BMS2004

haven't really talked about our progress. Pics pretty much say where we're at. The body kit is taking longer than we had thought. Oh well we shoulda known better.

Kenku

Hm, neat... you guys going to get it ready for this year?

We kind of ran into... uh... cash flow/time problems. So the new chassis is getting delayed, much less going to EP.

BMS2004

yea we hope so, starting to get crunch time though, we'll see. What are you guys gonna run this year then?

Kenku

Same car as last year basicially, but with yet another rebuild and... uh... better cooling.

We had some issues at one point with the driveshaft machining itself against the tri-link, but we dug up an old RX-2 2-piece one we're looking at making fit... we've got the diff apart too, and some other minor tweaks. Maybe we should repaint it too.

31rx7

I am prepping an EP car also for 2006. See

http://members.cardomain.com/rgrunenw

This is Jesse Prather's tub from last year. I am still collecting info and thoughts on what all to do, some of which is budget dependent. For example, I will likely start out with a 626 transmission (because it's cheap) and a Weber 45 DCOE setup (because I already have it).

We all want the two piece driveshaft. Let me know if you discover options that are more cost effective than ordering from Mazda.

Rich
Hilliard, OH

Kenku

Well, we have *a* 2-piece driveshaft (just to be sure of terminology, what people mean by this is "extra bend with associated u-joint" right?) handy, presumably left over from one of my dad's RX-2s... because I don't know what else it could be from. It's about 6" too long or so, but that can be fixed. Probably needs new u-joints too, as it's been sitting in our barn for at least 20 years.

BMS2004

I don't get it whats so special about the 2 piece? Other than the fact that you just happened to have it around. Whats the assumed advantage to this?

Kenku

Well, like I mentioned, we ran into issues with the driveshaft hitting the tri-link mount, so we did a bandaid fix by putting spacers on top of the rear coils to raise the rear ride height a bit. But the 2-piece driveshaft has an extra pivot point and support... so we can put that pivot point about where the tri-link mount is, and the shaft will remain fixed in relation to it. So we can drop the ride height down again.

This might not actually be that much of a benefit, and there might be other benefits I'm not thinking of, but that's our reasoning for trying it. That, and the price is right.

BroncoRX7

Sounds like a solid starting point , im working with bms2004 to get our car going. I'm all in favor of the 2 season transition/build. nobody says you have to win the first season, just finish.

bryan

31rx7

The two piece drive shaft eliminates the vibration at high speeds / high RPM. Eventually it will wear out the tailshaft bearings in your transmission. I tried new driveshafts, balancing, everything I could think of. My ITA car had that problem. Did yours?

On my ITA car, I also had minor issues with the Trilink pivot point hitting the driveshaft. However, they were primarily due to my early style gForce Panhard flexing under hard cornering. Susko's current Panhard is much more stout, and the mounting method is 100% stronger, and is what I will use on my EP car.

BMS2004, did we ever race with each other? I ran Mid Ohio, Nelson, IRP. Attached is a pic of my old ITA car.

Rich

BMS2004

I don't remember seeing your car. Our car has pretty much been confined to gingerman and Blackhawk Farms for the past few years (we, the students, ran it in Midwestern council's high speed autox) This year we're still running the MWC schedule but the professor should hopefully be running the Cendiv regional races. Yes we did have a slight problem with the driveshaft trying to machine itself on the trilink bracket. Luckily ours only did it on harsh bumps, so what we did was re-center the axle to the right some and it fixed it. Car handling wasn't really affected as far as I could tell.with about ~2 months till races start, we'll really have to get on top of things.

RotaryAXer

iTrader: (4)

All this talk about driveshaft and tri-link interactions and Jim Susko said nobody ever had that problem before me....hmmm.

BMS2004

well we never notified him so maybe he really didn't think there was a problem.

ddewhurst

Lets see now, we have:

BMS2004 from Michigan who has no name. : (

Kenku from Wisconsin who has no name. Maybe Ken ? : (

31rx7 from Ohio from Ohio who has a first name of Rich. I know Rich. : )

BroncoRX7 from Michigan who has a first name Bryan. : )

RotaryAXer from Michigan who has no name. : (

ddewhurst from Wisconsin who has a first name David. : ) That's me, David who is converting his Spec7 to ITA/7. Did the motor, diff, exhaust, carb, radiator, gauges, G-Force strut spacer last year & doing the suspension things this year. RotaryAXer, according to Jim I'm the only customer that bought strut spacers from him that questioned why I had to grind the $hit out of my reworked OEM parts to get HIS strut spacers to fit. It's real simple, I measured his strut spacers & another set of non reworked struts & tie rods & his strut spacers measured IIRC .019 different centers. Hey, his written instructions are very good but when his instructions are followed to the TEE, two 1/2 inch bolts through 1/2 inch holes on .019 different centers ain't going to fit. So that makes two un-happy customers that Jim HAD.

My first question to you guys is, why don't you use at least a first name. This is kind of like talking to a married lady in a bar.

BSM2004, is your Howe radiator a cross flow ?

Kenku, what car do you guys run & where ?

What's with the 3 or 4 guys from the CenDiv area 4 converting their ITA/7 cars to E Production ? Are you guys going to race Regional or National ?

If I am not mistaken the two piece drive shaft is to eliminate the vibration/ goofy single piece driveshaft angels at both ends which occurs after the chassis is lowered.

Have Fun ; )
David Dewhurst
CenDiv ITA/7 #14

PS: Rich, if Jim would have used a vendor/customer relationship I still would be a customer of his. But, when all he can say is, we'll work with you & then he says your the only customer who has ever complained, I don't call that working with the customer.

RotaryAXer

iTrader: (4)

I just forgot to hit the "show your sinature" thing.

