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The first time I saw this car, it was pouring a combination of steam and smoke and making piston-slapping-sounds as it rattled to the Mt Burke summit parking lot. It stopped, and from that point forward it had gone from 140 horsepower to 6 humanpower. We got it back to the bottom of the hill, but it didn't start again for that event. Back on the trailer it went, and I didn't think about it again until I saw it up for sale.
When it did go up for sale, I saw how much work had really gone into it. It had been well prepared, other than the cage. The engine that exploded at the Mt Burke hillclimb in 2014 was replaced with another used n/a motor. The price was right, I had a good idea of its history, and the owner was willing to work with me to deliver it. A week later, it was in my back parking lot.
A week after that, we were starting to redefine 'sno drift' ... as in, the car was beginning to resemble a snow drift.
I haven't started it yet (not for lack of trying). Between all the snow we've been receiving and all the shoveling it's required, I haven't had time to do much other than de-flood it (several times, using 'simple' and 'complex' methods). It isn't cranking as hard as I'd really like it to be, so I'm going to drop one of my Optima batteries in it, de-flood one more time, confirm spark on all 4 plugs, and try firing it up again.
Everybody loves action photos, so here's one from the Burke event where the radiator popped and decided to take the engine with it. Stay tuned!
I dug through the wiring a bit more today, and the starter was only receiving 10.9V. The battery has been on the charger for the past few days, and was putting out a healthy 12.8V (I generally consider 12.6 to be nearing the end of its life), so I started going through the entire chain from the battery to the starter foot by foot. The battery was relocated to the cabin, just behind the rear seat, by a previous owner. Within the first few probing tests with a multimeter, I had identified the sources of the problem.
One was a bad ground strap from the battery, the other was a bad positive terminal end. The ground strap is already a little shorter than I'd like, so I decided to just go 100% and not have to worry about it any more. I've been through this song and dance a few times before, and have essentially determined that welding cable is the best solution for primary cabling in cars. It's heat/fire resistant, rated for higher amps than any of the fuses will allow, relatively well-priced (I pay $36 for a complete car, and end up with leftovers), and is very flexible.
I'll just re-use the cable ends, but I'll probably solder the cable in and shrink wrap the cable to a cover of some sort. If you've ever seen a race car crash and a battery come loose and bounce around a bit, you'll understand why that's an important consideration in my book.
Any of you who have raced before know that everything comes down to tires. Your tires are the limiting factor on how soon you can accelerate, how late you can brake, and how much speed you can carry while turning. They also determine when you slip from 'pilot' to 'passenger' so the majority of racing upgrades are tire-related.
Your suspension's job is to keep as much tire in contact with the road as possible.
Your brakes' job is to reduce your tires' rate of spin as much as possible.
Your drivetrain's job is to apply as much power to the tires as possible while managing how much they slip (with exceptions, of course).
Your steering's job is to change the course of the tires.
Everything you do goes through your tires, so I'm a big fan of running the absolute best tires my budget (and classification rules) allow, and making modifications that make their jobs easier, and making sure you have the right tires for the job at hand. I'm in reasonable shape as far as tires for the season go (but I may get some nice wide R6's if my budget allows for it).
With tires mostly squared away, I'm looking for ways to maximize the two wheels that drive the car. That means my current s4 n/a open differential (7" ring gear) needs to be replaced with a limited slip unit.
Typically the best course of action would be to take the known-good 1.8 Miata torsen diff, which is absolutely perfect for races like autocross or most road racing applications. In hillclimb races however, there are a lot of very tight corners, and we spend a fair amount of those corners on three wheels.
When you lift a driven wheel on a torsen lsd, it becomes an open diff (can be overcome with stability management, which I think is how Subaru uses them so effectively). That's a dangerous proposition since I would lose power as soon as I touch a bump in a corner. When you suddenly cut power, the rear end gets upset and makes its way to the side of the road to make friends with trees and rocks and cliffs. That's not what I want at all, so the torsen isn't a very good fit for this application.
The TurboII clutched lsd would be an excellent diff, but it won't fit in my carrier (it's an ~8" ring gear) and is relatively expensive. I would need to upgrade the entire rear end to a TurboII, and might as well put in the beefier transmission while I'm at it ... but I've said the words "while I'm at it" before, and it never ends well. Generally speaking, it just never ends.
Moving on to the next viable option, a Kaaz would be great ... but they're a bit pricey. I'm less concerned about the sticker price, and more concerned about long-term use and the cost of rebuilds here. Mark it down as a painful second option.
