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First drive went well, another round of bleeding is required as the entire system was open or replaced. I also need to make a new master brace. A new Tilke circuit is being built ~45 minutes from my house so I'm saving all my bullets for when that opens in August, won't have a proper assessment before then. That being said, I found out I'm not the only one that is using Evo masters: RX-7ブレーキパーツ - ALTEX
They sell a complete kit with late spec booster as well as a barebones kit with lines, pushrod, etc. Wish I'd found that first, would have saved me a lot of time.
Wow, this is a game changer. I have a 929, plus original StopTech fronts (which are actually SMALLER piston area than stock), plus OE rotor upgrade rears and I LOVE the super-firm, low travel pedal... I've been wanting to upgrade for more stopping power but have been hesitant to lose the pedal.
Wow, this is a game changer. I have a 929, plus original StopTech fronts (which are actually SMALLER piston area than stock), plus OE rotor upgrade rears and I LOVE the super-firm, low travel pedal... I've been wanting to upgrade for more stopping power but have been hesitant to lose the pedal.
This was exactly my dilemma. I hated the idea of the stoptech kit offering 0 increase in stopping power, I was set to go 99 spec for that very reason. The 929MC would have afforded some room to go larger on the fronts but throw in a matching rear... No way.
Originally Posted by ZumSpeedRX-7
Like Larry said, I love everything about this car - top notch and well done Mike! Keep up the great work!
The weight of 2,387lbs with everything you still have and 1/3 tank of gas is insane. Was that before the rollbar?
Thanks man. The 2387 was in "time attack" style lol. Stock floor mats out, stock 99 brakes, no cage, smaller rear wing, no power steering. As it sits, it's likely closer to 2500lbs with all of the parts fitted to make it complete lapping days with confidence. Safety is heavy.
Speaking of lightweight stuff, I forgot to upload these pics. I was in Japan in 2019 again at Star Road when Daijiro Inada showed up. We started talking about lightweight RX7s, he told me I had to go see Amemiya's latest car. Sure enough, he had just completed his lightweight stock turbo build. Sub 1000kg with stock twins. The bodykit was made thinner than production parts, the intercooler is two CX9 diesel cores stacked, all sorts of other hardcore stuff. I took a couple pictures, zoom in and you can see some of the crazy details.
😅😅 Werd, although Maou needs to get itself a Radium surge tank haha. There should be some exciting stuff this year, I think this car was built to take the stock turbo record away from Aoki-san who is a former Amemiya mechanic and organizer of the Attack series. Interesting that the car uses stock ports with Ianetti seals.
Inspiration build. tons of detail, tons of quality and a very thought out effort overall.
So impressive how much weight you have managed to cut from the car, meanwhile keeping everything so clean and purposeful!
** for ptrhahn**
The new brake setup is mega. Mega mega. Need to get back to Area27 to truly evaluate but feedback and stopping power is immense. I should mention that I have an R Magic gas pedal like this: R-Magic 3D Aluminum Gas Pedal - RX-8 SE3P - RHDJapan which makes heel-toe quite effortless with the new MC. I think the stock gas pedal may be a touch far without it.
Well, car is parked until the new engine is built. The buyer paid up in full for the engine in the car, too risky to keep using it now. Parts are with Maxt for porting - I'm really looking forward to building my second 13b so hopefully he is able to carve out some time for me.
Last drive of the year was a good one. We got an invite out to Strawberry Creek Raceway which is a privately owned and built ~4.5km circuit. The owner has a ton of impressive machinery on display and the course itself is very challenging, about a third of the corners are blind to some degree.
** for ptrhahn**
The new brake setup is mega. Mega mega. Need to get back to Area27 to truly evaluate but feedback and stopping power is immense. I should mention that I have an R Magic gas pedal like this: R-Magic 3D Aluminum Gas Pedal - RX-8 SE3P - RHDJapan which makes heel-toe quite effortless with the new MC. I think the stock gas pedal may be a touch far without it.
