I personally think you should reverse the crankcase breather hose back to where it was. You don't have to worry about the catch can filling up if all the oil gets vaporized on the manifold before it can make it there :idea:

Sick that you cracked 300 wheel on VD, hopefully the dyno one day tells you that's legit!

Thanks man! You might be on to something with a simple oil atomization setup instead of a catch can :bowrofl:

Fingers crossed, I'm trying to not get too caught up in the numbers, but they're addicting. I figure with the extra drag from the wing and a bit of extra weight from the car being loaded up with fuel and some tools that I'm probably right at 300 or so. I'd rather see some graphs centering around ~310, but again, at that point we're just chasing numbers for no real reason (aside from making more power than @Fireindc does on the same turbo :fawk:).

Don't make me turn up the boost! :hahano:

Track Day Bro?
 

Well it was a busy weekend, but man, super fun stuff. I ran around on Wednesday to grab the truck from one friend and then over to another friends house to grab the trailer. It was my first time towing anything and honestly I didn't mind it much.

The part I did hate was loading the car onto the trailer. Of course it was raining and the ramp setup we had was janky, so I ended up driving the car into one of the trailer fenders and had to use a jack to shimmy the car over to the center of the trailer. Strapping the car down was pretty straightforward. I just went through the wheels and straight to the D rings on the trailer. Seemed like the simplest and didn't seem to compromise anything as far as securing the car.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...4081e0ebb9.jpg


The drive over was uneventful aside from the trailer light deciding to detach from the trailer. I initially thought that had to do with the issues I had when loading the car, but on the drive home the other one broke off as well, so I think it was just bad mounting and vibrations that caused them to fall off. I ended up replacing one of the lights and building some new brackets for them, so they should be solid now.

Anyway, do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior, cam buckle straps? Some of the more experienced people in our group helped me unload the car when I got to ORP and they threw some simple lashing straps over the ramps to secure them to the trailer better. Game changer. I would absolutely recommend picking some of these up if you're not 100% confident in your ramp setup.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...e7efe6738e.jpg
Rule 2 made me laugh


Our little crew for the weekend was 5 people driving 4 cars. I was the most senior as far as track day experience, having 1 event under my belt while everyone else was taking to the track for the first time. Having said that, everyone there had competed at national level autocross events before and a couple have won national championships before, so they're far from inexperienced. Two of the guys had actually coached me at an autocross school/class before. We did a quick, motorized course tour in the morning which was great to build some hype and really shows the wild elevation changes of the track.

It was me, the Porsche and the Mustang. Not pictured was the 2.5 swapped NC.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1cebd5e6fb.jpg


And after that we hit the track. The format of this event is excellent in my opinion. We had about 3 hours of open track in the morning running CCW and then ~4 more hours in the afternoon with the CW layout. So nice to be able to go on and off track when you want. Based on my trip meter I'm pretty sure I did about 100 miles on track. Some of that was pretty casually leading some of the new guys around the track to show them where the blind crests went or stuck in traffic, but obviously I got my foot into it a lot and the car largely held together.

I do love having the CEL setup as a warning light. I had that kick on at 102 C (215 F) which was really helpful to keep an idea of when to take a cooldown lap. Just taking a quick glace at a log I pulled off the ECU, it looks like one ~2 minute lap would raise temps from 95 C to about 103 C. Keep in mind it was a pretty cool day (17 C/65 F), so while I had to stay mindful of coolant temps, I was pleased that it didn't prevent me from putting down some decent laps.

I also had issues with my main cooling fan not working. I first noticed that at our last autocross. I can jiggle the connector and it'll kick back on, but after a while the connection will break again and the fan will stop working. Not sure if, or how much that was contributing to temps climbing, but it was pretty obvious when I was rolling back to the pits and the coolant temps weren't dropping.

My catch can was putting in work this weekend as well. Like the cooling, I'd say it was adequate, but not ideal. I filled a ~30 oz jug with catch can fluid throughout the day. I also overflowed the can at one point, which resulted in oil on the drivers side headlight area and some splattered on the bumper. It's just a 10mm bolt to get it pulled off the car and drained, so it wasn't hard to drain it when I was back in the pits.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...f786635c3e.jpg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...c808c129d0.jpg


Random photo of the main straight.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...e3ae6d2866.jpg


Well, it finally happened. The car had a mechanical failure and left me stranded. I swear this car has been way too good to me in that sense. I had the fuel pump fail after a ~16 hour road trip autocross weekend and a turbo fail a day or two after another ~8 hour roadtrip autocross weekend. This was the first time I've had a failure at an event and it was the first time I ever had a trailer with me.

