Looks great! I love how people put gauges on the passenger side... its so useful over there. LOL.

 

TY. Yeah man, the **** that you find done from previous owners never ceases to amaze me. Clueless wiring projects are always great. Now Im getting flashbacks of when I first bought the car - going through the dash harness and finding wires tapped into **** that lead to nowhere, or power wires installed by twisting and e-taping the connection...there were lots of "OMG....wtf...." moments.

Im not a big fan of gauges, period. Especially on a track car. Even if they are installed with visibility in mind, theres just no way I can reliably keep an eye on multiple temp and pressures while fully concentrating on driving the car at/near the limit. Even with pre-programmed warning features on the gauge, I don't feel confident.

This should help alleviate that problem.


Been itching to install it, but had to wait until those carbon pieces arrived. Hopefully can play around with it soon. Looks to be pretty awesome - Im really excited to see what it can do. Comes with full GPS track mapping and telemetry, internal accelerometer and gyro, 4GB of data storage, and robust data logging via CAN. Sensor data is displayed on screen, and for paranoid people like me, the entire screen turns red when a value exceeds your programmed threshold.

Hahaha.

Heres some nicer photos from the AIM website:






I actually pulled the trigger on the big *** behemoth full-color MXG, but called back and switched it to the MXL2 at the last second. After much debate, I felt like the simple and efficient design of the MXL2 is more appropriate in a race car vs a big *** colorful video game display.

Above all...Im so glad I didnt buy an IQ3 =XXX

 

No time to type a real update...but theres been slow progress.

Custom Magnecor R-100


Stoptech ST-40s



There more but Ill save for a real update =)

 

I realize this is shaping up to be a monster of a race car but a little Alcantera with that carbon would be a tear dripping moment of happiness in my book lol, car is looking amazing!

 

Please post more details about those carbon panels. Your end result looks very nice.

 

I'm really enjoying the build thread. Glad I'm not the only one crazy enough to lay under the car for minutes at a time wondering how the hell I'm gonna get this huge hunk of metal in JUST the right position to slide in. I didn't have a trans jack last time I did the trans in my Ranger so was manhandling it on my back under the truck. eventually ran a ratchet strap from one of the top bars on the roll cage through the shifter hole to hold up one end of the trans and another ratchet strap across the frame rails to hold the other By the time I got it mated my back was raw and bleeding. Never thought of the Berlin wall paint marker haha

 

Thank you for the kind words. I will def have fun in the future with little cosmetic things like that, but for now Im keeping my focus very function>form. I recently gutted everything from the backside of the dash in preparation of fabbing brackets to mount it directly to the cage. Some pretty decent weight savings with that big steel mounting bar gone.

Sure. What would you like to know? Basically the pieces fit like crap and you have to force them/modify them with a Dremel. I still have some work ahead to get them to fit as I would like, but I think they will be acceptable. When I first unboxed them and tried an initial test fitment I was ready to box them right back up and demand a refund. I suppose you have to keep your expectations tempered when dealing with Chinese parts. They're not priced incredibly cheap though, so I did expect a little more quality tbh. End of the day - they're not horrible, they'll work.

Holy ****. That sounds like an elaborate death trap. Desperately shaking a stubborn trans over and over without getting it to fully mate is one of the most demoralizing moments you can have under a car haha. Oh what a difference the right tools make. Next time the trans comes off, you best believe Ill have a trans jack at the ready.

 

Quick wheel/tire update:

A set of 285/30/18's fit near perfectly in the rear of an Odyssey. Could probably manage to squeeze 295's in there if needed.
Got a killer deal form a friend on some A048's =)


Mounted on 18x10 +38 standard issue RPF1's. Wayne from Phase2 came through once again with some much appreciated help. I realize these wheels are prob the most boring, cookie cutter "track oriented" wheels out there...but they're also a great value for some wheels that will likely get totally beat up. They're nice and light as well...hopefully strength is not an issue.

