Please do update on that automatic starter deal, I would love to replace this very old unit in my Tii with one for easier starting.

 

The auto starter a plug and play deal on the tii? I will be in need of a starter soon myself

 

It makes me sad that more people are excited about the starter than my diff haha.

I'll make a thread about it in the second gen forum and post comparison pictures here in the next few days. It's supposed to be a direct swap.

 

It is a nice diff... and the vent tube trick is a good one. I hope you have good longevity with it. I DD an exploder with the 8.8IRS and have already had one rear rebuild on it (and it needs another). I've been told by a mechanic buddy of mine that those diffs had some prevalent oddity, which can't be adjusted for, that causes them to eat ring gears which gives most of that gen exploder a tell tale whine at speed coming from the diff. IIRC he called it clamshelling? I was not surprised when you posted you had ~1/4" of metal on the plug.

As to those asking about the auto starter. I am using one to turn my LS1 attached to a TII bell housing. However, my firewall and some of my transmission tunnel has been rather modified so I cannot say for certain whether there is any interference with something factory that may be near it. Look at the first and second link (auto/manual respectively) and notice the difference in the length of the tail. It'll be nice to get a definitive yes or no about whether it's a direct bolt in from some one with most of the stock drivetrain sitting in their car.

 

Starter comparison:







The only thing I'm really worried about is the sprocket thing's position:


I test fit it and it it bolts right up, the ears are the same, and it clears with probably a full inch to spare.

 

Love the driveshaft.. You have my wheels turning here... The price has come down on those in the last couple years.

 

Yeah, I was definitely surprised when I saw how much cheaper they've gotten. You can get one for even cheaper from PST, but after hearing about a bunch of the yokes coming un-glued (supposedly fixed) and I could find any info about their wait anywhere, I thought the quarter master peice was a bit nicer for not much more money.
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You V8 guys are outside of the normal circle track length zone, so you'll probably have to get one custom made...

I'm not expecting a whole lot lighter than an aluminum shaft. the mazdatrix aluminum shaft is 10.8 lbs. I'm expecting this one to be between 9 and 10...

 

You are right its a couple pounds lighter. The driveshaft on my car came off of Charlie's (Mazcare) FC. He swapped out the driveshaft for CF and I bought his aluminum one. He said it was only a couple pounds lighter than the one he sent me.

 

after seeing that upgraded starter thread in the 3rd gen section, which i assume you did too, it occurred to me that in my FC i'm running an FD starter on a T2 trans, and it works fine, even though the gear is supposed to be way off.

i used the FD starter because i didn't have anything else, one of the ears is different, and its the same low kw motor as the T2.

its on the list to be upgraded!

 

I ground off some more of my diff, and drilled + tapped the ABS sensor hole to 1/2" NPT and put a pipe plug into it:


I also swapped on the (small) mustang pinion flange (the explorer/truck flange is too big and hits the subframe) to do some test fitting:


Test fit the diff and weld-in diff mount. put a bunch of scribe marks on the subframe and took it all back apart again.

Now I have to take it to my buddy's house to melt it all together. (including the camber link reinforcement tabs)


still haven't installed the starter because I have to drill and tap the bottom mounting hole for a larger size because 10+ years ago the previous owner decided to put a SAE home depot bolt in it... (which when I took the starter out was mysteriously missing....)

Also.... BREAKING NEWS

hilariously large street modified aero is happening soon

 

love all of the updates and progress, now following for the progress on the starter. lol

 

A lot of great stuff happening!
Just wondering, why did you ditch the ABS sensor? It seems like it'd be a good source of VSS for datalogs.

 

Haven't been doing a whole lot lately... it's been rather cold (teens and single digit stuff) and I'd rather not go into the garage other than to get beer, it's currently a giant walk-in beer fridge.

I did finally drop my my diff off at a shop to get rebuilt...

I also took the stock rear spoiler off my car to prepare for the wing... the stock spoiler is heavy! weighed in at 6.0 lbs. Hopefully the entire wing weighs that much and doesn't actually add much weight.

