I have been living with for 2 years. The Vacuum lines from the intake manifold to the vacuum manifold were too thin walled, I think they were collapsing under heavy throttle. I have noticed some irregular pedal feel with the brake booster on stage the past few years so this could be part of it, also the fuel table looked really wonky (per the tuner) so this could have been affecting my issue all along.
ironically all this idle valve effort is useless as the cable is pulling on itself making the valve kind of useless at the moment. Lots of monkeying with throttle cables/springs/linkages on this - next time I will just DBW - I give up lol.
either way the shorty manifold is on and installed and I am doing some finishing touches and will be at the dyno Monday again for a freshenup session with a few other rotards, maybe now we can see above 169whp for all that money and effort into this motor. If not I'm going back to my cheapo deluxe rebuild specials...
with my full height (rx8 OEM) injectors on the ITB setup it made for an interesting airbox situation in conjunction with the tall air horns and because the manifold was significantly smaller I had to re-plumb the fuel system, move the coolant neck around and a few other things so it could all fit. I still should have good water protection for those low water bridge events (100AW) but time will tell.
Next up will be to remove the roof scoop on the hood and put a legal (F YOU) scoop as I call it because I still have access to the fancy 3d printers.
more to come!
yeah even from driving it around I have far more consistent pedal feel, would be curious to slap on the old manifold and dyno it for A-B purposes... however the car does go back on the Dyno tomorrow so we will see how much it puts down with the heavily shortened intake runners. Aiming for 201whp @ 9000 RPM if possible.
with that completed I will work on fixing the hood and a more robust throttle return spring bracket and make a few of the fuel lines hardline for better fitment/packaging.
JoeYuqui said:fidelity101 said:The thought behind all of this is the added force of the electric power steering and the shortened knuckle pickup points are causing more force/stresses in this area. The dodge ones are greasable too which is nice and has ALOT of depth to have the outer tie rod end eat up:
I've wondered how hard the electric steering pulls on the tie rods. I would love to know just HOW hard it does pull. You raise an important issue. Tie rod failures are scary and can definitely kill you so I think you can't be too safe. I only install greaseable ones unless there is no other option.
Should be no significant difference, really. It's no different than regular power steering, or manual steering for that matter. The power assist is for our wimpy little meat-arms after we put a quickener on it.
I have had many bad experiences with greasable and avoid them if at all possible. They tend to be higher friction, which wears faster, and the grease fitting is a vector for transferring grit into the joint. We all got opinions though.
finally in the 200whp club!
it now spins up to 10,000 which is pretty wild for a streetport, a little playing with the air horns and I could probably get another 500 rpm out of it and a few HP but its diminishing returns at this point. If I wanted to add holes in the rotor housings for a semi PP setup the manifold can support that with a quick port job and retune then find even more power and RPM but that will have to come later if needed, right now its time to enjoy and get some of the other prep out of the way on the car.
Now that some of the other small items are taken care of, it is time to get right hand turn visibility back!
I opted for 3d printing again but also to help teach you folks about the technology - its not about just doing stuff (which is the bulk of the additive manufacturing industry) for example, they would collect all the oceans plastic trash and refine it down to powder and filament only to print more plastic bottles...
in this lesson you learn how to utilize the benefits of the technology, much like a tool. you can use a hammer as a screwdriver pretty terribly - manufacturing processes are no different.
use the tool appropriately and you get good results. so we will use the magic of 3d printing to create a shell by segmenting the roof scoop into smaller pieces that can be joined together (like a jigsaw puzzle) later to form the desired shape:
I COULD have printed the whole thing in one piece but that makes for installation difficult (would have changed the design for that then) and is more costly since you are trying to print a 3mm sheet of plastic, and in this size it would likely come out pringled.
but first I had to fix my hole from the prior scoop (roof scoop acting as hood scoop) :
now I have a spot to mount the new cowl/scoop
I used the same plastic trim I use for mudflaps and aeroparts for ducting, this is extremely cheap and available so it was easier for me to shear out a shape and slide it into the frame thus I was able to mix conventionally manufactured parts with 3d printed parts to get the desired result, and with a touch of spraypaint it all comes together!
so now you know!
did some testing during the (tarmac) rallycross and turned it into a drift course, as usual. I think I really need to hit a few amateur drift days this summer, just a lot of fun but I need to bump up the tire pressures more probably for better drifting but either way just used the opportunity to test out the scoop and visibility is drastically improved which is nice and car ran great all weekend except where I had the throttle return spring jam in the throttle mechanism but a quick spring swap and back in business. I knew it was going to give me some issues and already planned a fix for that.
played with the cameras a bit too so looking for an ideal viewing spot, I'll probably make a fun mixup these coming days with the footage I got and data recorded.
we always love action shots, right?
I need to check that bucket list item for this car by attending a drift event this summer
I'm a bit late to updating this so here is some updates:
Next event up was McReary Gravel rally, we DNF'd last year so it was our turn to overcome that failure and end on a high note. The roads are great and I had a lot fun and the event landed on my birthday so it was hard not to come! Everything seemed prepared for that event, I was working with the hanging throttle issue and added a lot of ducting to make sure ALL of the air goes through the radiator and oil cooler instead of around it, this was going to be ambient temps of low 70s to low 80s so a good test of the updates and changes to the car. I even made some organizing updates and fixes to the trailer.