I plan to make another post with details on wheel sizing for the Shine Feed widebody kit. I searched for hours and really didnt find any solid info as far as maximum tire size fitment. I also didnt have convenient access to any similarly sized test wheels, so I had to go to great lengths to determine sizing before I made any purchases. I will say that this combo fits well (rear has a spacer). I fit 285 all around (I think 295 will work as well) and since everything is the same size I can swap wheels around to maximize tire life.

 

I approve of everything here

 

**** me this car is inserational

 

Been neglecting to update this, but big things are happening in the electronicals dept thanks to the talents of Chris Ludwig and LMS-EFI. I'm really happy Chris and I were finally able to tackle this project. I think the result is going to be well worth the wait.

The car is also back in the fab shop. Still with my fabricator Pete, but now we are working out of Sportcar Motion near San Diego. The FD is in good company there amongst some of the fastest time attack cars from the early days.

I'll try to be better about updating this thing with content. Lots of changes have been made. Hopefully 2016 is the year...lol

 

Ill try to recap a little...I haven't been documenting things very well lately, but I have some photos of work that was done last year that I never posted.

For a long time I was going back and fourth about keeping/removing the ABS. I really wanted to give it a fair shot on the track before blindly ripping out. Research didnt really lead me anywhere as I ran into many conflicting opinions. Some say the FD ABS is actually quite good and aggressive to the point that it engages only right at the limit of traction, allowing the car to be pushed hard on the track. Other reports were along the lines of -- the factory FD ABS is an archaic system designed in the 80's when ABS on production cars was still a work in progress...its dangerous and stupid to retain on a track car...at the first encounter with a road imperfection it will whig out on you, go into "ice mode", send the pedal to the floor, send you and your car into the nearest wall, reincarnate Hitler as a T-rex, and destroy Earth's magnetism causing extinction of all ocean life eventually rendering the planet uninhabitable. (Apparently some people really don't like it)

At the same time, my plans on revamping the electrical systems, tearing out all the factory wiring, and installing a PDM were beginning to move forward. This meant if I wanted to keep the ABS I would have to open up the factory loom, find each wire involved in ABS function and pull them out to create a separate ABS loom...or rewire everything from scratch. The system uses its own stand alone computer in the rear of the car soI figured it wouldn't be too difficult to isolate just those wires. But thats a lot of work for system that I am unsure will perform as needed. I contacted Alex Rodriguez about it as he seemed to have had a lot of experience with FD braking systems for track use. He was quick to insist the ABS is trash and will hinder performance on the track. Seems like a predictable response from someone who sells ABS delete kits, but it was a quick and easy option so I figured Id just get one of his pre-fabbed brake line packages. However, looking at the kits I saw nothing special, just paying more money to save myself an hour of hose assembly. Plus there were a few specific things I was looking for and it seemed like a headache to deal with Alex, so I made my own lines.

I went back and fourth on whether to bend custom hardline or do everything in SS braided hose. Since I likely will end up changing things later down the line, soft lines were the easier choice. I went with Fragola -3AN PTFE brake line with braided SS covering and smoked plastic jacket. I like the SS lines with plastic covering, exposed braided SS is abrasive to anything in contact.

The ABS related parts came out and some decent weight savings made.


Two brake pressure sensors will feed data to the AIM dash. This will be critical information to overlay onto race video footage in order to help determine how I can improve braking performance. I will be able to see at which point I brake for each turn, how hard, how long, etc and reference that to other things like lateral/acceleration Gs, yaw of the car, speed, and of course section time throughout the track.


Front brake pressure sensor installed in 90deg banjo to -3AN with 1/8"NPT port. Took me a while searching Summit for that fitting.


Installed on the master cly.


Just using the typical Wilwood prop valve for now. This is temporary until we fit a proper pedal box with individual master cylinders and bias bar. These Wilwood prop valves do not allow true proportioning to be modified, they only modulate the front/rear bias via limiting how much fluid goes to the rear. Enough has changed from the factory setup that Im sure the stock prop valve wouldn't have been ideal either, hopefully this temp fix is adequate while I wait for a pedal box.

