That's a bummer that the racing community there suffered a loss like that... The only thing I would want to be sure about was folks not bitching about which dyno you used... if there's a shop that NASA 'trusts', I would try to be sure to use it.

I was just talking with a local guy about this exact issue yesterday. He also thought using RTV was a little ghetto and ended up cutting his own gasket out of a sheet. I would think that might be more robust under boost than RTV??

 

Yo, good point re: dyno choice. As far as I know, there isn't a single dyno that most of the guys around here use. I did, however, have a little back and forth with our TT director today and he was good with the shop I'm using. I was basically told that as long as the car's run on a Dynojet using a CF5 smoothing factor (I'm not going to pretend to know what this means), they're good with it. I confirmed via my NA's dyno sheets that this smoothing factor was used and was told by the TT director that we should be good to go. Hopefully my main competition is sympathetic being that they're running a MS3-equipped NB and probably know who Toby at AED is.

As far as the gasket (or lack thereof) goes, I agree with you and assume the RTV isn't going to hold up as well under boost either. I had RTV on hand, though, and wanted to drive the car into work to drill the block the next day. So... RTV it was lol. I think I've got some large gasket material sheets at work somewhere, though. Scraping that silicone off and replacing it with a proper gasket is on my to do list as well.

 

Dude these updates are coming at me so fast. First, psyched for some dyno results. When people are calling you out, you know you are doing something right. Reminds me of Ricardo beating everyone from a class under with 135whp. What do you think the car makes right now? IIRC there was a 175whp dyno on this thing a while back? What's your limit for power to weight ratio in your class, do you think you are close or in danger of breaking out?

The turbo prep stuff makes me super happy. You know I was there trying to keep you NA - kinda like a big brother trying to keep you from going down the same path. Now that you are committed I can only say welcome (back) to the dark side. Your NC on boost is going to be something else, especially considering the NC in its current revision is faster than your old turbo car, and probably most of our Turbo NAs on track. Should be a real giant slayer if you can harness it!

 

Haha, the updates are coming fast for sure. I keep thinking to myself that I should slow down with my posts on here but then I'd start falling behind and forgetting stuff. Amped on getting called out as well, it's more fun than a couple years ago when I was trying just not to land in last place

So the car made 180whp back in February on the slightly beefier "stage 2" cams and 91 octane. I'm hoping it's making ~185-188whp now with the new manifold and milder cams. The cams in it for sure make less peak power but I think the powerband is a bit fatter. It's on e85 now too but I've run back to back logs with e85 vs 91 octane (pulled 4* of timing when reverting to 91) and the MAF readings show no discernable difference between the two fuels. General consensus is that e85 only adds 5whp max on these engines (N/A) as MBT can be hit pretty easily on pump gas without knocking.

With my current declared minimum weight, my max power figure is 183whp (edited). We'll see what happens. I know I'm close but I don't think I'm going to go over. If I do, I can either pull some VVT angle out of it or limit throttle opening to drop a few HP. That being said, I had a pretty solid lead last race and put a a gap into second place even after doing a test run with a tune that should've been dropping ~10whp from the car. I swear I don't want to sound like a *****, I just think that was a pertinent datapoint haha.

This race should be much closer. I'm disproportionately faster at WSIR than other tracks because it's more ***** than technical ability. I got beat by these guys at Chuckwalla earlier this year by almost a second so it's not impossible they take 1st place back this weekend haha.

And dude, you have no idea how amped I am to see what this car can do with some power. The driver is going to be the limiting factor for sure hahaha.

 

Definitely don't slow down, it gives me more to read on my weekly MT.net visit haha Fun to see the progress, likecats awarded as usual.

As far as the RTV thing, RTV can work really well on stuff like this. I wouldn't be one bit worried about it with boost. The downside of RTV is that whenever you remove the manifold you now have a cleanup job to do before reinstalling. But if done correctly, RTV offers a pretty much permanent, trouble-free seal.

We always get a couple people per year emailing in about the QMAX complaining about the RTV sealant, saying we should offer a gasket. But the RTV works *so well* when it's done properly.

 

Dyno day!




Really exciting results yesterday, and more proof that I’m a dunce. Bear with me.

