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I did the Safecraft 10lb Novec fire system plumbed into the car, but still wanted a separate handheld extinguisher in case of just a mild engine fire. Element stick was a perfect fit on the door beam, attached with a loop of double sided velcro. It actually keyed into the shape of the door beam perfectly so that it can't slide forward and back, but I also put a loop of adhesive velcro around the element stick for a little extra security.
Awesome build I like it, kind of cool that it's something slightly different.
I'm planning on getting on of those fire sticks as well, but probably wouldn't want to put it there. If you get hit in the door just a bit it could come into contact with something else and get crushed and potentially go off, possibly ending your race when you could have otherwise finished.
Yeah crash damage was my biggest worry about that mounting location, but I'm fine with it. Now that the car is turbo it's pretty much track day and sprint racing only; no chance of enduros. If I get hit hard enough in the door in a sprint race to damage the element stick on the opposite side of the door beam, I'm parking the car anyway.
The Element website makes it sound like the little activation striker is just exposing the inner solid chemical to air to start the extinguishing reaction, so it would likely take a really hard hit to break the stick and set it off. In that hard of a hit, I won't complain about an auto-activating extinguisher lol. If I'm reading wrong and the striker creates a spark to start the reaction, then it's even less likely to go off in a crash.
Fab9 shipped a $40 amazon BOV with this kit. The amazon ad for this specific one doesn't say anything about the springs, but there's an identical looking one that's listed as having 7 and 14lb springs. I'm seeing 6.9-7psi vacuum at idle. The heavy spring was already installed so I started with that, and it never opened once during the first dyno session. I swapped to the lighter spring and now it works fine under boost, but it's fully open at idle and with the throttle closed.
What's my best course of action? Shim the light spring? Cut the heavy spring? Buy a better BOV? Do nothing? I've searched some on here, but the Fab9 pipe has a welded 50mm vband flange and I haven't found any good threads on here for that style.
Man that's ******* annoying, they should just cut that cost out of the kit and let the end user decide. Hopefully other stuff like the injectors aren't knockoffs either.
Cheapo BOV's don't last long for track duty and can become a source of boost leaks in a hurry. I would just replace with a reputable brand like Turbosmart so it's not going to give you issues down the line.
I've been doing the usual turbo miata fight with temps. I knew coolant temps were likely to be an issue with the intercooler blocking almost all of the radiator, so at the end of the first dyno session I tried removing the intercooler and replacing it with a straight pipe. IATs only got up to 150-160 and I'm on E85, so I decided to try that for the first track shake down day. Ended up maxing out the mazdaspeed3 sensor at 212F after 4-5 laps, so I put the intercooler back on and took it to Putnam Park 3 weeks ago. IATs were rock solid at 110-115, but coolant temps would hit 225 after 4-5 laps. I cobbled together some ducting improvements and removed the stock plastic grille mesh and got it to where I could keep coolant around 210 in open air, but any amount of traffic would send temp back to 225+. No good for GLTC.
Next attempt: shortened intercooler. This is actually what I ordered from fab9 but they sent me the full height standard intercooler instead of the custom shortened one that I requested. I had a local friend cut off about 6 rows/3" from the bottom and weld it back up. I think this is going to be a winner. The full height intercooler went all the way down to the splitter and blocked both openings on the NC1 bumper. The shortened one stops just above the lower bumper opening. The stock bumper beam fills the top half of the upper opening, so the shortened intercooler will only have 4-5 rows in clean air. If I'm not happy with IATs with this setup I'll make a tubular bumper beam this winter.
Quickie update. The car was pretty good with the old Ohlins but I was never 100% happy with it. I've talked to MCS a couple times since I bought the car a few years ago, but I was pretty committed to the idea that I wouldn't upgrade from the Ohlins until I could get a double adjustable inverted rear. Seeing all the NC XIDA posts a few months ago caused me to email MCS again to see if they had any updates on their inverted rear setup that's been in the works for a while. I learned this time that they've had the shock design ready to go for a while now but their dealer that was supposed to be making a batch of rear upper mounts hasn't come through yet. The setup was designed around the Eibach Mazdaspeed rear upper mounts and I knew someone that had a set of those on the shelf that I could copy. After getting those mounts to take measurements, making a small design change to work with my cage, and somehow talking myself into spending $$$ on triples, I finally replaced the Ohlins with MCS.
Before deciding to do the MCS, I'd already decided to also do a full spherical conversion over the winter. I don't love any of the aftermarket rear arm options that replace the OEM ball joints with sphericals and custom machined single-shear pins, so I decided to put the effort into converting the rubber ends of the stock arms to spherical myself. I'd do some things differently if I were starting over, but I'm pretty happy with the results. Since all of the arms except one have a spherical on one end and ball joint on the other and need to be clocked to center the joints, I copied the SPL design of using slits with shaft clamps instead of jam nuts.
The front lowers are Keisler-converted stock arms, the front uppers are P2M, the rear toe links are SPL, and the other 4 arms and the eccentric lockouts are my own. For anyone considering Keisler sphericals on an NC or RX8... ship the arms to keisler and pay him to do the install. I originally planned to ship him a new set of Mazda arms and have him do it, but Mazda was on backorder so I just decided to do it myself instead of taking the time to box and ship my used arms. Getting the old bushings out and new sphericals in without damaging the aluminum arms is a giant pain in the ***. I had to make a few custom press tools. Keisler only charges $100 plus shipping to do the install for you, and trust me, that's a steal.
