Hell yeah! It was an awesome weekend and I'm glad you joined us. I keep saying it, but the blue car is sick! What a hoot.

.....and you posted the whole video. That's embarrassing

 

Love the pre-session banter haha. Very relatable. Similar phrases every time one of the homies gets in the car. "Bro that one car over there is f*cking fast!" "Yo, turn 7 got so slippery after that car sprayed gravel all over the entrance" "Yeah man, the idle is so much smoother since I messed with the tune" "If I just had the ***** to turn in later to T4, I could shave seconds!"

And so on and so forth

 

Awesome driving dude, congrats on the new PB! Your cars acceleration out of corners is absurd, that 1.8 does not lie! Glad to catch up with you and talk cars like usual.

 

 

Picked up these R-Theory side skirts. I didn't realize it when I ordered them, but they actually have a nice tapered shape to them and they look pretty cool. They attach with the front fender bolts, and some fatty stainless self tappers down the sills. Might replace those with rivnuts later but they are doing the job! Don't mind the dirty car.






And after my first trip down the dirt road I live on they make a nice dirt shelf. Haha, sick!

 

~100 of these:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Quikrete...0180/100318511

One of these:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Anvil-Eg...7485/300960444

A 5 gal bucket, done. Should be pretty easy.

 

And you’ll be absolutely ripped by the end of it ^^


Nate after concreting his driveway.

Looks so good in conjunction with the lower flares out back!

 

Hahaha! The garage is getting a pad in it, that's for sure, and it would have been done already if I wouldn't have bought that damn rx7.

That said, the garage/driveway is the least of my concern. I live down a mile long dirt road, and this is new mexico, so.. dirt everywhere all the time. Even my friends with well sealed non dirt floor garages everything is covered in NM dust after about a week. It's just a way of life.

 

Hahahahaha. More like 300+ of those I did a walkway and landing to my stairs and since I would drive over it with my tractor I wanted a 3.5" pad and it was over 2 pallets of bags. You'll also need a bunch of re-bar, if you have a printer you can save like $80 in rebar chairs with the printable one https://www.printables.com/model/544...mments/1074294, and I'd suggest a not-**** concrete mixer, at least a rental.

 

So I take the car out Friday night after getting the 'skirts on, and it's breaking up in boost (and on low boost mind you ~10-12psi). Pulls fine part throttle, and even part throttle 5-8psi of boost pulls right through. Runs great everywhere else. I haven't driven it in a few weeks, so I'm like what gives, the weather's a bit colder now but the tune has been dialed and that kind of thing has long not been an issue. It ran perfect when I last drove it, parked it, etc. Since I'm planning on going to the track this coming weekend, I start frantically troubleshooting, here's rough steps I took:

• I immediately top up on fresh e85, visually check plug wires and re-seat them so that they are all "clicked" into place on the coil/plugs. issue persists.
• Take a log on the way home - check that. AFR's are perfect (plenty of fuel, not too rich), AFR safety isn't kicking in (turned it off anyways), no spark cut. ECU is commanding the expected timing values, afrs are on point, no weird sensor output or noise or anything else. Immediately send a log to @redursidae in a panic asking for help, on the off chance I was missing something.
• Swap the spark plugs. Old plugs look BRAND NEW. Issue persists.
• Gap the old plugs down just to see if this is spark related. MAYBE slightly better, but issue persists.
• Flash old map (from different tuner) just to rule out any safetys or something that could be kicking in (we have AFR safety, boost safety I checked, but there's some other sensor safetys that Ricardo programmed in - those should throw a CEL though and aren't). Issue persists on old dyno tune map.
• At this point I'm convinced it's spark related, not fueling, judging by logs etc. Feels like spark blowout I used to get when my totyota COP melted down (happened to me 2 or 3 diff times on toyota COPs before I got rid of 'em).
• Remember that "oh **** I'm a hoarder" and have 4 round LS junkyard coils I bought years ago. Swap those in (direct swap, woot), and take the car back out. Issue persists.
• It's well into Saturday at this point, start tearing into the spark harness. Get it unloomed, finding no issues, but now that it's completely unloomed I decide to clean it up a bit and re-wire for full Sequential spark. I had an old resistor between power and tach signal wire (which goes NOWHERE on ls coils, I used to use this wire for tach signal from my COPS). Clean that up, obviously not this issue, but my tach has occasionally spazzd out so maybe that helps. Re-wire the wiring with proper gauge motorsports grade wiring I keep on hand now days. Solder the joints and shrinkwrap. Basically re-wire the entire LS coil harness all the way back to the factory harness (from the old ignitor connector, which was long since chopped off) and clean it up.
• Car fires right up on Seq spark. Awesome. Issue persists. I kinda figured it would, even if this fixed it I would be left wondering why TF, but since I was in there I had to fix the wiring and get it setup for full Seq.
• While I was in there I got 2 additional injector circuits wired into the ms3x expander output and ran into the engine bay, so I'll be wiring in full Seq fuel in the coming weeks. Psyched about this.
• At this point still scratching my head, keep saying to myself "it must be something dumb".
• The only thing I hadn't tried were new wires. And for good reason, I don't have any that fit on the LS coils (and the miata plug wells). These things are from FlowForce, only about 1.5 years old, maybe 10k miles, and look brand ******* new. But I need to rule these out.
• Threw a hail-mary and used the NGK wires from my NB. They don't fit -at all- on the coil side, like the connector is too small and nothing clicks and they won't stay in place on their own. Proceed to butcher these into place with zip ties. WE HAVE BOOST AGAIN. FIXED.