So I got to AED yesterday at around 3pm, ready to do a few pulls, get my printout and go home. We get the car strapped in, do a pull, and it makes 181whp/176wtq, but with a much broader powerband than my last motor with the Stage 2 cams. Previously, I had a big torque flatline at 5k rpm on that motor, so it’s nice that’s gone. No big gains up top but I’m happy with it. I do my calculations (NASA has a formula for max “average power” that you can run) and I come in at 2whp under my limit. Sweet! I ran this exact tune at WSIR so I was legal then and now.




Yesterday’s Dyno (with an unfortunately placed number placard) on top, and my old motor’s dyno from back in Feb. Note the dip at 5k rpm on the bottom one.

So I’m satiated, but Toby looks at the graphs and says: “You see up top where the lines start getting choppy? It wants more timing up there.” To which I reply: “Ahh no way, I’m already running at least what MBT on these engines should be”.

So I go in the tune and… what the hell, this is my timing table from when the car was on 91.

I retrace my steps a bit and it hits me that a week before WSIR, I ran out of gas and pulled out a copy of an old tune I made in case of an emergency if I had to run the car on pump gas. Said tune had a different “injector size” input as well as a retarded timing map. Evidently, it also didn’t have my VVT map which I’d modified for the new manifold. I just carried over my MAF and fueling modifier tables over into that tune from my current tune. When I finally filled up on e85 again, I was rushing on my way to work and am pretty sure I just changed the injector size and saved it over my tune fine that I was running before. This explains why I only beat my WSIR PB by 0.1 seconds three weekends ago, despite being on brand new tires, weighing less, and having more front aero than in March. I think if I run engine at full power, the car might be capable of a 1:28 as is!?

Oh right, the power numbers. So I added 5 degrees of timing back in at WOT (25-27* across the board) and increased VVT 15 additional degrees at redline and… and…



Holy sh*t! Was not expecting to creep up on 200whp with the current setup. I guess this manifold is good for something! Super amped on those numbers. I believe this Dyno is pretty accurate as all of my NA’s dyno days were done here and the numbers were pretty on par with what we expect to see on the forums here. Plenty of people claim their 2.5’s are making 200whp without bottom end work and I just assumed they were full of BS, but I guess it’s possible!

Also, thank god I wasn’t running this thing full bore at WSIR and my screwup tune puts this engines power level within spec for this car’s class. I’ve reverted back to the 181whp tune for this weekend and am looking forward to racing the new “Circuit” at Buttonwillow. First time NASA’s raced here so the playing field should be pretty even. The track was first commissioned this January so not many people have driven it multiple times yet. I ran a 1:57.00 here on the same peak power (but with that flatline at 5k rpm) and 4 track day-old tires back in April. Hoping I can maybe snag a 1:56 this weekend if all goes well.



Headed up North once the traffic dies down. Tomorrow is my buddy’s event at Streets of Willow, which just got a huge makeover thanks to the new Willow Springs ownership. Then Saturday and Sunday we go racing! Wish us luck!

 

Sheesh dude, I wasn't expecting so close to 200whp. And what a happy accident with the 180whp tune. This cars gonna crack 300whp without even breaking a sweat, like 10psi or so. Those are k series numbers which is pretty crazy.

Have a great weekend, looking forward to your updates!

 

Nate, that’s exactly what I’m hoping for. I think I’ll be extremely pleased with whatever power it makes on 7psi. I might not even toss a stiffer spring in there till I dyno it for fear of killing the transmission. Favorable problems to have haha.

Extremely solid long weekend. Lots of ground to cover on here haha. I’m not yet sure how I’m gonna format the recap, and I’ll be hella busy jamming on the turbo install this week. I’ll figure it out but for now here’s some pictures without any context.

 

Work's chill enough today that I can squeeze in a solid post during my lunch break. Let's get on with it!


Continuing on with my new signature move of almost losing the rear end on the last turn of my PB lap...





Saturday and Sunday both went stellar. Couldn't ask for a better end to the last NASA race of the season. I told myself I was going to run a full season in the same class, limiting the car somewhat, and was actually able to keep my ADD in check and pull it off haha. Lessons were learned. It's been really fun optimizing a car for the class and being competitive, as opposed to before when I'd just show up and hope for the best.

First place both days this weekend, setting the TT5 lap record since this is the first time NASA's raced at "The Circuit". Super stoked on how the weekend turned out but the outcome was not without a little bit of struggle.



