Well it’s time to get back to working on the primary project need to correct the issues from the prior failures, the December rallyX went okay even though I was having the misfire but when I added the GIANT mudflaps on for the event it and I wasn’t gunning for championship points since I was in no position to podium for the season so I went hog wild and slide it any chance I could so this photo pretty much sums up the event…
Couple big issues,
1. Ride height – its too low
2. Misfire
3. Gas tank protection
4. Car looks like shit
So I have been experimenting with the rear suspension a bit the springs at sno*drift were too soft but decent ride height, the springs at summer sno*drift were good rate but far too low and every other spring out there lowers the car which is bad for rally (obviously) so I have been the goldilocks of springs: This ones too low, this ones not stiff enough, this one is juuuuuuust right.
The RS*R is on the left which is 225lb and ~13” spring, the middle is the stock vert which is ~90lb and 15” spring and the one on the right is a 16” spring with 225lb rate…. Juuuust right! Fun fact the 2.5” coilover springs is a direct bolt on to a rear rx7 shock UNLESS you have a bilstein and in that case the spring perch needs a few minutes on a lathe to go from a 2.8” OD to a 2.5” OD to accommodate, any regular Monroe or KYB/tokicko style will work.
So while I wait for this to get completed I move onto the next open item.
I chased a few things down and realized that I should get new plugs and replace the exhaust gasket at the header as this was leaking among fixing the exhaust in general since the SSD incident so that helped but it would still misfire which I found to be bad contacts near the fuel pump relay causing an intermittent connection. With this mended I moved on upgrading the rear skid plate structure it took such a beating that all of it was virtually trash and we started over.
Due to some work/life events and poor planning I did not have the material to make the structure I wanted with the time we had available so after making a few base plates we decided to move onto what else we could do. The car was starting to look like dog poo or like a bad novel with 50 shades of white. So I wanted this to look somewhat presentable so it was time to clean up the body work because everything else was a hurry up and wait kind of thing.
Started out by removing all the stickers and making everything the same white then mark up what it should looks like, unfortunately I will be doing spray paint and this car does deserve better but oh well, it used to be a real nice car
However when I got this car 10 years agoit looked like this:
But even if you’re not clever you should be able to spot the intent
Hopefully some better updates soon, holiday shutdown is upon us which means decent garage time ahead of us.