Thanks, Nate! Yeah, the spats look aggressive but they only come 1/4 to 1/2" out past the lips of the rims. It's hard to capture perfectly in a photo. They aren't angled as aggressively as the camber, though, so I could definitely taper them a little bit closer to the fenders at the top. That'll be a project for this week if I get some time.

Hahaha no joke. Both of our cars got the two-tone look going on. I'd love to do a livery on this thing eventually, but also don't want to make it too loud so I don't become a target for traffic cops. More contemplation needed...

 

Splitter rods and cams.

Got the ProfessionalAwesomeRacing splitter rods in on Monday. Quite the nice piece of kit. They use two long carbon rods that are cut down to size and locked into place with a collet on each end. Super stiff under tension but they allow for some flex if the splitter blade takes an impact. I used a set of M6 to M8 studs in two of the front bumper cover mounting holes to give the rods somewhere to mount into. From there it was just a matter of cutting the rods to size and mounting them to the splitter. Super nice piece of kit, would buy again.


Forgot to bring a rotary tool home and had to cut them with a hacksaw. No big deal, but I did have to sand the edges a little after taking this picture.





I also posted to the TT5/ST5 Facebook group regarding my aero setup and some other upgrades I wanted to do, and was informed that tire spats aren't legal for TT5. Bummer. I guess the TT5 aero rules are laid out differently than TT1-4, and anything not explicitly stated in the rules is NOT legal. No big deal. I'll just pull them off for competitions.

Cams and valve springs showed up as well. I ended up going with a set of Esslinger Stage 2 sport cams and Brian Crower valve springs w/ Ti retainers. The cams have a decent bit more lift and duration than the stockers, but aren't too insane (Esslinger makes up to a stage 5 in these cams). Valve springs aren't absolutely necessary with them, but I got a good deal on them and figured it'd be a responsible choice especially since the engine's going to see boost later on.

Did all my valve lash measurements yesterday. After swapping a bunch of buckets around to get the desired numbers, I only needed to obtain four new ones. Those are on order and should be here Friday.

One of the big NC shops in Texas, ARHindrichs, has an awesome excel calculator for figuring out what buckets you need, even telling you the exact part number to order based on the buckets in the car and your desired lash. Very useful tool. Here are my current measurements after playing musical chairs with a handful of the buckets.

 

Hell yeah dude. The car is looking mean and cool to see progress on the motor. You sure move quick. Sorry if I missed it, but what's the expected power increase of the cams and around what RPM?

 

Thanks dude! Yeah, I'm pretty amped on how it looks. Hopefully it proves to be functional on track as well! New cams should provide an increase of ~15 peak whp, but Esslinger also claims they make more power than the stock cams everywhere past 3,600rpm, and continue making power past my redline which will be set to 6.9 or 7k. I'm hoping I'll wind up around 175 peak whp once the engine is in, which is the exact maximum my car can run in TT5 as it sits.

I think the stock 2.5 cams make peak torque around 3.3-3.5k haha.

 

Nice job with the splitter. Looks awesome.

 

Thanks man! Can't wait to see how the car looks/drives once it's got a wing and set of skirts too.

Moving right along, I finally conceded on the 16k/9k spring rates for the Xidas, and ordered a set of 11k/7k Swift springs for the car this week. I took the car out to the canyons on Sunday and it was wildly rough and would not stay attached to the ground over bumps. Tried a bunch of different settings with the clickers. Under 14 clicks and the car would deflect over bumps and then ride like a waterbed after, oscillating for too long. Over 15-16 clicks and it would get even harsher (as one would expect, duh). At the end of the day I made the call on the spring rates, and just didn't realize what I was getting into. These spring rates are definitely made for a car being run on smoother racetracks only. 16k/9k on an NC is STIFF! Be warned haha.