Around 3:30 I was going to put a flyer down with my buddy in the orange Mustang chasing me down. The last time I had gone out there was one point where I went to shift and felt like I was locked out of both 3rd and 4th, almost like the teeth of the gears were interfering with each other. I figured that might be the 6 speed letting go. Tangent - I was running "low boost" this weekend but looking at logs I was creeping up to 220 KPA with about 20% duty cycle on the controller, so the turbo is almost definitely coming off this winter to port the wastegate further. Anyway, I got the car back into gear and got to the pits after that shifting failure. I let the car cool down and went through the gears and they all felt fine, so I went back out. After a couple more laps I pushed the clutch in and there was almost no resistance on the pedal until about an inch off the floor. I got the car into 3rd and limped it off the track to the hot pits.

The cars resting place, but also peep the sick ass Z4 in the background. That guy came up and wanted to get a photo of my car, while I wanted to do the opposite, his Z4 was super cool. Come to think of it he was an instructor so I definitely should've had him get in the car or taken a ride in his car, but I guess that's for next time.
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...c664b4aaeb.jpg

At this point the car was running fine and the clutch pedal felt about normal, but wouldn't go into any gears. My buddy said the clutch fork was moving, but when I'd go to put the car in gear the clutch wouldn't disengage and the car would move forward a tiny bit. The 2.5 swapped NC gave me a tow back into the pits and we ended up using a come along to get the car onto the trailer. In hindsight I could've just started it in first, but after watching a guy shear the flywheel bolts off his Prelude doing that (repeatedly all day at an autocross) I didn't want to take my chances.

So... that's where the car sits now. I'm probably going to go our and look at the slave cylinder here in a bit. I've got a new master and slave ordered, but I'm not sure that's going to solve the issue. I was able to start the car in 1st to pull it into the garage and everything seemed fine, so that's a positive.

I'll probably have some video today or tomorrow. I don't think I drove anywhere near the limits of the car, but this was an event that I appreciated not having any competitive aspect. I still wanted to put down good laps, but it was really nice to just get out with the car and throw it around without having to hold back. I think I ran a 2:01.8 for CCW and a 2:01.0 CW. I want to say both of those were pretty much the same as my optimal time, so with a bit less traffic and/or more laps where I pushed I think sub 2s are there pretty easily. Everyone else who came out had a blast as well, so I won't be surprised if this becomes a regular trip for us. I also noticed that one of my rear calipers seemed to be overly tight when I was pushing the car around in the garage last night, basically like the e brake was engaged, so I might've been dragging that for all or part of the day (although I think I would've noticed that).

And on another note, Pulsar sent me an entire new CHRA due to the issue I was having with the current one leaking. It isn't leaking with the drilled out reducer, but I mean... I'll take a spare CHRA if they're willing to send me one.
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...aae72ecf39.jpg

Dude, nice! Aside from the failure. I'm still stoked on your track record so far. Driving hours and hours, ripping the car at AutoX, then back home and never having a critical failure until now is still pretty damn impressive. Fingers crossed you get it figured and ironed out quickly.

Glad to hear it was a solid track day otherwise. Open track and getting to run both directions over the course of the day is awesome. I've only run a full open track day twice, but it was so damn nice knowing I could just go out for four or five laps, tweak with the car, then go back out without worrying about lost seat time.

Might have to neg cat you for leaving out photos of the 2.5 NC though :giggle:

Well hopefully I'll get a video of the guy having a huge off right in front of me. Apparently his front sway bar was disconnected when he showed up and he didn't realize it. Pretty standard 2.5 swap with a cage added. Other than that just some basic suspension stuff. I know he matched my time (actually beat me by 0.010) going CCW, but the dudes also a 2 or 3 time national champion in his EST (formerly STS) car, so I'll take that as a win :bigtu:

Z, here's your photo of the NC. Unfortunately that lip didn't last long. It ended up becoming 2 different lips shortly after this photo was taken (pretty big off on turn 16).

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...c355a58fbf.jpg

Mobius has a great story of t16, he’s lucky he only lost a lip!

Yeah, it was really mild all things considered. He ended up debeading 2 tires but thankfully had spares. He also found out later that his front swaybar was disconnected for some reason, which probably didn't help. Thankfully we were running CCW at that point, so he shot across track and into the dirt, not the concrete wall.

Gah damn! Glad to hear it was just a lip and not a whole front end.

Hey your car looks pretty dang good too in that pic :cool:

Well after helping my buddy wire his Active Center Diff (ACD) controls into his Evo's digital dash yesterday, which was a surprisingly straightforward job, I decided to start pulling the trans from the car.

I popped the turbo heatshield off to get access to the downpipe and what do I find...
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...08b4e0294b.jpg


Well that's not quite right. I had a spare clip lying around that seems like it should hold, but now I'm wondering when this happened. I did adjust the wastegate arm a bit to try and prevent it from happening again. Looking at the logs I have from later in the day, I was still making 220 KPA, which I can't imagine was with the wastegate disconnected. Either way the turbo will be getting ported further this winter.

