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My first autocross points even was a success and I am pretty happy with the results. 126 cars at the event. After PAX I was sitting 86th time-wise. My raw time put me 41st time-wise. Finished 2nd out of 4 cars in SSM. I was 4 seconds behind the SSM winner. He was in a fully prepped corvette on Hoosiers. I was 6 seconds ahead of 3rd. N/A powered Miata. Obviously SSM wasn't super competitive at the first race. No idea if more SSM cars will show up in the future.
As the car sits today, I gave up a solid second in just braking zones. I am struggling to figure out when I should be braking and end up always initiating my braking zone way too soon.
With a 6 month at home, I drive the car casually way less and autocrossing has been a ton of fun. At this point, I think I am going to slowly make it a dedicated autocross car. By slow I mean years most likely.
I have poly bushings and SADfab rear hubs waiting to go on the car. I am on the waiting list for SADfab's bronze bearing retrofit kit and will wait to put everything on at the same time. Hopefully, I can get those before the end of the summer.
As soon as I get some sort of indication on the availability of the bronze bearing retrofit I will be ordering Xidas to replace my flying Miata tokico kit. I will also probably pick up subframe gussets and a Wilwood prop valve at the same time.
After all the above is done I'll hit up Tarmac 88 for corner balancing.
This is the only photo I found from the last event someone took:
As of this past weekend, the car has:
Poly bushings with SADfab bronze retrofit.
SADfab rear hubs.
Supermiata upper ball joins.
Flying Miata ELBJ & R-type tie rod ends.
Supermiata sway bar kit.
Racing Beat Sway Bar Bracket Bracing.
Just waiting on my Xidas. Much excite.
I also learned the hard way that the FUCA must be installed prior to the racing beat sway bar brace. Otherwise, that super long bolt won't be able to make it past the brace to go in the arms.
I had my second autocross event will all of the above hardware installed. I ended up getting quite a bit of rubbing in the front, which I am assuming is because of the bronze retrofit reducing resistance and making the car act like it has softer springs. Overall the car felt better and my times reflected that. I finished first in SSM this time and puts me in the points lead. There isn't a ton of competition in that class week to week but I am having a ton of fun and that's all that matters.
My xidas showed up and I am very excited to get them installed. I also picked up a set of BroFAB front hubs. I am hoping the suspension + wheel bearings are now pretty bulletproof.
I also started installing some singular hood vents and unfortunately, the vinyl template pulled all the paint off my hood. Much sad. I am looking at getting it repainted. I am also looking at getting singular motor mounts. My Mazda competition ones don't appear to be cutting it.
Xidas are now on the car. After the 50 first miles, I really didn't see the hype. But after a couple of hundred miles and an autocross event...wow, just wow. It helps that I stopped by Tarmac88 and had the car aligned and corner balanced. Dan is a great dude and I am really happy I visited his shop. Car was a riot at the last autocross event.
I also got my singular hood vents installed on my repainted hood. The body shop nailed the color match and I absolutely love how these look.
I also found a great deal on a 11.75" BBK with superlites. They don't quite clear my 15x8 6ULs but I think with a touch of grinding and a 5mm spacer they might work. It might be silly/stupid to try and make them fit but I really want to install them and can't find any larger 6ULs. I really don't want to put any other rim on the car as I like the look of the 6ULs so much. Waiting on the dual master cylinder and brake pads to show up.
Xidas are now on the car. After the 50 first miles, I really didn't see the hype. But after a couple of hundred miles and an autocross event...wow, just wow. It helps that I stopped by Tarmac88 and had the car aligned and corner balanced. Dan is a great dude and I am really happy I visited his shop. Car was a riot at the last autocross event.
With 1000/500 rates and a 54107 front sway bar, one shouldn't expect the plushness that most testimonials rave about with the lower rates most customers order. Glad they worked in their natural habitat though
Full disclosure...I panicked about a week after I ordered 1000s and picked up 800s on Amazon. I swapped to those before they went on the car. Using the 1000s as the motivation of something to grow into.
Installed the Wilwood Brake Master Cylinder Upgrade Kit from good-win-racing. Probably the most nerve-wracking/hardest thing I have done yet. Bending the lines and trying not to kink and the 2020 upgrade of the kit changes the hardlines to premade stainless steel flexible lines. The lines are really nice but the instructions could use updating for them. I think they could also have an option if you're going to run the Wilwood proportion valve to have both line match to eliminate an OEM hardline. I am guessing they don't sell enough to justify the added complexity, or I installed it completely wrong
I spent forever double-checking the distance and throw of the OEM master vs the Wilwood when used with the OEM pedal assembly. It appeared that I needed a hair more initial "poke" of the pushrod. I pulled the rod and added a small washer to pump it out ever so slightly. Photo of taking it off:
I also had a very hard time bleeding them. I bench bleed it as the instructions said, but never touched the bleeders built into the master until several hours of beating my head against the wall. I could not build pressure with the pedal no matter how much bleeding I did at the wheels. As soon as I cracked those two bleeders, bam...pressure. I didn't touch them because the instructions didn't mention them. Live and learn, like most things at this level, everything is going to be a bit customized. Overall I am pretty happy with the routing and how it worked out. I made a little bracket that ties the prop valve and the front line splitter together to give both some bracing. It's not in the picture I took though.