Mind you I live down nearly a mile of dirt, Each trip out to the pavement to test a possible fix is like a 12 minute ordeal. Some of the stuff like plug gapping/swapping, I just did in town pulling over on the side of the rd. Was easier that way.

So after a full day, maybe a little more, of troubleshooting, my dumb-*** has a bad spark plug wire. I must be the only one to re-wire the spark harness over something like that. I'll put that on my list of mechanic-fails (along with hooking up a PCV wrong leading to a motor pull/headgasket swap, and a separate time when I pulled a motor due to a cracked radiator that I also thought was a headgasket (subarus, what can I say).

Ordered another set of wires from flowforce, and paid for next day air shipping, so hopefully with any luck I'll have these by friday and ready to go to the track on Sat!

 

That was a spectacular read hahaha. It's always gotta happen just before a track event. Glad you got it fixed and got yourself a bit of an upgrade with the sequential spark in the process.

I did the opposite of you with my NA. Got a misfire under boost. Swapped the plug wires and kept gapping the plugs down because it helped. Turned out I had an exhaust leak right before the O2 sensor and had been tuning the fuel map crazy rich because of it. Thing was running 10:1 or lower in boost once I found and got the leak fixed lol.

 

So, I really dig my FlowForce LS coil kit. No real grips, other than a plug wire failing for some reason, but..

I reached out to them on Sun to make sure they had wires in stock (was also eyeing the FM magnecores, but these are more "tailored" to the car/kit so I wanted to stick with them). They said yeah, but couldn't guarantee Monday shipping. They were coming from TN so actually not too far all things considered, compared to east/west coast stuff. So I went for it and sprung for next day air shipping.

Now, I noted in my order my urgency, and sent them a kind follow up email to remind them. They replied and said they understood. However, wed comes around and still not shipped. I'm puckering at this point, but oh well if it doesn't make it it's not meant to me. Long story short they finally got them out to me on Thursday morning and they arrived today around 1pm. Just enough time to throw them on, test the car, and confirm all is well. And all IS well, issues are all fixed.

So I got the car cleaned up, packed, and ready to head to the track tomorrow. Just in the nick of time. I also am reminded that the LS coil kit I ordered for them didn't ship in the first week, I ended up finding a second hand (but brand new in box) kit and bought that off the forums instead. So this isn't the first time I've seen slow shipping from them. Again, great product, just be aware if you are in a hurry.





I'm pretty satisfied with how those skirts tie in with everything. They actually have a taper to them, which at first I thought was odd, but now after getting in/out of the car a lot with them on I'm glad they taper down to be more narrow in the front. Also makes me wonder how some of you guys live with super wide skirts (cough* Serenio), but not a big deal for a track only car. Anyways I think the aero kit is about where I want it, sans a small splitter in the front perhaps. Really need to wrap this thing, it's at the point that it would look pretty bitchin if it was shiny and flashy. But alas I'm a slave to an FD rx7 right now so not super high prio ATM.

 

Hah I love my wide boi dirt shelves, but in all honesty it is a pita sometimes. That's awesome you got some replacement plug wires in time. See you tomorrow!

 

Companies that offer to let you pay for expedited shipping, but can't get such an order out the next business day are a real pet peeve of mine...

