I hate you.

I have
(1) daily driver
(1) pockmarked downtown rochester roads driver
(1) winter beast
(1) autox/track car

BUT THEY'RE ALL THE SAME CAR lol

 

p.s... going along with the discussion of endlinks, there's a sale on Hardrace reinforced sway bar endlinks for the 3rd gen protege on www.toprotege.com

http://www.toprotege.com/forums/show...418#post417418

They don't have the racing beat sway bar appropriate rear endlinks made yet, but it's in the works.

 

Don't hate me because I'm poor white trash!

 

i wish i had a track/race car... all i have is a ms6, 65 mustang, red 92 miata, black 92 miata, and my wrecked protege. just sold my 99 explorer and my 87 blazer with a 350. i can also use my moms f150 or her 4runner. i actually have to sale everything but my mustang and my ms6.

 

Keep a miata, cage it, gut it, and you'll have a track car....

 

thats what i planned to do, but sometimes dont go as planned. lol i think everyone knows that though.

 

Ok, so it's been a strange (tho somehow par for the course) couple of weeks for Dory.

Part I:
I was fed up with locking up my tires CONSTANTLY after the pads had about 2 or 3 runs in. They pretty much became an on-off switch for me. So, I swapped out some HPS pads (from Kevin's GRM car) for my HP+s. While those work great for R-comps, the HP+s are too much for my *decent* street tires. After the pad change, with newer pads mind you, my brake pedal got LONGER. While we were changing the pads, we noticed both calipers were leaking fluid. Well, THERE'S your problem... Swapped in new calipers (HUGE thanks again Kevin) and bled them. The fluid coming out of the driver's side was milky b/c it was impregnated with air. Gross. I'm a lot happier with my braking now, esp that my pedal works again

Part II:
The part some of you seemed pretty interested in at least... Swapped in the new endlinks. Now the POP from the front every time I touch the brakes is completely gone, and the mid-corner 'uncertainty' from the poly bushings is gone. I'm EXTREMELY pleased with them.

Part III:
New shocks. I had the Koni Race shocks (re-valved w/ more rebound) and shortened shocks up front only. This was before I knew that the BIG place you want more travel's the rear. I got a deal on some Races for the rear and jumped on that ASAP. Shortened shocks = more travel = car can stand to be a little lower. I'm not touching the bump stops nearly as much as I had been in the rear, which makes this RWD wonder a lot more predictable. However, I'm a chassis setup n00b, and therefore...

Part IV:
Shock settings. I ran 1.75 events like this. I'm embarrassed to even admit to this. Laddies and gentlemen, boys and girls, listen close. Better shocks don't mean JACK if they're not set properly. I honestly can not even remember how or when this happened, but it did. After my 3rd (of 4) timed runs yesterday, I noticed a pattern. Right turn: Understeer. Left turn: oversteer. Huh? I check my rear shocks (the only thing that had changed that could cause that, besides wonky ride heights). Right rear: full stiff. Left rear: almost full soft. @%&#(@#%&@!!!!! So, for the last timed run I sort of set them somewhere in the middle and hoped for the best. I ran a 47.2, well off the pace, but good enough all things considered. For my 2nd set of runs (time only, aka fun runs), I worked on dialing the rear of the car in. Managed to get down to a 45.7... that's a 1.5 second reduction just by having my shocks properly set up. Too bad those last runs didn't count, b/c I would have won STS2 by a half second. Oh well...there's always the next event

Part V:

Found a surprise while rotating the tires Friday night before the event. Everything went fine until I got to the passenger side rear. Break 1 loose, break 2 loose, break 3 loo... looo... LOOOSE!? Nope. Turned the bar once, twice, and third times a charm: PLINK! Snapped the stud. Sumbitch. And of course, you can't exactly hammer out the stud and replace it in the rear of the miata, you have to pull the whole hub assembly appart. Well, I didn't have the tools, the facilities or the part, so I bit the bullet and took it to kauffman tire to get it done. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't have been a big deal, but I have lug-centric wheels, so I didn't really feel comfortable running only on 3.

Part VI:
Scored a deal on a use Racing Beat header. It's the new design (4-1 as opposed to the tri-Y of the earlier headers). This header makes better power / torque than the last one, so I was happy to find someone selling it used

 

I see that the leaky caliper was your problem, but have you tried Porterfield pads? I'm really impressed with the RS4s. Quiet on the street, and GREAT on the track. Not too dusty either.

Much better than the Axxis Ultimates I had on there before.

 

I really like my HPSs, they haul the car down and are easy to modulate (a lot easier than the HP+s. From what I've read, a very common and reliable setup to even out the brake bias some is to run HPS up front and HP+ rear. I'm going to give that a shot next and then go from there lol


The leaky caliper wasn't even really "THE" problem, it was one of them lol. They worked fine after being bled until you took them off of the pads and allowed air to get in the boot. It was crazy. My pedal felt amazing until we changed pads. I just need to get a more agressive pad (greenstuff maybe with good initial cold bite) out back. Next season, I'm probably going to go w/ greenstuff's rear / axxis ultimates front (supposed to have better initial bit than the HPS w/o the locking tendencies of the HP+s)

 

more good news! Since we changed the water pump and fixed the timing, I could have SWORN she was stronger than before, but I only had the butt dyno to refer to. It definitely sounded better, but you know how it is with these things. Anyway, since the header came in, I wanted to get a good reading of where I am right now so I can compare if / how it helped me. Well, just like my hips, my butt don't lie



BOOM! 16.1 more than HP the last time I had her on the rollers, and 21 more than the very first dyno (77.1 I think with a crudded up air filter, stock air box, bad timing, stock everything, etc).

Torque is another story. Peak only gained about 1.5 lb/ft, however I have b/w 7-10 lb/ft more throughout the mid range, about 20 lb/ft more in the top end. m'gawd man!

It's amazing what fixing the timing will do LOL. Having the water pump give up the ghost is one of the best things that's happened to this car

Needless to say, I'm EXTREMELY happy with the results. For a 1.6 w/ 160,000 miles on the clock, she's not doing too shabby (yippy)



And for good measure, a picture of Luke getting a little out of shape. Pictures like this where the car is leaning towards the inside of the turn always trip me out lol


Uno mas!


lol tape numbers. So sad. I actually had a set of new numbers that should have arrived on site before we started running...but that didn't quite pan out. By our 3rd runs, we looks a bit more professional

 

not bad, not bad @ all...

hey, had to have my helmet to race

 

77! good thing you have the P5 for when you want some high horsepower action

A 21whp gain over stock is nothing to be ashamed of though! takes a lot of work and money to do that with an FS-DE

 

It's a 21 hp gain over a broken stock engine. Most of that gain was bringing it up TO stock levels. Granted, this is a few hp stronger than what stock would make. A friend of mine made 101 w/ a header / exhaust / sock intake, but his motor has about 130,000 miles fewer than mine (factory crate motor), SO I'm not really doing too bad.


EDIT: I wouldn't call the P5 'high' horsepower.....

 

Someone's not getting the sarcasm...

Dig the power-on oversteer shot. Can't do that with the P5.

 

I get it, but I was tired last night lol.

And no...in the P5 I get power on understeer lol

Now, when I blow a run and I get pissed, I can let it hang out. it's SOOO easy to do w/o it biting you. On caber sweeper? I can get the *** end out the whole way around totally in control. No, that's not mad skillz y0, the car's just that balanced.