HOWEVER
all hell broke loose when we got there:
I managed to do a parade lap at the exhibition stage prior to parc expose where I was monkeying with zip ties to at least fix the 5000rpm idle and once that was over it meant no rest for us as after recce it was immediately time to remedy everything the night before the race and luckily I fixed the cooling fan issue quickly with a spare relay.
We added a helper throttle return spring and that seemed to work, this also uncovered that the tune was faulty at low TPS% because it was tuned to a sticking throttle that caused some tip in fuel lean spots but was definitely driveable so that permanent fix would have to wait.
the alignment shop didn't hold the tie rod boot as they adjusted the front toe so that caused the boot to bind and tear then jam in the worm gear and from the driving at milan rallyX and sliding I could tell something was up but everything seemed fine (milan was pre alignment) post inspection, so I didn't catch this until too late when I went to fill up for gas and found myself with a worse turning radius than my truck...
There is nothing more terrifying to find out you have no more steering, even at parking lot speeds. botched together some tie rod boots out of spares and zip ties and kept it together for the event but the steering itself needed a lot of power assist, felt a lot of resistance or grindy type feel, which is odd because its an electric column that drives a quickener that drives a steering rack but it was felt all the way up into the wheel ( more on that later ).
so with done what we could it was time for rest and then tackle the entirety of the event in the morning, we thought the worst was over, oh how silly to jump to conclusions so soon...
The event itself is 3 sections, like I mentioned in last years McReary Gravel Rally, its a goldilocks rally.
Section A is too fast
Section B is too rough
Section C is juuuuust right!
after section A and B was a service.
the first stage was fun and was starting to feel comfortable, temps were good - starting to get used to a different co-driver and find a ryhtmn, did 2 stages then we had a bit of a wait so I took the time to work on car as I felt the throttle feel could still be better as it was a bit sticky still once the engine bay temps creeped up. It was at that time someone walked by the car and said, you're leaking fuel. Upon inspection it was the recently updated primary rail to secondary rail fuel lines. I didn't like the routing I had before as it was a chance to touch the B+ post on the alternator which is a bad idea. However the angles and binding of the AN braided hoses weren't friendly to this setup and then immediately scrambled to make it safe, and after an array of tries and fitting swaps Fedina said simply "just put a hose on it"
as silly as that sounds they were just AN braided HOSE fittings so we removed the line and tossed on a std rubber fuel line to connect the two and we carried on with the rally leak free just to pick up some penalties for lateness but we were still in the rally!
we did enjoy the last run of the section and got a more competitive time and got ourselves ready for the rough section:
see for yourself!
made it back to service and promptly inspected the car but no damage and we were out for the rough section which took its toll. It is a technical fun and flowly stage ran twice but with a river crossing:
unfortunately the gopro audio failed or was slightly unplugged but here are the issues:
managed to limp it back to service and promptly replace this:
and here is a closer shot of the crack:
that big bolt can affect toe where it attaches to the knuckle as factory these have DTSS dynamic toe steer... system or something japanesy. IDK but for racing you want this a solid piece so you don't have variable toe while racing.
we managed to get out and do the last section with only additional minor penalties and took the last section with care and fun this is where I was watching my temps as last year they were climbing quickly here in the heat and heavy load/low speed - to my surprise: everything worked! the toe was still a little off so we just took it down a notch and enjoyed ourselves. The other competitors in my class had issues and dropped out one by one that put us on the podium due to attrition!
No more 230F water temps, nothing every really saw over 192f and oils temps never got passed 250F. I FINALLY have fixed my cooling issue over this decade of trial and error.
it was time to get home as this rally was brutal on the team and equipment however the ride home (berkeley ohio) meant it wasn't over yet. Trailer lost a wheel bearing and nearly caught fire which would have been a disaster, this ordeal itself was a mess and is a story for another day over some adult pops but is separate from the car build all together.
here is a pic of the culvert afterwards.
pretty gnarley but this car is a tank and it would prove to be one in the near future (foreshadowing)
but before we get to the next event we got some post race cleanup to do and be prepared which is exactly where I found this out:
these are the caravan tie rod upgrades on the depowered steering rack, It took a good hit and bent pretty good but lasted the remainder of the rally. This was promptly replaced and steering system inspection and overhaul was to be performed before the next event.
did I say water crossing? I meant RIVER crossing - the intake no longer sticking out the hood meant that I was about to find out my anti water intrusion techniques didn't work, it promptly stalled and stalled at every other minor puddle after that.
yes the air filter and post sock were soaked but what also had happened was the orientation of my idle control valve was poor so the filter on that was near the exhaust so it melted and allowed a straight shot of water to get into the engine bay with any tiny ammount of water splash. it stalled 3 more times on that stage, each puddle or stream significantly smaller than the big one here.
but there are some great action shots from this event:
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