fidelity101 wrote: You know you are rotarded when...
Now all you need is that six-rotor crankshaft...
fidelity101 wrote: You know you are rotarded when...
Now all you need is that six-rotor crankshaft...
This doesn't look like my garage at all....
Carry on good sir!
The tires are in the garage, the rotary parts are kept indoors so that they main stay pristine :)
efahl wrote:fidelity101 wrote: You know you are rotarded when...Now all you need is that six-rotor crankshaft...
That's eccentric shaft, if you please...
jstein77 wrote: That's eccentric shaft, if you please...
I agree completely.
I'm not smart enough to make one or rich enough to afford one but I'll take donations of either to make said scenario come true :)
then we gotta find a boat to put it in because it wont be any fun in a straight line car
Well now... This is out dated. Better change that. Reading everyones rallycross threads got my all excited again. Also that photo above was on the regions homepage for a bit :)
I Went to go play on the ice again this winter! I originally wanted to dedicate a whole season to wheel to wheel ice racing (MIRA) but some truck repairs (exhaust/distributor) and combined then with the rx7 demanding rear wheel bearings....
so that sucked up the extra funds for that so I decided to dedicate a whole weekend to ice racing instead. 3 events in 2 days with 2 different groups and one event was at night.
The photos were from the 3rd event, I do not have photos of the others. I Beat the 911 on day 1 and most of the other 2wd cars for that matter too which netted me yet another sweet mug:
Even the tow vehicle got some action on day 2!
Maybe a little too much action:
We don't always tow people out but when we do, sometimes we use a shovel and one time part of the shovel made contact with the rear window and it shattered. No worries though it was so far back that the 3 hr drive was still pretty warm with it being 15 outside.
The rest of my spare time this winter was preparing the half bridge frankenwankel for Dave Estey here:
http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/rx7-hillclimber-build-thread/52684/page19/
SAFETY SELFIE!
and a shot of Dr. Rotorsteins laboratory(photo is a bit dated there are more HID/LED lighting setup)
The weekend after the ice racing weekend was rallycross and it was ROUGH. So rough that I snapped my midpipe on my exhaust and it kept bouncing off of the hangers. I have been le tired of it anyways so I took a nap and pondered what to do next. We also cancelled the event after the 1st heat it was so rough but it was my first event EVER in having a cone free day. Problem is that I could not catch the Miatas or the 911s
Stainless 1 piece exhaust from the header all the way back to the racing beat furai rotor shapped muffler, why? because I am rotarded. Also I am mostly R&R stuff by myself and the twin mufflers is a pain to deal with it. Also this car doesn't make much power so I must continue to add lightness!
My headlights were of a grand idea but pour execution, and now that I work in automotive lighting, you kind of see things differently, I used to be in the dark about optics and such but now I see the light! And this E36 M3 is bright. Here are some teaser pics,
The front: A regular ass J30 headlight projector unit sub assembly.
The rear: HID retrofit lowbeam (but I will just have HBs on as HD fogs. Legally you can run maximum 4 forward lights on at one time.
What is neat is that you can monitor your adjustment since there is a leveling bubble there. The issue I am having on this how to construct a bracket and where to mount the ballasts. Not sure if I will put the pop up lights back in or not yet either in conjunction with this. TBD - this will be a long project and slow just chip away at the rock.
What to look forward too this season???? New engine is in the works, about half way through porting it. Haven't decided on doing a half bridge yet but after building Dave's its pretty tempting.
rx8 6 speed swap, I got a KILLER of a deal on one BNIB. pics to come in future. It also came with new throwout bearing, clutch fork and fork grommet. Just lacked a shifter which was sourced for 30 dollars. A new wooden shift knob will need to be made since the threads are different but more on that swap later.
If you wanna get rid of those bilsteins, let me know....
Hell no! They were about 200 shipped from summit.
Actually I need to find some springs that will fit the rear that are a little stiffer, look at the as I call it "Squat at WOT"
0 miles on the new shocks. I should probably take note to the other suspension links that are aging first though, also front shocks hopefully this summer. I got some nice gutted shocks from dave to put bilstein inserts in then I will replace the bushings with mazda competition ones and maybe even replace the springs if I am feelin up to it...
I have so many little things to fix on this car its not even funny.
just off the top of my head...
I will not be at many events this year but I aim to be at Great Lakes national challenge, July's 2 day event with DET SCCA and HOPEFULLY nationals in October.
I will be accepting applications for co-driver and can pick you up enroute but you might need to be on the tall side to fit in the fixed position seats since I am 6'4" and all legs
Part number on those rear bilsteins and front inserts please...
Thanks!
Rob R.
P.S. for the rear stiffness... I just cut a few coils off the stock springs which would have made the rearend too low. I then added a big thick spring rubber under the spring and 1 "in" the spring.
it helped a great deal and was very cheap!
tada!
might be in this summer quite yet but we shall see how this whole house stuff goes first, the plan is to drop the new engine in with the new transmission.
yummy!
Do you do engine rebuilds on a regular basis for paying customers?
Thanks!
Rob R.
An iregular bassis is probably more accurate. Right now I want to wrap up my engine (summer) and I may be moving in a few months, not very far away but still a hassle and costly so I won't be building anyone an engine until fall, I have about 90% of the parts I need to make another frankenwankel(S4/S5 NA 6pt hybrid, maybe streetport) aside from the one I am currently building for myself.
