JhnRX7's 2017 Season Track Tour: Rotary FD & MX-5 Powah'ed
 

Goal: Have the FD track worthy by the beginning of the 2011 season.

My FD had been sitting in a garage down in Florida for 5 years while I attended college in the Northeast. In those 5 years the car saw maybe 50 miles of driving at best. After graduation this past spring I immediately flew down to FL to pick up the car. She started right up and and made the 1200 mile trip to the Northeast without a problem (with the exception of Scrub hitting a bridge transition too fast and making titanium sparks).

After being reunited with my FD after 5 years I took the summer to enjoy the car, but now winter is approaching so it is time to start thinking about my build and getting the car ready for some track time come next spring.

First item on the agenda is to ditch the stock single oil cooler for some large dual oil coolers. Naturally I have settled on The SakeBomb Garage track kit, which includes two 25 row Setrab oil coolers. These large coolers will fit nicely with my Mazdaspeed GTC bumper and utilize the large openings well.

Old bent up stock single oil cooler… Which also happened to be leaking at the quick disconnects.

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The SBG kit comes with everything necessary for your install: fully assembled -10 lines (very happy about this after going through the hassle of assembling my own fuel lines), pre-bent brackets, spacers to adjust the cooler height as needed, and even a fitting wrench! Of course, Setrab coolers and a Mocal thermostat are also included :nod::icon_tup:

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Instillation was a breeze. I only had one small hiccup with the install that was due to other modifications on my car. The SBG kit is designed to work with factory radiator placement. Due to my intercooler setup I have my radiator mounted vertically as opposed to the slanted stock mount. By raising the radiator into the vertical position I have reduced the amount of space where the Mocal Thermostat mounts. With the supplied fittings the thermostat ends up hitting my radiator fans.

Mocal thermostat with supplied fittings (extends too far for my setup).

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The guys at SBG will work with you if you need a custom application. They supplied me with a different set of fittings to bolt into the front cover which pulls the thermostat closer to the motor and it gave me the clearance I needed.

New fittings that allowed enough clearance for my fans.

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The A/C and Power steering bracket needs to be removed in order to remove the factory oil cooler line, which bolts to the oil filter pedestal. I do not have A/C in my car anymore, so removing the power steering and that bracket was simple. For a stock car with A/C still installed this step will be a bit more time consuming.

Some instillation shots.

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I will get some shots of the coolers with the bumper installed in the next few days.

Unfortunately I installed the coolers right as the fall weather arrived. So it is difficult to determine exactly how they affect my temps. I have never had any issues with my water temps so I was not expecting any drastic changes. It may be due to the cool weather (low 70's F), but since I have installed these my car has been running very cool..... almost too cool. On the highway I see 81C even after multiple long boost runs. On the back roads I am seeing 83-84C and sitting in traffic I see max of 85C. These are all water temperatures, unfortunately I do not have an oil temperature gauge (and have no plans to add one). The real benefits will be seen on the track.

Now that my cooling system is in check I can focus on suspension :egrin:

very nice addition! Ducting would be very beneficial

Thats my next step :nod::icon_tup:

I will be ducting everything properly in the coming weeks and I will take pics of the process and post it up.

Currently I am running a Shine 3 piece undertray and I have a cooling plate on top which seals the radiator so no air can escape, but I need to do something about my intercooler.

The oil coolers sit right up against the bumper openings with only small gaps. Unfortunately even small gaps are enough to let air escape around the coolers. I am currently taking with SBG about upgrading to the 99 spec kit which positions the oil coolers farther back. That should give me enough room to add ducting between the bumper and the coolers and seal them up real well.

I will post pictures detailing this soon.

Bam!

Those oil coolers look so awesome.

sexy :nod:

Looks good!

Are those SSRs going to be your permanent wheels? I read some where you were just borrowing them.

Lookin good!

The last picture is my favorite because I can see a sliver of both my cym's sleeping in the background, haha

Now you just need to upgrade those things above the coolers. We should just offer something called the "SBG Front End Upgrade Package" LOL . Anyway, it looks great!! Cant wait to see the fitment with the GTC back on! -Heath

PS Love the color!! Nice choice!

How do you like that Shine undertray? For the money, it seems like a no brainer, especially considering the condition of most trays I see and the price for one new.

-M

The setup looks fantastic.

Thanks for pointing out the clearance problem between the stock fans and the therostat. I'll probably run into that problem as well once I get my kit.

