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Since everyone seems to be doing splitter/air dam stuff right now, I figured it was time to replace mine. It was getting pretty well sandblasted and dull at 4+ years on the car. I cut a replacement when I finished the K swap, but stupidly cut it against the natural curve of the plastic and didn't like the way it sat. Even after parking it in the sun a few days, I was never really happy, so I went back to the original and added an inlet for the air filter. It was time for a refresh.
I had previously used 1/2" rabbit fence from HD racing, but decided to upgrade to the stainless mesh from Pegasus racing that folks are using. The material is a lot more rigid than the rabbit fence, but will also restrict flow a bit more. I've never had problems with heat, but I decided not to reduce the inlet dimensions by much. I'd rather live with a little extra drag than overheating.
Your air dam is one of the cleanest I've seen executed. Small details like how nicely trimmed it is so it lines up with the bumper belt line, your winglet extensions to kick it over the tire, and color matching go a long way to make it look great. And that new splitter looks killer. Have you considered adding fences to the outer edges for extra DF? And, do you use ramps? I elected to not do either since I'm trying to balance my setup with the street wing, but that could be free DF if you need more.
Your air dam is one of the cleanest I've seen executed. Small details like how nicely trimmed it is so it lines up with the bumper belt line, your winglet extensions to kick it over the tire, and color matching go a long way to make it look great. And that new splitter looks killer. Have you considered adding fences to the outer edges for extra DF? And, do you use ramps? I elected to not do either since I'm trying to balance my setup with the street wing, but that could be free DF if you need more.
Thanks!
I did make some fences when I built this splitter after the K swap... they didn't play nice with the tie downs in my stacker, so they had to come off. The lift in the stacker is only 14ft, so I'm very limited on tie down options.
I have not added ramps yet, but they are on the 'list'. The next version of the splitter will likely have them, though the car is pretty well balanced as is.
Pulled the top today for annual spring cleaning. It's amazing how much dust/dirt ends up on the package tray area and inside the rear window. I try to do this once a year.
Also, my original finish panel has been in sad shape for a long time. About a year ago, I picked up an intact panel in black from a local FB seller. I guess it's about time I got around to installing it. If I ever pick up a fiberglass hood, I'll get this painted, but for now it doesn't look too bad in black.
The NA is waiting for its next event, the NC is waiting for FM to drop their turbo kit. About the only thing going on lately is a spent a bunch of $$$$ servicing the generator and replacing the AC transfer switch in the RV. And I 'downgraded' our tow rig...
When I bought our truck in '17, I went with a dually because at the time we were hauling a 4500lb camper in the bed and pulling the car trailer behind. A dually was a no-brainer.
We sold the camper after buying the RV, so the truck is just used for pulling the trailer to 'local' events and general truck stuff. Not things that require a full ton dually. While I loved the truck, the ride when empty and the short gearing (4.10 for max tow) limited it's appeal, even thought it has the most comfortable interior of anything we own. I was looking at used 2500s, but was really reluctant to give up a 68k mile truck that was nearly perfect, paid for, and that we'd owned from new. I had decided to keep it, and looking into re-gearing it in the fall, and maybe looking at some suspension mods to ease the ride. And then the perfect 2500 showed up at the local RAM dealer. It was a year older than our '17, but had 2000 fewer miles. It had all the same options as our current truck, and had an interior that wasn't black (this was a big one for me), and an exterior that wasn't black, white or silver. And it was a one owner truck, that had been local since new... After some nearly confrontational haggling, we worked out a deal with the dealer and made the trade.
Old and new together...
New rig with the trailer...
I had to write a little bigger check than I would have liked, but I think I made a decent deal. Especially since the dually would need new tires this year, and the 2500 has near new tires. That and what it would have cost to re-gear the dually pretty much covered my out of pocket cash on the trade. The previous owner had brought the truck to the dealer for everything since new, right down to tires and wiper blades! I got a copy of all the service records...
The PO wasn't shy about bringing it in if they thought something was wrong, but there were no major issues in the records, and all the maintenance was done on-time or early from new.
From our point of view, the 2500 rides better empty than the dually did with 1000lbs in the bed. Comfortable cruising speed is 10+mph faster on the highway, and it gets 3+mpg better doing it. Around town it's also ~3mpg better in everyday driving. Even though the dually wasn't that big an issue navigating parking lots and traffic, the 2500 has a much smaller footprint. Obviously, it won't be as rock stable on the highway with a trailer, but it's damn good, and better than a 1/2 ton. I did a quick loop with the trailer hooked up and it was fine. I don't foresee having any regrets, and I think what I may miss most is the 8ft bed for Home Depot runs. Otherwise, I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
Thanks! Upgrade/downgrade... I'm not sure either, but it's a better fit to our current use case.