That's awesome to hear! How would/should one go about buying that master kit if you don't speak or read Japanese? I'd want the full bolt on hit with new reservoir..
Working on some improvements for the upcoming track season and wouldn't mind some input from other track guys. Seems that my ricer wing has been putting in some work:
I think I'm going to come up with a rigid mount that sits maybe 2mm below the hatch in normal closed position. Something like this should translate the force more directly to the chassis. I am worried about how to prevent the hatch from moving side to side once located on said mounts. Has anyone else dealt with this or come up with a similar solution?
Also addressing the brakes on the car. Ducted stock fronts with 99 spec rears worked well with appropriate pads and fluid (Carbotech XP14/12 and Endless RF650) worked well at the local track for a long time but getting out to higher speed circuits has exposed some weakness. I fitted a 6 piston front brake kit and make brackets to fit a mustang rear caliper with a 350mm rear disc but I need to sort out the master cylinder. I could fit a 1" unit from the 929 but I think a 1-1/16" bore is more appropriate. Has anyone fit something like this or resleeved the factory master to fit a larger piston?
TIA!
Any additional specs/info on that rear brake kit, i.e.: year/model mustang caliper, rotor, is there a two piece version available, would you be willing to replicate the bracket?
There are a few chassis mount solutions I see with serious wings:
*giant goose necks off the rear bumper support mounts
*mounted to the trunk floor with reliefs cut through the hatch, usually at the far sides
*hard mounted and pinned hatches
edit: whoops, I see that quote was from some time ago
I'd say if you are serious about tracking and your hatch is doing that, you are one of the few that will actually benefit from the function of a rear mount gooseneck type setup. They look awesome but I can't say I like seeing it on a street car.
Haven't updated this thread in a while, not much new happening until Max finishes porting my new plates. Work and life have both demanded a lot of my attention lately, really hoping I'll be able to carve out some time to be out at 100% this year. I reviewed my pics from the year and thought I could add a couple pics/mods that I didn't mention here previously.
Originally Posted by BLUE TII
Car under cover looks like Ford RS200.
Originally Posted by EREBUS
Good guess!
I hope you are right
Those things are amazing and incredibly rare
Great eyes gents!
Originally Posted by Narfle
There are a few chassis mount solutions I see with serious wings:
*giant goose necks off the rear bumper support mounts
*mounted to the trunk floor with reliefs cut through the hatch, usually at the far sides
*hard mounted and pinned hatches
edit: whoops, I see that quote was from some time ago
Originally Posted by TwinCharged RX7
I'd say if you are serious about tracking and your hatch is doing that, you are one of the few that will actually benefit from the function of a rear mount gooseneck type setup. They look awesome but I can't say I like seeing it on a street car.
Good options, I think I'm going to make a reinforcement that mounts to the sheetmetal underneath the hatch. I envision a conical peg and receiver, one mounted to the gate and one to the sheetmetal with maybe a 2mm gap so that there is no interaction (meaning no noise or difficulty closing the hatch) until there is a significant load applied.
Laziness getting the better of me here. I used an aluminum banjo bolt for a turbo water line as it was the only thing I had at the time. Told myself I'd change it out later, of course I was right I just didn't get to decide when.
Added some brake ducting. I will probably change the hose out for some 3D printed scoops, the hoses get pretty mangled.
The Holly Hydramat I had been using for about 4 years suddenly gave out completely. Massive fuel starvation even with a half tank, I think it was pulling in air if the entire sock was exposed at any point. Replaced it with a Radium unit against my better judgement and was pleasantly surprised with how it performed. I ran the car down to 5L in the tank with absolutely no logged pressure drops. One or two small design oversights but overall really really happy with this unit.