Ducting is always an issue. Gotta get that sorted out if you want max air flow.

Can't wait to get this kit ordered!! :)

looking good! i still need to get a set also. :D

I love the undertray. With my intercooler/radiator setup combined with having the aftermarket front end I could no longer use the stock undertray (and ran without one for years :icon_tdow).

The 3 piece undertray is intended to be used with a '99 front end, so there is no guarantee that it will fit up perfectly with aftermarket front bumpers. I got lucky, my Mazdaspeed bumper has about a 5-6" extension under the bumper so the undertray was able to reach that with no problems. I have seen other bumpers (Burnout) that dont have such a large extension/lip under the bumper and the undertray did not quite reach. An adaptor had to be made to connect the front of the undertray to the bottom of the bumper.

The undertray by itself will not seal up to the radiator. If using it, you will still have large openings between the undertray and the frame rails, as well as a small gap between the bottom of the radiator and the undertray. The gap under the radiator is simply fixed with some large foam and double sided tape. However you will need to fab up some panels to seal up the gaps at the frame rails.

I currently have mine setup this way because it was a simple quick way to seal up the radiator, however I plan creating radiator ducting that does not incorporate the undertray soon.

Here are some pics of my cooling plate setup:

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Thats correct, the wheels belong to Scrub... there are on extended loan :blush:

There is a set of Wedssports that I will be picking up soon :egrin:

MOAR pics!

Overall front shot showing oil coolers and intercooler setup. You can see my temporary radiator ducting on either side of the intercooler which seals off the gaps between the undertray and frame rails. On the passenger side I added a small duct for my filters.

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I believe this FMIC will work great for track use (once properly ducted). The intercooler is a Spearco core with custom end tanks welded on. It sits far enough back and is short enough that it does not block all the air going to the radiator.

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SBG provided me with some larger spacers which allowed me to lower the oil coolers about an inch lower than the normal setup. I could have kept the original spacers and left the gap under the cooler to be used for some brake ducts, but I opted for additional oil cooler coverage. I may reconsider when I upgrade my brakes. There is still a small 1/2" gap at the bottom of the cooler. I added some large foam strip which seals this section off nicely.

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From above the gap grows to maybe 2". This could be ducted as is, however even the large openings of the Mazdaspeed bumper is not enough for these coolers. I would estimate about 20% of the surface area is blocked. By pulling the cooler back a few inches I would be able to add ducting which would take advantage of the entire cooler.

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Looks great man! :D Too bad the wheels weren't yours...I was about to say nice wheels, they look familiar. ;)

Although at a quick glance those appear to be in better shape than mine. :(

Agreed. I have grown quite fond of them and dont want to give them back :lol:

Here is an exterior shot (before the oil cooler install)... Scrubs wheels really are in great shape :icon_tup:

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They really do look fantastic on your car man. :icon_tup: Had I had the pleasure of buying these wheels brand new, mine would be immaculate as well. ;) Previously I had a set of SSR GT-1 integrals that were flawless (purchased new), but they were only 7.5” wide, so they didn’t make for good RX-7 rims. :( And being that SSR GT-3’s are extremely difficult to find in the right offset and bolt pattern, finding them used for an RX-7 is difficult enough, and finding them new is pretty much out of the question. Mine had a little curb rash that I fixed when I got them, but they still have some minor scraps on the spokes. :wallbash:

Beautiful A.S.I. engineered intercooler piping ;)

Wow! Really clean car & good mods.

POW POW!!! Looking good man, keep it up.

-Austin

:lol::lol::lol: its pretty ghetto... the welds are cracking and the sharp bends cant be good for flow haha

Replacement intercooler piping is on my "to do" list. :)

want pics of the wedsports on! were they ordered yet?

HAHA! The good ole da..What am I sayning?? The bad ole days!!

loving it man. nice car...

faggette. the car is looking so good dude. now please, go single turbo and be a man now lol

great stuff John! Good luck with the winter build. I hope to see you out on track in the fall!

I don't normally quote pics but this is worth a second view, one of my favorite pics for sure.

~S~

Thanks! Now I just need to get myself one of those 500R kits! :egrin:

Thats not for a while though, I am happy with the power I am making and my efforts ($$$$) really need to be focused towards suspension right now.

you and me both man :nod:

I was pretty impressed with the SBG kit. Haven't overheated since i bought them, even during a 109 outdoor temp 3 hour drive. Wish mine looked as clean as yours lol

car looks great!

