https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/p...ge_mmthumb.pngdriveline is in, just need to slap wheels and the exhaust on and we are ready to rock. eager to try the 5.12s and a few pounds saved with the aluminum driveshaft.

That would of been awesome.

Way back when Racing Beat said they made some adapter for a short pinion to a long pinion for FC's. They said it was expensive and no one wanted to buy it. I am assuming it would be in the rear end case.

Would of that been a thing or does my memory fail after having a conversation on the phone 10 years ago with Racing Beat?

i ran across it in the catalog a few weeks ago, and i wonder why it didn't catch on

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...84a65935d9.jpg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...2fe358530e.jpg

Wouldn't something like a wheel spacer be simpler? Hub centric to both fitments and offset the holes?

thats a clever solution too, I never knew those existed.

i'm surprised it didn't catch on. i think its like a really long companion flange pic is an ND diff

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...1b9c054e88.jpg

Dave Lemon at mazdatrix is pretty good guy I'm sure you could reach him for a drawing if you wanted to get one machines or a batch of them...

I'd love to make that call!

You think we could get a bunch of people that would want them?

Man you're a resource.

I may take one as backup if I snap another pinion, I have some S2000 4.778 ring gear setup on my shelf in the garage. I'm a bit spent from the rally weekend but I'll re-cap later and get some pics and vids up.

hopefully I never need it with these 5.12s I got, as long as I don't break it that is haha. but downtime for that part is pretty extreme...

​
[img][img]event recap to come but here is the best stage on the circuit IMHO.

lots of high speed blind and tight twisty fun, I stuff it briefly playing with the wipers switch and get distracted. Car felt great the conditions were prime but my balls needed to sack up a touch - everyone has stepped up their game it seems. 4th gear corners and higher speed corners need better notes and commitment but were a work in progress.



the ring and pinion made 3rd gear extra perfect and was very drivable, the changes to the cooling system were very noticeable and now the car stays extra cool, even the hood scoop shows that I am grabbing some cool air, would be curious to see once it gets stuffed under the hood how high that will get instead...



we took 5th in class due to penalties related to blowing 2 tires but had we not had that there was a definite battle for 3rd on our hands but thats rally!
​

your 5th place speaks to the class you're in, i guess, because to my untrained eyes, it looks like you had plenty of balls. great job.

Much respect bro!! That thing hauls ass!
Your passenger guy is a cool customer!!! His voice never changed! awesome stuff!

That's the wild part - everyone has stepped up their competition in past 18 months, everyone is faster and better now bravery and preparedness are key factors. looking at average speeds, everyone increased their avg speed across the board, yes the fair conditions helped that but thats not everything.

Fun fact this is our 5th time doing this event (with 3 different co-drivers) and this is the only time we haven't been on the podium. If you remove the penalties we missed 3rd place by 1 second and that was us driving on 3 tires for 10 miles. Had I not gotten greedy on tire choice/pressures the battle for 2nd or 3rd would have been on. 1st place was haulin - we could not make up enough time on them for the tighter stages of Saturday as Friday were more topspeed/flat out. I'm certainly in the lower hp range of the class with 160-170whp whereas most of the bmws are 200-220whp and the M3 and the lexus's have around 300 on tap.

76 cars started the rally, 54 finished. We started out 28th on the road and finished 32 overall. We would have placed around the 26th overall without those which is pretty decent. Last year we took 12th overall but conditions were more favorable to me (wet n sloppy). Happy with the performance and the car's performance. Great to know my cooling system updates worked fantastic now I just gotta work on more confident notes and driving. 4th gear corners are another animal

the stage before that one we took 2nd fastest in 2wd and fastest in open 2wd, I'll get that posted up but this particular stage is the best on the calendar coast to coast.