Promised Miata content...
Had Safelite come by and put a new windshield in the NA the other day. I had a new windshield installed after I built the cage four years ago, but it had a significant amount of sandblasting from track days. Mostly from one weekend in particular, at Chuckwalla in the CA desert. It suffered a staggering amount of pitting from just that one weekend. In any case, the pitting was starting to make life difficult in early morning sessions, so I decided to replace it. Having a new windshield is like cleaning a pair of glasses... you sometimes don't realize how bad things were until you do it!
Thanks for the reminder. I need a new windshield on my car so badly. Some foggy mornings, I run the wipers and wonder why they're not doing anything. Then I realize I'm looking at all the pitting
Replacing the windshield on your car probably made that guy's work week lol.
Very excited to see you get rolling on it! The kit looks super well-sorted, though I was chuckling that CA customers couldn't get their kits yet because the CARB EO hadn't gone through yet.
2860RS should spool super fast on an MZR engine...
I spent a LOT of time talking with Brandon about the FM kit at Summer Camp last year, and looking over the development cars... this kit was actually part of my plan in getting back into an NC. Our NC is a street cruiser, and although we do AutoX it and it might hit the track a time or two, we're not serious with the NC, and I don't want another track Miata. OEM+ is the plan, and that's what the FM kit is. They spent the time and effort to work out all the details down to the correct water flow from the turbo back to the radiator, heat management both for the intake and turbo, 50 state legal OE level calibration and numerous other details that would be left up to the end user with most turbo kits. It makes decent power for a street car, is plug/play, and set and forget... exactly what I'm looking for for our NC.
I actually didn't even know Kraken was developing a kit until Z_WAAAAAZ posted in his thread the other day. Looks like a cool setup (and a great value!) for a track car on a standalone, but not where I'm going with ours.
You hit the nail on the head with why FM is my first preference for aftermarket upgrades - they hit the OEM+ ethos really well on a lot of their products. There may be faster, more track oriented parts out there, but seldom do you find something that is more well rounded than the FM option. They are good at elevating the whole vehicle with very little compromise.
Memorial Day weekend at the track... We usually don't run this event because it's always very crowded and the paddock is a cluster, but we hadn't been out in a while, so we decided to run Saturday. Since we're fairly close to the track, we dropped the trailer Friday to get a good spot, that we could pull out from Saturday afternoon. Ended up in the same spot we were in for Labor Day last year.
Anyway, the day started out nice and we did our first sessions on our old V730 tires. I ended up having a belt issue, and pulled off to fix it, and that had the benefit of getting me out of a bunch of traffic into clear track. I ran a 1:46.8, which was an immediate improvement on the previous best of 1:48.09 here on worn out Toyo RRs. The conditions were almost identical... highs in the low 90s and windy. The V730s have decent pace, but just don't feel as hooked up as the RRs. I was only intending to run them for the first session (trying to get some use out of them) anyway, and we switched to RRs. I never got a clean lap with the traffic in my 2nd session and tapped out with a 1:47.8.
Next up was my first TT session, and having had grid issues at the last few events, I decided to grid higher than usual. I still got stuck behind the dimwit Mustang driver that has plagued me for three straight events, but managed to pass him after one lap and get into clear air. He's the black Mustang at the beginning of the video, and he just can't comprehend TT etiquette. Several other drivers have 'chatted' with him after sessions, and I've now talked to him 3 times...
Anyway, I got around him and ran 1:45.8 (transponder had it at .801 and my AiM at .86). I think I could have run a low :45 or high :44 if I hadn't been stuck behind the Mustang for the first couple of corners and had a compromised drive onto the straight. Still, I was super happy with the time, and it was ultimately good enough for a class win by a bit over 1 second. The other cars in my class were a Subaru STi, a couple of Coyote Mustangs, a turbo NB, and an S2000.
We did have a 2nd TT session late in the afternoon. Most of the time, no-one goes faster in the late session... I was pretty sure I wasn't going to beat my earlier time, but I was pushing to try to improve a few corners... it didn't go well.