So starting on Thursday night, I had some self-inflicted ECU issues. Friday would be a fun track day at Streets of Willow with my buddy's organization, CanyonRunSundays, and I was going to run the car at full power for that. I got home after the dyno session Wednesday, parked the car in the garage, and loaded up my "kill tune" with the mind blowing 199whp on tap. Thursday night I go to put the car on the trailer and it starts and immediately dies. I try again with the same result. And again and again and again. I run out to my van to grab the laptop, freaking out because what the heck could have failed between last night and now? I pull up ECUtek and find that I loaded up my tune from before the Fab9 intake mani and increased intake diameter, so the ECU has no idea how much air's being sucked in. Dang, same mistake with loading the wrong tune twice in a row, I should not be trusted with a laptop lol. Got the correct tune loaded, started the car and loaded it up.

I'm gonna skip over Friday and focus on the race Saturday and Sunday for now. Will come back to the Streets of Willow track day later.

So Saturday comes around and I start the car up in the morning and get it through tech early. My buddy David and I were both at the Streets event the day before and drove from Willow Springs to Buttonwillow afterwards. Following the Streets event, I swapped out my RC1's out and mounted the Toyos, but decided I'd wait till morning to load up the power-limiting tune. I won't be doing this again. After getting the car through tech, I start loading the low power tune onto my car, and accidentally yank out the USB cable halfway through. The ECU freaks out and bricks itself, anti theft light starts flashing, car won't crank, the whole nine yards. I've had this happen before and have found that the ECU can only be recovered by flashing the factory ROM into it, and then reflashing your custom tune. Normally it's a quick fix but of course my laptop sensed the urgency and decided to crash and reboot right after. Then I couldn't get ECUtek to work smoothly... Finally, 40 minutes later, I got the tune successfully flashed onto the ECU. Made it to grid for the first session with 5 minutes to spare.



So one of my buddies was at The Circuit two weeks ago. This guy's a good driver but I get the sense that he... embellishes things sometimes? Dude drives an S650 Mustang GT with aero and the whole nine yards and I love him but I think he's more car than driver at times (says the Miata guy). Anyways, he hit me up after his event here two weeks ago talking about how much worse the road surface was than earlier in the year. Said everyone in the Mustang club was tearing up their tires and running two seconds slower than before, etc etc. Yeah man, sounds like excuses but whatever.

So session one comes around, temps are perfect in the mid-50's. I get a couple warmup laps in traffic then the field spreads out and I get out for my first flier. 1:59.60. What the heck? I must be off pace. I managed to run a 1:57 flat here in April. Two more unhindered hot laps. 1:59.23. Dude am I tripping? The car feels great, I must be slacking somewhere. I pull in after the session and find the same trend among everyone else's times. The upper TT3 cars are a handful of seconds up on me as usual, all the familiar names are right about where you'd expect them to be in comparison. I guess the road surface really has degraded. F*ck it, as long as it's not just me I'm not gonna trip about it haha.

Luckily, my 1:59 was good for 1st place in class. If I'm being honest, there wasn't a ton of tight competition this weekend. Team Rotary Heads' star driver wasn't able to make it, and Mick Blue Racing's spec E46 was only racing ST5 this weekend, not Time Trial. I should be glad about that, their fastest qualifying lap was 3/4 of a second faster than I ran all weekend.


Sunday results. Mick Blue would've had me beat if they entered TT5 but I'm still taping that trophy to my toolbox.

The rest of Saturday went really well. Session two, our TT leader Stu ended up gridded behind me in his TT4 K-swapped NA. Stu and I are normally somewhat close in pace but always end up gridded a few spots away from each other. I've never actually chased or been chased by him. We went out for the second session and ran neck and neck with each other for like six laps. With my car having the edge in the corners and his car having the edge in the straights, it was a perfect super exciting matchup. I didn't PB but Stu ran a high 1:58 after I let him by on lap ~4, making him my personal target competition for Sunday.

After the track went cold, Saturday evening was super fun. There was a beer garden at the main building, sim racing, and someone brought a couple drift karts to let everyone rip around. A few beers were consumed, some cones were relocated to the pits, and some super epic driving ensued.



Probably the peak of my driving career, tbh.

Sunday started well enough. I was pretty close to the front of the grid after Saturday's result, and I had nothing but open track the whole session. Managed to bring my PB down to a 1:58.55 on lap 4, just barely edging out Stu, who was unfortunately having brake issues and wouldn't be able to push it the rest of the day.

