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After my overfilled oil and valve cover with no baffles incident, I decided I wanted to invest in some legitimately good catch cans. Of course, Radium makes legitimately good stuff, so that's what I started looking for and that's what I bought.
But this is me we're talking about, so of course I bought something used rather than spending money on new and shiny things.
And boy, are these used.
I could have just bought another Moroso Mini can for the PCV side, but what would be the fun in that? This pair of cans was originally part of the Radium EVO X dual catch can set, but then someone wrecked the car and I scooped them up. The Evo brackets are bent and the fittings are wrong for the Miata hose sizes but I can make things work. The car these came off of was absolutely PUKING some rancid *** oil out of the crankcase breather port at the back of the valve cover, and the seller didn't bother to drain it before shipping. Nothing like a big box full oily styrofoam peanuts to start things off Did I mention theses things reek? Because they absolutely reek of spent oil. Borf.
I'll pull these apart and clean them, and I've already ordered Miata appropriate brackets from Radium and AN to hose barb fittings from Jegs. The Radium fittings are SUPER nice, but not $30+/ea super nice. I'll update once it's all installed.
I'm not going to lie, these Radium cans are uncomfortably nice. I've have I Moroso Mini which is nice, but its not Radium nice. I had a Mishimoto in the past, but it struck me as generic eBay tier quality trash so I immediately sent it back. If I was building a dedicated racecar, the Radium Comp can would be at the top of my list. I considered buying some tube and making a set on the baby lathe, but man, it was easier to just pull the trigger on these guys. No ragerts. I could gush about the finish or the attention to detail in the manufacturing but I won't because nobody comes here to listen to my mental diarrhea.
Or maybe that is why you come here? I'm not here to judge. (Well, maybe a little)
For sure! Even better when you find dealz. All in, my cost for these Radiums will still be less than even a pair of Mini Moroso cans. I think my leftover Mini will be a hand-me-down to the Dirty NA as that engine seems to make a TON of blow-by and has legitimate crank case ventilation issues. Some of that is wear, but the bulk of that is due to how the JRSC has the vent plumbed.
Oh, what a fun weekend. It started at the track, but not in the way you would expect:
I love hard work, I could watch people do it all day!
Helped @afm assemble a lift in his shop space, which was actually super fun. We got almost all of it together in 1 day and managed to escape with all our fingers and toes. High 5!
A Wild @codrus also stopped by after running the NASA event, so it was cool to get to say hi.
Sunday started by replacing the passenger side hydraulic engine mount on the wifes 2007 Ford Penalty Box:
Its on the left, under that aluminum bracket. And the AC lines. And the radiator hoses. And the coolant expansion tank. And the cruise control actuator. And a fuel line. And a wiring harness...
Anyway, everything that Ford, Mercury & Mazda stuffed this 3.0 Duratec v6 into uses this same jelly filled mount and they all fail every 4-8 years from internal hemorrhage. It double sucks because when they do fail, whatever skooge is inside them stays inside, there is no external indication of failure. It's on its 3rd passenger side mount, the last one made it 6 years (although 2 of those were the car sitting in the driveway during the pandemic) so it was due. When the mount collapses, the entire weight of the engine drops onto the exterior body of the mount and there is just a 5mm thick rubber "hat" there to absorb clunking and vibration, you can kinda see it in the above pic. It makes a hell of a racket and deep vibration at idle, especially when you are at a stop in gear. It's been making me crazy so it needed to be addressed.
Unfortunately, the operation was a success and the patient survived to live on. Wife actually said this morning "Is the car quieter? Did you do something to it?" which is about all I can hope for. I call that success.
To reward myself for not smashing the Ford to pieces, I played with the Miata. The brackets and hose showed up from Radium and the fittings from JEEEEEEGS!!! so I got everything assembled.
Good news is that the PO never read the instructions so there wasn't locktite on anything, so it all came apart and went back together super easy. Bad news is that the PO never read the instructions so there wasn't any oil on any of the o-rings, so most of them took some damage. They are fine for now but I'll need to replace them eventually. Remember boys, never go in dry.
The source EVO X used 3x -10AN ORB to -8AN male and 1x -10AN ORB to -6AN male coming off the can, but the Miata kit is set up with 4x -10AN ORB to -6AN male off the can and then 4x -6AN female to 90° push lock 3/8 barbed fittings. To buy 3x ORB and 3x -6AN to 90° push lock 3/8 barbed fittings, from Radium, was going to be $104 before shipping. I really like Radium parts, but holy crap.
So in order to use the -8AN male fittings that came with the cans, I had to do some digging and I managed to find a -8AN female to 90° push lock 3/8 barbed fitting. For like $11 ea.
