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Hoosier challenge this weekend was exciting and terribly frustrating at the same time. The more I drive the better my car feels but, I still don't get close to the s2000s or m3s. Watching my videos I can see so many mistakes and places to improve. Hopefully, I can work in changes in my driving to get faster times. Also, wider 245 tires and 200 tread wear would be so much better than 225 wide 300 tread pilot super sports would be great.
Sunday's autocross went fairly well. Considering the factual lack of grip of a 300 tread vs a 200, being 1.5 seconds behind second isn't too bad. Next year I'll have better rubber. If I don't have everything I need to start and finish the turbo engine build, I will probably hold off until I do.
I also found my water leak. The barb on the rear iron I capped with a rubber bypass cap just split and has been causing me to lose lots of water. Good news though. Wasn't internal to the engine. I tore that apart since I am installing the megasquirt and turbo parts. Irons, housings, everything looked perfect. For my first rotary rebuild to look that nice after 2 years of hard thrashing, I am very pleased.
And as it turns out there was more of a failure to the rear iron. I'm thinking a little piece of that has been blown out for a while now. Explains a few things. At least I'm not reusing it.
So, I guess my thread will become another one of those "Hey, I'm looking for 300-350 Hp to the wheels" threads. I will try to be more mythological and methodical than some. My plan here is to have my s5 turbo front and rear irons lapped with the s5 NA iron (as the NA and TII irons are identical according to my limited research). I will be reusing the eccentric shaft from my NA engine, purchasing either FD or FC rotors (they are also the same), doing a custom exhaust and turbo manifold, I will be doing a bumper delete sort of and a center exit exhaust, 750 secondary and 550 primary RC engineering high impedance injectors with a walboro 255 pump, custom fuel rails and lines, TII intake manifold, try my luck with deleting the BAC (I know it's nice for idle if you don't know how to tune for it), BorgWarner S360 turbo, not sure yet if I want to do a v-mount or a front, all ready have been working on the megasquirt ms3x, raspberry pi digital dash, I would also like to get everything rebalanced (perhaps to go above 9k rpm for future endeavors), probably more stuff I can't remember at the moment however, that's most of it. There's still a lot of researching and purchasing to be done. I also am working on my own custom engineered dual element rear wing. I've put a lot of time into flow analysis and have a great profile ready to be shaped with carbon fiber. This is purely a fun weekend/autocross car. The goal is to have a relatively quick turbo response time so I'm not blowing the tires off when boost hits. All of my research is showing that the s360 should be the perfect size and cost for my goals, same with the injectors. Is there a better way to achieve what I want? Probably. It's all about the knowledge and learning experience for me though. I am a very DIY oriented person. Loads and loads of work and updates are coming.
Well, my weekend went by quick. After tearing out the engine harness and degreasing that side of the bay, the body harness looked at me with puppy eyes and begged to get torn out as well. Far more wiring than I really wanted to do. But the simpleness of deleting the solenoids up near the bumper will be so pleasing to me. It was too cluttered. The major pitfall of doing this is basically that everything on the harness is tied together in some fashion. I think Mazda were trying to even out the weight distribution by adding massive amounts of wire in the front half of the car. I will be "simplifying" it by using 3-way switches flasher cpus and momentariness. Thankfully, this is essentially my autocross car and occasional weekend or work drive car so. Really didn't want to do but, oh well. I guess I'm not really to the point of no return on the body harness yet. I've only cut off the headlight retractor plugs and a couple others that were never plugged in. We'll see how far I'm willing to go with it.
Well, the quest for more power continues and the saga thickens. My boss gifted me a Borg Warner S300 66mm compressor core. Of which I ordered a .91 ar exhaust housing so, now I'm waiting for a good deal on a compressor housing. Slowly but, surely collecting parts. I picked up a 3 foot piece of O1 tool steel and made my own dowel set. Some people/ companies use A2, which has the same exact hardness rating as O1 however A2 is wear resistant, which is unnecessary for what they are doing, and a little more costly. The 3 foot piece was only 16 dollars where A2 would be 30 for 1 foot. 16mm OD @ 9.0625" long (230~mm) for those who are wondering.
Also in the works, is the ecu panel. It's pretty much at a stopping point now until it's in the car and the engine is in so wires can be routed and landed where the need to be. The more I look at the mess of stock wiring, the more I want to rip all of the old wiring out and start fresh. For now, I am focusing on the engine portion though. Once that is pristine, I will consider more wiring. The wiring layout on the panel is really subject to change as I'm not 100% certain which way I want to go yet. One thing is for certain though, all of the grounds other than the ecu will be grounded to a copper bar instead of the chassis. Still things to play around with and get it exactly how I want it.
The make your own manifold pipe kit (just an array of 90s and a straight piece and the header flange and turbo flange) is on hold until the engine is assembled and installed. The pipes were a steal from one of my work vendors at $36 total. You'd be well over that using McMaster or other online vendors.
Working on my dash build lately. Loaded tunerstudio on the pi for use of digital dashboard as well as tuning. Turns out that the pi3 and pi touch screen fits perfectly in the shroud. Thinking of using the old to make a mold for a completely carbon fiber shroud. Also started porting the irons using pineapple templates.
08-09-17, 09:51 AM