Side note -- Heres a good read regarding brake proportioning: Proportioning Valves

No factory hardline. The new -3AN brake lines go all the way to the braided lines that came with my brake kit.


More to come...

 

man, i was looking at those carbon interior pieces for my car also.... also looked into the Evo-r version of the cluster/hood combo, but they don't carry the HVAC panel. how much was the carbon hood, i didn't see it listed on their site?

 

Marc from Carbonmiata offered me a slight discount for getting all the pieces as a package deal. So I really don't know how much any individual piece was. Just email him and I'm sure he'll get back to you with a quote.

 

Back from the dead! ...no, not really. It just feels that way because I havent had an FD in my garage to tinker with in over 8 months.

We've now moved from Sportcar Motion to El Monte where Pete (finally) has opened his own shop. Its been kind of a PITA always working out of other peoples shops. Things should progress steadily now...once the paperwork/formalities with the space is settled. There is a lot of BS with permits and whatnot with the city when opening a new automotive/mechanic shop. Apparently anything automotive = trouble in the eyes of city regulators.

Most of the new fab should be finished up by the end of June. Then Ill begin to get all the new wiring dialed in and functional.

Since my old PS1000 setup still had the fuse/relay box I decided to sell everything and start over with the electronics. Pretty lame running a PDM and having a relays/fuses still around...I couldnt get comfortable with that idea.

If were gonna redo everything, might as well upgrade the ECU...

Staged injection VE tuning, dual channel knock control, traction control, DBW, gear based tuning, self learing closed loop correction maps...Im looking forward to taking advantage of all the Elite has to offer.

Racepak Smartwire PDM will handle power distribution. The ECU, Smartwire, and AIM logger dash will all communicate with each other via Haltech CAN.


Ludwig/LMS-EFI did a superb job on the harnesses. Tefzel wires and Raychem preformed boots with DR-25 throughout. The best part...all wiring for the entire car comes in at under 15lbs. =) This will help greatly in achieving the goal of a 2200lb racecar.

Chassis harness.


Engine harness.


Ignition subharness.


MmMmMmmillll-spec.


Most chassis connections are converted to Deutch.


Heres how everything interfaces. (minus the CAN connections and dash)


More progress to come!

 

Looking awesome!!!

 

Sweet bro! I love it when you update. Haha

 

Thanks for the encouraging comments =). With a build this long its easy to go through spells of low motivation. Updating this thread kind of forces me address that, so I think its a good thing. You can always follow my Instagram @AX75F92. Im usually quicker to update that with small bits of progress and other car stuff (I keep my IG completely car related).

A couple pics of Pete's new shop (Ive dubbed "Pete's House of Rotary"), the temporary home of the FD until the rest of the fab is complete.

Darkness in a sea of red...

 

What a nice shop. Good for Pete, I met him must've been 10-12 years ago at an XS garage sale I believe it was. He was a super nice guy and was patient with me googling over a twin turbo t04 kit he fabbed up sitting on the counter. Only kit like it in the country at the time as well I think.

Also, I really want that splitter on the red car haha. I'm sure you can get motivated to work on your car with walking around his shop:-D

 

Awesome, I can appreciate what you've got going on here

I had a Rywire harness turn out to be a complete piece of garbage, cost me an engine, so many problems with it..... as detailed in my build thread a while back.

I had contacted Ludwig about having an engine harness fabbed up for me. Seems like he did awesome work for the harness for your entire damn car

 