In the future I want to be able to do more but I have to properly set up a work shop where I can do things easier, right now most of it is hodgepodged. Also porting takes ALOT of time, I'm kind of picky so I may re-think that in the future. But then again I am using a very tiny compressor so with the right equipment it might not be so bad.
So in preperations, last time the engine was out I placed the two next to eachother to get an idea on mounts, maybe hybrid the PPF and stock FC trans mount or have something made from scratch. Not sure exactly yet.
When I recently pulled my engine out for some R&D on a new engine I put the t2 trans next to the rx8 trans to get an idea roughly what I am working with:
Shifter will be farther forward and I have no qualms about making the hole in the floor more egg shapped.
Engine is currently still being ported (maybe 50% done or so) so this engine will have to last likely for the remainder of the season or however long it holds up, I'm kind of curious to see how much more abuse it will take before it ultimately stops working. 2 races scheduled for memorial day weekend. What I can promise though is that this trans will only go in when the engine is ready.
The other issue with an rx8 trans to solve is the driveshaft. Luckily though the rx8 uses the same spline count/diameter as the TII and I have the following parts on horde: + T2 output trans yoke + rx8 output trans yoke + N/A driveshaft complete
I still plan on using my NA rear end so I figure I have my bases covered. Right now the vehicle is equiped with a T2 to NA rear end driveshaft from mazdatrix that has serviceable u-joints. I have heard that auto trans FC driveshaft may be a direct fit as well. we shall see. but it looks like there may need to be some adjustment is shaft length (lol) to make this bolt in.
The auto driveshaft does work but is something like 20 mm shorter. There are plenty of people who have used them in conversions without issue.
Depends if the 20mm more of slip will be okay or not, I'm not sure. There is lots of bouncy bounce in rallycross.
Would the bouncing have any effect on the driveshaft with the IRS rear?
In reply to EvanB:
touche, but the driveshaft is the easy part of the swap. Doing the mount will require some effort. I need to find a new welder friend(s) to tow it up to TRF way far away now.
I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast but I'm not intercontinental when I eat french toast so I am going brag and/or boast.
http://detroit-scca.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/5-24-14_rx_scoring.pdf
FTD RWD, 3 cones all day and out of 60 entrants only 2 people had a faster individual time than me. Damn MF-ers.... I am still driving on a tired engine with relatively blown out suspension. Debating on to not fix anything else in preperations for national challenge in Ohio this August.
Although right now my steering rack is developing some play, thought it was front wheel bearings but I replaced those (they were bad) and it helped but there is still some slop. Threshold of spec stuff.
some updates, I have been busy with house purchasing stuff. I mean buying a garage with a detached house, but more on that later. I did make some progress on my lights though.
Here is kind of a mockup of what it could be vs what it is right now.
The idea is to cut out part of bumper and enclose an area for new HB/LB and fill in the hood with fiberglass where the headlight covers would be. I'm still working on some mounting ideas, tested a bracket or two that failed so back to the drawing board. Also long term idea is to replace front bumper and fenders, clean up the hood and re spray the front end essentially. I have all the parts (minus driver side fender but it could be salvaged) so that will happen at the new shop :)
So let me walk you through lighting terminolgy and etc. One of the perks of being in the lighting business, ALL THE BALLASTS! ALL THE DS3s!
Don't worry I have plenty more in the basement as well.
The top assembly is a projector unit or commonly refered to in the biz as a PES, which stands for piezelispode surface or something. Regardless it is made up of a few key parts:
+PES (projector) Lens +lens holder +Shade +reflector +bulb
Now this shade is unique because it is for a bi-function HID XENON unit. The shade gives you your legal road requirements for light cutoff and utilizing that with the lens gives you that crisp sharp appearance. Now with a bi-function unit it has a solenoid on it that moves a door on a lever to change from your high beam to low beam function, pretty neat stuff. This particular unit is out of a mustang but I'm sure its used in most ford products.
now the fun parts: I wanted to retrofit this low beam halogen into a bi function HID unit so I unbolted the ADC (aluminum die cast) reflector and looked inside. What you see if the low beam shade, instead of being a stamped piece of metal it is actually cast into the unit itself.
So that E36 M3 has got to go!
cutoff wheel fits Juuuuuuuust right.
Now that the stock shade is gone, time to graft the bi-function stamped shade to the bad boy.
Luckily the reflector bolts to the shade only one way and the mounting features overlap so I can keep the legal cut off line and have good light pattern isntead of massive glare and blinding all of the drivers on the road. I just had to cut one of the ears off for it to fit, drill and tap 3 holes and BAM. shade accomplished. Now I just need to bolt the shade to the reflector.
add wiring pigtail for the bi-function solenoid.
and viola! you are done with your sub assembly, here are some shots next to the other handed unit to show the difference.
Now you can see in the last pictures there are 2 square holes, these will be used for the aiming adjustment screws, some misc hardware from work pop right in then all I need to do is re-insert the correct length adjustment screw.
the black object in the middle top is a plastic bushing that holds a stud on a ball pivot, these 3 items together give me my fulcrum for adjustment.
Next step is mounting and enclosing, stay tunned.
Great work to date
Oh I forgot to note that I am leaving the stock HB function alone, I will likely just change it to a yellow bulb and set it up on its own circuit for a HD fog.
You'll need to log in to post.
