FC Rallycross/Stage Rally/Ice Racer

[fidelity101]

The network is back!!!!! Horay!! (still don't have Gchat at work though) Happy Friday bitches!


Well it has been a busy month of ice racing and a rallycross. Unlike most people, February is my busiest month of the year and I don't really celebrate valentines day. Not only is ice racing a blast, it makes for great photos! All those prior build photos were fun and all but now its time to enjoy the fruits of my labor with sweet sweet action shots.



Feb 7th SVR region SCCA , ice runs AT NIGHT! Got to use ALL THE LUMENS. seriously it was a blast. Great way to shakedown the car and see the lighting improvements. added the rallyboobs on for added lulz factor. Much lumen. visibility wow! This group runs rallyX classing but solo scoring rules, so grouped by MR/SR/PR etc but fastest single run out of 4 runs wins.
(no photos due to night)


I won by 40 seconds, if it was rallycross rules I would have won by over 4 minutes. I beat a lot of AWD cars too. Roughly 1.8 mile course, I hit top speeds of 51 (GPS) crossing the finish line


Feb 15th. Furrin Group ice runs, classes separated by drive configuration (SR/MR/PR all one group) and rallyX scoring. Took 3rd. Lost 2nd by 2 seconds and lost 1st by 5. Had a spin on 1 run and did a ride a long with a competitor and gave him good advice that managed to take 2nd from me. All in all. good day.  Much shorter course, maybe 3/4 mile and I hit speeds of about 45 crossing the line.












Also the frankenburban was tow/recovery duty, also fun.

[fidelity101]

Feb  21st, round 2 of DET SCCA Rallycross (my 1st rallyX this year). Took 3rd (out of 4) lost 2nd by a cone and lost 1st by about 10. I was real dirty all day hitting cones and had a spin that cost me about 16 seconds off pace. Also the hairpun sucked, it was uphill and icy.









Also note that my body damage/headlight is from my co-driver stuffing it into a snowbank from biffing it in the hairpin. Now I need to fix the headlight by swapping the guts into a new housing... wonderful. (PITA)








Again, suburban was tow/recovery vehicle. best work assignment ever, bluetooth radio and heat in sub 20 degree weather, not to mention be able to sit down.



Feb 22nd SVR Region ice runs! This time it was a 2.2 mile course and I got to drift an island! (Video to come soon) finish line speeds were up to 65mph, took 1st by 14 seconds this time (had a half spin on my fast run) but rallyX scoring would have been 3 minutes. Automobile magazine was there with their fiesta and they took pictures all day.

Article below:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login





So they drove the fiesta ST with a fastest time of 168.5 seconds to get around, my fastest lap was 166.2



Overall the car performed great ran strong and felt good, the formula works and has worked so now I need to tidy up my driver mod. I was racing rallyX like ice racing, which does not work. Time to re-readjust.
No racing this weekend, (more ice racing feb 7/8th) time to do some repairs and adjustments, more photos soon to come!

I'll give you a hint. "new" wheels, "new" tires, new steering wheel and studs. Diff overhaul is MUCH needed. it hates the ice it is 100% limited to slipping right now.

[fidelity101]

Now thats a better steering wheel!
(380MM)


Then a friend inspired me to get these.

and then this happened...




Ice racing this Sunday and potentially on the 15th as well, so we shall see how these bad boys do...


God I love winter!

[toplessFC3Sman]

Wow... the FC looks absolutely awesome out there, and I'm sure you're going to tear it up (literally & figuratively) with those studs!

[fidelity101]

Results? they worked, AWESOME! However, they were pretty average on snow because the gravel tires are too hard for snow traction so you had to floor it to dig into the ice everywhere. With the warm weather the ice was quite grippy and the heavy melted packing snow was grippy for snow tires.


a couple of fun action shots:



Here is a better picture of the interior:


and then I got friendly with the machine shop staff at work and they milled me some new steering wheel hub spacers, 1" and .5" out of aluminum now I can toss out that heavy steel one that didn't have the correct pattern on it.
ALL THE ERGONOMICS!!!!


Next up?


I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I AM DOING!

I can rebuild a rotary engine but I am pretty dumb when it comes to setting backlash on a differential. it is time to overhaul the differential's LSD unit. no more limited to slipping differential (is the goal).


