codrus

I already own the winch, so it's just a case of bolting it down. Dunno if I'll use it all that often, but good to have.

The former owner of the trailer used it to haul his dirt track cars, so I think he was just very particular about cleaning it. He's a contractor, so during downtime with no work he'd pay his employees to clean his trailer/etc instead. It's not quite as clean/pristine when you get up close as it looks on camera.

--Ian

codrus

No more news on the Miata, I haven't even taken it off the lift in like three weeks now. I really need to get back to it -- hopefully after the holidays.

In other news, though, I bought another Mazda. This is a CX-9 to replace Peggy's beat up Odyssey minivan -- a bit smaller because we don't really need car seats any more, but still three rows for kids+friends transport.




We've been talking about getting it for a while, but she's in San Diego right now visiting her brother and doesn't know I've bought it yet. Shhh Picking her up at the airport in it on Thursday. Got S-plan pricing (which is invoice) from the Mazdaspeed Motorsports discount. I tried to sell her on red, but she wanted the blue -- at least it's still a color and not godawful silver!

--Ian

icantlearn

Im a fan of the red myself. You should stick a go pro in the car to film her reaction. Haha.

ridethecliche

iTrader: (2)

Congrats Ian! I'm sure she's going to dig the surprise.

Full disclosure: I'm a subie guy but I honestly think that mazda's are some of the best looking big brand cars on the market right now. Their design team has done solid work across the board. They just look solid and ungimmicky.

codrus

Subaru is shooting themselves in the foot with the CVTs at this point, IMHO. The Outback was on our list of things to look at, but it didn't come in a normal automatic.

--Ian

codrus

It's been a while since I've done anything to the Miata (hell, it's been six weeks since I've even *driven* it), and given the amount of rain we're having the moment, today didn't break that trend. I have, however, been plotting out what I'm doing with the trailer, hopefully in time for a track day at Laguna with the Golden Gate Lotus Club in February.

The previous owner of the trailer was a contractor, and he'd set up the interior fairly extensive, but not entirely the way I want it. It's got cabinets down one side, a fold-down tire rack on the other, a fluid cabinet, a fire extinguisher holder, and a helmet rack, all of which are great. It's also got some small 12v RV fixtures with puny incandescent bulbs in them, and a bunch of 110v lighting, three large fluorescent fixtures, and a pair of halogens pointing out the back as loading lights. I'm not a fan of the fluorescents, the fixtures really aren't intended for something that vibrates and bounces like a trailer does, and parts were falling off of them after the 450 mile tow home. There was no generator included with the trailer, and I don't own one. I'm actually not really all that interested in buying one either -- AFAICT, the main reason for having one is so you can put A/C in your trailer, and I just don't tend to go to the track in the months when that's really useful. Generators are expensive, noisy, require maintenance, remembering to fill them with gas, etc. All in all, I'm just not sure I want to mess around with it. I *do* however, want decent lighting in the trailer, as well as a winch, an air compressor, and some basic 110v circuits for doing stuff like charging laptops. So instead of a generator, I'm going with batteries and an inverter.

So, I picked up a pair of group 31 deep cycle batteries and a 2kw inverter, and started putting things together today. This is just mocked up at the moment:




The batteries are in parallel, the inverter is on the right. That's 1/0 welding cable connecting them, and I'm going to put a 250A fuse and a disconnect switch on the line from the battery positive to the inverter input. They'll all be mounted on that piece of plywood, which I'll put on the generator slide-out rails inside the trailer. The inverter has a standard NEMA 5-15 plug on it, the AC circuit breaker box in the trailer has an L5-30 generator-style input plug, so I also picked up an adapter cable for that (not pictured).

For the winch (which I already own) and the 12v DC air compressor, I'm going to pull off some 4 AWG wire, feed it through two more fuses, and then to Anderson connectors. The winch already has one of those on it, which I used for running it off the truck's battery on the old open trailer.



