Sorry about that guys. That's why I carry a fire extinguisher with me at all times. Made my own SBG ripoff/copy a few years ago and have it mounted on the passenger seat. Just modded the bracket to fit my Sparco seats.

Too funny. The "lounge" is quite interesting. Visit the Politics thread every now and then for amusement.

The black carpet does look much better. Got in a few hours work on it today. Tidied up some wiring, replaced the battery (old one no longer holds a charge) which required modifying the tie down bracket, and cleaned up some wiring. Didn't have time to finish it up as I need to head back to Jax for the rest of the week so it will be early next week before it's done.

 

When you going to bring her down to fl again?

 

Sometime. Was going to go to Simon's event in Miami but had to go to the sister and brother in law's triplet's 3rd birthday party. What fun that was!

Will start looking for some other high profile events. Got any ideas?

The FEED trunk thingy looks great. It was admired by a bunch of rotary guys today that were at Steve's shop while I was there on the never ending carpet campaign.

 

Make sure to store extra apex seals in it! lol

Well i done blew up the diff in the camo car, once we get the 8.8 in we should make the jax people throw a big jax meet again...

 

^ Yep, saw that. That was quite the explosion. The 8.8 will handle it easily though. I went the Carbentic carbon diff route with a T56 Magnum coming sometime in the future.

 

Magnum...David always making the rest of us feel inferior in a multitude of ways.

 

^ If only my Trojans worked that way

 

/end thread lol

 

Your build is an inspiration to what i would like to do, as soon as i get an fd. throwing around the idea of building from a shell.

 

Thanks for the kind words. I will get back to the car early next week. In FL right now.

 

So back into the car. As an aside, I'd never make it as a carpet installer Based on the time I've spent, I'd have to charge like $42,000 to install $200 worth of carpet. Any takers?

Got all the carpet in the car and all stock holes cut. Reinstalled the back bin and plastics and cleaned up the battery wiring when replacing the battery. Not a big fan of the Odyssey yellow top but that is what I put in the car for now. Seat belt bolts back in, the dash is reinstalled and the center tunnel and other pieces in. Just need to put the audio components back in and the steering wheel pieces and I will be done.

Cleaned up as much wiring as I could. Had a bunch of old stereo wiring that was not needed but still have a bit of a rat's nest that I am not comfortable touching so it's going back in as is. Hopefully it will all work. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Carpet looks much better and I am happy with the way it turned out but it was a lot more work than I thought. All in all, still better than spending $1,300 on OEM carpet.

 

Pics of the final install?

 

^ Coming next week. Need to wrap it all up which will take me another day. So I guess I'd need to charge more, say $54,000, for the install.

 

Short boring update. Got everything buttoned up and back together. Tested the wiring and all hell broke loose. Probably a bad ground somewhere in the dash but this is beyond my pay grade in diagnosing so I've pulled Steve Osley into the fray

Gonna get him to sort out the issue and then I'm home free - at least for now.

 

Me too. Black wires, read wires, they all look the same to me

 

i too hate wiring, especially when you think you are done. go to test it..................and you find out something is not connected right! At that point, i usually walk back into my house, grab a beer and not go back into the garage for about a month!!!!!

david, your a brave man for taking on such a task. post pics when you are done. I dont think your price is out of line........i would increase it just a bit cust in case someone takes you up on the offer. god knows you dont want to go through this headache again. hahahahahahhah

 

^ That's pretty much what I did. Cleaned up everything I could and knocked out a few other simple projects - swapped out the water pump to the REMEDY model (very nice impeller design) and also put in new front windshield molding. At that point, I left it up to Steve Osley as he's the man with this kind of stuff. I'm on call to come over and help him pull back out the dash and hold his tools, etc. while he does the real work. I think he jinxed the project by staying I had done 95% of the work on this - oops

It's one of those "if I had know then what I know now" projects. The install of the carpet is easy, but the dash and wiring not so much so. I may have tried to install the carpet without pulling the dash and called it a day. But it is what it is and once the issue is found, life will be better again.

And for you Simon, I'll give you the extra special rotary discount and install your carpet for only $24K. For that price I'll even fly down to do the work onsite. A deal right?

 

do you plan on getting your seats recovered?

 

^ The OEM seats were recovered a short time ago with Italian leather all around and perforated leather in the middle insets. I also had "MAZDA" stitched in black on the headrests and then replaced the tan seatbelt holder straps with back ones. I really like the way they turned out.

HOWEVER, I have picked up Sparco as a sponsor and now have their black EVO fixed back seats installed. They look great with the new black carpeting. They also give me the clearance to drive track events without my helmet hitting the roof.

So soon I am putting the recovered OEM seats up for sale. Just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Before:



After (but with new black carpet installed):

 

Couple of pics of the FD stock water pumps versus the newly installed REMEDY unit. The REMEDY unit is very high quality and a nice design for the impellers. You can easily see how the REMEDY pump will help to prevent cavitation at higher RPMs.

OEM water pump on the left and the REMEDY unit on the right:



OEM water pump:



REMEDY pump:



I had a temp issue with the car and the REMEDY pump should help out with this. However, we did find the root source of the temp problem, with the back side of the water pump housing (not the pump itself but the housing that attaches it to the block) not being sealed correctly and allowing in air. With this sealed up (and before the install of the new pump) temps had dropped pretty considerably. The REMEDY pump will most likely be effective under higher RPM scenarios.

 

Hmm.. If you could send me that pump over I could copy the impeller and make then mod my stock pump?! Nice Billet wheel there.
I am sure it is way back in the thread somewhere but needle and haystack spring to mind! What radiator are you running?

Cheers
Lee

 

^ It's from Mazmart:

http://www.partswebsite.com/mazmart/...107&type=parts

They do essentially what you are suggesting. They start with a stock water pump and replace the impeller with the new design. We will see how well it works but from the looks of it, it will help for sure at the higher RPM ranges.

 

A sneak peek of my new LED lighting project:



Been playing around for about 1 year the use of a more singular light source versus the individual LEDs I currently have in the turn signals. After trying a bunch of technologies, found that side emitting fiber optics rod works the best. Built a couple of LED light emitters to go on the ends of the fiber optic rod, designed the shape and bent the rod, and came up with this.

Going to install it on the car to see what I think.

Now that I have done this, seems like the car manufacturers are all going the same route, with Audi and others swapping over to this look. Should have been less lazy over the past year and could have been out ahead of the herd

 

I think I will get my spare pump out and have a look. Pretty sure I could get a new blade made for less than the cost of the pump? I guess the main thing is following the generally blade shape and attack angle for the OEM blade and then filling it in and smoothing it out. Might be a tricky thing to test though?! Flow rate at a constant rpm off the car?
Do you know if the blade is ally, mild steel or stainless?

I thought the pump housing looked OEM to be fair.

Regards
Lee

 

David really liking that idea, care to share what parts you used and links for us to have a go at making it ?
I'm stuck with non series 8 lights so might have to try something more tricky.