Initial tear down was good ( on the spare LSD ) gears and bearings looked fantastic! However, all of my friction plates were about ,05mm undersized standard but still above the "limit" as mazda labels it. My thrust washers were at the limit of wear.


I'll be honest, I thought a clutch type differential used clutches and plates like some fancy flywheel clutch setup or whats in an auto trans, I was not expected a bunch of metal discs with various grooves. I did find some minor scoring on a few friction discs but overall looked like normal wear.



Then, after that - source a 15.2:1 power steering rack and then de-power it & install into the car. Current non P/S model is 20.4:1 and I find myself chasing the wheel too much, time to quicken it.


After that? May be EFI consideration time, I am at the limit of this carb and new carb is EFI money territory... (megasquirt)
Considering I already have S5 NA upper/lower fuel rails, S4 NA injectors w/ pigtails, S4 Intake manifold (w/ block off plates) and about 11 crank angle sensors (don't ask) There already is an aeromotive adjustable FPR and walbro 255lph for my fuel system so converting back would be simple.

OR toss in a stock NA harness/ecu setup on there and Rtek it?

Still much to think about but in the mean time I would rather just focus on seat time.

[toplessFC3Sman]

The best explanation of tuning a clutch-type differential (as well as explaining 1-way, 1.5-way vs 2-way diffs, etc) I found was at MotoIQ... hopefully it's helpful for you!

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

If you want to go with MegaSquirt, I'll be glad to help.  We could even have a few building-wiring get-togethers with Murz & anyone else interested.

Also... I really hope you had a power drill or something for all those studs...  The results look awesome though!

[fidelity101]

I'm thinking about it... this carb is too small and I'm at the limit of my balance. it runs too rich going down the road at no load, (10.8-12.2:1 afr) if I lean this out the drivability gets really poor when cracking the throttle because its a thirsty engine. Then above 7500 it can't keep enough fuel in the float system for WOT, its got the largest needle and seat size, I bumped up the pressure, played with the float adjustment. The price of a new carb + jetting would be the cost of a megasquirt setup.

I don't want to build one I just want to buy a built one lol. I'm okay with the wiring but the soldering the board stuff, not interested.

[fidelity101]

Made some progress, ended up making my own plug wires. Tach doesn't go all jumpy either because of it. I had my coil to dizzy wire fail, if you were to close to it and between a ground you would get shocked.

Co-driver helped me out with that and then decided to label the switches so he didn't forget what was what:


2nd rallycross of the year this Sunday and I have some meaty tires to enjoy.

ALSO, I can't tune out this carb and there are no more emulsion tubes that are offered for it, I cannot get rid of the 7krpm lean out issue. The only thing that I seem to be able to control everything else but high rpm high load tuning. I think its time I went back to EFI, so expect a megasquirt or haltec sub build soon.

However in hindsight, I wish I just dropped a renesis into this and avoided a lot of this work...

[toplessFC3Sman]

I'm not sure a Renesis would have been any less work - there's supposedly a lot that's required to get the ECU to play nice in anything other than an RX-8, unless you had a wrecked one and wanted to transplant most of the electrics into the '7

[fidelity101]

I'm not sure a Renesis would have been any less work - there's supposedly a lot that's required to get the ECU to play nice in anything other than an RX-8, unless you had a wrecked one and wanted to transplant most of the electrics into the '7

that would be the idea. You basically insert it all into the fc and then get the ecu flashed by racing beat and fab engine mounts.

[fidelity101]

Okay well it has been a while without any updates, mostly because there aren't any!

I fixed a few rx7s here and there:




Found some bitchin mudflaps:


Then, went racing!


And over here too:


The mudflaps seemed to help!(I guess)




Then I managed to update a few things, rear camber adjustment bar (AWR) and finally replaced/"upgraded" my pesky sticking rear calipers... with new brakes!




Never gonna look that nice for a while. My old powdercoated suspension pieces are holding up decent to the abuse.