The box on the bottom left is a generic marine fuse holder, for automotive-style fuses for the various small 12v circuits in it. The small black box above it is a charge controller -- it'll take the 12v coming in from the truck and use it to charge the trailer's batteries, maxing out at a 15A draw so that if I've run the trailer batteries down with the winch/etc they won't blow the trailer supply fuse trying to suck down massive current.

I took the incandescent bulbs out of the RV fixtures and put in some LED ones instead, MUCH brighter than it had been before. The fluorescents are coming out, I might add a couple more RV fixtures with more LED bulbs, not sure. The halogen loading lamps are also coming out, and I picked up some 12v LED floodlights to use instead. There's a light switch in the back of the trailer that controls them, so I'll disconnect the existing wiring from the halogens, hook it to a new DC circuit, and use it for the LEDs.

I also picked up a 4 camera backup/side-view/etc system for the trailer. It's like the one that Emilio demo'd in the "what do you use to to tow your track car" thread, with a 2 backup cameras and 2 side ones. My truck is old enough not to have its own backup camera, so I'll be using one of the backups above the trailer door, one on the truck bumper, and the two side cameras on the sides of the trailer. I decided to go with the wired version, it comes with a pair of connectors and a curly-que harness for jumping between the truck and the trailer.

--Ian

icantlearn

When is the track day? I might join you.

codrus

February 24.

GOLDEN GATE LOTUS CLUB - GGLC Track Days

--Ian

icantlearn

Damn, thats a friday, I have school.

codrus

Finished wiring up the DC board and mounted it in the trailer. Haven't actually wired it into the trailer yet, still need to do a little investigation into exactly which wires go where.

Board looks similar, but I've now got a cable for the low-current lines. 6 wires on it right now -- +12 in from the truck, ground, + and - from the solar charger, and 2 +12 light circuits going out. The truck's +12 (auxiliary power on the trailer connector) is the input power to the Xantrex charge controller, with its output going to the positive rail through a fuse. The white cable (with red & black in it) is the solar charger output -- it isn't mounted on this board because I want to be able to see the display on it without sticking my head in the cabinet. The yellow and green are the two DC light circuits. Lots of empty spots on the fuse box.

The 4 AWG wires fused at 150A with the Anderson connector is for the winch.



Mounted on the generator slide-out rails inside the trailer. The breaker box on the right is for the 4 AC circuits in the trailer. There are two light circuits (loading ramp halogens, trailer fluorescents) plus two outlet circuits. I'm going to lose both of the AC light circuits (halogens getting replaced with LEDs, fluorescents just going away).



--Ian

aidandj

iTrader: (5)

What about the flat screen install? And microwave.

codrus

I might actually put a cheap stereo in the trailer. Any video will be a laptop screen, and I don't plan on a microwave.

--Ian

aidandj

iTrader: (5)

Miatagasm

Ian's car is in there.

codrus

It is!

I've never driven a 930, but if my car has the same kind of lag then I really don't understand what people were complaining about because it's not that hard to drive!

--Ian

18psi

iTrader: (76)

WINNING

sonofthehill

iTrader: (1)

Great to see at least 3 cars I recognize in R&T, fun read too!

icantlearn

I was surprised he didnt say much about your car tbh. I still can't even imagine what 300whp feels like so he must have driven some gnarly cars.

curly

iTrader: (25)

Brian Kelly and John Mann, hilarious. Both tuned by Kris, he might have a thing or two to say about all the lag mentioned. I'd be surprised if your 1.6 setup was that much worse than either of theirs in terms of low end grunt.

aidandj

iTrader: (5)

Talked about it elsewhere but my best guess was that my car has a crazy linear powerband. Makes 160ft/lbs anywhere all the time. So it doesn't feel like it's building up the way the others do. Just a guess.

But I won't say I'm not a little proud lol.

codrus

Magazine writers get to drive some really fast machinery, so even a 300 rwhp Miata probably doesn't seem THAT fast to them.

As for the discussions on lag -- I dunno. I don't get it.

--Ian