Swapped in the 11's up front last night and got the 7's installed in the rear today. Ride heights are set to where they were before. I'm heading out of town this weekend, and will only be able to get a feel for it driving home tonight, but I think this is going to be a step in the right direction. I still have the RX8 sway bars in the car and if I need to cull any body roll, the beefier Progress Sways are still sitting in my garage.

 

Splitter looks fantastic man! Bummer about the spats but sounds like it won't be the end of the world.

A guy I race with just got a set of BC cams and springs for his NC. Tis the season I guess. Do you have to retune for the cams?

I'm not surprised to hear you went with softer spring rates considering the car is dual duty. Did you like the stiffer rates on track at least?

 

Yo, thanks Sim! Yeah, the spats are a bummer but not a deal breaker. Still super stoked on how the front end looks. Just need that **** to come in. I think it's gonna be another ~2 weeks till 9LR ships it.

Haha, weird coincidence! Is he running them on a 2.5L or just the stock 2L? I've heard the more aggro cams really light up the 2L as well. My car seems to be out of breath at around 5.5k rpm. Doesn't seem to make a difference if I shift anywhere between 6,500-7,200 haha. The cams will require a retune, but I'll already have them built into the 2.5L tune I'm receiving. The Esslinger cams I went with are pretty common and there's off the shelf tunes to accomodate them. One cool thing is that the cams actually came with a recommended VVT table in the box.

Dude, I wish I could say that the stiffer spring rates were good for track but they were too stiff even for that haha. I want to say with more tire, aero, and stock sways, they would've been appropriate but they were still just so stiff over bumps. The NC runs much stiffer than the NA/NB for a given spring rate. I was running 14k/10K on my last car no problem and 16/9 on this car feels like a 50% increase in stiffness. Super stoked to run the 11/7k next weekend with the softer sways and finally feel that Xida magic that everyone talks about.

On the coattails of the aero conversation, and because I wanted to copy Nate, I ordered a set of skirts and installed those this week. Super amped on how they look, and hopefully they make some sort of difference. These also aren't TT5 legal but I installed them with rivnuts so they're quick and easy to remove for race weekends.



Otherwise, I haven't got much else done with the car aside from the spring rate swap. Went up to Kernville with a bunch of buddies for a mountain biking trip last weekend and didn't work on/drive the car at all. Nice little reset, though.



Sh*tty views. Sh*tty AirBnB. The river below is the one you can see in the above photo.



Got some more done on the engine this week, though. The buckets needed to set correct valve lash finally arrived Monday. Installed those, lash is dialed in. Ended up with .008" on the intake side and .010" exhaust. 0.001" maximum variance between total lash on each side. Got the engine timed, which is a weird process as none of the timing components on these MZR/Duratec motors are keyed, and all of the gears are held in place by friction washers. I painted the timing cover orange (but it came out orange-red) as an homage to the orange valve cover on my last motor and installed that as well. I have an eBay aluminum valve cover for a Mazda 3 that I'm gonna modify and install too. The turbo'd track guys say the factory plastic valve cover tends to warp from the heat even with shielding, so I figure I'll just deal with that now. The eBay valve covers place the breather port in an area that hits the firewall on an NC, so I'll have to cut and plug that and drill and tap a port elsewhere. Good opportunity to convert the breather to an AN fitting and add a catch can anyways. I'll probably paint the valve cover some sort of fun color as well.





Just waiting on a couple other small parts and she'll be ready to drop in. EGR block off plate is in the mail, I've got an EcoBoost Mustang water pump on order (common upgrade, more efficient impeller design than the MZR/Duratec), and I need a new crank bolt and coolant hose kit... and I think that's it. Gonna be doing another double track day next weekend and then maybe I'll pull the motor the weekend after. Exciting stuff!

 

Woooo! Sick updates, love the skirts they really tie in the front end. Just needs ****. And the 2.5 is looking nice with the painted cover and the fluidampr on there. Mmmmmmm.

Jealous of the MTBing, that airbnb, and the view from the trail looks epic. It's already snow season here so I'm gearing up for snowboarding season. Lifts open next thurs!

