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While I ponder shock things and procrastinate on getting the car up on a lift to test fitment of the tophats the shocks came with(please fit, please fit, please fit!) I am at least making small movements in the correct direction...
It's going to end up about 1/2" higher than it was in that picture, puts it 1.5" lower than stock undertray, it will be fully fenced to the bottom of the bumper.
I think I've also sold myself on the idea to do the shocks myself... Picked up a TIG welder and have been practicing, going to make a shock dyno (might as well put my day job to work for me) and order lots of shiny bits from Penske. Spending money on tools is always more rewarding than paying someone to do it for you, plus then I can experiment to my hearts content.
Anyone else wiling to met me touch their stuff if I can show some quality results?
Our last testing before the Pro happened this weekend at NNJR SCCA. The car was great, the new clutch worked great, the sticker Hoosiers were great, the drivers didn't suck... overall amazing weekend. Ended up 1-2-3 on index and top raw too.
DSP is ADDICTING. So much fun.
Looking forward to seeing some of you next weekend!
Honestly I'm so terrible with names and faces that I probably wouldn't recognize a coworker I see every day in the grocery store So please don't be offended if I don't run up and say hi!
We'll have to re-introduce this weekend and I can also introduce you to Andrew (my fiance) and Tim (our season codriver) and Riley (the car).
Two of us from flr are just down the road at the dunkin, and more are coming that know a lot of the NER people. Am sad Brian isn't coming. I wanted to see Smelvin in action.
When Dennis had this car, he had - 2.9* front camber. Then Mazda did the LCA recall when I brought it up north. now zi can't get more than 2.0/2.3. My idea is Dennis did LCA offset bushings and now I need to do them as well.
Anyone have suggestions or things to watch out for when doing this? It seems people more often do UCA offsets, so the LCA knowledge I find is limited.
Maybe I can jack it up tonight and lossen all the non alignment bolts and torque them back down.skroggs worked magic on the FoST like that and got almost half a degree more out of the front.
Edit: While jacking up the suspension*
Last edited by Abendschein; 05-04-2018 at 12:09 PM.
Who else is planning to attend the Fingerlakes Tour next month? Right now it's a class of 3 with me, John, and Nick. I have someone interested in co-driving to help make a class, but we still need one more car for contingency payout.
Who else is planning to attend the Fingerlakes Tour next month? Right now it's a class of 3 with me, John, and Nick. I have someone interested in co-driving to help make a class, but we still need one more car for contingency payout.
We will be, just haven't registered yet. That'll make at least 5, 6 if you get a codriver.
NJ Pro update! First off, it was awesome having so many of you there - John, Nick, Everett, and Evan, along with the drivers in my car (Andrew, Tim, myself). It was a great RX8 showing.
For us, Friday started off rough. We blew up our diff. More like, exploded it, during practice starts on Friday. The FD torsen cannot take much wheel hop, or lifting a tire, which is impossible to avoid in NJ. This is the second torsen we've broken so far (the first we found over the winter when draining the oil and finding some teeth), so we have to find a better solution. I really like the way it drives, but reliability wise it's not worth it.
Our backup diff was the rebuilt OSG that we had never tested since it was adjusted. Thankfully my fiance Andrew is quite skilled (he is the builder of the car, afterall), so between he, Tim, and I we were able to put in the new one in about 3.5 hours on Friday afternoon/evening with almost no power tools. Evan also jumped in to help for a bit (thank you!). We ended up all liking how it drove during the event, despite some differences from the torsen. However, given that it's a clutch diff, I'm concerned that as it settles in (all clutches wear) that we may wind up chasing setup again like last year the first time we tried it. If we can make it work though, it's theoretically the superior diff and much stronger than the torsen. In the meantime, we are going to swap out the subframe bushings and design some delrin rear suspension bushings to try to help eliminate the wheel hop.
The event went pretty well. I ran L1 and ended up winning over Shelly, who was driving John's BMW. I also ended up top qualifier for the ladies challenge and 2nd in the Ladies challenge, and I would have been 2nd in Open (John pretty much crushed everyone... although I got him on the right side! He probably had sand though). The guys ended up 3rd and 6th in S3, both " in the money" with Mazda contingency. Huge kudos to my fiance Andrew, the builder of this impressive car. I know Andrew wasn't thrilled with his driving this weekend but his results are getting better and better each outing. Tim is still brand new to the car and getting up to speed, so being just a tenth out of second is a great showing for him I think, especially since he was struggling with the launches a bit. We ended up with 3 Hoosiers, $750 in Mazda money, and other prizes for the results, which helped pay for the weekend and the diff replacement
Next up we are going to Spring Nationals. Anyone else thinking of going?
I was really only happy with my right side runs this weekend. The left side I struggled with the entire weekend.
It was pretty dope meeting everyone and watching the monsters of DSP on course.
I'm not going to spring nationals.
As for making a class at SeAD, I might find myself in DSP simply because I am -almost- positive that my cat has disappeared; Mentions of large fireballs from my exhaust and a smell of fuel makes me believe this.
And I'm not a good enough driver to be competitive in STX, but it would be nice to PAX some of the ST* homies in the local region if I could.
The event went pretty well. I ran L1 and ended up winning over Shelly, who was driving John's BMW. I also ended up top qualifier for the ladies challenge and 2nd in the Ladies challenge, and I would have been 2nd in Open (John pretty much crushed everyone... although I got him on the right side! He probably had sand though). The guys ended up 3rd and 6th in S3, both " in the money" with Mazda contingency.