Its a JEEEEEEGS!!! house-brand fitting, PN 110850. The quality of these fittings are not great, I wouldn't trust them for anything I actually care about like fuel or oil. Maaaaaybe something low pressure fuel like a return system, but they still aren't great. As far as I can tell no reputable manufacturer makes these because its probably a stupid idea to allow your customers to hook something -8AN to a 3/8 hose barb. I can only see that ending poorly for Sally StockCar and Robert RockCrawler. Proper systems using AN hoses shouldn't need adapters like this. Oh well, these will work FINE for a PCV and valve cover vent system.
The fit is, of course, excellent. Because Radium. I, of course, didn't order anywhere near enough hose. Because moron. I ended up just looping the rear can with some surplus hose to keep the rocks out, and I'll hook it up later once I source more hose.
Something I've been fighting with off and on between this car and the Dirty NA is the radiator cap. The redneck circle track radiator in the Dirty NA and the big chungus Trackspeed Radiator in the NB both use the same size cap, but of the 3-4 caps I've purchased, only the cap that originally came with the TSE does the proper air purge and coolant draw-back from the overflow. I thought I'd blown the head gasket in the Dirty NA again after replacing the legitimately blown head gasket, so this has been an ongoing struggle. Its bad enough that I've been moving the good cap between the two cars depending on what I want to drive. Well, @afm got tired of hearing me whine about it and bought me another radiator cap to try out:
So I had to install it and try it out. I believe the TSE supplied cap is 16lbs so this one at 1.3bar (18.85lbs) offers a little more pressure, but not so much that I'd really be concerned about it. Bummer part is that it doesn't have the sacrificial anode like the TSE supplied cap so I'll just have to tell myself not to worry about that. Next step was to try it out.
Current racecar weightloss plan is to let it sit in my driveway for 6mo at a shot, then take it to the DIY car wash and see how much clear coat I can knock off of it. Plan seems to be progressing as expected. Aired up the tires, checked the oil and coolant, put the updated registration sticker on the plate, stole the one working battery out of the Dirty NA and went to take care of business.
50 Shades Of Orange is looking pretty good, the bronze Gen2 6ULs and chunky RS4s looking quite resplendent, if I do say so myself. Yes, I left the numbers on it so the CHP would have something to worry about.
After washing it I spent a couple of uneventful hours driving up into the Sierra Nevada foothills and around town reminding myself of how much I like this car, and how I need to keep driving it. I'm very glad we had some good weather and I was able to get out and take advantage of it. I still need to fix the ignition switch harness, because its still a problem. I was going to do it on Sunday but went for the aforementioned drive instead. For now I just wanted to drive the car again.
Radium cans came out really nice dude. Nice score on those
Thanks! But really, that's just Radium making nice things. Fitment is really, really good and it dropped right in between the shock tower gussets and lined up perfectly with the existing threaded holes in the chassis. The only place I deviated slightly from the instructions was a small, thin piece of rubber to keep it from rubbing on the body in the vertical orientation. They really are a nice bit of kit.
I got lucky with the dealz otherwise cheap bastard that I am, I'd not have spent that kind of cheddar on something like a catch can. But if you are feeling balleur, I don't think you can go wrong with Radium.
Why spend time driving your car when you can instead spend hours sitting on your cold *** driveway randomly typing commands into a terminal and hoping for the best?
**** you Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is like a free couch sitting on the curb in the rain. You can bring it into your home, try to sanitize it and clean off the weird stains, dry it out, soak it with fabreeze to try to knock down the cigarette and wet dog smell. But in the end it doesn't matter because no matter how many hours you dump into it, the first time you sit down it will reward you with a rusty hypodermic needle in your *******.
Thanks Ubuntu, for stealing even more of my life. Go **** yourself.
While swapping dressers this morning, I found this in the back of a drawer:
What is it, you might ask? Why, its a random serial to USB converter. I have no idea how long its been there, where it came from, or if it even works. Fuckit, lets plug it in. Step 1 was to swap back to the Windows 10 SSD in my laptop, but that only took a couple mintues.
Oh, look at that. Its a Prolific and its on COM4. Like ******* magic. Notice the time stamp in the bottom right?
So I downloaded a copy of MLV and TS to make sure I had up to date versions. Installed them, then found my keys, my straight through serial cable, put on pants, found my old man glasses and headed outside.
Holy ******* ****! It detected the ECU! It also pulled the correct firmware so that I could actually do something with it.
Bam! Tune saved.
10. goddamn. minutes. You see this ****? This is why I hate Ubuntu.
Current time is 11:52. Its taken me longer to make this post than it did to get the tune off the ECU in my car thanks to an operating system that "just works"
10-20-2021, 05:45 PM
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Did I mention theses things reek? Because they absolutely reek of spent oil. Borf.
