j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

so i know the shop teacher at my old high school, he used to be the shop foreman at one of the other dealerships. and he decided to retire, and had a bunch of stuff to get rid of.
the cool one being the T2 hood.


its always funny how the brave blue is closer to black than it is to blue....

i wanted to paint it, but the paint on it is so bad, and since ive got spray paint, i just don't think it would turn out, so i'm going to leave it
the shattered clear coat can symbolize the struggle or something

Spider2k

the wiper switch or the wiper ECU box?

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

wiper switch

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

so my friend likes to make fun of my interior, its pretty complete, but its not all black, there are some blue parts and some gray parts.
since i had run out of stuff to buy for the car, i bought kick panels. overnight from Japan of course

also of course they came out of the box looking almost the same as my gray ones, lol
but it had the nifty JDM flare holder.

since its on the wrong side i got some tape and a micrometer and measured out some holes to drill on the other side

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

I have no flare at all let alone a JDM one, but a Mini M&M tube fits perfectly,



and then i went to go put the kick panels in and found out the JDM kick panels don't fit because they are mirror images...

so i put the flare holder on the old gray ones, and put those back

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

in one of those lessons i'll probably pay attention to at some point, i jammed the fenders blue when i put them on, before the car was painted.
Since the Brave Blue is really just closer to black, it looks bad...


so i painted the fender, thing where it bolts to the car (flange? flap?)


i think i like the brave blue better without the clear!

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

oh and the after,

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

so as the only person on the planet looking for a downpipe for a FEED Sonic SR exhaust system, i was delighted to find the 1 in 7,000,000,000, person selling one!
for $16!

of course FedEx wanted $300, but that seems like a pittance
so i bought it, and for $300 you'd think FedEx would go pick it up, but no, it took them a week to go pick it up, and then they sent to to Alaska, and like Kansas or something, before it came here (to California).
pretty sure FedEx's tracking info is wrong, or maybe very unreliable...

anyways, some time later i had a pipe and all the JDM bubble wrap i could eat



and the object of my desire


for the record, an RB down pipe was plan B, but its $250 plus tax and shipping, which would have been more than this, and then i would have had to modify it

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

It looks like a fat snake

Spider2k

If you don't de rust that exhaust I'ma have an aneurysm.

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

lol, can we compromise? what if i put it where the sun don't shine?

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

and somewhere in here the clutch hydraulics completely failed. usually ive gotten symptoms, but this was just complete failure.
probably doesn't help that the ACT clutch i reused has really high effort, i really hate it
its the extreme, like a pizza shooter.

the clutch hydraulics do come off as an assembly though, which is nice




its been a bit of a pain to get this fixed it turns out that the braided hose was worn out too, so it didn't seal, and eventually got so bad it was spraying fluid everywhere(!)
so i had to replace that as well

diabolical1

iTrader: (3)

that's kind of odd. how old was the hose?

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

not sure, one of the few parts that came with the car. the other one being the brake master cylinder, which is known for never leaking and always lasting forever

WondrousBread

FWIW, I have never had an OEM rubber line fail. They get old and brittle but after 30 years that's reasonable.

I have had two braided brake hoses (different brands) leak, each less than 3 years from purchase.

My current set (braided) seems solid so far, about 1 year in

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

and then here is an interesting sidebar.
i hate my clutch, its effort is too high, ive been looking at clutches, but like they cost money, and putting them in is work
but then the light bulb went on! FEED makes a big clutch slave, its supposed to drop pedal effort, which is exactly what i was looking for

The FEED part is $258, which seems expensive, but its not really. either they have it made for them, or they are buying a new stock one and boring it out.
i couldn't find how big, or even the calculations to figure it out, but i did learn a lot about slaves. well, release cylinders.

so every Mazda has a Master cylinder (or is it a primary bedroom?) that is 15.87mm, or 0.624", and every Mazda has a slave, err release cylinder that is 19.05mm, 0.750" or 12/16"
i think FEED is going the next size up, which is 13/16" or 20.64mm, if you started with the stock casting, i think that would be about as much as you could do

so i went down the rabbit hole looking for slaves, err release err the thing that makes the thing move. and just looking at pics we can eliminate a bunch,
the Rx7 has the two bolts on opposite sides, ears. the hose is a 10x1.0 and sealed with a washer, although that could be adapted to something else if needed

the F044-41-920C, the turbo part


the NA has a different one, but the difference is just that the ears are further back. the FB's have similar ones, but the bleeders move around, etc etc

after much searching i found the early BRZ has a 13/16" release cylinder, and it looks like this



if you're thinking hey that looks a lot the same and even the ears are close and everything, you're right, it does look a lot the same.
i couldn't find any measurements anywhere (who would bother?). so i spent $40 and bought one

and basically goes right in. the Subazerati's use a banjo but it is the same 10x1.0 size, so the FC hose works.
the pattern on the ears is not the same, but the Subaru has 10mm holes vs 8mm, so it still bolts up.

the only work that needed to be done was that the Subaru pushrod is so small it just falls through the Mazda fork, which is pretty funny.
then the Mazda Pushrod is too long, so i shortened it a bit, and it was in

but my clutch sucks. in addition to the high effort, it also needs more travel, and when you make he slave bigger, it has more leverage, so effort goes down, but it also doesn't extend as far (master moves the same amount of fluid), so it didn't work for me

so oh well. the other interesting thing is that while the Mazda part has one seal on it,

the Subaru part has two, so it should be less leaky

Nosferatu

Some years back on here. Someone who bought the feed compared the feed slave to stock side by side. Basically, from what I can remember, he said they were identical except feed had a longer extension pin (or whatever it's called) then the stock turbo slave. This is the picture from that post. whether the feed one has internal cylinder bore difference is unknown. they sure look the same except for the pin length difference.