My theoretical ideal option (series 3 FB clutched LSD) just arrived today, but I'm not certain I can use it. I couldn't get quite enough firm information together to be able to say that this definitely fits or definitely doesn't, so I'm going to be my own guinea pig. If this does fit, or if I can convince it to fit without too much extra machining, I'll call it a big win, and might even order a second so I can easily change gear ratios or lockup ratios depending upon conditions on a hill.
On paper, it looks plausible. They're designed around the same basic dimensions. Once I get the FC down to the shop (after it's running/registered/inspected) I'll pull out the existing diff and get some comparisons.
The best info I've found so far is on this rx7fb thread.
Some s4 NA cars came with clutch type LSD's as well, not a bad solution if there's one handy in your area
subbed for what looks like is going to be a wicked competition build!
Some s4 NA cars came with clutch type LSD's as well, not a bad solution if there's one handy in your area
Originally, that's what I was looking for, but couldn't find anything except a few on eBay for $800 or so. This was $350 including shipping, so it's worth rolling the dice on. If it doesn't work out, I know a few people who race FB's who probably wouldn't mind taking it off my hands, so it won't be a complete loss.
Originally Posted by ibeljin
subbed for what looks like is going to be a wicked competition build!
... and daily driver! This will take over the Miata's daily-driver duties as soon as I have it running/registered/inspected. I'll probably add heat, too. Heat is nice to have in the winter. Defrost is even nicer.
I find that daily driving a race car lets you get to know its characteristics a lot better, and you can shake down reliability issues ahead of time. We generally have one or two cars that get trailered to the hill then have some kind of electrical/mechanical issues that prevent them from racing through the weekend. Daily'ing a car like this is a big pile of compromises, meaning that I have to bring spare wheels, leave lights in, keep OEM-style DOT seat belts installed, and a myriad of small changes ... but I think it's worth it. None of the hills are so far away that I couldn't have it towed home if I have a major off, so bringing a dedicated tow vehicle to each event isn't an absolute necessity.
I also just like driving fun cars. Boring cars are boring. If I can't drive it every day, I don't want to own it.
damn I didnt realize those diffs could fetch a pretty penny!
I'de love to start tracking my car one day but like most FC owners, the "to do" list is longer than my arm
damn I didnt realize those diffs could fetch a pretty penny!
I'de love to start tracking my car one day but like most FC owners, the "to do" list is longer than my arm
1: Buy helmet.
2: Register.
3: Race.
It doesn't matter how long your list of wants is, that's what's required to get racing, provided that your car is safe to be driven on the street. The trick is to just get out there and do it.
Last year, my first event was:
1: Buy Miata the week before the first event.
2: Borrow helmet.
3: Show up and race without registering, because some people hadn't shown up.
In a minor wiring update, I pulled the battery ground strap to see if I could get a good enough connection to make it functional. One end looks well terminated, with a good ring terminal and shrink wrap.
The other end was barely pinched together into the battery terminal connector, with bad contact and too little exposed wire. It's also not very good wire, generally speaking. It's rated for temperature, but is pretty brittle and inflexible, but the actual terminal connector itself was the worst part. Once my welding wire comes in, I'll make a permanent solution (with a little longer cable or possibly a better grounding location than where it was), but for now I just want to get the car started.
I don't know what the aux power connector went to, but I've removed it. Instead of powering things directly off the battery with a fusible link, I have a micro circuit breaker box with switching power supplies. Most of the devices I need are powered via USB (cameras, mostly), but the working lights I'm adding are 12vDC so they'll just have a circuit breaker.
Last edited by driven-daily; 02-11-15 at 04:34 PM.
Reason: last season
The new cables just arrived. There are so many things to love about Excelene wiring. It has great chemical, temperature, and abrasion resistance characteristics, it's very flexible, even with thicker cables. All told, 20' of Excelene (two 10' lengths, one red and one black) cost the same as 10' of the same thickness of "automotive wire" at Advance Auto.
I'll let the comparison photo speak for itself. Go ahead and click it and zoom all the way in.
I'm still waiting for my cable ends, but might just pop down to the local battery store to see what they can come up with. With any luck, this will solve my chugging starter issue and get the car running again.
I really hate wiring, but Excelene is so easy to work with, it's kind of nice.
Total materials cost: $6. I'll put together a full howto with specific materials sometime this winter, along with a big handful of other howto's. I still need to decide exactly where I'm going to ground this on the chassis, I'm not really crazy about where it was originally.
I've been out with the flu for awhile now, but the weather today was so nice that I couldn't stay indoors. I did a bit of minor fact gathering on the electrical system, and isolated part of my starting woes to the fuel pump not turning on.
I did a bit more digging, and identified the source of the problem to the circuit only having 3v of power, not the full 12v that the pump requires to run at full capacity (a turbo would be a little different). Being colorblind for this sort of thing is awful, because everybody seems to say 'red wire is 12v+, yellow wire is signal, etc etc etc' ... and ... yep, no idea what to do with that information. After some diagnosis, I jumped the pump, but still haven't started it yet (I need to test for spark, and really need a second set of hands for that).