lost fastest 2wd by 2 seconds on this stage, maybe if I didn't grab 4th I would made it to #1 but a hell of a run:

took some time to revisit this and found that vacuum lines from the intake manifold to the vacuum block were a touch too thin walled and would collapse at high RPM/load situations which was hard to catch my brake pedal feel is far more consistent and better overall which made me believe that some of the power issue was because of bad data to the sensors. With that fixed and I swapped to the short runner intake manifold from EFI hardware and used some more metal printing magic to add a BAC adapter for idle help/warmup:

https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/p...ge_mmthumb.png


then re-tuned it on a dynocom dyno and now I am a member of the 200WHP+ club!

https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/p...ge_mmthumb.png

congratulations!
i imagine a lot of the BMWs will be sweaty after a run now. :)

on a sidenote, i get the M3s being around 300, but which Lexus' are you running with that are running 300s? i imagine they are the IS300 and/or the IS250/350), but which ones? the 2JZ cars? the 2GR cars? both? i'm just curious.

Thats the plan! a lot of the E36 M3s and BMW rally cars have a race weight of 3200-3300lb. My car full tank of gas is 2800lbs, Downeys E30 is 2600lbs and 230whp so thats a challenge and his pace has stepped up.

They have no 2JZ lexus' out there they are using the v6 that comes in the IS250/350 but its still 300crank or so, I don't know what the engine code for those v6s are. It depends who rents them and if they enter a regional or national event, I have been competitive with them in the past. not always with hooper, who rents them and runs the lexus show, but if it rains I can close the gap on him pretty easily.

yeah ... the IS350s are 300+ crank. i think the IS250s are somewhere near the mid 200s or so, but when i read your post, i thought you were talking about power at the wheels, which is why it really piqued my curiosity. i was going to have to look into what they were doing to make that kind of power. as you can probably tell, i am a fan of those cars and engines.

at any rate, i enjoy it when you post updates and i'm here for the ride. your journey is inspirational, so keep at it.

Thank you! this project is never done but I'm happy with the formula now. Now its time for some more seat time and enjoy...

250whp is a sweet spot for rally RWD as anymore you just cant put power down on the loose surface, anything above that too you start to eat tires likes gasoline and that gets expensive.

Sometime in the future I will do a A-B manifold dyno comparison to really see what the potential was for that long runner manifold.

Now that some of the other small items are taken care of, it is time to get right hand turn visibility back!

https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/p...ge_mmthumb.png

I opted for 3d printing again but also to help teach you folks about the technology - its not about just doing stuff (which is the bulk of the additive manufacturing industry) for example, they would collect all the oceans plastic trash and refine it down to powder and filament only to print more plastic bottles...

in this lesson you learn how to utilize the benefits of the technology, much like a tool. you can use a hammer as a screwdriver pretty terribly - manufacturing processes are no different.

use the tool appropriately and you get good results. so we will use the magic of 3d printing to create a shell by segmenting the roof scoop into smaller pieces that can be joined together (like a jigsaw puzzle) later to form the desired shape:

I COULD have printed the whole thing in one piece but that makes for installation difficult (would have changed the design for that then) and is more costly since you are trying to print a 3mm sheet of plastic, and in this size it would likely come out pringled.

but first I had to fix my hole from the prior scoop (roof scoop acting as hood scoop) :

https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/p...ge_mmthumb.png

now I have a spot to mount the new cowl/scoop

https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/p...ge_mmthumb.png

I used the same plastic trim I use for mudflaps and aeroparts for ducting, this is extremely cheap and available so it was easier for me to shear out a shape and slide it into the frame thus I was able to mix conventionally manufactured parts with 3d printed parts to get the desired result, and with a touch of spraypaint it all comes together!



so now you know!

Hopefully ill see you out West one of these days.

I plan to do an OTR/Olympus/+1 day regional possibly for a west coast regional o2wd run
but probably still some years out.
next year is Canada

action shots? action shot!
!https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/p...25_mmthumb.JPGhttps://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/p...98_mmthumb.JPGhttps://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/p...28_mmthumb.JPGhttps://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/p...61_mmthumb.jpghttps://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/p...58_mmthumb.jpghttps://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/p...-2_mmthumb.jpg

we always love action shots, right?