WAM

Which is why we agonize over every piece of the car spending stupid money and time to lose a pound or two.


.

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

No, I just suck at driving enough to not noticed 200 pounds of ballast thrown in randomly.

Midtenn

iTrader: (15)

Thats an issue you need to fix. If I could feel 200lb passengers in an ASP Corvette, you should feel them in a Miata. It does take time to develop the feeling though. I would suggest keeping passengers out of the car for awhile to help build up that feel. Its much like making too many adjustments to the car, if someone is in and out of the car the whole time it gets harder know whats making the change. The only exception would be attractive women (bonus points for "screamers") because then its just a time to show off.

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

Ugh. This weekend sucked. I installed the super duper cheap poly bushings, that went really well. Then I tried to make sure the hoosiers wouldnt eat themselves on the shock towers and proceded to spend the entire weekend trying to do that. My bump travel went from like 3/4" and killing hoosier with ~48mm of bump stop, to -1/4" (yes it was on the bump stops and above desired ride height) and 36mm bump stops to 1/2" and 18mm bump stops, to 5/8" 18mm bump stops, and 5mm wheel spacers. The fenders look even more terrible now. I ******* hate my life and I'm considering buying a new chassis to swap all my parts over to. There's a nice straight, truly rust free NB roller with a 99-00 long block in it (no tranny or accessories) for like a grand in Atlanta. I cant ******* figure out why my car has this issue and no one else does. I'm at +14 offset with the wheels once I add the spacers. If I could make a +5 offset wheel work without hitting the rear of the wheel well then I could add another inch+ of bump travel back in. With a tape measure my upper control arms are the same length as my dad's miata so I'm guessing thats not the issue. The only thing I can think of is that the shock tower are somehow pushed out further than they should be. I'm having my dad measure that today comparing his car to mine. I'm really hoping this is the issue and I can get the frame bent back into a shape that makes sense.

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

Oh yeah. I took some pictures too. Here you can see where I welded my splitter support on.


Here you can see the tire hitting the car.




This was a failure.


Dad trying to make the fender look somewhat decent. Failure.


Drivers side where the tire hits.


Pass side


herra frush, thats at full bump

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

Well it didnt break. Thats a lie, it did break. It wouldnt start. Plugs were fouled, had to run to napa to get new plugs before the event started. Died midway though the day. My coil pack harness is falling apart and shitty and I ordered stuff to completely remake it, this was causing the car to break up and caused it to completely fail at the start line once.

ABS, it was working to begin with, I think it needs the light added and the codes checked or something. It seems to work sometimes, but I was still able to lock up the tires when trying to do the impossible.

Power steering, perfect you can just barely beat it. I think once the front suspension is fixed it will get beaten a lot. I think nothing can be done without modding the rack.

Overall, the car it slower than last year but much much easier to drive at the limit. It will be faster when I can get all the front suspension travel back. The car is just all over the bump stops and thats killing my front end grip. It feels like it has more front downforce now, in quick wiggles and other things that use less than 5/8" of bump travel the thing is dominative. But other than that, **** yourself.

Best grid ever.


That was the pro grid, the Davis's were also driving my car so it got a 3 driver workout, total of 20 runs because Bob got a rerun. Billy hit a billion cones because the rear of the car does not slide at all and he's used to that or some other excuse.

My fast run.

So before Jersey I'm going to remake the coil harness to not suck. And re-align the rear of the car to try and free it up a bit, because the damn thing is too tight right now.

I'm working on getting the longer front control arms made, but they wont be in time for jersey. I was getting waterjet quotes today on the plates, I loled at the $400/side quote and asked why, its because dumbass me is using like 5 different plate thicknesses. Redesign in progress.

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

This is late. Car sucked at jersey. No front suspension travel killed it, and running the rear shock cranked up with higher rear tire pressures kind of helped somewhat. Still trying to process the solostorm video. I'm too lazy to type it all in my phone and the phone doesnt want to connect to the computer so I'm just going to have to put my sd card into the gopro to connect. So those are transferring now. Here's the gopro video's. Of course I showed up with a dead battery in my gopro so you only get the external shot for the 2nd day. And of course my co driver's camera filled up before the end of day 2 and he muffed the camera turn on before my 3rd run.

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

Solo Storm vids. The accelerometer axis are swapped.

TNTUBA

iTrader: (1)

After being one of the beta testers for Solo Storm, I declined the offer to buy a reduced priced version of the software. It was due to several issues I had pointed out, which from looking at your videos still hasn't been fixed. I still see Solo storm as a "novelty" incapable of giving you any real, repeatable data but it does make for some cool videos. As far as GPS based data goes I still don't think you can beat one of the old MaxQ Data systems. I have a Racekeeper now and really like the accelerometer based data but for looking at data between runs the MaxQ is still king.

On a side note the car looked much more stable in this set of videos than the ones you were showing me from a few weeks ago. Whatever you are doing...keep doing it.

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

All I did was, suck less at driving.

Seefo

iTrader: (5)

are you running a spacer in the front? for the tire problems?-what offset/width is the wheel? Sorry, late to the party!

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

15x10 +19 and a 5mm spacer in the front so that end up making it +12.

Seefo

iTrader: (5)

well, doesn't fit in with suggestions from others. Have you considered adding more spacer? or are you hitting the top of the wheel well in that case?

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

No I'm hitting the shock tower. If I add a half inch spacer (for a +9 offset) the tire hits the back of the wheel well at steering inputs I would use on course. Most people use +19, which is equivalent to a 15x10 6UL with a 6mm spacer. And most people, depending on their shock top hat design can get away with running just the 6UL with no spacer, they're +25. The sister car only rubs on the shock mount when its 6ULs are on it with no spacer. And has near zero rub with the same wheels, no spacer, and no bump stop at all.

Seefo

iTrader: (5)

so what's the difference in yours? tolerance? it seems like a lot of deviation for tolerance.

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

Car has been hit at least once or as many as 3 times in the front. And its been rear ended once. There's a kink in the frame rail on the pass side behind the sway bar bracket, swaybar and suspension doesnt bind though. Thing is just all bent up.

TNTUBA

iTrader: (1)

Well....isn't the "sister car" a NB?

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

Yes, but it shouldnt be different there.

FrankL

We have 1/4" spacer on ours. For now. We no longer get close to hitting the hat tho with our newest setup.

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

Well I didnt get around to updating this until today cause I'm lazy about uploading videos. The gopro stuff has been uploaded for a while, the solo storm is in process.

Car worked a billion times better, the toe out in the rear made it actually rotate for once. Thing is still spewing oil. I'm going to put a filer on my AOS rather than running it to the intake. I think the hole in the side of the block is just a failure.

And now video, oh yeah, panda broke in the morning so jenna took her morning runs in my car.