Thought this was a great idea, "cheese" from SuperNow. These aluminum spacers correct the rear sway bar geometry issues caused by the factory mounting.
misc shots
Here's a shot of the WG muffler I made. I hated how the recirc sounded, the car is quite loud at cruise and idle but very quiet as soon as the turbo and WG start doing their thing. WG mufflers are a perfect middle ground IMO but with ever tightening sound restrictions, it's going back to recirc.
I played around with a bunch of different steering wheel shapes, sizes, offsets, spacers to see if there was a position that worked better than the deep 350 OMP I had been running for years. There wasn't.
FD with the old man's Cayman. His 987 is pretty dialed, the lap time delta between the two cars should be a lot bigger than it is.
I ordered a new exhaust manifold to replace the HKS V band unit I have on the car now. Altrack will be supplying a unit similar to the one he made for Shimatani-san's Endless FD.
I will probably make some removable stainless heat shields similar to what I had made for this RB:
New seat arrived, I can't decide what to do for the passenger seat. I don't like making passengers sit in a bucket but track ridealongs in the stock seat are somewhat irresponsible at this point. I might just take it out for now.
I don't think I ever posted a pic of this plate, but man I love how it looks.
3D printed prototype caliper bracket:
With covid essentially closing the airport, my friend thought it'd be cool to go out and get some Gran Turismo style shots.
I have adjustable Super Now tie rod ends so I thought I'd spend some time to actually set them up properly. Turns out, as far as I can measure, OE geo is best on the FD. MacPherson and Chapman strut cars commonly have a toe inversion near the top of the suspension travel and spacing down the tie rod is a common way of avoiding this at the cost of a greater total toe change. On my car, I put the wheel theoretically into the sheetmetal and didn't record anything unsavory so I put OE ends back on.
Show car vs real race cars:
This was kinda cool, a friend came and visited my shop with new CEO of R1 Titan (formerly Powerhouse Amuse)
Typical scene whenever I drive the car inside the city:
LOL
Sometimes it's easy to forget how small the FD is:
I don't typically time or film my driving, it's just a hobby and I usually have a pretty good idea of how I can improve my driving. Lap timers in the hands of amateurs usually create bad habits and incidents so I shy away, but a friend threw his phone in my car for a session. Boost was turned to the bare minimum, 0.6 bar, as the track is super green and dusty still and we are all just learning our way around. Big lockup in one corner cost some time and this was just a random session late in the day so not my fastest or cleanest lap... still, it was the fastest timed lap at RMM at that time haha:
End of an era in a small way, my front bumper was getting pretty beat up from all the miles on the car. Had an incident that accelerated that process
This is where my car is usually parked, probably helps explain the Pcar influence:
Third muffler and downturn added to try and get under the 95dB limit at RMM:
Another lesson learned. I installed a Radium in-tank setup last year in a rush and didn't re-evaluate all the wiring for dual pump capacity. Wiring was good but the DTP connector wasn't up to task.
Anyways, on to the bummer stuff. Once a year we do a night event, 5PM to midnight. It's my favourite day of the year, driving at night on an unlit track is a totally different experience. One thing I didn't factor in is that with the lower confidence levels and track temps, getting the slicks up to temp would be challenging. I let a lot of my friends drive the car, so eventually this was bound to happen:
Car went off on a fast left hand decreasing radius corner, a common corner for off track events. NBD I thought, happens all the time. It was the end of the night so I packed the car up as we had a second event at a different track the next day.
RS200 without the cover this time
oddest car there this time around, Mclaren MP4-12C chassis with a manual Ferrari V12 swapped in
Quick in-car of the night event. At this point I was just chillin, there was no way I could get temp into the tires with 5C ambient temps. I also learned another lesson, I made an error in my PDM logic and discovered that when I turned the high beams on, the rest of the lights turned off so I had to run the night with low beams only. The low beams actually work quite well but being aimed appropriately meant that my vision didn't extend forward as far as I would have liked. Car in front was a very well driven and prepped GT4 on R7s, he actually ended up within 2s of his PB at that track.
