Cleans up nice.



Loaded up and ready for DGRR '18!

More people showing up at DGRR '18.

Fresh off the trailer Wednesday afternoon, I go out for a very small pull before a car wash and break my transmission. I baby shifted 1st at 3K, hit second and did a pull for second gear only and the transmission sounded like a rock crusher. It was done. The faces of the people who heard the transmission as I limped it back into the parking lot at Nantahala village were priceless.

I message a friend that I was going to be picking up a transmission from on Sunday afternoon leaving DGRR and ask if I can pick up the transmission early, as mine was broken. They say to bring the car over and change the transmission at their shop, it's a low miles transmission so it should be good to go. We change it out Thursday while it's raining and on Friday, it's ready for the dam picture. Let me tell you, a lift really makes things easy but the scatter-shield sure did fight us.

I drive it on low boost Friday (around 20psi at the time) to make sure I don't break anything. On the way back from the dam, I get a pull in against a high boost high horsepower IRP built streetcar (driven by Ihor) and get a few car lengths on him in a friendly 3rd gear vs 3rd gear battle. It was definitely fast! I'll post a short video that was taken by my passenger shortly.

Saturday, I decide to give some people rides in the car since it's running good on low boost. I give one short 10 minute ride and then on the second person, I break the replacement. The low miles transmission was rock crusher status again. I pull back into the parking lot at Nantahala village and park it next to IRP, the car making a ton of noise since the transmission is done. I end up calling it a weekend at this point but I had a great time wrenching on friends cars, smoking different foods, and hanging out with everyone. Hard to complain that I'm breaking transmissions instead of anything else.

Of course, that means it's time to upgrade the transmission to something beefier.

 

RX-7 on RX-7 crime video. IRP car was really strong, definitely a solid build.

 

Parts starting to arrive for the transmission upgrade. A SFI bellhousing instead of my previous separate scattershield and bellhousing, it's now combined and a lot easier to remove if necessary.

A big box for a stout transmission. A T56 Magnum! I had contemplated going to a sequential or a clutch assisted GForce but neither would be as street friendly so this seemed like the best choice to me.

This transmission should hold 700lb-ft of torque and still cruise on the highway.


Bolting the bellhousing up.

Test mocking, something doesn't add up. This ended up being the beginning of a long struggle to get this transmission bolted up to the engine. It was by no means a bolt-on affair. The bellhousing had to be modified, the transmission had to be cut and ground, and a ton of custom fabrication work went into getting this together. After about 4 months, I had a driving car though with a significantly improved transmission!

 

Prepping things to go in.

Finally got it all modified and together.


The new clutch arrives!

A gorgeous setup once test mocked

Old scattershield vs new scattershield

Old clutch, ACT Xtreme with a RAM Sintered iron friction plate. It held really well but it wasn't the ideal street setup.

 

Test fitting the new rear mount.


Time to cut up the old diff cradle/brace.

Diff mount almost wrapped up


The transmission is in! I had to R&R the new transmission 5-6 times test fitting, measuring, and making clearance but it was finally in the car after months of modification and some fabrication work.

The new driveshaft arrived! This ended up being one of the longer wait items with a 6-8 week wait.

I opted for the billet 1350 input yoke.

 

So the transmission was finally done, it just needed a mount and a shifter. Time to give her a bath, over 4 months of dust really looked rough.



The new shift **** installed on the new billet relocation shifter.

That essentially takes us to modern day.


Getting the trans mount and exhaust mount fabricated up, so I snapped a few shots of the undercarriage while it was on the lift.

 

The first test drive on the new transmission:

 

This is where I'm going to leave the thread for now since it's mostly up to date. The transmission swap worked great but it still has some minor issues I'm working on. It does however hold power very well and has in turn had me turning the boost up quite significantly. The boost response is very good, 43psi in 3rd gear by 4600rpm. It's about 4100rpm in 4th gear.

I guess more modifications will keep happening but probably not for a little while. I want to get all of the bugs worked out first.