 

Dude, our first snow days of the season were just this weekend! My buddies try to get me into it every year. Looks like so much fun but I just have too many coals in the fire already with our prime MTB and track season being in the Winter. Glad you guys will be able to get on the slopes soon, though!

F*cking hell, I want to get right back on topic with the build but my "testing" session on the mountain almost ended before it began today and I feel like I should share that story first.

So I met up with a few buddies today to rip some mountain roads. I haven't rallied the car since putting the 11/7k spring rates on and wanted to figure out if I should swap the stiffer sway bars back in before heading to the track this weekend. I also wanted to see how imbalanced I should expect the aero to be without a wing (I know it's not an if, rather how bad). With a bunch of my preferred roads closed due to the recent fires, we met up at the bottom of Angeles Crest Highway. It's a super popular road, and most folks have probably seen it in Hagerty media, car magazines, commercials, YouTube videos, etc. It's also basically just a bunch of super high speed sweepers for 60+ miles. For these two reasons, I don't particularly like driving it. Tons of folks come out every weekend to rip the road and it's super dangerous given the speeds that you can reach. There is, however, a split-off near the top with a 5-mile dead end road that's super technical, tight, fun, and not too busy. I figured we could cruise up and I'd put the car through its paces there.

We agreed at the bottom that we'd take it easy until getting to our destination near the top. I took the lead and set an easy pace. No more than ten minutes in, an M3 flies by us going the opposite direction. I then see another car coming around the corner, but I see its taillights first. It's a new Mercedes SL sliding across the road at a 45-degree angle, and it comes into view just in time for me to watch it go nose-first into the wall. Shrapnel from the front end flies everywhere, including across the road, but somehow doesn't end up in our lane. I pull into the next turnout and run down to the car. Both occupants, a couple kids who couldn't have been over twenty, are luckily uninjured. Some street bikers show up and start blocking traffic for us, and I end up driving the passenger of the crashed car five minutes up the road so he can get cell service to call a tow. One of the street bikers also rides to the closest ranger station to get highway patrol on the scene.

My buddy caught a bit from his car behind me. I wasn't running my camera at the time of the crash. I uploaded this clip to YouTube but left it "unlisted", so it can only be seen by someone with the link.

So I'm hanging out at an intersection up the road where there's cell service. The passenger of the crashed car is making phone calls when the rest of their posse shows up. Another (and I'm not exaggerating) twenty or so BMW M-series cars and other assorted six-figure German vehicles, all piloted by early twenty-something year-olds. The passenger sees them, yells to the lead car, a Grey BMW M3 Competition, that their buddy totaled their Mercedes, and jumps in the backseat. The whole convoy takes off, with multiple cars pulling short burnouts and fishtailing (not in the rad way) around the T-intersection as they head down the hill. Shortly after, highway patrol cars and a fire truck turn and head down the hill. I don't want any of this potential clusterf*ck so I wait another ten or so minutes before heading down to link back up with my buddies. There's about 30 cars backed up near the crash site now so I pull a u-turn and park in a turnout on the other side of the road. My buddies join me shortly after. One of them gets out and immediately exclaims "Dude, there was another crash! A whole bunch of these BMWs showed up and some guy in an M5 rammed into the back of a Grey M3 Competition.

It was the lead car that the passenger from the first accident was in. The dude literally got out of the totaled Mercedes, hopped in my car to get to the intersection, jumped in another car, and got in a second accident. Luckily, nobody was hurt in the second accident either.

At this point, as one would understand, none of us were all too excited to continue driving. We were close to the technical split at the top, though, and the view up there is good, so we cruised up and hung out for a while. It was a good time still, and after a while the nerves died down.



Traffic was light, and with the morning behind us a bit, I was feeling better. Ripped a few runs on the road and was pleasantly surprised with the 11/7k spring rates vs the 16/9k. The car didn't feel like it incurred any substantial body roll, but the coilovers were obviously MUCH more compliant with these rates. The car felt great and I'm going to keep the RX8 sways on for now. I'll bring my stiffer Progress sways to the track next weekend, but don't think it'll be necessary to run them.

