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Personally, I think you should sell everything and buy the new GT3RS.
^^ Agree.. FD seems to be a anchor around your neck. Having little ones and no time to work on it can be a downer. Plus it looks like you already prefer the Porsche and it fits your goals much better.
Selling the FD while the market is high as giraffe pu$$y would make sense too.
^^ Agree.. FD seems to be a anchor around your neck. Having little ones and no time to work on it can be a downer. Plus it looks like you already prefer the Porsche and it fits your goals much better.
Selling the FD while the market is high as giraffe pu$$y would make sense too.
Just my 2 cents.
Good luck!
Steve
my challenge is that if I miss the FD, I can’t just go buy another. Also, being a convertible makes it a so so track car in terms of safety and very limited in terms of what tracks will accept it.
Have you managed to get a second, or even third opinion on the actual compression numbers? I'd be wanting to double, and triple check the numbers you have reflect reality. Not too hard to make up an adaptor to a 1/8NPT thread using an old sparkplug with the ceramic removed. Then use a common 150psi sensor, and look at the raw voltage output on the scope, convert it back into pressure. I've not used one of the compression testers that seem to have flooded the market, but I'd certainly double check its numbers.
I sent my buddies RCT back for a check and it was off but even with the correct numbers since we got it back, it's still low for a fresh rebuild. I then ordered my own and verified the numbers as well.
You can race a Miata and keep the FD safe in the corner of the garage.
Racing = Wrecking
Its a matter of time.
The wifey is a rational human, you can demonstrate the investment principal of FD price increase and increasing rarity.
However, if you are certain that your insurance will cover the actual value of the FD while racing and that is a chance you would like to take- hats off to you.
People out there racing Ferrari GTOs worth many millions.
Im poor AF with an FD that I "race" (solo time trials), so I think of these things...
Im glad it is taking more $ to total my FD- on the other hand not all the unibody stampings are available anymore.
Its a matter of time.
The wifey is a rational human, you can demonstrate the investment principal of FD price increase and increasing rarity.
However, if you are certain that your insurance will cover the actual value of the FD while racing and that is a chance you would like to take- hats off to you.
For HPDE you can get stated value insurance from Hagerty as well as Lockton Motorsports. Comes with 10% deductible of stated value but track day insurance definitely exists…just not covered by your regular insurance.
if I had enough free time to justify a track only car, I would but I don’t. Trying to get the best of both worlds with minimal risk. I’ve been to enough events to know that crashes do happen but not as much as people think. Most of the time it’s self induced vs being caused by someone else unless you’re in advanced group at which point people are wheel to wheel.
For now, I stick to lowerspeed venues with lots of run-off for my solo time trials. I had my fun hillclimbing FD LOL...
Though damn drifters keep putting tire walls on the edge of the track where there is nothing but grass run-off. Drifters love hitting **** and messing up their cars...
For now, I stick to lowerspeed venues with lots of run-off for my solo time trials. I had my fun hillclimbing FD LOL...
Though damn drifters keep putting tire walls on the edge of the track where there is nothing but grass run-off. Drifters love hitting **** and messing up their cars...
Ha. Track day insurance on my FD at a $48k stated value is like $150 a day which isn't too bad. I think for time trials, they either don't provide insurance or it costs more because that's seen as a race vs. a high-performance driving event where the goal is focused on driving your car safely on track vs trying to be the fastest.
Yup, Im 3rd owner of my FD and each of us has competed in SCCA events in which I at least hold 2 published records (hillclimb and kart track).
Not only is every FD a potential race car, the previous owners and I have been establishing the Provenance on this one.
I raced against my dad and his best friend in Grand Turismo. My dad died when I was 3. Grand Turismo used driver profiles from the local SCCA chapter for their named entrants at the relevant events.
Sadly, he wasnt driving his Lotus 7, or his XK120 or his XKE hatchback in Grand Turismo. It was still cool AF.
Does our racing add to my FDs value? No, not yet. Give it another 30yrs...
I raced against my dad and his best friend in Grand Turismo. My dad died when I was 3. Grand Turismo used driver profiles from the local SCCA chapter for their named entrants at the relevant events.
Sadly, he wasnt driving his Lotus 7, or his XK120 or his XKE hatchback in Grand Turismo. It was still cool AF.
Does our racing add to my FDs value? No, not yet. Give it another 30yrs...
Very sorry to hear about losing your dad at such a young age. It is cool as AF that you can race against him in Grand Turismo though. I haven't played that in so long I didnt even know you could use real profiles. That's pretty effing cool.
Oh, just sharing good memories and thoughts~
I got a new dad who is awesome! My moms a catch and a keeper.
Im just trying to shift my own (and all of our) thinking on the FD from cheap attainable sports car to the classic and rare car it is now and what that means currently and in the future.
I see parallels to the FD in my late father's obscession with his British sports and race cars in the '60s era and how they shifted and became valued classics for the boomers today.
Is 1 of 5,000 FDs usa registered or 15,000 FDs usa imported or 80,000 FDs made period (renouned in Japanese games and media in an international information age) going to be a future classic?
Or are the millions of Z06s and Porsche 911s going to be the future classics?