Then session two grid comes along. I'm idling in the hot pits with a minute to go before the session and my car suddenly dies. Anti theft light comes on, no crank, nothing. I call to the flagger and we push it across the road to the regular pits and I run to get my laptop. The OBDII port has power but the laptop won't connect to the ECU. I pull up a fuse diagram on my phone and find out that this car has three separate ECU fuses, WTF? Pull each of them and find the 10A "ECU 2" fuse in cavity 21 is blown. I put another 10a in it, blows. 15a blows too. 20a is enough to start the car. I start it and drive back to my van to diagnose.

So I searched and searched and couldn't find a single bit of documentation online about what components this fuse protects. I made a post asking about it on one of the NC Facebook groups then started making educated guesses. There was only so much I could do without a test light and multimeter, but I had some ideas I wanted to try first anyways. I put a 20a fuse back in the slot, started the car and pulled codes from the ECU. Nothing aside from the usual codes due to disconnected emissions stuff. Bummer. A pretty common issue on these cars with aftermarket exhausts is the upstream O2 sensor wiring making contact with the midpipe or just plain melting from the heat. Aftermarket headers relocate the O2 from the top of the collector to further down in the exhaust system, requiring the wiring to be extended and run close to the header outlet and rest of the exhaust. So I jacked the car up and found some of my O2 wiring near the header was pretty brittle. The corrugated sheathing I was using in one area was getting stiff and the wires under it were kinda stuck together, so I cut that segment of wiring out and spliced in some new wiring.


Semi-melted segment of O2 sensor wiring. Ran a razor blade through the electrical tape/etc but couldn't separate the heat shrink portions from each other. All melted together.

New fuse, cranked the car over, nothing. Fuse still blew. Alright, no issue with the O2 wiring. I checked every ground in the engine bay I could, cleaned 'em, removed and retightened 'em. No go. Pulled the connectors to damn near every component in the engine bay and tried again. Fuse still blew. I spent around three hours looking for a culprit with no luck and then finally got a comment from one of the sages on the Facebook group. "Eng fuse 2 basically only powers the MAF sensor and the EVAP leak detection pump".

Holy hell, I didn't even consider the evap system or anything back near the fuel tank. I got under the rear of the car, disconnected the leak detection pump up near the top of the differential, and got back inside the car to take a look at the wiring.



Oh yeah, that uhhhh... might be an issue. How the heck did I not smell that? The wiring to the leak detection pump was completely melted all the way from behind the passenger seat to the connector of the pump outside of the car.


No stripping. That's just how the wires were when I found them.

So I left the pump unplugged and clipped the wires. New 10a fuse in the box. Boom, car starts right up. Crisis averted! I made it to session 4 with ten minutes to spare. Ended up running session 4 and then pulled in with 20 minutes to go before the "bonus" untimed TT session at the end of the day. I decided to do a proper send off for this car's last time on track N/A, and loaded up the "kill tune" for one more session. Only two other cars and I showed up for the bonus session so it was basically a wide open track. Temps were still ~15-20* warmer than in the morning, but it wasn't blazing hot outside so I figured I could best my PB. Ran 6 laps and got down to a 1:58.40. Ehh, good enough. I pulled the car onto the trailer, hung out with the guys for a bit, then took a shower before heading home.



Couldn't ask much more from the car this weekend. Aside from the wiring issue and my own ineptitude with the laptop, she slayed it and continued to punch above her weight. I'm getting familiar with a lot of the drivers in our TT group now and a bunch of the TT3 guys groaned when I said I was putting a turbo on and moving this car up come February. 2026 NASA season should be fun. Maybe we'll make some more people angry haha.

Turbo install this week. Onward!

 

Holy hell man, your posts are always so entertaining! Way to end the season with no question that adding power is the right choice, actually psyched to see how you do with the big boys next year.

And in the meantime super psyched to watch the turbo build unfold 🍿!

 

Killer job Zak! Congrats on another awesome weekend and nicely done with all the diagnosis. Good stuff on the power gains too. Basically 200whp, with a broad power band, damn. That’s sweet.
Funny about the TT3 people groaning. Looking forward to your turbo updates!

 

As excited as I am for the turbo build, I'm sad that all the butt kicking with a junkyard n/a 2.5 will cease...