T16 is a tight, right hand 180+ with the braking area over a blind crest where I drop from about 82mph to 50 for the corner entry, continuing to bleed speed down to ~40 at the apex. You have to stab the brakes, then modulate over the crest and get the car turned in. I pushed my braking point a bit too far, and still had too much speed/brake at the crest and all 4 locked up. I couldn't get it slowed down and ended up spinning and going backwards into the gravel trap and was beached. Well, that's embarrassing...
I waited until the end of the session for a tow back to pavement and then made the drive of shame back to the pits with a car covered in dirt. At least it's been about 8 years since I had to get pulled out of a gravel trap... I'm going to blame it on baking on grid while we waited 15 minutes for two carts to get cleared after the cart race that preceded our session! Nothing damaged but my pride, so it was all good... and we were done for the day so we packed up and headed for home.
Yesterday, I spent a few hours cleaning up the mess I made of the car...
I had my first snafu with my AiM system, as it failed to capture the entire first TT session. It's odd, because the video was fine and had the data properly embedded, but the data wasn't there to download. Bummer, because I lost the fast lap, which is what I really needed to look at. At least I had one solid lap from the first session to look at.
The track:
Previous best, last August was 1:48.09 on Toyo RRs on their 8th track day. New best is 1:45.8 on Toyo RRs on their 3rd day. Most of the improvement came from Turn 4 and the long run uphill into Turn 5 and were the result of two changes: I stayed in 5th for the corner instead of downshifting to 4th, and I switched from R12/R10 brake pads back to R10/R8. Here's a screen shot of the speed trace, and brake pressure trace for Turn 4 from the previous (blue) to my 1:46.8 lap (red) the fastest lap for which I have data:
The blue trace on R12 pads shows a double peak, the result of trying to modulate pads with no feel. The red trace on the R10 shows the results of better confidence... braking harder and later with a smoother letoff. That also led to one more mph terminal speed on the straight. Leaving the car in 5th led to improved confidence mid-corner and an improvement of 4 mph in terminal speed into the braking zone for Turn 8. I'm full throttle from the apex of T4 all the way to the braking zone for T8 (T5-7 were not part of this track configuration). On my fastest lap minimum speed through T4 was 88mph, according to the video. While that section of the track is where I made my biggest improvements, there were several other corners where I stayed in 4th instead of downshifting to 3rd as I had previously, giving minor improvements in minimum corner speeds. I'm still a little weak braking into T8... it's over a blind crest and down hill, braking from 114 to ~ 40mph, and I'm still figuring out my braking point. I'm on the limiter pretty early crossing the start/finish, but that's right at the braking point for T1, so I don't think an upshift will help. I know I need to do something about gearing, just haven't decided what yet...
Very pleased with how the car is working now that I have confidence in my brakes again. And I finally have a solid comparison of pre-K swap to K swap lap times, since I have records for this track, in similar conditions, on the same tires. BP powered best lap was 1:52.5, so the K swap took 6.7 seconds off the lap time here.
Engine coolant temps and oil temps stayed in the mid-high 190s on track. All good.
Great updates, loving the data snippets in the thread. That track looks really fun, and it was fun watching you badger that black mustang even if he did stuff your corner speed onto the straight. Nice work on the PB and 1st in class! I'll seeya at FM!
Very pleasant surprise hitting play on the vid and immediately seeing you bullying a Coyote S550 haha. Congrats on the W and PB! And I love the data breakdown. I'm getting better at interpreting the Aim data, but reading your breakdown showed me a few things I've been overlooking.
I gotta get out to INDE at some point. Track looks like so much fun. All dat elevation change...
Bullying... Never thought of it that way, but it cracks me up! I've had three 'talks' with the Mustang driver, and several other competitors have talked to him as well... and he just doesn't get it, so we're done being nice.
INDE is a lot of fun to drive! It's definitely worth the trip. PCA has a weekend there in late September that we're going to try to make. That's usually a less crowded event, no racing though they have done a 'TT' session lately with 'Porsche' and 'not Porsche' classes.
The data analysis is a whole new facet of this sport for me, and I'm still in the beginner stages of learning to use it. It's already helping me to become a better driver by showing me what I'm doing at any point on the track, and that allows me to make specific plans for improvement. Then I can go back and look at the data and see what difference it made in that exact place. It's a HUGE step from 'that felt good' and trying to figure out from a full lap time if one particular corner improved. At this point, I really need to develop the discipline to start looking at the data between sessions... with both my wife and I driving, and all the other tasks/distractions at the track, that's been hard.
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Never thought of it that way, but it cracks me up! I've had three 'talks' with the Mustang driver, and several other competitors have talked to him as well... and he just doesn't get it, so we're done being nice. 