I think the answer to both is "yes".
Our and our kids/grandkids generation will want back the cars they or their family had or wished they had once they gain the means to purchase them.
How can we FD owners raise the prestige of our FD in the information age?
Your taking the FD to performance driving events and meeting other performance car enthusiasts does just that: especially if you share it on social media (old like this or newer like instagram, etc).
The dip in the dyno graph and the excessive wear on the sides of the apex seal seem to point toward a failed/stuck shut rotor thermal oil bypass.
Scenario would be-
no oil cooling the rotors, the apex seal groove clearance close up some from rotor thermal expansion and apex seals cannot feeely move in/out of their grooves.
This causes power loss from poor apex seal sealing since apex seals cannot expand out to stay on the rotor housing throughout the compression nor power strokes and accelerated seal wear over the high spots in the rotor housing that would normally push the seals into the groove.
You can test the function of front eccentric shaft thermal oil bypass in a pot of hot water.
If the bypass was eliminated with the machined aluminum piece check to see if something seized the check ***** up in the jets of the eccentric shaft.
Anyways, a theory; since everything else appears good/is vouched for.
coming back to this. I finally got some analysis from Ianetti:
“We have completed the analysis of the apex seals.
A brief summary of the results:
The wear on the side faces, where the of the parts touch the rotor groove, are extremely uneven and unusual.
The hardness of these parts is identical to our standard for new I-Rotary Apex Seals (no change from new)
The height wear rates and other dimensions of the apex seal are within normal parameters for an engine after break-in.
There is heat tinting on the center of the radius- The source of the heat is not clear.
There is no indication that these apex seals are any different from any other I-Rotary Apex Seals. They are effectively identical to the many others from the same batch that are in engines that are performing well.”
Sounds pretty inconclusive or he's just not wanting to take responsibility of the failure (who would). Probably a good thing you went with a different seal this go round, IMO.
^^
Have the apex seals sent back to you if you havent already of course.
If your dyno operator put a carpet fan in the opening of the front bumper for the IC and radiator, but left the oil coolers over on the side (do you have 1 or 2?) just stewing with no airflow you know it was probably oil/rotor overheat without having to examine the rotor apex seal slots and corner seals where the sideseals meet them for excessive wear.
If you have aftermarket oil coolers and an aftermarket oil cooler bypass style thermostat it would also be pretty easy to hook up the oil lines wrong to the thermostat and bypass the oil cooler(s) 100% of the time leading to oil/rotor overheat situation.
....or there is just something wrong with the I-Rotary seal design since this has been happening a LOT and I've NEVER seen this problem with ANY OTHER seal.
There was just a post this week with another person with I-Rotary seals that had a loss of compression on the first dyne run. Hmm, sounds familiar.
Sounds pretty inconclusive or he's just not wanting to take responsibility of the failure (who would). Probably a good thing you went with a different seal this go round, IMO.
But since I also have crap compression with these Rotary Aviation, the question now is was it an engine build issues that led to the failure of the iRotary and possibly my current issues because 2 sets of bad seals across 2 brands seems unlikely.
If you have aftermarket oil coolers and an aftermarket oil cooler bypass style thermostat it would also be pretty easy to hook up the oil lines wrong to the thermostat and bypass the oil cooler(s) 100% of the time leading to oil/rotor overheat situation.
I'm running SakeBomb Garage dual oil cooler kit. It was installed at Rotorsports and not by me. I don't show high oil temps though but I guess I can't see where oil is actually flowing in the engine compared to wherever the sensor measure temps.
Normal engine "block" referenced oil temps on the dyno run seem to handily rule out my hot rotor seizing the apex seals theory.
Which leaves us to the incompatible apex seal material (too soft so, too much friction) theory which we have found to be true with every other "tougher" than Mazda seal so far.
Well this just gets getting more and more interesting. There is a thread on Facebook RX7 group where the poster of the thread said he had spoken to a shop (which he didn’t want to name) who told him they’ve had multiple issues like mine and have narrowed it down to what they believe is the Haltech NSP software. My ECU was upgraded to this when we tuned with the iRotary build.
The shop supposedly put the coils on an oscilloscope and saw it was firing oddly during decel. The running theory is that this has to do with some software update that was designed for piston engines to deal with unburnt fuel as part of emissions. What I heard was that this shop spoke to Haltech and they flat out wouldn’t even entertain hearing it.
I saw that @IRPerformance responded to the thread as well and said they've seen some weird issues too. One thing that seems to be apparent, at least with iRotary, is that it doesn't like decel. They told me that some of the failures they saw early one were due to people not disable fuel cut on decel. Now you have this issue that could be caused by a software supposedly doing weird things on decel...
I called Haltech. They "heard" about my story/issue through the grapevine and are well aware of the accusations floating around. They have my logs from my dyno runs and will investigate...
i have seen similar results with the iRotary seals on a different ecu platform. and i have seen similar results with the ESP. I highly doubt its the NSP.
I heard the same story from a shop (i suspect the same shop you are saying) that the NSP is most likely the root cause because they have had the same sort of results but my money is on the tuner and the iRotary seals...
08-25-22, 01:20 PM