I need to get some plugs to plug up the bolt holes from the spoiler.

also, one of the screws holding it on was stripped, and after trying a few things, a reverse drill bit took it right out, those things are awesome.

yeah... I thought about that, but I didn't know what signal it was putting out... and if I were to go that far I'd probably just put the ABS rings back on all the wheels so I could install some more up-to-date ABS anyway. I'll have GPS speed data in any of the datalogs I use for racing so I'm not too concerned.

 

tonight I did some measuring for the height of the wing. SCCA SM rules state that the wing can only be 6" above the roof at it's highest point, so I'm going to make it as close to that as I can.

But the rear end is still a foot or 2 in the air... so I had to make due. I zeroed my digital level on the door rub strip and made the broom stick level to that:


Looks like the roof is ~15" above the rear deck.

and yes... my garage is a mess.

 

so does that round wooden thing channel air to the individual bristles? giving each one better airflow? you'd think something as revolutionary as that would have been seen in F1 first

 

i bet you clean up first race with the new wing!

 

I spy a couple bottles of super blue brake fluid...

Is the spoiler going to be a solid mounted piece or will you be able to un-mount it if you wanted to drive on the street without looking silly?

 

It'll have brackets at the bottom where I can unbolt the whole thing pretty easily.

It'll be very similar to Andy Mckee's XP RX7:

 

Heard from quarter master about my driveshaft... looks like it'll ship in about 2 weeks... hopefully I can get the car ready and the diff/gears broken in for the first autocross of the season practice event on 4/22...

Wing is 3 weeks out, probably won't be ready for the first event, we'll see.

Diff is all built and ready to go, which is cool.
summary for people not paying attention:
Ford 8.8
5.14 motive gears
Torsen T-2R high bias
Ronin mount kit

turned out pretty nice:


also, this came today:


it's a dirt simple water(/meth) injection from snow performance (stage 1). I plan on letting the megasquirt control it, so I didn't need to waste money on anything fancy. It's going to stay 100% water since SCCA doesn't allow meth. I'm probably going to order a water level sensor and some other stuff too. I still haven't decided if I'm going to up the boost with it yet or not, or just make my current high compression turbo a bit safer.



....and no, I haven't installed the starter yet.

 

goddamn 5.12 diff? are you even gonna be able to take the car on the highway? haha from what I saw with one of the 4.77 diffs its bad enough that you cant do over 65ish without being over 4k rpm in 5th!

 

my exhaust gets quieter (less droney) the higher my rpms are, so that might be nice on the highway lol.

but I don't think it'll be nearly that bad, using a gear calculator, with my slightly taller than stock tires (25.4" instead of 25") at 4000 rpm in 5th I'll be at 82 mph. the stock tach does read high though, so it might show higher than that.

more importantly my 2nd gear (autocross gear) will change from topping out at 79 mph with 4.3s (83 mph with stock 4.10s) to topping out at 67mph with the 5.14s. coming out of slower corners should be much better. They're probably not ideal for giant national level autocross courses, which are faster, but I don't really care. Most SSM FD guys use 4.77s I think.

 

McKee's in XP now? Dayum.

 

Started taking apart/cleaning the explorer CVs yesterday. It was a messy job, but they cleaned up a lot easier than I thought they would. (no solvents allowed because they might break down the new grease that's going in.)

I had to use my 12 ton HF press to get the tripod bearings off the explorer shaft, but they came off pretty easily.







T2 (actually 626 turbo) outer vs. ford explorer inner stub:


I forgot to order axle grease, so on hold until tomorrow night when amazon prime shows up (the kit comes with some, but I want to put some redline CV2 grease in them...)

drive shaft still hasn't shipped... not really amused at all the delays. Looks like I'll be driving the back up autocross car this weekend (my '89 corolla with an engine swap and a 6 speed) It hasn't moved in probably a year so we'll see how that goes.

wing uprights are stuck at the cutter... so no wing yet either.

it's warm again!, so expect more updates.

 

stub axles painted and grease received:


and a little spoiler (pun intended):

 

we've used that CV2 grease in the race car for years, and we haven't broken an axle since, and we've run some long events (25 hours) in a FWD car.

the only piece of advise is that you need to pick whom you pack the axles with, as its a more intimate experience than you'd think. or if you like, there are *****, shafts, lube, rubber covers, etc etc.