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

this is the only thing i could see, maybe its just worn out?

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

so i put the exhaust on, it would have been cool to coat it or something, but it took a really long time to get, and i wanted to see if the SR in Sonic SR means Really Loud
and then i found another difference between the US and JDM cars.... well and that mine is bent a tad.

muffler meet reinforcement. you can also see that the hole for the clip is way off

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

my car is from San Jose, Almaden Mazda, the dealership i started with, but it lived most of its life in San Francisco, and it came with an interesting story about being parked on a hill and someone parking so close behind that the way out was to drive over them, like a monster truck. i kind of doubted the story, but the bumper is all bent. i took it apart back there (for the first time! original parts left are the windshield, HVAC, and the brake master)

anyways, here are the bumper brackets, which i assume are supposed to be flat

rear of the car is like this

you can see there is a fold in the spare tire well, and you can also see where the reinforcement hit the body....

bought a puller, hoping to be able to pull some of that out, but just a hammer and the jack worked pretty well

after a good cleaning, a little paint touch up, and much hammers, i ended up with some clearance!


which wasn't enough, when its cold its ok, but the exhaust must grow when it heats up and then it hits the bumper, ECU picks it up as knock

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

One of the differences with the JDM FC and the US FC, is that the rear bumper reinforcement is different.
here is the one from the same car my exhaust came from, notice how long the bumper clip holder things are


so on a JDM car the GIGANTIC muffler would go under the bumper bar, but the US one it hits...

BTW if you go on Yahoo Japan and search FC031, you get stuff from that car, and dresses, but mostly car stuff

gracer7-rx7

iTrader: (16)

So are you saying that a play date with an angle grinder is in your future?

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

it was! the US bar is made of some kind of fiber. the muffler made some nice witness marks too, so the witless (me) was able to take a chunk out. made a huge mess, lol, and if i had to do it again it would be a lot neater, but whatever

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

so spoiler alert, exhaust is on the car, fitment is really amazing. the 4 bolt flanges have holes that are just big enough for the bolt, so there is no real room for movement
its also tucked up closer to the floor, so despite the pipe going from the stock 60mm to 94mm, its got the same amount of clearance as stock, maybe more.
exhaust tip is basically right in the center of the opening, and access to all of the bolts, except the one by the trans is easy.
the funny part is that the tip is 100mm vs the more typical 120mm, so its not nearly as flashy as it could be, which is nice





in this pic you can see the dents in the floor when my friend drove over that other car, lol

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

so the road to Sevenstock, i had a bunch of stuff pop up at the last minute, and i think i got most of them fixed, but didn't get a chance to really make sure.
10 years ago i would have just gone any ways, but this year i took the back up car, and did my best James May impression

As you can see, i've done this properly....


it kind of turned out to be good, because we had 4 people and one car, whereas if i brought my FC i would have been parked across the lot, and this way we got to hang out

its Peripheral port, we drove it there and back. mileage isn't great (14?), but other than that its totally fine
so anyways Irwindale is a good place for Svenstock, everyone was parked together, its closer for us, and we had perfect weather, and a good turn out, so i'm really glad i went

anyways, the FC, so the funny thing, its got JDM wheels with JDM valve stems and i unscrewed the valve stem cap and the whole valve stem came with it, lol
super easy fix, had to take the wheel to the gas station and we pulled the tire off and tightened the nut


i can't find a drill bit that will touch the FEED exhaust, so i made a clamp on silencer thing. it actually sounds better, ive learned that the left exhaust is the JDM spot, but like if the car is LHD then its kind of in your ear


so the next one turned out to be a rabbit hole, but the FC Tweak software gives you a score based on how close a cell in the map is to its target, and i couldn't get mine over 84%
the other thing is that every run i made it would just add fuel at the top boost areas (it takes your log and will change the map for you), and what tipped me off that something weird was afoot was that the HP it says was WAY more than when my little spreadsheet was saying (352hp vs 240hp), and 352hp sounds really awesome, but its an S4 turbo, its just not possible.

i asked the PFC group, and they found some noise on the WB signal, but agreed that there was something wrong with the fuel system.
i think Wednesday i had the voltmeter out checking the battery, and then the fuel pump voltages. i was kind of annoyed that the battery was good (12.47v!) it would have been nice to find a problem.

and then i pulled the fuel pump, which looked fine
filter was new a few years ago, tank looks great.
i decided to pull the pump out, and it turned out that the stupid fuel pump O ring wasn't right.
reseat it, and AFR was in the 9's....
of course my map was all tuned around having no fuel pressure, so i spent the rest of the day and Thursday re-tuning, and i'm back up to upper 70's so that is ok.
didn't have time to do anything about the wideband, which turned out to be good, as Xavier has an updated wiring diagram which should help


but the diff, which has always been loud has started to get LOUD, so i hopped in the miata...