Hi.

I'm actually pretty happy with Jim Susko and his efforts. I just thought it was odd he said I was the only one with a problem that appears to be a bit more wide spread. It isn't a huge deal it just took some finesse to get it to work correctly.

Later,

Kenku

Heh, fair enough. I'm actually Dan; my father and I share a car. We run in Midwestern Council; he does wheel to wheel in ITA, I do autocross. http://ham.and.cheese.on.rye.sandwic...racing/rex.jpg is him in the car at Elkhart from a couple years back. We're only gotten out to Blackhawk Farms and the one weekend a year MC gets Elkhart thus far... fairly new at this, and working on figuring out how to keep everything on the car in the normal number of pieces.

I can't really recall any major hassles with Susko's stuff, but then it's been on the car a while. Also can't really think of how to do some of it better and stay ITA legal. Though I might've found a better way to locate the rear than a panhard, no time to get it built right at the moment. Blegh, stupid school taking time away from playing with cars.

As for going to E-Prod... enh. My dad and I suffer from the problem of being engineers, with all the associated trying to think of nifty ways to go faster. And as liberal as MC may be about checking to make sure things conform to anything but safety regs, it'd hardly be kosher to start doing engine/transmission/etc modifications, even if they wouldn't necessecarily be findable. Even if you have to suspect some of the "Spec" Miata guys are...

Plus, isn't it just sort of a natural tendency to go to a more expensive, faster car as soon as you almost start to get the hang of what you have to do to keep the current one going?

31rx7

I am not concerned with the extra work required to get Jim's spacers installed. Ideally, they would be machined to bolt in from the get go, but we are talking a low volume, custom item here. I would rather take the extra time myself than cost an addition$100 or so. I took my struts to a machine shop to get them accurately ground so the bolts thru the strut to the top of the spacer would seat properly. I then used a whiz wheel to grind a groove in the spacer to correspond to the brake backing plate. Easy. The engineering is good, that's the main thing.

Wait til you go to a prod class where 90% of the stuff is custom and one-off.

My personal experience with Jim from a customer perspective is very positive. In the Brat Bash race at Mid-Ohio in 2002, the Panhard broke due to a crash impact in the race on Saturday. Jim towed my car back to his place in Findlay, fixed it, and had it back the same night, and I raced on Sunday. Cost? A tank of gas and $5 at Wendy's.

I think CENDIV people are moving from ITA/IT7 to Prod for a number of reasons.

1) IT7 has really not taken off in CENDIV in spite of reasonable efforts
2) The IT legal RX7 is pretty much at the end of its development curve. There are not going to be significant performance improvements, and the car will drop further back in the pack. At least in EP there is a reasonably secure future. I am too damn lazy to learn about another car!
3) More power + more handling = more fun!
4) There are enough EP 1st gen RX7's out there that parts and engineering is plentiful.
5) It is an incremental step up from IT that enables one to run Nationals and potentially qualify for the Runoff's. The ARRC is not the same as the Runoffs.
6) More opportunities to race - Regionals + Nationals!

BMS2004

yea sorry about that. I'm Ron from kalamazoo, mi. Bryan and I are students at Western Michigan University. The car is actually all built by the students. (except for the motor this year) The 7 hasn't ran in SCCA for some years now. It was to be used for the autox's Dan refers to. I agree with Rich entirely about the move to EP. In our case our goal is to run regionals this year and nationals next year. the 7 just really isn't as competitive in ITA as it is in EP (see crx and miata).

Addressing G-Force. we have some old spacers that work just fine. The only problem is we had to grind of the top lip when switching to the SE strut housings. Like Rich said EP is much more of a headache for making stuff work. (see bodykit) I can also say Jim has been nothing but very helpful in our conversion.

Howe radiatior: i'm not sure of the specifics of it other than its huge.

anything else ya need or wanna know, just ask i'll try to help.

Ron

christaylor

Hey Ron, is that weld on the knee bar as scary in person as it is in the picture?

BMS2004

by knee bar I assume you mean the crossbar from the pic with the dash in it? the black one?

If thats the one you mean then no its not scary, a little overkill sure but I definately would think its safe.

BTW: I didn't do it

christaylor

Yeah, that's it.

I wasn't sure if the weld was covering a gap or was done by somebody that didn't fully grasp the concept of more doesn't always mean better.

ddewhurst

Thanks guys.

Rich, I was at Mid Ohio for the race you talk about in 2002. With the parts peddler he didn't want to talk about the hole center distance differences. Friend/customer/whatever that is BS. Working around stuff for a race car is one thing, working around someone's error is quite another thing. As to E Production I was the Skirmants crew in year 2002. Crewed with Loshak last year for the Runoffs.

Ron, is your professor a guy by the name of Dick if I IIRC. He posted in past years on the IT site.

Dan, I did one MC race last year at the Farm. First time out with the new speed stuff including the 4.88. All of maybe 10 practice laps. Driver error, in the middle of the turn before the back straight at 8,000 rpm's I shifted to 4th. Shift lever stuck between 3rd & 4th. Upon inspection the driver hit reverse.

Have Fun ; )
David

BMS2004

yep, Dick is the prof. makes things interesting at times having us students in the engineering field build a car with someone who's a business teacher

So who all will be running cendiv regionals this year? It'd be nice to know all the 7 drivers before getting to the track.

Kenku

I hate that driver error stuff... we've lost too many parts to that. "Gee dad, how come there's a dent in the crossmember and oil pan? And why's there grass and dirt in the car?"

Because I, of course, am perfect and never break anything. Yeah, that's it.

christaylor

You know you're talented when you have an offcourse excursion, and you come back with wildflowers stuck in the bumper turn signals.