A couple hours later and the trans is out.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...ef42aeb806.jpg

Shout out to Simon of the past for putting antiseize on most of the bolts and not over torquing them.

It was about 1 AM so I decided to call it for the night before I got the clutch fully pulled, but I did notice some wear on the springs through the pressure plate.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...7fafd2ad87.jpg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...45e78d33dd.jpg

The FM Level 2 Happy Meal is on order, so hopefully that'll show up early next week and I can get it thrown in the car. I was going to use the stock flywheel but they only had the clutch in stock if it was packaged with the flywheel, so I guess we're trying out a lightweight one.

Caution, clutch gore below.


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...97a1ce66c4.jpg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...21ef97c25a.jpg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...36da927df3.jpg


Yeah... so that might explain why the car wasn't happy. The Level 2 Happy Meal is in the mail. Hopefully this isn't the fate of that one as well. This clutch survived ~25K miles and a good amount of abuse, but I would've expected it to go a good while longer or at least slip before it split. The pilot bearing is also smoked and the throw out bearing was replaced when I was swapping over to the 6 speed, so that's in decent shape.

I should be able to get the new clutch installed later next week and get some break in miles on it before our next event. I won't get to go drag racing next weekend like I'd hoped, but that's not the end of the world, there's always next season. Side note I got a codrive in a mildly prepped NC this Sunday, so it'll be interesting to see what that's like.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...40675d95d3.jpg

To be fair, you probably wouldn't be drag racing for long next weekend if that clutch disc hadn't given out after last weekend! Sick heat spots. #Doyouevenlaunchbro??

I'd ask FM to hold off on sending you that clutch till after you drive that NC next weekend ;) :rofl: I kid, I kid.

We'll see, ABS and reliability do sound nice... Definitely happy this happened when I had a trailer and not on one of our roadtrips or at the strip next weekend.

Videos from last weeks track day are up.

I would suggest using the same FM1 pressure plate and a ceramic ACT or supermiata pucked (but sitll sprung) disc. I've never seen their discs fail, I've been seeing the FM1/2 discs fail since...2014? I am not surprised at all. Sucks, cause I really like the FM1 clutch aside from this issue. Great street clutch, not a great track clutch. I can't be 100% sure, but most of the failures I've seen have been on track cars.

Here's Laz's near identical failure at 230hp: https://www.miataturbo.net/build-thr...m_content=post

Clutch disc: https://www.good-win-racing.com/Mazd...MaAoXbEALw_wcB

That combo will be incredibly streetable, hold around 300ft/lbs. If you go to the FM2, you won't be able to do a ceramic disc. I mean you can, but it won't be fun on the street.

I heart ACT XTSS

Sure enough Curly, you called it. I ended up grabbing a level 2 happy meal kit. My plan was to swap a level 2 in this winter regardless. I wasn't planning on going with a lightweight flywheel, but that's what was in stock. I know they went to a new 6 spring disk, so hopefully that holds up better.

Flyin Miata made (at least the guy I got on their support email) made it sound like this wasn't a known failure mode. They did throw me $50 off my new setup, which is cool, but I've spent a whole lot more on clutches now in just 3 years. If the level 2 fails before 60K or so I'll look elsewhere.

Curly, does that ACT disk work for the six speed? I've never heard of a clutch that is specific to the 5 or 6 speed but that link says "for the FIVE speed". I'll hold on to the level 1 pressure plate for now and hopefully I'll be able to test that setup on someone else's car. I would still say that 80% of the miles on the car are street miles, so that's a major factor for me. I will also likely be around 300 lb/ft at the wheels, so the holding power is a concern as well. Definitely toeing the line of reliability and streetability.

Yeah they also say it’s for 90-05, but 5/6 speeds are all interchangeable.

Theres 2 ways to increase holding power, more pressure (act= hd vs xd) or more aggressive pad material (organic vs ceramic)

I think youll find the pedal pressure of the fm2 is unnecessarily high, and you’ll wish you had the same holding power but with your fm1 pedal feel with a grabbier disc.

I like my fm2 pedal, but I've been used to the XT I was running for the last 15 years. Otoh I drove a SM stage 1 and didn't like how light the pedal was.

FM2 was redesigned recently and hopefully won't have the same failures. It came with a beefy ass throw out bearing too, which I appreciate.

Late to the party, and don't have any worthwhile input on the clutch convo, but damn that's a fun-looking track. Elevation changes and runoff for dayzz.

Despite the wind noise, I can tell the car sounds really good too. Kraken exhaust FTW.