Seeing Dave's car progress so nicely and finally make some unhindered runs up Okemo has inspired me. I can't help but to spend some time on this car. I cut a little more cage out today, and started digging in to the wiring. Here are the facts I know so far:
Fuel pump isn't getting enough power
There is a drain on the battery. I've tried 3 different batteries, and all drop down from 12.8v to ~9v if left connected overnight
The starter isn't cranking as hard as I'd like.
The cage needs to be replaced
The windshield needs to be replaced
The seats need new mounting points (the old ones are terrifying)
I finally pulled the dash to see if I could find the cause of the drain. What I found was both encouraging and disheartening at once.
For starters, the dashboard itself is brilliant. It's sturdy, lightweight, and other than the cheesy carpet covering, it's pretty well made all around.
I think the heater is also kind of brilliant, but a pusher fan most likely isn't strong enough. I may be able to dig up a spare blower fan, but that isn't necessarily a high-priority.
There are a lot of Bosch relays. While that's better than most cars, they can be a pain to diagnose.
The primary 'race' switch panel is kind of awful. It's simple and easy to replace, but don't have a wiring connector so the panel is removable. That means the panel has to stay with the car when I pull the dash, rather than simply disconnecting the wires and leaving it in the dash. I'm going to re-make this, and add in a 'fuel' switch, and replace the switches themselves.
Overall, it's in a good place, but there's plenty left to do on it. The Miata is pretty much finished, so I can start to focus on this. Once it's finished, I'll decide if I'm keeping it or selling it, I haven't decided yet.
There isn't really any update to post. My landlord gave me an additional workspace to use, which is extremely helpful, so I'm building that out before wrapping up any more projects. Expect to see progress this weekend (I know I do).
Well, I've certainly been busy since the last update, but the rx7 is finally in the garage now.
Miata
While you were away, the Miata won Street Prepared 6 and took first in points with Killington Sports Car Club for hillclimbs. It's also been the daily driven race car for two solid years. I think it's getting to be time to put the new engine in though, this one's getting really tired. Heat would be nice too, now that it's starting to drop into the 20's.
Datsun
Dave came up and offered a whole lot of help getting the Datsun up to my chassis fabricator in Vermont. That frees up the garage for a month or so, so I can take care of minor maintenance like getting the rx7 ready to drive (maybe some ice races this year?) and swapping the Miata engine.
Once the Datsun returns, I think you fellows will dig what I'm doing with it. Hint: It doesn't involve the 2.8liter turbocharged inline 6 that was in it.
For now, the rx7 gets attention and probably a new battery. I need to figure out why it isn't starting, and why the fuel pump is getting such low voltage. It's been ignored for too long! I still plan to sell it once it's sorted out, so don't get too attached to this project.
That's all going into the Datsun, which is hanging out at the Subaru fabricator's shop where it belongs. I had hoped to make it up to see it yesterday, but a few plans fell through and I ended up staying home and working on the new daily driver instead. I might be able to make it up next weekend. Current status suggests that the cage will begin to materialize sometime later this week.
Up in Vermont, Joey added a little bit more material to keep the trees and rocks outside of the car. The interesting design point here is that each tube in the door bar is continuous, which is more consistent/predictable in failure (CRASH!) than a more traditional single-continuous door bar would be.
Most older-style door bars have one continuous tube that runs from the driver's shoulder to the driver's shin-area. That's excellent, but the reinforcement bar isn't continuous, it's two halves of a tube coped to fit the single continuous bar. They tend to break at the welds (rather than bending and deforming) and the sharp edges make their way through the passenger cabin. It's a great deal better than nothing, but the tests (and in-person crashes) I've seen overwhelmingly support double continuous bars. I'll still want a vertical reinforcement bar that connects the driver's knee-area to the top-of-the-windshield area for some rollover protection.
A little suspension reinforcement in the front always helps too.
I'm also focused on logistics for this season. The new trailer design is in the works, but I'm going to wait to update on that 'till I have something physical to show. I'm pretty sure the HANS is getting replaced with a different restraint system. HANS is fine for most forms of racing where a head-on collision is likely, but hillclimbs are just as likely to put you on your roof ... backwards ... 8 feet in the air in a tree (I've seen that happen twice in one season). I really want to get something that secures the head/helmet in side-on impacts as well, and I'm considering a containment seat if I can find something I like at a decent price. The sides need to be removable for daily driving, which is a bit of a problem.