 

Turbo install time sounds like a good opportunity to go though and completely gut the OE harnessing of things you no longer need.

Oooorrr build a new, fancy harness from scratch, but that's time intensive... ain't noone got time for wiring when you got turbos to install.

 

Haha, thanks all! The *** kicking shall continue next year?€? hopefully. Just against faster cars. This thing?€™s currently in the mix with the V8?€™s, but it would be cool to be ahead of all of them. We?€™ll see.

Wing, I agree. I don?€™t have the patience to do a custom harness at this time but I?€™ll be yanking more stuff before GTA for sure. All of the emissions stuff is already disconnected, but fully removing those circuits rather than just chopping the connectors would probably be prudent. I still don?€™t know if the Evap pump just burned itself out or if the wires actually shorted somewhere, and I?€™m probably not going to put in the effort required to find out at the moment.

Speaking of effort. I got some stuff bolted in tonight. Intercooler is mounted, as is the manifold, oil cooler is relocated as well (as it was sitting right where the intercooler goes), and the turbo?€™s mocked up. Praise be to V-bands. Already got a couple things added to the list. Charge pipe between the intercooler and TB is gonna need to be trimmed due to where the Fab9 manifold located the TB. I also might have to make a cut in my ECU relocation bracket to add some clearance. There?€™s basically zero space between one of the ECU harnesses and the aforementioned charge pipe.





Space between the exhaust housing and brake lines is gonna be somewhat tight. Top priority after getting it running is gonna be dialing in some heat shielding. I?€™m gonna get a turbo blanket ordered and also might try to get the upper downpipe ceramic coated before GTA.

 

Great result on the weekend!

This thing is going to be seriously fast... but you definitely want to spend some time on heat management. Even street driving the FM setup, I was surprised at the increase in underhood temps. Your hood vents should help with that, but you'll be pushing more heat on the track. And the brake lines and ABS module are very close to the turbo on an NC.

The other thing you'll probably want to start thinking about is gearing. Even with 240ish HP, the factory gearing is pretty short. I'm looking into a 3.73 gearset that Mazda Motorsports sells... there some conflicting info about it fitting NB diffs, but I'm pretty sure it's a euro gear set for the NC. Trying to confirm... Part # MA07-27-110B

 

Hooo boy it's happening!

And big +1 on heat management, but I'm sure Zak knows this. It took me years of development to finally get my car fully sorted to where I don't even look at temps while on track anymore (I have safeties and those will kick in and let me know if something is off). I'd consider removing that radiator shroud altogether, re-visiting your ducting so that every single crack is sealed from the mouth to the radiator, etc.

And yeah those brake lines near the turbo need heat wrapped and moved out of the way as much as possible.

E85 and relatively low boost pressures will help here.

 

Yo, thanks Roda! Yeah, heat management is going to be paramount going forward. Luckily, I've already got all my coolant lines somewhat out of the way but the brake lines and ABS... Yeah, less than optimal. Not much room to move the turbo closer to the valve cover, or to move the lines out of the way. Turbo blanket and crafty heat shielding are going to have to happen. I've got fire sleeve to wrap the brake lines in too but am going to fit that after the initial install just so I have less in the way while checking for leaks/etc.

Agree with you on gearing too. Luckily these cars are "geared" a little taller with the 4.10 than an NA/NB due to tire diameter, but I suspect I'll be rowing gears pretty quick with the added power and the 6 speed. I really need to run through KPower's gearing calculator again. Last I remember, they had both NC 6 speed gear ratio presets in their calculator. As far as the 3.73 gearset, I thought Mazda spec'd them in some EU or Japanese market cars. Could've sworn I'd seen Prestige or some other reseller having complete 3.7 diffs up for grabs. Another thing I should research but haven't had time to because track days and turbo stuff lol.

Oh yeah, so Streets of Willow.



Lots more to unpack here. I think Friday might have been the busiest track day of my life, I was driving sessions, getting ride along requests from everyone and their brother, instructing all sorts of first timers and I think I had three people ask me to take their cars out for hot laps (more on that later). My car ran faster laps than I'd hoped for, I got a killer PB and the new walls weren't as scary as I thought they were going to be. It was a good day, although I was exhausted by 2pm.