Good luck at the track!

 

Glad you got it back up to snuff in time for the track day! Hope today's going well.

 

Update from last weekend! I've been out of town all week on a work trip, so just now getting around to this, but it was a great time. Car ran great and I finally started to figure out how to use these brakes. I kept noticing under my normal driving habits that the brakes finally stated coming alive on the last lap. Of course, this being time attack, the pads that I chose just don't seem to get enough heat into them. I started driving more aggressively on my warmup laps, getting more hard stops in before the full-send, and they feel notably better. I'm on R12 front, R10 rear (g-loc), and think they might be aggressive for the 5 lap format (including 1 warmup and 1 cooldown), but if I get heat into them they work really well. Otherwise I've had a few cases of the car not wanting to stop (stiff pedal, lots of pressure, not a lot of braking). I'll re-bleed them before next event, and I like the idea of heat capacity for bigger tracks and HPDE's so I'll probably be sticking with these pads for the foreseeable future.

Sunrise pic on the drive to the track:




Some pics throughout the day, it was a pretty good showing! Lots of nice cars, and some good increase in pace for all classes. Likely due to colder weather.








e85 fillup on the way home! I utilized my flex fuel and put a few gallons of 91 in on the way from the track so I could make it here.


And I had a pretty fun time giving a local racer a ridealong. He's much better than I am, holds the SM record, and gets to drive real formula 4 cars on a race team. I was a little nervous about giving him a ride (I know I'm a hack), so it was pretty cool to have him excited about the car and my pace. I had to skip my warmup lap and go straight into 9/10th to keep my buddy Ricahrd in his STI (also a 28's car) at bay on his hotlap behind me, he was kinda late hopping in the car (issues getting buckled) so we barely made it out that session. Good stuff!


At the end of the day I was able to PB with a 1:28.7, my first sub:29, so I was pretty psyched. Funny enough in the ridealong video I can hear him a lot better (I sound like an old man in the video, WHAT DID YOU SAYY, HUH), but we had a good chat after the drive where he showed me some things I could improve on. Mostly consistency and going curb to curb (using more of the track). Some of the lines he told me to take more speed though I probably won't, just due to the risks involved. He's definitely a racer with a racer mindset, where I'm just trying to drive fast without too much risk. I'm starting to feel closer to the limit, but I do think there are 27's in the car as-is. Serinio (in the white miata) has been nailing consistent 27's so I'd like to be able to compete with him better next season. He's on the same size tires (bigger wheel 10's vs 9's), but is on nangkangs vs my 660's, and is a great driver.

 

I ran R12/10 on my stripped out atmo racecar, T/A format. Yes, the 12s need work on the outlap but I was very happy with them. I wasn't happy with the R12 dust, the R10 is a quick clean, I neglected mine to the point that the fronts were more or less uncleanable only learning too late that the re is a big difference in the characteristics of the dust between the two.

Good work taking on the passenger, that sort of thing can be a real boost so nice to see you got a good result there. Like free everything, advice is great but has to be weighed, not everyone thinks things through before putting it into action, not everyone understands the niceties of your constraints/situation.

 

Heck yeah dude, congrats on the PB. Hopefully you can get into those 1:27s at some point so you and Serinio can have some fun going head to head in the same class next season. Nothing like a little friendly competition with your buddies. I'm actually thinking I'll hold off on turbo'ing my car until the end of next season, just so I can go head to head with the other 2.5 NC guys I've been garnering information from around here.

Maybe I'm missing something, but for me the R12s up front were extremely touchy until they got some heat in them. It usually would take me a lap and a half or so to get them warmed up and calmed down. Our brake setups were almost exactly the same... maybe our bedding processes were a bit different?

 

I upgraded to R12 up front after doing my K swap, and they feel pretty wooden until they get some heat. Same thing for me: 1-2 laps before they really work. I initially felt I was trying to warm them up too quickly, and now I'm wondering if I should push them a little harder on the out lap to get the heat going??

 

By wooden you mean they don't grab hard, correct? I had the opposite experience. Super grabby until a lap or two in. I started performing more numerous and harder stops on my out lap (which I probably should've been practicing already) to ensure they weren't still excessively grabby by my first hot lap.

Side note: My current Hawk DTC60s exhibit no noticeable difference in grab between cold and hot. It's not a make or break attribute, but I appreciate having one less thing to keep track of on my out lap.