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Picked up these tow hooks for so I would have an anchor point to tie the car down when trailering to the tuner. I don’t need much cause I’m not going far, so I hope they work. They are actually heavier than I expected. Even if only one of the two works out it will be worth it, to me. First glance it looks like the rear will work out. Front might be a different story.
FYI those are *tow* hooks to tow a car from. Track cars have them so a support vehicle can pull the car out of a berm/ditch/tire wall/etc. easily and safely.
Stock the car has *tie down* hooks for towing on a trailer/flatbed. That is just to secure the car so it doesn't roll or move off. If you try and tow with a tie down hook you can tear it off - the tie down is designed for the force to be pulling down, not forwards.
Depending on the trailer there are tons of options to safely tie the car down - straps that are designed to wrap around the wheels, tie down straps looped over the suspension, etc. Most cars don't need anything else to be able to be towed - tow truck drives up, winches the car onto the bed, ties down, away it goes.
FYI those are *tow* hooks to tow a car from. Track cars have them so a support vehicle can pull the car out of a berm/ditch/tire wall/etc. easily and safely.
Stock the car has *tie down* hooks for towing on a trailer/flatbed. That is just to secure the car so it doesn't roll or move off. If you try and tow with a tie down hook you can tear it off - the tie down is designed for the force to be pulling down, not forwards.
Depending on the trailer there are tons of options to safely tie the car down - straps that are designed to wrap around the wheels, tie down straps looped over the suspension, etc. Most cars don't need anything else to be able to be towed - tow truck drives up, winches the car onto the bed, ties down, away it goes.
Dale
Was planning on putting the car on my gooseneck and for the purposes of looking secure for DPS I wanted some easy points of connection for my straps since I am not setup with a channel system for wheel straps. I’m not traveling far and not looking to over invest. I my just put the stock wheels back on and put straps through them if nothing else. If all else fails I’ll drive the car there and limit the boost.
When i I ordered the tow hooks my rational was, if it could handle the force of towing it could handle the pull of a strap from front and rear. I still believe it would have worked if there wasn’t bumper plastic in the way of mounting points and these hooks were model specific rather than universal. I believe Mazda shipped the cars with them on and removed them didn’t they?
The cars did have stock tie down hooks front and rear. I THINK the dealers were supposed to remove them as part of the pre-delivery inspection but many times they were left on.
E track and tire straps on the way. Testing them out with my Polaris, diff width, making adjustments. Has to fit the caddy and T-bird while I’m at it. More to follow.
Despite my plans, I just couldn’t load the FD on the gooseneck without having to hassle with fabbing some way to get the nose of her up over the ramp. None the less the tie down system works for the Ranger, Razor and other vehicles that have a higher clearance.
So so I drove the car to the tuner and dropped it off. It’s going to roll over 20k miles anyway, as much as I have been postponing it. WTH, that’s what it is being built for right.
While it it is away it missed a local car show with some pretty nice cars and trucks.
And one of my favorite all time cars, close to my heart since when I was 15 I paid $250 for a 69’ and made a Baja out of it. Wasn’t quite this nice though
Finally got the car in and have some results from the dyno. 260RWHP 245TQ on this so called conservative dyno. Still has midpipe, cat, air pump and hopefully a safe all around tune. I have not driven the car yet or got it back. It is still under the knife ,so to speak, getting dialed in with cold starts and street tuning to make sure it idles right and performs under load.
It seems to be well short of my HP goal yet I’m not sure in the essence of keeping it as close to stock as possible I can get much more out of it without going beyond the point of no return? At least a point I wouldn’t want to return.
That being said, the car now has many reliable upgrades that have made it reliable, cooler, taken away hesitation and helped it breathe. Picking up the extra ponies along the way are just a bonus. I’m sure I will feel it when I drive it home, the long way of course
A new wide band to help the ECU with feedback. Boost to monitor the sequential turbos to be sure everything is going as it should. We were able to remove the stock A pillar all together and use this after market piece without drilling any holes in it so it can be returned to stock if it needs to be.
Car is starting cold, hot and not skipping a beat so far. No probs with idle when kicking on AC and cycling through electrical loads etc. Keeping fingers crossed. Set at 12 psi primary boost.
