Still interested in the results for the sake of knowledge! Is this head going in Lazarus?

 

I've been busy working on my friends' cars the last few weeks and haven't looked at Scooter very much, but I did get a few drives in this week. The throttles had been getting stickier after the dyno day, so I lubbed all of the joints and blades which seemed to help. Haven't driven it enough to see if it helps with the higher idle at higher coolant temps but I'm hopeful. I want to do a quick glance over this weekend, change the oil, spark plugs, and flush the coolant which I've been putting off for too long. Otherwise the car is good to go for Flyin' Miata Summer Camp! Will be doing the Friday trackday and have high expectations for these Nankangs. I also procured a Racing Beat muffler but I'm not sure I'll have time to slap it on before FM. We'll see!

 

In the drives I did this week I swapped from air box to open air filter to see how each would react to heatsoak and how close they would come back to ambient temps. I didn't bother pulling the logs because the results weren't even close. The airbox dropped close to 38-40C (100-104F) after a few minutes of movement, while the airfilter never came back down from 50-55C (120-130F) after being heatsoaked. That's likely 10 whp worth of power loss at 50C!

 

Dang, that's huge! Jealous of all you guys going out to FMSC here shortly. Can't wait to read the post-event writeups. Get a ride in one of their turbo'd NC's for me please lol.

 

Tis the season for CLT/IAT mods I suppose. My throttle body was a tiny bit sticky until I adjusted the little set screw that limits the travel. I opened it up the smallest amount to prevent the blade from completely slamming into the body and haven't had issues since. I also put some white lithium grease on the outside of the blade at one point. I don't remember that making a huge difference and it seemed like it would pick up contaminants and gum up over time, so take that with a grain of salt.

 

You gotta come join us sometime man! I will do my best to catch a ride along and record it. It will likely be the most popular attraction this FMSC though.

I must admit that I didn't consider how one of them may be jamming a into the runner. I'll do some more fiddling with it this week because today's drive had the same rev hang issue, although the pedal and throttles feel smoother with the little lubricant I applied.

 

Late to respond but no, a customer's '00, Laz is only getting Volvo springs and new valves after they were destroyed during our first race. Head shop is taking what feels like forever, race was 6 weeks ago, I think the head got dropped off 4 weeks ago, but I've been plenty busy so I guess I shouldn't complain. We've discussed cams for Laz, I'd really love to do a square top vs. VICS dyno comparison first, I'm fairly certain there's damn near no difference on stock engines. The cams really benefit from 7000rpm+, which isn't practical for an enduro build. I'll be comparing the runs under 7000rpm for sure. As you can see from the graph I posted, it's about 5hp less at 7000.

 

Here ya go, red line at 125hp is a bone stock '00 engine/ECU, with RB header, midpipe, muffler. AEM intake. Green 134hp line is Laz for reference, refreshed BP4W block/pistons with VVT head, custom intake, Link ECU. Blue 166hp is the same bone stock '00 block with a ported head, flat top, supertech double springs, Maruha cams, and a ~.120" compression shave. Ended up installed a Cometic .044" head gasket to make me feel better. Stock cam gears, so there's probably a little more in it with a S2 throttle body, port matched flat top, and some adjustable cam gears and a few hours with a dial indicator.


Pic of just how clean this 30k '00 is.

 

I love those cams. We have used them in a lot of our race and project cars. Same as the old Tomei cams.

 

Definitely a fan. Seems to like ~1100rpm idle, has a tiny lope, should have an easy ~5-7hp with a little extra work on the intake manifold and throttle body, and like I said some adjustable cam gears. I’m curious what it’d do without the aggressive head shave. Tensioner is bottomed out.

Really wanna do this on Laz, but that’s another ~$2k that’s tough to spend! But 8k is so glorious. Sorta flat lines above 7500, but doesn’t drop off at all.

 

Wow. Thank you very much Curly. That's great information and a very clean NB. Which Maruha cams are those specifically? They have the F-Cam (252/256) and Race Cam (264/264,272,288). I had earmarked the F-Cam based on Emilio's previous recommendation of keeping a low duration with higher lift.

 

The 256 or 264. Shorter is better IMO. The BP heads just don't flow enough to give a really broad powerband with long cams. Longer cams just push a narrow band up where the bottom end struggles to stay together. Better to have a strong area under the curve 5500-7500 than a bit more peak at 7200-8200.

 

Indeed the race 264s. I'm really happy with the power band, I wouldn't want to push it up any further unless it's a sprint race car. Port the square top to the head and open up the exhaust and I'm sure it would continue to climb into the 170s.

On another note, I also temporarily used the Link's internal MAP sensor to help calibrate the OE MAP sensor, and now it's using that for the primary load source. I absolutely detest running a vacuum line to the NB's ECU location. I'll post the calibration in the Link section when I'm back in front of my work laptop.

Anyways, which ones are you ordering?

 

Thank you both for the comments and recommendations. It's greatly appreciated. @curly I think I'm going to go with the F-Cam 252,256. I would really dislike to lose grunt between 3-4k RPM since that's the RPM I'm at after a hairpin. I'm seeing in those plots that Laz has 20wtq more in that range than the cammed engine, which I image is due to VVT? But the cammed engine still lost a few wtq to OEM in that range, even with more compression. I think based on Emilio's comment and my wants, the F-Cam would be a better fit. Does that make sense or am I missing something? I also don't think I will rev it past 7500 after all. Having less things to fix and spend money on would be nice for more track time.

 

This sounds great! I'm very interested to read about this.

 

Summer Camp is wrapping up and I'm headed home tomorrow. I'll do a longer write up later, but here is my fastest lap of the Friday trackday, a 64.64 which was good for 6th out of 78 drivers. Ahead of me were Roda, Fireindc, an exocet, a K Swapped NC, and a well prepped mazdaspeed! I'm very happy with that result. I'm also very ready for a bit more power...

 

Great lap! In a field of highly modified and swapped/turbo cars that's a very solid finish. I'm kind of surprised we didn't have at least one V8 car this year... Next year I expect the NCs to be an even bigger presence at the pointy end of the field.

Sorry we didn't get time at the track to look at video/data, but your lines look really good. The only suggestion I might have is a later turn in/apex on T3 (hairpin), but you're probably at full throttle sooner than I am anyway.

It was great to see you guys again, and hopefully we can go for an MT.net 1-2-3 next year!

 

Here's a few pics of Scooter on track...




Taking the 'tight' line on the hairpin...

 

Yes extra torque due to VVT. Might as well buy the VVT cams and look around for a head Honestly any losses are marginal. We're talking 5ft/lbs. But technically at 3k and 4k, the cam'd engine makes more torque. There's just a small band between ~3400 and ~3800 where it dips below, which could be my fueling or ignition, but who knows. I wouldn't choose cams off of that. I'd go with the 264, but don't blame you for going with the 252s either. Just don't eliminate them just yet!

IIRC, it was 0.9v=4psi(?) 4.2v=14.7psi, but I'll get the actual calibration at work tomorrow. I kept the OE solenoid, just turned it on above 8v, so if it's ever below that, the Link won't inject fuel due to low voltage anyways.

And yes I work in standard/psi units. I actually tune in MGP, which took me forever to realize I needed to calibrate for MAP, not MGP, but figured it out eventually. At least I learned why my crankcase MAP sensor never seems to make sense...

 

Finally had a chance to look at our videos side by side... GREAT driving!! You beat my Vmin in several corners and were definitely smoother overall. All you need is more power!