First test at Putnam 2 weeks ago went really well. The MCS needed some adjustments from the starting settings but felt great by the end of the day. I was afraid that I was going to struggle to dial them in with so much adjustability, but I feel like I figured it out pretty fast.
Looking forward to my first 2022 GLTC race at NCM this weekend!
Last edited by jpreston; 04-11-2022 at 02:06 PM.
Reason: typo
With the front lower caster bushing axis being rotated 90 degrees, and the looong stroke of the MCS, it's possible to max out the caster spherical bearing on both ends of the travel. Thankfully the MCS at full droop was just a few mm away from reaching the spherical limit, but it was possible to max out the spherical before full shock compression. Not sure it's something that would have ever happened in real life, but I didn't want to risk it so I put some time into finding a bump stop. The MCS have massive 22mm shafts and most other race shocks are 5/8" (15.8mm), so finding bump stops wasn't super easy. I got lucky and found that Energy Suspension sells a line of poly bump stops for <$15 a pair and one of those just barely worked. Here's the shock at roughly stationary ride height.
I also found a problem with the rear lower camber arms that I should have caught during the design phase. The sway bar attaches to a tab on the center of the arm. This works fine with the stock inner rubber bushing that only rotates on one axis, but with spherical on one end and ball joint on the other, the sway bar forces cause the arm to rotate until one of the joints reaches max travel. This causes reduced sway bar effectiveness at best, and inconsistent handling at worst. I was going to make a set of delrin limiters for the inner sphericals at first, but a friend told me that he's seen SPL arms that just use o-rings as limiters so I decided to go that route. Haven't tested these on the car yet but they seem to work perfectly.
The passenger front reservoir that's near the turbo was getting mega hot in my first couple shake down sessions. Thankfully I had some adhesive backed heat shield in the trailer so I rigged this up with zip ties. Also cut a hole in the plastic fender liner to allow some air movement around the reservoir behind the heat shield. Made a huge difference. Need to make a proper metal heat shield since I can't really find any better reservoir locations with this hose length.
How high are the people that keep blowing the 2.5's revving them to? I have stayed with 7k on mine and it is ok so far. I really hope it lasts a long time.
Also, how are you liking the 5-speed versus the 6-speed? My 6-speed has been super grindy and bad shifting since I got it. I am really considering getting a built 5-speed from Walter and get better shifting and gearing to go along with it.
I don't have enough personal experience with unopened n/a 2.5 engines for my opinion to be worth much, but I think 7000 is about the right number if you want it to have a reasonably long life on track. For enduro use where you don't want it to cost you a race I'd probably drop it down to 6500-6800. For sprint racing, probably set the rev limit to 7500 but still shift at 7000 and only go to 7500 when you really need to hold a gear instead of shifting.
Love the 5 speed. Feels just like an NA/NB 5 speed, which is about as good as it gets for me. I wouldn't spend the money on a walter box for a naturally aspirated 2.0 or 2.5. A decent junkyard 5 speed should last a long time.
I was out there. NCM, Gingerman, Autobahn, Mid-Ohio. Multiple people have told me that the car just blends in and they never notice it on track lol. Doing some color and appearance changes right now so hopefully it's a little more noticeable this year.
Luke and Gary both sold and moved to Corvette. Erik bought a Corvette and plans to sell his NC once the vette is up and running. Justin still has his own black NC plus Luke's that he bought. He keeps going back and forth on selling Luke's vs renting it.
I still love mine and have no plans to switch chassis any time soon. The turbo has been great and super reliable so far. Way better than the 2.5. I'm planning to add more ballast to the car this year so that I can go to a heavier wastegate spring and add more mid-range boost. Right now I'm on a really light spring because it's the only way I could get the peak power down low enough, and the light spring is limiting how early I can ramp in boost. I already blew up one 5sp last year (at Autobahn when I was having my best gltc weekend ever, up to 4th position) so I'm probably going to go back to a 6sp at the same time as the wastegate spring change. Not super excited about that but Mazdacomp has a spec MX5 6sp upgrade kit that supposedly fixes a lot of the shifter issues and doesn't require a full transmission teardown to install.
Other changes I'm currently working on when I can find motivation:
-Custom electric power steering column
-Lexan windshield
-Splined front sway bar so that I can experiment more easily at the track. Front bar swaps suck on the NC.
-NC3 front with carbon headlight blanks
-A few different custom aero ideas that I have high hopes for but will probably end up looking like ***
-18x10 Apex SM10 in mustang fitment with 255s (should work fine with stock fenders with just a little more rolling)
Right now I have 2023 tickets for Mid-O, Gingerman, Lime Rock, and Road America. I want to do Lime Rock but I'll likely end up selling that ticket because of scheduling conflicts. Would love to do Laguna if a big enough group of midwesterners can organize a reasonably priced transporter. I'm definitely not doing that tow on my own.
Oh this is good info! The easing up on the forced induction modifier opened up things in 2023 as the 2.5 was never going to be the winning ticket me think
I will shoot ya a PM here. May be interested in the Limerock tix.
Last edited by RalliartRsX; 03-08-2023 at 03:25 PM.
09-07-2021, 06:08 PM
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