If I build this turbo motor the way I've been planning to, it looks like I'll be in SP2 for 2016, then SP4 for 2017 (with water/meth injection). I still need to source the wheel/tire combination I'll be racing with, but that's definitely something I can put off for awhile. More updates to come as soon as I have my CRX back together and can take a drive up to Vermont to see the car in person.
In case anybody's interested, I just posted the FC for sale, with all its spare parts. I'd love to keep it in the community if possible. This will help fund the rotary Datsun, so I'll still be around even without it. Know anyone who might be interested?
Today, I joined up with my friends Dave (click for his hillclimb build thread) and Ian (hillclimbs an NB Miata) and stopped at a local salvage yard on the way up to Vermont. I searched for a long time to try to find a decent front suspension setup, since the s30 fronts leave so much to be desired for my needs. I wanted the following:
Match the rear suspension track width as closely as possible[/*]
Get a double-wishbone setup, rather than the macpherson that I have now[/*]
Keep myself open to common aftermarket options[/*]
Retain maximum suspension travel[/*]
Upgrade to vented brake rotors[/*]
The 350z/g35 (non-awd) front suspension solves all of these problems admirably. I get 12" vented rotors, floating piston calipers, a great front-steer steering rack, 5x114.3 hubs, and gorgeous double-wishbone suspension. Total cost: $1100. Roughly the same as a set of techno toy tuning coilovers (which are pretty much the best replacement available). I'm pretty happy with how things are looking.
Installation will be 'straightforward' for a custom fabrication job. That is to say that subframe pickup points need to be added to the s30 chassis such that the wheels are placed in the right locations and aligned with the body, and the upper mounts (damper hats and upper control arms) are mounted in the appropriate locations to retain stock-ish geometry. I decided that the conversion from front-steer to rear-steer would be a bit of a nightmare to cobble together, so I took the g35 steering column as well. That should ease the transition quite a bit, but it might require adding an extension to the steering shaft (the 350z/g35 really can't compare to the s30 in terms of firewall-to-crossmember-distance).
The new engine is in place. Just to illustrate my point of how large the l-series is, here's a size comparison.
Cage work is progressing nicely, as Joey ties in more suspension pickup points and triangulates the whole car. It's mostly 1.75" .095 DOM tube, but there's a fair amount of 1" or 1.25" for rigidity reinforcement. I want to ensure that everything outside of the crossmember points works as 'crumple zone' and that everything in the cockpit is treated as structural squishy-human-protection.
I'm really relieved with the seating position, for the most part. It's going to end up a few inches taller than it is to clear the floor and be above the sill bars, but I have gobs of head/leg room. I don't really expect anyone else to want to drive this beast, so that's even better than expected. The shifter location is perfect for that, and I found that I could even move the engine back a few inches to centralize the weight even more.
The problem with this setup, I found, is getting in and out. Especially after adding the FIA bars (semi-vertical bars that connect the bottom-front of the door to the top-rear of the windshield), the halo containment on the seat means my head has no way to comfortably get in/out of the car. Because it's a daily driver, I'm going to have to do some brainstorming to figure out how I'll solve that.
Sneak peek at what's going on with the Datsun-shaped thing:
I haven't had a chance to test-fit them yet, and don't have wheels/tires to use for mockup yet. In the meantime, I decided to dig into the fc3s and see if I could figure out why it didn't start. I felt a little bad about pulling apart the nice wiring packaging, but I had no other choice.
This is the result
... and here's roughly what I learned
I still haven't sorted out why it doesn't start.
SPARK
I have spark, based on my spark tester. I have not put my timing light on it, and don't eve know if a rotary would need a different testing method.
FLOODING
I purged the engine and dumped a little ATF into the plug holes, but it didn't seem to help. I even went so far as to spray a bit of starter fluid in, to ensure that I have premixed fuel available. All I got for my effort was a few exhaust-putters while it was cranking.
FUEL PUMP
I have fuel pressure. The pump doesn't receive sufficient voltage ... I can sort that out permanently, but this confirms that I'd still have a problem even if I fixed the wiring issue.
FUEL INJECTORS
I haven't tested the fuel injectors, and really don't even know how I would anyway.
EGI FUSE
I have a bad ground or short somewhere in the EGI circuit (tested across the fuse terminals, my test light BARELY illuminated). I'm not entirely sure where yet, though. This could be the key to my problem, I definitely need to read up on the EGI circuit.
VACUUM
While rummaging around the engine bay, I found several badly dry-rotted vacuum caps. I'd be surprised if this is the root cause of my problem, but I'll replace them before my next test-day.
I'm not really content with my progress for the day, but I think I can re-build the majority of the wiring harness outside of the car. Strong connections across the board will go a long way toward diagnosis.
02-10-15, 02:44 PM
Driven Daily Hillclimb Racer