Satisfied with my broadened understanding of how the current setup handles when pushed, I called it a day and headed home. Stay safe out there, fellas.

 

Glad you didn't get caught up in their crashes, and glad no-one was hurt.

I spent a LOT of time on Angeles Crest, but it was in the mid 1980s, and way less traffic than today. Also, no internet to hype it up... I learned (the hard way) about target fixation up there when I was new to motorcycles... fortunately without major injury or damage. One of my favorite memories is a weekday morning I spent up there with a couple friends. I had my 280Z with a big cam and a bunch of suspension work, my roommate had his dads 928S, and another friend had his gray-market R5 Turbo 2. There was no traffic, and we spent hours chasing each other up and down the mountain.

Some of my worst memories also come from mountain roads, not ACH, though. I've been on two motorcycle group rides where a rider died. I'm pretty sure getting on track with motorcycles saved my *** from eventually having a serious crash.

Mountain roads are fun, but any public road is a pretty unforgiving place to be pushing it. And the track is always faster...

"Stay safe out there" is good advice indeed.

 

Man, first my local battleship, now this? You’ve been everywhere before me

I can’t imagine how much fun that must’ve been back in the 80’s before traffic and tourism up in the San Gabriels got heavy. I’m with you though, even with a lack of traffic there’s no point in pushing it in the mountains as hard as you will at the track. I’ve got too many hours into the car to put it into a wall (or worse).

Riding a motorcycle up there seems like an entirely different beast. Looks like fun, but the stakes are insane.

 

I said it in the NA build thread and I'll say it in this one - there's some seriously irresponsible driving in those canyons. I'm glad you guys have better heads on your shoulders and don't go from one adrenaline fueled crash directly into the next one.

"The older I get, the faster I used to be" is something I first heard back when I still rode a motorcycle. It is so, so true for me. Now that I've got a significant amount of seat time on track, all I want to do on the street is pretty much 7/10s with a focus on being smooth and getting the flow right.

 

The advantage of age... But look at it this way: I'll probably be using a walker when you're still racing...

Going from street to track on motorcycles was where I really discovered that riding fast on the street ain't ****. Developing the skills to actually go fast on the track removed any motivation to push it on the street, and though I still enjoy a brisk ride in the mountains it's more about enjoying the ride than going fast. That carries over to cars as well. What's disturbing is that the folks that push hardest to be 'fast' on the street are usually the ones that have nothing but excuses when it comes to trackdays...

 

Holy crap, glad you are good. That was WAY too close, if you were just a few seconds ahead you'd have another miata part-out on your hands..

I still ride motos, and I too am slower than I used to be. Honestly I think back some of the stupid **** I did, riding 9/10th on the road, and am grateful I'm still here. Especially coming from mountain bikes, you know how it is Zak, it's a similar feeling of being invincible when you are attacking a road you know and tearing it up with buddies. Fortunately I haven't laid down my street bikes but I've had some close calls, like a white line front tire slip into a tank slapper coming out of a corner (fortunately onto the straight), and being knee-down in a corner and coming across some water runoff, etc. I ride much more chill now but still like to let 'er eat through corners I know and can see through.

And same with cars, I used to drive WAY too fast on public roads - but the track has changed that for me entirely. Once you feel what it's like to truly be 10/10ths out on a close course your desire to drive anywhere near that on public roads goes away. The speeds our cars can carry on public roads is insane, even driving like 6/10th in my car in a canyon is stupid.

The car looks great out in the wild! It's crazy how different track setup cars look out on public roads, I love it.

 

@Z_WAAAAAZ The guy I was talking about runs in DSP, so I believe he has to stick with the 2.0, but I can't remember for sure.

