Such a bummer about the job search man, hope you find something soon.

I've been under the impression that poly diff mounts last pretty much forever. Would be curious to hear the experience of others.

 

I hope things get better for you man. Job hunting sucks.

As for shifting and driveline control, I'd consider adding an engine damper, or a 3rd link like lots of FWD cars have. The location of the engine mounts being so close to the crank centerline means you have to use very stiff bushings to have enough control. Something going from a shock tower brace to the cylinder head would really help hold the engine in place, and could use larger or softer bushings that would still be stiff enough with a longer lever arm.

 

"medical device cybersecurity" Was this at "some place of interest " or something like that?
Feel free to PM me your background. I'm on the hardware end of the biz and we're in a growth cycle.

 

PM coming your way. I am quite familiar with the company you mention (you can remove that now if you'd like). I really enjoy sitting down with a device and poking at it with a stick.

Thank you so much, I love this place!

 

Thanks for the good wishes; it's fun being in a niche business, but it's also a pain in the *** when you're experienced but not visible.

I had never thought of the relationship between the crank center line and the engine mounts affecting the driveline twist, but it seems obvious now. Now some (just some) of those engine dampers I've seen start to make sense. Definitely not the ones that are just a turnbuckle and some rod ends though!

Despite my reservations, I think I will pull at least one of the lower differential mount bushings to see if anything in there looks torn, cracked, or aged-out. I can justify it now because it's less work than designing/building an engine damper!

 

I spent a couple hours today trying to figure out why my vehicle speed sensor wasn’t working. Things weren’t adding up - wiring was fine, I could read some AC voltage coming out of the VSS, but the Haltech just couldn’t read pulses. My multimeters showed something like 250mV when spinning the sensor shaft with my drill, but the Haltech couldn’t see that. I was finally walking in to my house, holding the sensor, when the problem revealed itself.



Wire broken off inside the sensor sheathing. What a painful chase.

 

A brand-new Haltech GPS speed sensor is $130.

A used NB speed sensor from eBay is something like $120.

The world is a funny place.

I’m going to try to Dremel out the potting on the sensor I have and if I can find solder pads, solder on some new wires. If not, it’s GPS time, I think.

 

Surprisingly, the green plastic bit on the end of the sensor actually pops off. There’s a little bit of sealant holding it on and filling gaps.


After cleaning that out, it was easy to solder on some new wires with good old 60/40 rosin core solder. Lead has its place, OK?



You can see how the wires were embedded in the green cap. I Dremeled this out with a carbide burr so the new stuff would fit.



I assembled it with some silicone sealant, the original rubber grommet, and some DR25. I also dropped a touch of thin superglue into the interface between the green and black plastic. Should hold.



And now everything works in the Haltech. Where I was getting a few tenths of a volt before, now I’m getting in the teens.

Sadly, while reassembling the gear onto the shaft, I lost the spring clip that holds it on. It had lost all its spring and I was manually closing it with some pliers when it went AWOL. I’ll make a trip to the hardware store for a replacement tomorrow.

An entire afternoon for one stupid sensor. Ugh!

 

I had to do the same repair. It's held for probably 50k miles now, so while it's annoying you should be good to go for quite some time.

 

Solid diag and repair work right there! My backwards *** probably would've written it off as a loss at first.

 

Glad to hear someone has had success doing this. I figured it cost pretty much zero dollars, it's worth a shot for however long it lasts. 50k would be amazing, at the rate at which I go through motors...

Eh, I'm not so kind to myself. I made an assumption when I bench tested the sensor - it produced an AC voltage when I spun it with my drill, so I assumed it was fine. I thought the voltage was a little low, but I didn't take the time to look up normal values, I just figured my drill wasn't spinning it fast enough.

Intermittent problems are the worst - a couple of strands of copper made all the difference here. If one or two more had broken at the beginning of the testing, that would have been an easy catch.

 

I had a chance to get to the hardware store this evening and buy a new clip to hold on the speedo drive gear. And by "a", I mean a variety, because even though the shaft measures out at exactly 5/16", I know it's metric and that can't possibly be correct. Plus the metric clips started at 10mm, but were clearly not for a 10mm shaft, and also if there's one thing I've learned it's to always buy an extra because one will inevitably go missing between the hardware store and the application.

Eight. I came home with eight options. $4 or $5 all in, so I'm OK with it. Now I just have to label this bin and slide it into the rack. FWIW, the standard 5/16" external clip worked perfectly (second row from the top, on the right, duplicated in the second row from the bottom, right hand side).