I’ll post a link to the dyno later when I put it on YouTube. I suppose 260RWHP isn’t all that bad considering it’s probably 300+ flywheel HP.
Stock FDs put down 220 at the wheels, so +40hp on a skeptical dyno is nothing to shake a stick at. You should lay down a trap time, to see where you're really at.
The car is back at home and man what a ride! Absolutely no disappointments here ladies and gentlemen. After a snails pace 2 1/2 years and 1000 miles later I have completed the project. I did not get to the 350 HP mark but as I got into this project and with keeping my target of keeping the cars integrity of being able to easily return to stock I soon realized I could not get there with the experienced advise of those like Banzai and others. It’s just not possible unless I want to strip out what keeps the value of keeping it stock. Now I have reliability with a mix of safe usable HP and the ability to watch it with gauges.
I couldnt have done done it without the help of all the great advice from all my friends out there that offered help and criticism. Thanks all.
So the final numbers as stated are 260RWHP 245TQ on 12-10-12 boost. The best test of AFR I could witness was on “the track” on a 5th gear pull. 135 mph, 11-12 psi boost and AFR held no lower than 10.1. I believe this is still plenty rich. The car with 9.5” Pilots on the rear will spin the tires now with just turbo spool in 2nd gear.
Nice day in Texas at Bow Ties Camero car show annual event. Lots of beautiful cars on display. The car ran great and it was 90 degrees out so I’m happy the A/C is working well. I entered in the car show under the “Imports” division. There were upwards of 160 cars in the show and well over 250 on the grounds of all makes. I believe there were over 20 imports from new Ferrari, MBG, Nissan GT, Jag, Audi to Mercedes. The RX pulled 3rd out of the bunch! Not bad considering I didn’t polish anything up before going. It was a last minute thought to go and I’m glad I did. So many neat cars and great people there.
The car pulls really strong, couldn’t be happier at the moment. Usually it is a game of chase trying to achieve more but I am completely happy where it is at. It will spin the stickier, fatter Pilots with just throttle in second and pulls great in all gears as it should. Especially 3rd as we all know.
If anything now it would have to be coil overs. Still trying to stay true to the car but eating bumps stinks and so does bump steer.
Weelll, to be honest it has been sitting covered while I have been tinkering on the “V”. I did send my tune file to the master, Chuck, but I have yet to locate a Datalogit on here yet at the right price to put the one he sent me back in the car.
Im very happy with how the car has been running. I’ll likely keep an eye out for a nice set of coil springs as this is the one thing that could be improved most on this car.
Who made your cooling panel? BT? Looks good. I'm gonna need something similar, if I ever my junk in gear.
It is Bubble Tech. It fits pretty good and cleans things up from removing the stock intercooler and rearranging the bracketry. You may have to enlarge for your A/C sight glass for it to fit flush as it uses magnets to hold it down to the car for easy removal.
Made a Coffee and Cars run out to Dripping Springs today. It was a little cold and wet so I started out in the Caddy and came back in the afternoon and picked up the 7 to finish the day out when the roads dried out. Funky weather hear in Texas with needing a jacket in the morning and blasting the A/C a couple hours later. It was great getting some spirited driving in with both cars today. They were both eager to get some go juice moving through the injectors. Put a big smile on my face
One of the items on my build list has been to get a paint correction done on my car. Being the ultimate DIY and tight wad and refusing to leave my cars with anyone I decided to I better learn to do it myself. After much reading, watching YouTube and looking around at what the best options for me would be I decided on the following:
Jay Leno’s or Chemical Guys touchless car wash.
Power air dryer, no touch blow dryer.
Turtle wax bug and tar remover, to get road grime and bugs off.
McGuires clay bars to remove the rest of the junk until the finish was smooth.
Griot’s Garage G9 and G8 polisher with orange cutting pads. Various polishing compounds
And after many hours of work starting with the correcting creme first to remove years of swirls and scratches then a final wax I am left with a show room shine. It looks like glass. It’s all but perfect again. Well, for 27 years old and original paint, one can’t complain. It came out mirror like.
03-17-19, 10:58 AM
Honey come to bed