Yeah Petes a great guy. Very honest and genuine, and truly passionate about cars/racing/fabrication. The twin turbo setup you describe sounds like its prob the one he had on his drag FD. 650whp, twin turbo, PPG dogbox (same one now in my car)...ran 10.01 lol. I forgot the trap speed but the thing was a beast, and mind you this was in like 2002. Its crazy I cant even find a picture of the car now, just this low quality vid: That was against Tarzan in the Signal S15, I was there that day. We had a super epic drive up to LACR the night before. A'PEXi/XS caravan with the FD on the trailer, a 550whp R33, a lightly modified (420whp) R32, and a couple other slower street cars. I was the new guy at A'PEXi at the time so I was stuck with scrub duty driving the Uhaul box truck full of booth supplies. We ran into a group of mustangs on the freeway that wanted to play with the GTRs. It was like watching sharks devour a tuna...out of nowhere I see the GTRs take off, big *** fireball out the 33 that lit up the whole left side of the freeway. Im foot to the floor in the damn Uhaul topped out at 70 and the tail lights get smaller and smaller till they disappear. All the other cars of course followed and were gone as well, leaving me behind alone lol. This was the days before I had a cell phone, so it was a little sketchy finding my way, but luckily I had been to LACR a few times and kinda had an idea. By the time I found the motel we were staying at everyone had already been there for like an hour lol. *******. This was back when the company was full of true, hardcore enthusiasts and new employees def went through a hazing period. I think I was the last guy to experience that era and looking back Im grateful for having to earn the respect of these guys I really looked up to, some of which turned into the best friends Ive ever had.

 

Thanks Rich.
That sucks about those harness issues. Must have been frustrating as hell. Im not one to publicly trash talk someones work, but I will say youre not the first Ive heard this from. Perhaps there were some growing pains early on that have since been resolved...giving the benefit of doubt here.

Yeah I cant say enough about Ludwig/LMS. Smart guy who knows his stuff, honest, and excellent quality for what you pay. With electrical work theres so many levels, and the "true" motorsports harness builders will end up costing you more than your whole car. The guy I bought my AIM dash from is big in the Porsche racing scene and has his own GT3 he uses as a MoTeC demo car. He told me he has about $25K in just sensors alone...just sensors. I have a couple friends who build harnesses for factory race teams. I didnt even bother inquiring with them because I know there is no "hommie hookup" that can make that **** fit into my budget lol.

We are really very lucky to have a guy like Chris available. It would have been much easier for me to go with Rywire. Ive met Ryan before and have friends who have worked with him closely. Im happy with my decision for go with Chris, even if I had to wait forever and deal with the fact that hes on the other side of the country...well worth it. Plus his support is great too. If there is a mistake, hell do whatever needs to be done to correct it. I had a couple connectors that were incorrect, he had new ones in the mail the next day for me to swap in. Cant recommend him enough.

Side note: From the beginning Pete had major doubts about me using some harness guy from Indiana hes never heard of. Pair that with me telling him I got a base map off the forum and he was very skeptical that the car would even turn on. It was very satisfying proving him wrong =) haha. Now he has major doubts well be able to reach 500whp on the S362...but Geoff tells me the turbo is good for it and I trust him when it comes to anything BW so hopefully I get to give Pete a smug "I told you so" again. I know he truly hopes Im right.

 

More electrical stuff...

Package from Ludwig with dual Bosch broadband knock sensors, dual EGT sensors, Omega k-type thermocouple for gearbox temp, Haltech TCA-4 (4 channel thermocouple amplifier box), and some k-type cable extensions that Chris had to make in order to run the EGT and gearbox sensors into the cabin to connect to the TCA box. TCA box will interface with the CAN hub which will allow rotor 1 EGT, rotor 2 EGT, and gearbox temp data to be shared with the ecu, smartwire, and AIM dash. Pairing the dual EGT and knock data with the Elite's ability to control bank1 and bank2 (rotor 1 and 2) injectors separately, and Koji can dial in each rotor individually. Only thing missing is individual wideband 02 sensors, but I think that is probably overkill.

We had our doubts about the FC oil cooler from the beginning...so I decided to replace it now with a Fluidyne DB-30618. Still not the biggest thing in the world but it will cool more efficiently than the FC unit. Also keep in mind this is not a car that will stay on track for entire 30 minute sessions without pitting. Every intention is strictly time attack, so 3 or 4 laps at a time.
Thing is shiny as hell...

 

Nice electronics package. Should really help with reliability. I have friends with 400+ hp SR's and turbo VQ's that have been tuned by this mythical Koji fellow with excellent results. Cool to know that he speaks rotary as well.

 

Too Too sick dude, I approve.