Focus! FOCUS!


I dropped the sensor in, it clicked into place nicely and I bolted it up. I decided to see if it would register on the dash when I cranked in 6th, because the laptop was so far away and I was lazy. Only after I had cranked for a second did I remember that I hadn't connected the sensor wires. Yeah, it's been that kinda day. Happily enough once I did that, it worked beautifully. K24 cranking rpm in 6th nets 2-3mph on the speedo. Job done.

I brought out the laptop to double-check my work and update the dash firmware. Haltech now allows you to change out their generic boot screen for your chosen image. I've been working on a custom gauge set (also a new feature) and created a quick boot screen that shares the theme/palette with my unfinished gauges. I gotta say, it's really cool. Stupid, but cool. "The Devil" is the name I gave this car back when I bought her as transportation in ... 2005?

 

Let’s see if the recent changes have resolved the punctuation issue with my iOS posts.

Made some progress this weekend. Ran new wires for the trans temp sensor and neatened up the wiring for the speed sensor. TechFlex all the things.



I also did some sheet metal fabrication again, this time for a headlight blanking plate. Same aluminum sheet as the ducting.




Apparently I failed to capture a lot of the intermediate steps. It’s not done quite yet, but close. If I had a shrinker and stretcher, this would have gone better, but I managed the job with some pliers, and will clean it up some more tomorrow. The gap at the front edge is going to be fixed.

And that’s a wrap for tonite.

 

Nice job on the headlight cover, I need to do something like that. What gauge aluminum did you use?

 

Passenger side diff mount looks good. No visible wear or cracking.

 

It’s about 0.044 or so.

 

I've been checking things off the todo list as we approach the next NorCal event, which is coming up this weekend at Thunderhill.

I finagled the KPower exhaust into place again after replacing the crank sensor earlier. There's an infinite number of ways the thing can "fit", but very few in which it will fit without hitting something. That's over and I'm glad.

I also replaced the diff fluid. It's been too long. That stuff is incredibly smelly, so of course I spilled some on the exhaust that I should have reinstalled after filling the diff.

Today I tackled a project that I planned to leave until the next event - set up a usable passenger side mirror. From my seat, with the halo seat, I can't use the stock passenger mirror - it's out of my line of sight. So I moved it to the front fender. I copied the hole pattern onto some painter's tape and after much back-and-forth setting and checking the location of the mirror, set it up on the passenger fender. I only ended up using it for locating the center hole for the mirror - a 7/8" hole with a little bit of de-burring turned out to be a nice tight fit for the extended boss on the mirror base. From there I did more back-and-forth to the driver's seat to orient the mirror correctly. The base ended up at a more extreme angle to the fender than it was originally, but this is what it takes to get the mirror to where I need it.






It looks a little odd, but it's not stupid if it works, right?



I painted the headlight cover the other day and finally bolted it on for the final time. It's semi-gloss black, which matches the semi-gloss paint of my car. Which reminds me, I need to wash this thing tomorrow.


I also uploaded the new dash layout to the IC-7. We'll see how it works this weekend! There's a whole thread where I rationalize my design over here.

 

Make sure you bring your rain tires!

--Ian

 

Otherwise known as ... my only set of tires. RT660+ with good tread remaining. I'm watching the forecast, trying to decide if I want to quickly hack the windshield wiper motor wiring into the car. So far I'm seeing less than half an inch each day.... hoping RainX can keep up with that.

 

You oughtta just go full Datsun with the mirrors at this point haha.



Big fan of the dash layout as well. I'm on a much more primitive setup, with dedicated oil temp/pressure, boost and AFR gauges. I've got CLT, IAT, fuel trim, knock, and MAF data bluetoothed to my phone on the dash as well, but really only ever look at CLT. A lot of the data aside from CLT is unnecessary while on track, but useful to check before leaving the paddock. For instance, my downpipe began developing a crack last race weekend and I was alerted to it because fuel trims at idle started reading lean when I first fired the car up. I ended up fumbling the diag and retuned my MAF tables thinking the sensor was off, but at least I was able to see something was wrong and attempt to do something about it. I guess your CEL function accomplishes the same goal, though. Having IAT and/or ambient air temp is nice too if you're tracking setup changes, tire temps, etc. Much better having a solid number rather than: "I think it was around 70 degrees out on the second session..."

Have fun sliding around this weekend! Still can't wait to come up north and rip an event with you guys over summer.