I bed in my HP+ pads in my Superlites. Initial pedal impressions feel really good, won't really know till Sundays autocross. The HP+ pads spark pretty good, or at least it's very noticeable at night. At first, I thought something was wrong, double checked everything and nothing appears off. This is my first "performance" pad and some googling indicates its common.
Autocrossing on the new brake setup was fantastic. So much more control/modulation. Night and day vs my sport brakes and stock master with unknown pads. I think I found a great combo of shock clicks and tire pressures. Combine that with the awesome brakes and I had a very consistent set of runs.
I don't think I believe run 6 timing. When I came through the finish the clock said 58.0XX and it felt like a great run. Car in front of me was high 60s and the car behind was low 60s. I don't know where that number came from, I know I didn't get any cones. It wouldn't have changed my placing, I finished second in my class behind a v8 240 with big arrow and wheels who ran 55s. Finishing 22nd overall with 40+ SSM/SM/CAMS/CAMT feels good. The car has a long way to go but I think this is a good start.
Overall very happy with the results.
I managed to make it into our challenge event, which is a head to head competition of the top 16 drivers who face off to see who can get closest to their fastest lap of the day. The closest time moves on and you are allowed to break out twice until the money rounds.
Won first round and second round. Reset my time in the 3rd round to 57.8xx which put me racing for money. Final round I ran a 57.9xx and gave me the victory. The breakouts make it weird but I got $100 cash and $100 summit racing gift card for the win.
Here is the area we have to work with and what our last event course was. Not my car or time, stolen from our FB group. The course is known to close to a mile or more at times.
I did a thing and bought a tow vehicle. My wife has complained about me leaving her at home with our 9-month-old while I autocross. This was our compromise. Mint 2 owner 2011 GMC Sierra 1500 Z71 4x4 extended cab with heavy-duty tow package. PO installed 18 inch OEM rims, Lund tonneau, rhino liner, upgraded speakers, and keep the underside oil sprayed.
I did some things. Found an 800 dollar hardtop that matched really well. Bought a big **** and deuce kit from ninelivesracing. Made a DIY splitter to hopefully balance the wing. It's more than likely our last autocross event is this tomorrow and it a doubleheader. Really looking forward to trying out the splitter/wing combo. I absolutely love how the car looks now.
It's a blessing and a curse being so close to Tarmac88. 15x8 6uls w/RE-71Rs I ran this year and the 15X9.5 Konig Freeforms w/ Proxy RRs for next year. 205 vs 245. Much excite.
Finally got some time to get the car ready for this season. I started out by making the front splitter easily added/removed. Very happy with it. It's overkill but I can stand on it with limited flexing and I think it's weak enough to fail with minimal damage to the car.
I added ducting that I forgot to take a photo of. Eventually, I want to cut the rest of the ears off that I welding in originally and it should allow me to make the ducting even better.
I also bought a new trailer. 18' with 2' dovetail. Brakes on both axles. Paid $2700. Trailers are stupid expensive right now. New was only like 15% more than used around me. I bought some weld on d-rings and went to work. Sorry for the insta story but I forgot to take a photo of welding them in because I was doing it at 11 PM the night before a test N tune.
Here is the complete rig. I have never towed a car before. I have never pulled a trailer until a week ago. At least twice on my maiden voyage I looked in my rearview mirror and scared myself when I saw a car immediately behind me.
The first autocross points event was this past weekend at my local track. I spend all week making a winch setup for my trailer. I wanted it to be removable so I can store it in my garage since my trailer sits outside. Welded a harbor freight hitch receiver to the front of my trailer and built a platform for a battery and 2500lb harbor freight winch to sit on and welded it to a trailer hitch. Works great! It uses a spare Miata battery and doesn't seem to struggle.
This was my first event on my new to me Proxey RRs. It was cold but boy did they still work. I cant wait to see what they do with some heat in them. My pyro gauge had them at 90F max. I managed to win my class and post a top 10 raw time out of the 100+ cars there. It's largely a Corvette/Camaro fest and it feels really good to go this fast.
1/2 is a former Formula SAE car.
3 is a mustang that finished first in PAX times.
4 Corvette
5 Lotus 7 replica
6/7/8 is Camaro/Corvette/Camaro
I also finally got my raspberry pi dash installed and working.
I had a break in autocross events so I took apart my spare 1.8 engine I got basically for free and found out why it was free.
Thrust-bearing failure. It ate into the main cap and crank. I don't believe this is worth repairing. Oh well.
A small update, the car is now on an MS3X. I kept running into inconsistent crank sync issues. It appears that pot tuning on a pre-assembled MS3X from DIYautotune.com is different than a DIY MS3X assembly. Using trubokitty.com instructions for tuning pots made it almost impossible to get the ECU to sync. Use the recommended pot tuning from the manual got me running/driving but still had an intermittent crank sync error. Almost always at very light load between 2.5k-3k RPM. What appears to have fixed it was turning on tach period rejection in the noise filtering section. I am running Toyota COPs.
05-27-2020, 02:38 PM
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