That is one really sexy FD, very nice car dude. Only suggestion I have it to put some wire mesh in front of your finned heat exchangers (rad, IC, oil coolers), to protect the fins. I put this stuff in front of my OEM coolers and it works great. I will be putting another piece in front of my new radiator setup too...

http://www.pegasusautoracing.com/pro...p?Product=3641

g/l with the rest of your build, FDs are so much fun on a track!!!

UPDATE!

I participated in a track event this past weekend with the Porsche Club of America at NJMP (Thunderbolt track). It was a great chance for me to learn the car and build up some skills before next year when I plan on getting a lot more track time. The track is a bit intimidating at first but after the first couple sessions and you get used to the track and it is a blast!

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Even though the car was not quite ready for the track suspension wise, this was an invaluable experience for me to really know what needs to be done on the car over the winter. One of my biggest enemies over the weekend was body roll, there was a lot of it :lol: The traction was there, but the car just did not feel very stable in the corners which did not exactly inspire confidence in me.

New coilovers, bushings, and sway bars should solve that problem. I am still undecided on what brand of coilovers to go with, due to my budget I am thinking about going with stance. I will have to make that decision soon. My 100k+ mile old bushings took quite the beating this weekend as well, I now have some new clunks :lol:

Body roll in turn 1.

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Front end squatting under braking.

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I was not exactly impressed with my braking performance either. I found myself letting off throttle and braking very early because my brakes just did not bite very hard. I had replaced my rear pads and rotors just before the event because my old pads were shot. I went with Endless NS97 pads which felt very nice compared to my old pads. However, when I replaced the pads I did not bleed the system at all and the pedal felt a bit soft afterwards... It probably would have felt better if I bleed the system a bit. I was running fairly new Hawk HP+ in the front and the brake fluid was fresh.

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The motor ran flawlessly with the exception of a slight hesitation when the secondary injectors came online. Luckily I brought my tuning computer with me and I was able to get that sorted out. Later in the day I also noticed a bit of a stumble on tip-in, but it was not a big issue and I will work on solving that later.

My cooling system was top notch :nod::icon_tup: Saturday was a high of 68F and Sunday was a high of 72F. My water temps were rock solid at 83C on Sat and 85C with a peak of 86C on Sun. Intake temps were in the mid to low 20's C on Sat and high 20's C / low 30's C on Sun. I haven't done my ducting yet either, so I don't think I have much to worry about with my cooling system :)

FIAH BALLZ! :egrin:

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Great build.

toss some wire mesh in the front bumper.

what corner seals did you use?

dude...you need wheels so bad...i can just imagine some 17inch vs-xx or bbs LMs on here...in the gold...flying down the track with flames out the exhaust....wet dreams!!!! :lol::lol::lol:

Looks great John, car looks awesome on the track.

I see your exhaust tip turned blue too.

I really need to get my car on the track, seeing these pics make me jelous.



John

Thanks. I will be adding some mesh to the bumper after seeing all the rubber chunks that come flying at the car when following other drivers. My windshield also got hit by something and I got a small crack... It was time for a new windshield anyway.

I am using 3mm Hurley apex seals with factory Mazda corner seals. Could that have anything to do with the flames? I would like to eliminate them or at least reduce them. I was hoping it had something to do with my map.


Nice catch haha.

My tip def turned blue after the first day. I would like to get an EGT sensor to monitor / log my exhaust temps.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1199/...68704598_b.jpg

Dont worry, I have some wheels in the works. :)

I would love to go Zeal, but that will really eat into my budget for the rest of the suspension upgrades. So stance may be a nice compromise.

Great pics as usual dude. As far as the flames go, dude, its an FD. It needz the flamz yo. What are your AFR's at in tip in and wot? Please tell me that you bought a proper wide band...

you should post the fireball picture in the calender thread!!

I am running an Innovate LC-1 with XD-16 gauge. I was concentrating on driving and not on my gauges so I was not really monitoring it during my track sessions. I now wish I had logged a session or two so I could analyze that tip-in stumble though.

I had previously tuned the car to 11.1-11.6 AFR under WOT and I am still only running 10 psi.

I did notice in one of my logs from a while back while comparing TPS voltage to injector duty that as I let off the throttle and the throttle plates had closed completely injector duty did not go to 0% immediately. There was a brief moment during de-accell that it tapers down to zero, so maybe it is still injecting some fuel after I lift. :scratch:

Subscribed! Looking super great, JhnRx7!

subscribed definately! looks amazing

Interior Update


While I am building this car for track duty, the reality is that it will spend more time on the streets so a full interior is a must.