Soooo, turns out I had misunderstood the off-track incident. The car didn't push off track, it locked up and sailed straight off the end of the track at ~150kph deep into a wheat field. I ended up having a tire deflate on a cooldown lap.
The culprit:
They say when you put a helmet on you lose 50IQ points and after this I have to say I agree. I rushed to swap wheels on and get the car back on the trailer and apparently didn't secure the wheels properly.
I feel very fortunate that I didn't hurt anyone or damage any other cars, but still this was a bummer to see. Damage is about as minor as it could be but I still get to swap out all my wheel hardware and repair the fender. I think I'll change up the colour of the advans, open to thoughts on a good/interesting colour!
Regarding the bumper, I wanted the new one to have smaller openings and also have a design that works with a splitter - something the URAS bumper doesn't allow. I did a bit of testing earlier in the year to see if reduced openings would adversely impact oil temps and I think I'm safe.
I ended up ordering a Vertex bumper with the canards. There are so few pics of this bumper and none on a "time attack" style car so buying it is a bit of a leap of faith, but the same was true of the URAS bumper, damd diffuser, and vorschlag wing I had before and I was super happy with how they turned out. When this goes on, the body shop is going to improve the panel gaps and I will re-seal the Amemiya headlight lenses to improve the fitment to the panels.
I also got my first sneak of the manifold Yoko came up with. It's a cool idea, his projects are always hyper unique so convincing him to do something as limited as a 13B manifold was tough. Honestly I think the final product will look a lot like the HKS T04Z manifold but this was cool:
current weight of the car with the big wheels, brakes, roll bar, half tank, and interior added back in
random pic but my friend got his car back from paint, looks pretty mega imo
Still not sick of this view
I'll throw this in here as well, just some fun laps leading and chasing a GT3RS. Fun starts at 1:50.
Annual bump, didn't do a ton with the car last year. The local track that opened started enforcing a 95dB limit which has been challenging to meet. Combined with some sporting injuries and a few away track days in other cars, the FD didn't receive much love this year. I did a ton of other cool car stuff but almost none of it RX7 related haha.
Sitting in storage:
I have started making plans to replace my old HKS T51R V-band unit. Most aspects of the design are as close to as ideal as possible - tapered runners, short and equal length, excellent boost control, very large diameter. I would like to retain most of those design points but move over to a divided manifold to cut out the adapter I'm currently using. I had my manifold and engine bay scanned so I could send the data to Altrack and have him start designing a replacement.
A couple days later, Yoko sent this to me. Pretty cool, hopefully it turns into something tangible.
Unfortunately it looks like the Esprit wing has taken a toll on the factory hatch. I'll likely grab the Supernow chassis mount kit to address this.
Made it out to a couple local meets
New bumper arrived, it's off for paint now
Splitter mount prototypes, I have the finalized ones bolted to the car now.
I added a small third muffler in time to make the last event of the year. I had my brother pilot as I was still out of commission after an elbow dislocation but we completed 2 sessions without black flags so that is a positive change.
There are a handful of small changes I'm making this spring - milder pad compound, MK60 wiring, 3D printing brackets, wheel studs, Advan refinishing. I just returned from Attack at Tsukuba so I'm full of motivation.
I was greeted by this at the very entrance of the only Upgarage I went to:
So we jammed it in the rental van like this for a few days until I could drop it off for shipping
The FD was the most well represented chassis at this event outside of class specific entries which is so backwards from what I'm used to
Ando's Scoot built periport car and the ASM S2000 waiting their turn
Yuki's Scoot powered 4 rotor
Mid Night Club FD
Second fastest FD of the day, powered by a stock engine
Fastest FD of the day, powered by a stock engine
Lots of work done, but tons of stock components remain. Super impressive that these two cars are lapping 3/4 seconds faster than the 991 cup cars in attendance.
Funny seeing an Elite intake setup on this car. 4 seconds off the pace of the two fast cars.
06-08-21, 06:48 AM