So earlier this year, Willow Springs was sold to some sort of private equity firm, and all of us were scared that the track was going to become a members-only venue, and no longer be available to the public. Luckily, this didn't happen. The buyer partnered with Singer Vehicle Design/Auto Museum in Los Angeles and began POURING money into the venue. Costs are going to go up next year but they've already done lots of renovations to the track. These were pretty needed, as Willow Springs has been... rustic, and the facilities have been all but falling apart for some time.

The first round of renovations have been pretty huge. They repaved and renovated the go kart track and a lot of the facility buildings now look like four star hotels. The final recent renovation, though, has been pretty contentious. They redid the entirety of the smaller (extremely Miata-friendly) Streets of Willow track, and made amendments to make it FIA legal (Level 2 or something I heard? Dunno the exact details). This included paving runoff in most corners instead of dirt, and installing TONS of tire walls. We here in SoCal are not used to having walls on our tracks at all, and there was significant outcry at this, especially because SOW is our resident track that most beginners get their feet wet on. There are already plenty of videos circulating the internet of people hitting the tire walls here and it's only been open with the new renovations for a month and a half.


Kinda looks like COTA now.

So since the repave, I will note that I was a bit scared to return to SOW. Especially knowing that I'd bang my head against a wall if I binned my car at a chill event the day before a race weekend. Also notable, the general consensus is that the track is one second slower in either direction, even with the "short" skid pad route. Going in, I didn't expect to get a comparable time to my PB, which was a 1:23.2 in my NA.

So I go out for my first session following my buddy Tim in his 420whp EVO. Tim's a great driver and almost exclusively goes to this track, so I trust him. Our cars excel at totally different parts of the track but he's usually just a little faster than I am. We go and do four or so laps to get a feel for the surroundings and then Tim waves me by and I go for a flier.


Ok so I don't know if I'm just lacking in survival instinct, but I get on my first flier and am just completely indifferent to the barriers. I thought they were going to ruin my day, but I'm just not seeing any issue with them. I set a couple decent laps (for a first session), and pull in with a mid-1:23. Hell yes!


I'd end up getting down to a 1:22.4 the next session. Almost a second faster than my PB in the NA, and much faster than my CW 1:23.5 PB last time I came here in the NC (CW is faster by about a second here)! Good times, I was satiated with the day.




But it wasn't that simple. This is my buddy Josh's event, and a handful of the guys and I were made instructors for the day. I ended up helping with registration, and held my own drivers meeting and download meeting for the beginner group after the first session. There wasn't any trouble on track the first session, but the first-timers said they were all very confused on the line. We ended up coming to the conclusion that I'd lead the group out in my car for the second session, pointing by a couple cars per lap so that everyone could see the line and get some experience with passing. They absolutely loved it, and by midday I had a line of people waiting to ride passenger in my car.

I also had a couple folks and buddies ask me to take them for rides in their own cars too, the most noteworthy of which being...

THIS DUDE'S 1990 EXOCET HELL YES MAN!


Bucket list item ticked off, this car was so rad to drive haha. I forgot what it's like driving a stock power NA, but the 245 Maxxis RC1's this gentleman put on more than made up for it. Super fun handful of laps.

At the end of the day, I swapped out the RC1's on my car for the Toyo R's and my buddy David and I made the two hour drive from Willow Springs to Buttonwillow. We continued our recent ritual of stopping for hole in the wall Thai food on the way and ended up getting to BW at around 10, just in time to take a shower and knock. I was already nice and tired out for the next two days haha.

 

Some of those walls are pretty terrible, take a little extra entry space or a wiggle on exit and you're smacking them. If anyone actually races this track and doesn't get room entering the chicane, their only choice will be hit the car next to them or the tire wall.

 

Well I'm glad to see Willow Springs isn't getting torn down. I feared that would be it's fate when I heard it sold. I can't imagine I'll ever run out there, but it would be a bummer to lose such a historic circuit. I'm glad to see they're trying to give it a new life if nothing else.

There's a section in Ultimate Speed Secrets about mentality when driving around walls. I can't remember all the details, but "Don't think about Elephants" jumps into my mind when I start thinking about things that are counter productive.

Oh, and good driving by the way. I've been keeping up with the youtube clips.

 

Wow... it's been quite a while since I've been on Streets, but my question is why put walls up when there's lots of runoff? Seems like gravel traps would be a lot safer than what they've done... hell, leaving it like it was seems safer?