Maybe it's just that the algorithms have started pushing this content my way, but I feel like I've seen a decent uptick in street racing content lately. There's a local touge group around here as well that - from what my friends tell me - have photo's of people posing on their cars after binning them. I love a spirited drive as much as the next guy, but I don't get the "win it or bin it" mentality.

 

I was thinking the exact same thing a little while after we left the incident. The skid marks showed that the car oversteered into the outside lane (my lane), then the driver let off the throttle and the car snapped back towards the wall. That would've been an unquestionable head-on if I were there three seconds earlier. We treated the dudes with respect, made sure they were okay, and helped them call their family and get a tow truck sorted. However, an hour later it occurred to me... that dude could've killed someone. Homie minimally deserved a swift slap upside the head the second he got out of the car. Not that I'd ever do that, but there's a weird dynamic towards helping someone whose carelessness could've cost you your car and serious injury. I'll stop with the negative thoughts, though. I've just been musing on that dynamic a bit this AM.

Dude I feel you there too and am the same way. When I first got my Miata, I thought I was ripping on canyon roads (maybe driving 5/10ths honestly. I was still cautious and wasn't driving insane). It's crazy how much harder you can drive at the track, safely. Blew me away after the car's first track day and the canyons never felt the same afterwards. I still love to go out there and drive, obviously, but it's not a real substitute for track time.

We have the same thing over here with the pictures of dudes posing on the hood of their crashed cars. I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that it's a form of taking ownice on the fact that they were doing something dumb and crashed. Maybe they really are just bragging about going too hard and totaling their cars, though. Weird. I won't lie, I enjoyed Initial D as much as the next young car enthusiast, but that stuff is just fantasy and shouldn't be imitated in real life haha.

 

I'm glad you're ok Zak. It could have been bad. Just to scream into the echo chamber some, I too lost the need to push hard on the mountains after doing some trackdays. Especially after my first proper (and humbling) spin on track. One of the reasons for my BP copeium is that I can make the engine sing through a couple of gears without going too quick. We have a lot of mountain roads here, so you never know if there will be a squirrel, an elk or a biker around the next blind corner. We all do stupid stuff at some point in our lives, some of us are just lucky not to pay the price before we know better, and we need to teach the young ones.

 

Another one who gets his fast driving jollies on the track, not the road. You can drive a LOT faster and harder there with no big fine or loss of license just around the corner, not to mention the risk from on-coming traffic, even out-of-control on-coming traffic. What did it for me was the bike coming over the crest of a popular mountain run, with its front wheel seriously off the road either just on, or just on my side of the center line.

Its scary being the first car on the scene, wondering what you will find in that pile of steaming junk on its side, wheels still tuning. In that case it was drunk, mumbling in the passenger footwell.

 

I've been enjoying the same thing as well the last few months. It's actually kinda nice being able to gun it through a couple gears on the street and maybe just barely break the law. Same applies in the canyons too.

Again, agreed with both of you. Obviously track driving is still dangerous, and can be scary, but much less so than on the street.

On a lighter note, the 2.5 is just about ready to drop into the car. I grabbed an aluminum eBay valve cover for a Mazda 6 and cut off the original breather port (and scuffed the VC a bit while doing so, d'oh!) so it'd fit in the car. Drilled and tapped the VC in a different area for a 10AN fitting, and swapped the VVT solenoid seal with the one that came in my 2.5. We're in business!



I then tried to take it to the next level by stenciling my old nickname with the leftover orange paint I had and absolutely ruined it. The lettering makes me laugh every time I look at it though, so I'm gonna keep it. Best not to take all of this too seriously.




The motor's basically ready to swap into the car now. This weekend is gonna be busy, I'm hitting my buddy's track event at Streets of Willow on Friday, then driving across the desert to Chuckwalla for the last NASA race of the season on Sunday. No point in going all the way home Saturday so I'm gonna stop in Palm Springs and go for a nice long mountain bike ride to break the drive up. Might start swapping the engine next weekend. Quite excited for it.