Took home three 2nd places in a row, to the same driver/car... but a trophy is a trophy

Frankenburban was happy though, solid 10-11mpg or so that trip:

[fidelity101]

Yesterdays race should have been a victory but I was often chasing the wheel and I lost my 12 second lead into the afternoon runs due to driver error causing me to hit 6 cones :\

Manual steering rack everyone keeps suggesting a quickener because my steering is is 20.3:1 and a powered steering rack is 15.2:1, they are easy to de-power and run as manual racks, I already have a large diameter wheel and plenty of practice on it and broken powersteering FCs, I need the turn in response, if its not enough then I will switch to a quickener setup but one thing at a time.

Also due to my rpm limit I found the need for more RPM. So here is a teaser


Next up:
1. Diff overhaul
2. Steering rack swap
3. Microsquirt


SOOOOON

[fidelity101]

Okay so It has been a while so here it goes, the last even was good but I knew exactly where to make improvements ( that have been lacking) so back to work! And 10AE is full storage mode now.



…and out with the rear diff! I also changed the differential ear bushings to mazdaspeed competition bushings too and re-drilled/taped the factory breather for NPT so I can run a tube into the cabin for a much dryer breather setup and less change of sloshed oil leaking out of it and making a dirty rally car



 Specifically the LSD part



When you add the wear up it became way undersized on the spec side, most people jam a pop can in there or something but I like doing this right so I don’t have to keep draining shiney from my diff. So I went with mazdaspeed oversized clutches/springs/washers wherever I could, and where I could not I would just use OEM mazda parts.

Link to mazdaspeed competition parts catalog for said parts above:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login



As you can see, a night and day difference between old/new :

Also between Nov-December event, I managed to install a manual converted power steering rack which has a much faster ratio and I have far less turns to lock, I gain seconds it feels like because each corner I’m working the wheel less.  (not pictured)

But with not using rock hard tires, overhauled LSD and a faster ratio rack it yielded this result



…the car behaved very well actually with just those changes:




Look at 2:57-3:20, 3:36-3:45, and 9:23ish for yourself.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

[fidelity101]

But I still seem to have issues with popping exhaust gaskets so I decided to go V-Band. I’ve tried RTV copper, refmflex, regular ass copper, cometic style, different flanges, jobber gaskets and etc,  so I decided to help the exhaust out a bit (again) and provide it less stress with the flex pipe and better exhaust union…




And a little refresh on some polishing abrasives, I have manifold modifying to do.

Safety first!


I ported/polished another RX7 throttle body, this may marks probably the 15th one I have done…



More EFI goodness that is all what this is for. I have received a megasquirt 2 setup with ignition and fuel control, microsquirt idea is dead because this was a good deal . Just need to do a little alteration of the harness for my application but more on that later. For me to go to EFI I decided to use the S4 NA manifolds because they have long runners and look like they flow pretty good.

The issue is that I am using a 4 port block but the NA manifolds are 6 port. Here is the block gasket over the current manifold


So I have to fill the aux ports with J and grind out the new hole.



And a rough cut done.


(I still need to remove the gasket on the engine currently and match the manifold to it so I can have a proper gasket matched block to housing for optimal air flow.

[fidelity101]

It is difficult to read this walkthrough (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login) for megasquirting an rx7, but it does share good information amongst the chit chat writing style, like this little handy nugget of goodness:

“If you have an NA FC, the Mazda RX-8 (2004 - 2008) 6 port injector is a great choice. They are 450CC, high impedance, and a modern disc design (as opposed to the old pintle style). They are Denso part #N3H313250A 195500-4450 and available at most auto parts stores as well as Mazda. They drop right into the FC but you need to use the appropriate Denso connector. TII owners (550CC injectors) can use the Denso 195500-4460 RX-8 (4 port secondary I believe) injector. It's 540CC which is close enough to the stock 550CC for stock turbo use.”

Look how close they are, they are a direct swap, I can use either o-ring – everything is the same dimension. I am just going to use the correct grommets for the manifold that they are going to.



I just need to finish cleaning up and modifying the intake manifolds to help simplify the engine package and then finish prepping/cleaning the gasket surfaces to bolt this assembly together.

After that then it is perform minor alterations to the megasquirt setup and integrate it into the car. More soon to follow. I hope to have it EFI by Jan 1st because there is a rallycross I am signed up for Jan 2nd 

Stay tuned…