too bad I'm on the east coast....

 

Correction, Eyesore Racing needs a B6, not a BP...

 

A bit late but damn, I want to make active aero out of my trunk now.

 

Quick update: Race just ended. car was ******* awesome. Ran almost flawlessly, only broke once. We babied it for all but the last two hours (shifted at 6000 rpm), then we opened the full rev range and gave it hell.

End result: 2nd fastest lap of the entire race and 4th place finish out of 96 entries.

More details when we're sober.

Many thanks to those who helped. Too drunk right now to remember who they are..

-Dave

 

Awesome! The car didn't explode and did really well!

I saw a few pictures up on Jalopnik from the race, looks like a couple cars flipped over this time too.

 

Wow, impressive results!!

 

I just found out who had the fastest lap at the race. A ******* crown vic! Albeit it was door-less after the peoples curse came down upon it. lol

 

Well done, guys.

 

Good job guys!

I just found out the Lemons is coming to the track about half an hour away from me in June (No Problem Raceway in Louisiana). A few friends and I are doing the homework on this and thinking of making a run at it.

 

The race was spectacular. It turns out we led the race for more than 70 laps. That is freakin ridiculous for a lashed-up jalopy like ours. Our 4th place finish was behind some very seriously fast hardware, and we were not behind not by much--after fourteen hours of racing, we were one lap out of 2nd place.

We had the time of our lives out there. Again thanks to all the guys on this forum who helped us out with this build. We absolutely couldn't have done it without you. Cheers to you.

 

I still don't understand how a bowling ball-activated spoiler beat out an eye-level turbo and adjustable roof spoiler for the Banned Racing Technology prize.

 

Is there anywhere to watch footage of the race? I would love to see that...

 

I'll bite. How is that possible?

 

Especially considering the bowling-ball spoiler DIDN'T WORK, and ours worked so well that when you hit the brakes at high speed in clean air (no car directly in front of you) the low pressure zone behind the car actually sucked the trunk lid open!

I was REALLY confused the first time I hit the brakes and got a mirror-full of blue trunklid...

-Dave

 

Before the people's curse, that was a very well prepped car with a manual trans (despite the claim it was an ex-cop car) some impressive on-track dynamics (looked better than cop shocks...) and very little weight. It was very gutted, had all-lexan windows, etc., and naturally, had tons of power.

It didn't lay down that scorcher lap until after the people's curse removed the dead weight of all the doors, hood, trunk and part of the roof, and removed the aerodynamic penalty of a windshield.

I still don't know how they did it. I was driving the ***** off our car when I set our fastest lap. No mercy...

-Dave

 

Great work guys, some fantastic rigging there

 

Latest update: We tore down the engine this weekend looking for a noise that some thought sounded like a rod knock, some thought sounded like piston slap, and some (me) thought we should just ignore and keep racing.

It's been making a subtle, but increasingly persistent and nasty noise at part throttle and it's been filling its oil filter with metal ever since we first assembled it from a stack of shitty old broken Miata parts. We did about 3 hours of track time before the first time someone thought they heard rod knock. We couldn't duplicate the noise, so we wrote it off as in-helmet acoustics.

We pulled the first oil filter at about 7 hours and found this:


Still couldn't make the rod noise, and we were out of time, so we went ahead and raced.

Halfway through the race, we started noiticing the rod knock noise from pit lane as the car went by on the straight! But only during yellow flags. On boost, the engine was silent and smooth. When we pulled and cut the filter at the halfway point, there was a lot less metal than before, so we decided to go ahead and drive it like we meant it (we had been short shifting at 6000 ever since the first filterfull of metal). Finished the race with no drama (other than almost winning and almost setting fast lap).

One more filter, a little more metal, and finally we could duplicate the noise. If you revved the engine, it would make the clatter for just a second at the top of the rev. None while revving up, none while coasting down, but a little clatter right at the top. Ron Bergenholtz was standing nearby for one of our clatter tests and he said it sounded like piston slap. That actually made sense, since a turbo motor always has positive pressure on the top of the piston when its on boost, but when there's vaccum in the manifold, the pressure delta across the piston goes negative on the intake stroke and positive everywhere else. If you have an ancient block and pistons, maybe the piston-to-wall clearance would open up enough that the pistons could rock back and forth?

After this diagnosis, we did another 6 hours on track at Laguna Seca.

In total, we think we've got 33.5 hours of track time on this engine, at least 30 of which were after the first time we thought we heard rod knock.

So, this weekend's teardown? No cam bearing damage. Piston skirts look fine. Cylinder walls look quite worn (hone marks gone in 30 hours!), but nothing that would shed metal. Rod bearings? oh...



All four look like this.

How he hell did we manage 30 hours of track time with bearings that looked like this?

1: dumb *** luck.
2: during assembly, we picked up a washer off the floor and slipped it under the oil pressure relief spring, kicking up oil pressure some random, unconfirmable amount.
3: Before the race, we went through the oil shelf in my garage and dumped every half-used bottle of oil into a jug and poured the concoction into the engine. Since we usually use the good stuff in our other cars, a lot of those partial quarts were synthetic. I think the mix resulted in something like 7W39 quasi-syntheitc. That probably saved our asses...

Those bearings had less than 60,000 miles on them when we installed them, and we put them with the crank they originally knew (though not necessarily on the same journals...) So maybe you shouldn't move used bearings around?

Thanks to wholesale parts discounts from our lone sponsor, MD Automotive, we just spent $15 on a head gasket, $25 on new rod bearings, and $3 on oil pan gaskets and put it back together. After a race, if your car survives, you can ask Jay Lamm for a value on your car. He said ours was worth $275, leaving us $225 to spend before the next race. Since this weekend was half-price weekend at Pick Your Part, we ran over there, found a Volvo 240 turbo, and snagged the oil cooler ($8), lines (2x$4=$8), and sandwitch adaptor ($free! they didn't notice it). I think we'll be back on the track for $59.

-Dave

 

So what lemons event you going to next? I'd like to make it to CMP in Sept but I won't bring another Miata. The hate fro these little cars is hard to overcome. But I guess they have a point when our 5 drivers have NEVER been on a road coarse before (4 never drove the car before that day) came in 24th. Just a testament on how good a car these bone stock Miatas really are.

 

I love the secret toolbox stash discount at the pick 'n pull.

I wonder if you ran those bearings so hard they just self-honed under the heat and coleman mystery oil.

 

Hey kids,

The whole story of the engine build is up on MotoIQ.

The FrankenMiata Geek Hub > MotoIQ > Magazine Articles

When I get my crap together, I'll finish the stories on the coolant re-route, suspension tuning, and fusing two miata chassis into one.

We're headed to Thunderhill in a couple of weeks for the car's 4th outing. Just dyno tested it today and it makes EXACTLY the same power it made a year and 3 races ago.

-Dave