When I purchased the car almost 9 years ago the previous owner had recovered the tan leather seats with a quality black leather. However for whatever reason he thought it was a good idea to paint the carpet black. Needless to say after a few years the carpet started looking REALLY bad. I finally picked up a black carpet over the summer and tore out the entire interior to replace it.

The old carpet was so ugly I couldn't use my good camera for fear of damaging the sensor :lol:

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I stripped the interior of everything except for the HVAC system. I decided that the headache of removing it was not worth the small section of carpet I would need to cut.

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Finally! Black carpet!

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The next task was the door panels. I was having issues with my windows not rolling down all the way because the window seals would grab them and stop them from going down. I also wanted to stiffen up the factory panels and reduce or eliminate the cheap plastic sound when you pull on the panel.

Window seals:

Old on right, new on left.
The felt had worn off and the rubber would stick to the glass stopping it from rolling down.
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I also got some new door locator pins to replace the non-existant ones on my panels.

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A while back I saw a fellow forum member use some liquid ABS plastic to coat the inside of the door panels. I figured I would give it a shot. It definitely added a bit of rigidity to the weak areas of the panel and even reduced (but not eliminated) some of the plastic creaking sounds due to less flexing of the panel.

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Another source of annoyance in the interior was the constant rattling coming from the broken defroster vents... a quick call to Ray Crowe at Malloy Mazda fixed that.

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Looking great and I can't wait to see more updates soon!

Interior Update... continued


LED Gauge Cluster

A while back I had converted my cluster to white LED's via the Hypertite method of sanding off the red film on the back of the gauge faces. I lived with that for a while however it never looked good... The lighting was uneven, the gauges were very bright, and it was distracting at night.

Since I had already sanded off the film on the back I could not go back to stock. I decided to try out red LED's. The red looked MUCH better, however there was still the uneven lighting issue. I tried to solve the issue by adding more LED's.

RotaryAddicts Guide for LED Conversion

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The extra LED's did a great job of evening out the light output, but the biggest difference was made by switching to circuit board style LED's.

http://www.superbrightleds.com/image...ED-WHP6_mm.jpg


After I had converted the cluster to red LED's the HVAC controls did not match so I converted them to LED's as well using NeoWedge 3mm and circuit board style 74 bulbs.

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Here are some shots of the interior in its current state.

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It was really hard to capture the true color of the cluster lights... this is the closest I was able to get.

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My Nardi 350mm Deep corn wheel and Mazdaspeed horn button I got from GoodfellaFD3S himself :nod::icon_tup:

Also my recovered shift knob done by fellow forum member hulandfd3s.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4061/...8e16b246_b.jpg

Where did you find the NeoWedge 3mm and circuit board style 74 bulbs ? Are the amount of LED the same as described on RotaryAddicts.com? Can you give us some more info regarding this =). I've got my cluster and everything out. This will be the best time to do that ;-).

Thanks in advance!

-AzEKnightz

I got all my LED's from superbrightleds.com

The NeoWedge are used in the HVAC controls. They did not fit very well but I was able to make them work. For the other LED's I have tried just about every style and the ones that worked the best were the circuit board style. They worked the best by far. Besides that, you can follow the RotaryAddicts guide for installation and quantity.

Also, If you have not already sanded off the film I would seriously consider just trying out the LED's first. It really is a pain to get an even light distribution and it took me very long to get it to a point that is acceptable to me... but its still not perfect.

As for the HVAC controls, that is not on the RotaryAddicts guide and I cannot remember off the top of my head how many bulbs you need. There is a post in the interior section about it if you search for it. The only advice for that I can give is that the heater / zone select knobs use 74 style bulbs.... go with circuit board style.

Thanks for answering my questions. Now i've got some more if you dont mind =).

Did you actually switched all the LED to the circuit board type or did you add in a couple more of those to even out the brightness for the gauges?
Also, you've mentioned about the film on the guages which I havent done so. Are you saying that I should NOT remove the film and try it out with the new LED first and if all good leave it the way it is?

As for the NeoWedge is only used for the HVAC only correct?

CIRCUIT BOARD TYPE LED

Above is a link to the circuit board style LED for anyone who are also interested in this mod.

-AzEKnightz