You drove very well and the car looks hooked up. Nice work. I'm continually reminded that I need to accelerate the pace of my SM RX-8 build. I didn't intentionally sandbag on the right course, but because I felt my lead was safe and I didn't really want to go faster, we did make some drastic shock changes before and during my runs to try to get some more data on that lot. We did get some data, but the car definitely didn't work as well so we went back to a known setup for the challenge, which worked well but I got iced for an hour between the first and second rounds and ran into Mark Daddio. Bad combination.
I tried to get into Spring Nats a few weeks ago but the waiting list for both events is way too long. I guess I'll just keep my fingers crossed that Toledo happens, or I'll have to risk only having two Pros to get into the Finale.
Nationals is going to be interesting. I think I need to start allocating money for bribes to the course designers to make sure we have some speed changes.
Nationals is going to be interesting. I think I need to start allocating money for bribes to the course designers to make sure we have some speed changes.
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But thanks John, it was great competing with you again - always a humbling experience. Thanks again for loaning us the sockets we needed for the diff job.
I'd like to take a moment to thank #Tamdrew for the recommendation of Black RTV to stop my Home Position Switch Sensor from leaking.
Once it fully dried, there's no more fluid coming from the wire grommets. Once I got up close and personal with it (don't worry, dinner and a show were first), it looked like the PO crushed the wire by using the improper width tool to reinstall the sensors after the rebuild. Now to order the switch once my Mazdaspeed stuff goes through.
After doing some quick napkin calculations it would seem an N/A RX8 would be able to use a much smaller filter setup than you are planning to run with your setup. By my numbers it would be overkill to have two filters in the configuration you are planning, am I off on my calculations or was the plan to go way big?
Abendschein - you're welcome! I passed it on to Andrew since credit goes to him
So the past few weeks have been a whirlwind. After experiencing so much wheel hop at the NJ Pro we ripped the car apart to install solid subframe bushings from Sikky, stiffer motor mounts from RX8 Performance, a more aggressive delay valve to help with the Tilton clutch on launches, swap out the gearing in the diff, build a spare diff, and fix many of our bound up poly bushings. All of this before we left for Spring Nats.
For an unknown reason all of our poly bushings (full kit of Energy Suspension with the missing ones as Powerflex) in the rear had become super bound up, to the point of needing to use a large c-clamp to press out the inner sleeves. Andrew designed a few delrin bushings (all we had time for) and we reamed the remaining poly ones to make them fit more freely. We also added zerk fittings and re-greased them all. Now the suspension moves super freely as we would expect.
On the RX8Performance motor mounts, make sure if any of you are using them that you install the thick washer under the motor mount bracket. Without it in place you are effectively lowering the engine, which is illegal for SP. There was some confusion around whether it went above or below the bracket, and after taking measurements, it should definitely be installed as pictured below.
Last weekend we made the 24 hour drive out to Lincoln, NE for Spring Nationals. I'm happy to report that our efforts were worth it, and with sufficient rpm at the launch (7-8k) we were wheel hop free. If we tried to launch at lower rpm's we would still get some wheel hop (and also bog) but I think that is to be expected. Keep in mind our super tiny and aggressive clutch can contribute to wheel hop from its grabbiness, somewhat offset by the Tilton delay valve we added.
The temps were 100 degrees every day in Lincoln, the hottest we have ever faced with the car. With three drivers and the aggressive prosolo format, I was concerned we might have overheating problems. However, it seems that the radiator upgrade we did over the winter (Koyo) plus under driving the waterpump did the trick, and every time the car would pull back to grid and I would plug in the Cobb, the temps would be 199 to low 200s at most. We did not datalog any runs due to not wanting to risk the Cobb coming unplugged from the OBD2 port. We did have some tire overheating problems though. With concrete temps at 140 degrees, the second driver got greasy tires despite non stop spraying.
Overall the results were solid. I won L1 and ended up 3rd in the Ladies Challenge, and our codriver Tim took 2nd in S3 by just a tenth of a second behind an FSP car. I know a few DSP people were on the waitlist for the tour and didn't make it in, so we jumped to FP and SM. Tim wound up 2nd in SM (!!!!) with some awesome driving (also around 30th on overall index in SM?!? No we didn't add a turbo LOL). I was only a tenth back in FP (to a real FP car) on day 1 but day 2 I coned run one (wouldn't have been enough anyway) and had greasy tires on runs 2 and 3 and slowed down significantly, so Andrew jumped me and we wound up 2nd and 3rd. We were all happy with the car's setup by the end of the weekend, and she's working the best she ever has on concrete.
Here's a cool shot GotCone got of me 2 wheeling at the pro over a bump in a fast section:
Our next event is Finger Lakes, where I know a few of you are signed up. We haven't ran the car on a runway course yet this year so hopefully we can get her dialed in quickly.
I just ordered the rx8 performance engine mounts and rear diff bushings. Thanks for the heads up!
I do believe I went ***** deep and got the harder material (believe it was delrin and not just a higher durometer PU).
Mine are the original equipment that cMe with the car, and the fluid filled mounts are donezo after the NJ Pro - full metal clunks can be heard from the right side. Lol
I think I have the height about right, but there is room for adjustment. Also got the oil changed, BHR Ignition kit installed, and got the battery relocation to a point where it should pass tech.
There is a local event (on a less than stellar surface, so just running street tires) this Sunday that I am going to go shake it down at, just to make sure my redone cooling is up to par and that none of the aero is going to pose an issue. Once I have all of that checked off the list it will be time to get serious with the suspension and make the car FAST.
Good news for those attending the FLR tour: we got the bumpy **** milled down a bunch so it's better where the course will be. Not perfect, but waaaay better.
04-26-2018, 08:10 PM
So please don't be offended if I don't run up and say hi! 