 

Oops, forgot all about SCT Charlotte just prior to the T56 swap. I was prepared to absolutely destroy the stock transmission with the car on kill for the time; It was hot but I had the A2W ready. Unfortunately I had some technical issues and the car just wasn't performing like it normally did. I was able to get it fixed but I had unfortunately lost in the first round to a 700+rwhp BMW M3; the staging lanes for testing were well over a 1/4 mile long at that point, so I was done for the day. That's just how it is sometimes. The event was way too big and unfortunately wasn't handled very well for the traffic volume. I did however get some 1320video coverage.





And ofcourse the Glease Man graced us with the photoshop.

 

 

No dyno numbers yet, maybe sometime soon.

 

That's awesome. Love your work mate.

 

Awesome write up man

 

 

How's the drivability with the Typhoon intake?

 

It's not very good; It leaves a lot to be desired. I have thought about changing some things to make it better but I haven't got around to it yet. Some of it is likely my tuning abilities, but it's a very tricky setup to get dialed in.

 

Figures haha, is that because touching the throttle results in big changes in MAP and there's too much noise on the TPS to make the acceleration enrichment sensitive enough? I guess the peripheral ports won't help either. A cam shaped throttle linkage to make it more progressive and a TPS X MAP tune might help?

 

This is essentially my guess, it's exaggerated by the peripheral ports and the single throttle blade for sure. I've contemplated the cam shaped throttle linkage and switching to a TPS vs RPM instead of a MAP vs RPM map.

 

I'm not familiar with the Haltech Elite but I think TPS vs RPM could help. I'm using an Adaptronic Modular and have the MAP filter set at 180 degrees, which I believe works out to a 30ms delay at 1000rpm. So if I pump the throttle and it goes from 50kpa to 100kpa, for 30ms the MAP value, VE value and AFR Target are going to be wrong. It has a wall wetting model, but that's also based on the MAP value...

The Predicted MAP function solves all of those problems, but because the TPS sensor has a bit of noise I can't trigger it as early as I'd like. If I set the trigger value really low, the throttle response is crisp as a ******* crispity cracker, but there are too many false triggers during normal driving. An old school TPS x RPM map of injector pulsewidth might actually be superior in terms of throttle response.

Anyway, let us know how you go with it. I'd be really interested in seeing your datalogs if you want to share.

 

What kind of offset do you have front and rear?

 

So the car lost a main bearing in March but it is back together now. I should hopefully have some more progress pictures coming soon. I also have a Stoptech big brake kit to install as well.

Here are a few pictures to at least show the carnage for now.









So I've been talking with Mazzei (Monsterbox) and we've both ran into the same issue on the Haltech. We're in a group with a few other people all kind of roundtable discussing tuning specifically on the RX-7 and found a solution with a lot of digging. I just recently got my car back together so I should hopefully have it solved here shortly with some tweaking.

18x10 +50

Ideally the rear could be wider or have a bit more outward offset but I like the ability to rotate wheels and a square setup is useful on track.

 

The car actually still ran (with a lot of knocking) and all of the seals could have been reused but the rotors had some dents in them from the amount of boost being ran. No flat corner seal springs or cracked corner seals so likely no detonation had occurred. I had some new rotors machined and pressed all new bearings. I just went ahead and replaced everything in the oil system to make sure it was healthy for the new build.

So all new apex seals, side seals, corner seals, associated springs, eshaft, rotors, main bearings, rotor bearings, oil pump, thrust bearings, thrust bearing retainers, spacers, and the standard rebuild components. I also went ahead and upgraded my oil coolers.

 

Not sure how or why I wasn't already subscribed to this build thread, this thing is so savage.

Skeese

 

Glad to have you back behind the wheel.

 

Well the car has been slowly inching towards it's break-in mile goal but I pulled the trigger on the big brake kit I had previously been contemplating.

I've also switched from MAP based tuning to AlphaN based tuning and have been making progress on making the car easier to drive. It's a little more work but the results have been quite nice and the car has made some improvement in the drivability department.