I missed this one earlier. I go to weather.gov to see what they say. I suppose I could also just look at the KPA reading from the ECU when the car is off and convert that. Originally I saw the altimeter settings on another page on the website so until recently I didn't think there was much correcting to do.

 

In Link you could use the BAP readings for the VD correction, since those would be the current atmosphere. If you want to account for humidity then that’s a different story. I don’t worry about the humidity, and use BAP and atmospheric temperature as the SAE correction factor. If IAT is reading way hot, then I use that instead, but checking iat VS environmental temp is a good way to see how much jam you could be losing.

 

3d printing is one hell of a drug



I've printed quite a few top latches in the past, but after throwing my hard top on recently I felt like it was time to give it a try again with my own printer. The soft top fits like trash and has always stressed these to the point of failure, but the hard top latches pretty easily so I figured it was worth a go.

I'm going to run this one for a bit to see how it holds up and go from there. I'll likely switch back to the metal one here in a bit now that I realize it's locking alright.

On a similar thread, I did a test fit of the wastegate bracket after chatting with a friend who might machine the bracket for me. If not I'll probably go with 1/4" or 1/8" brackets from SendCutSend that I can stack to customize the fitment.


This is the current setup.




And this is a bad photo of the metal bracket over the 3d printed one. I did mock it up and everything looked OK, so I think the design is good to go.





While I had the hardtop bracket off I noticed the little rubbed bushing on the tip of the bracket had disintegrated, so I think I'm either going to print an existing model or try to draw one up myself.




I still haven't quite retired the car for the winter yet. I think in the next couple weeks it'll be put into hibernation though. My sister is visiting this weekend so I want to give her a scare but the NeoGen's are about to chord out in the front, so pretty soon we'll probably put it on stands and into a few winter projects.

 

Time for some overdue maintenance. Although I don't love it for ski season, it's quite warm this week so I figured I'd take the opportunity to get some jobs done. I've got a space heater in the garage but that only goes so far when it's freezing out.

Earlier in the week I 3d printed some more parts for the top latches. Both of these files were available on thingiverse for free. Material cost was probably ~$0.20 per latch if not less. Top Adjustment Lock Latch Cap


The cap seemed to make some difference in the fit of the top. Not sure if there was much of a benefit in road noise or anything, but I don't think it hurt.

So now we get to move on to the big pile of parts.



These have been sitting for a while while I waited for the motivation to get the jobs done. Since it's been nice out I've been joyriding the car most weekends. I'm actually just a few thousand miles away from 20K on the engine now, and 10K from breaking 200k on the chassis.

I've also known the current street tires were on their way out. They could go a bit longer I'm sure, but I figure with potential winter conditions it's probably best to not be on the chords.



I've been happy enough with the NeoGens, so I opted to order another set. These ones were new in March 2024 around the time the engine went in, so I'd guess they have about 15-16K miles on them. It was raining yesterday and will continue to today, so I threw the wheels in the backyard to get cleaned up. Tires should be here sometime this week and I've got a buddy who's going to throw them on for me.

So other cool stuff that's I found when I was pulling the wheels off.

I had been getting some squealing from the brakes under light pressure. These were still the RockAuto track pads, so I didn't think too much of it.






Satisfied that I got my moneys worth from the fronts, I think they'll be getting replaced. I picked up some Porterfield R4S pads from someone on here. They have about 300 miles on them but were about 1/3 the price of new. I actually decided to go with those pads before seeing them for sale on here. I'll be interested to see if they live up to the reviews I read.

Moving to the rear of the car, I removed the rear passenger wheel and noticed the caliper area looked wet. I recently serviced the drivers rear due to uneven wear, but haven't touched the passenger side aside from swapping pads and bleeding before the track day a couple months ago.




Finally (I think) as far as carnage goes, one of the dust boots on the Tecna's tore a while back. Ed hooked me up with some of their velcro dust booths which I'm finally getting around to installing. I think I'm only going to do the rears though, as the front springs have already been contacted by the wheels and those boots are fine.





Like many of you on here, I've slowly noticed my car getting more and more orange, and while the new shock boots are going to cover some of that up, we'll be compensating in other ways.

I grabbed some caliper seal kits from RockAuto along with fresh rotors. SuperMiata stainless lines will be going on to complete the brake upgrades/maintenance.




For those of you who don't have an air compressor like me (somehow?), you can blow the caliper pistons out with a small tire pump if you have the right tip for it. Make sure you're hands are clear when that thing goes, because it could do some damage.



After failing to get the seals installed I opted to move to something that required less finesse.



Hammer time baby. Yes, I've started 3-4 different projects all at once, but they're all tangentially related. I've been sitting on the rear CHUBs for a good couple months now, but it's finally time to get those installed. I got the rears mostly dissassembled last night and am hoping to get over to my buddy's house to use his press later this week.

A couple new parts went on so far, but largely everything's scattered around and half done.






Believe it or not, this is the first time I've put brand new rotors on this car. Honestly I haven't been disappointed by the brakes on this car, but I'm hoping this freshens them up. Caliper rebuild, newish pads, new rotors and stainless lines. Accompanied by new bearings and hubs in the rear, this should breathe a good amount of life into the car.

Oh, also, after test fitting the 3d printed wastegate bracket I decided to give my friend the go-ahead to order some material to machine a couple. I should have 3 of those in my hand pretty soon.

 

cancer cannon or diesel heater, and insulate the garage door with the kit from home depot!

it feels nice to get the little stuff done sometimes, though altogether it adds up to big stuff. Couldve cut your knuckles for angle you dont need whilst they were out 🤣, tighter u turns baby!

air compressor is also a must have.

i always like telling people ive put more headgaskets in my car than I have wipers and or rotors- sometimes they just dont need to be done.

 

You know, honestly depending on the job I'm doing I'll often run to home depot to grab something and then park the hot car in the garage for a while before starting to work. Between that and the space heater it makes things tolerable. A minisplit has been discussed, but I haven't quite pulled the trigger on that. Too many other house projects to do first.

Air compressor is similar. On the list, but hasn't been a huge priority. I'd like to get a nice quiet one that's decent enough to blow out my sprinklers. The little Ryobi inflator works well enough to add a couple PSI here and there.

 

Having the creature comforts can make or break a job though, some things you buy and wonder how you lived without it, but you cant know what you're missing until youve had it i suppose.
Turning the heater full blast and doing a pull towards your house, pulling in the garage and closing the door last second, hood up does work surprisingly well to get a lot of heat in the space.
Better yet just leave the car running while its in the garage for a while, close the door so heat doesnt escape, youll have it cozy enough in there to take a good LONG nap.

 

Dude, 300+whp on those smoked Neogens must be a RIOT Does your car smoke those in third no problem? Glad to see I'm not the only one getting every single millimeter of life out of my pads and tires haha.

Refresh project looks good. Sometimes I think I should just put the car down for two plus weeks and do all of the deeper maintenance like that at once, instead of doing one thing at a time more or less as issues pop up. Would probably save a lot of headache haha.

 

Honestly not really? I'm always surprised when people are talking about "3rd gears useless" type stuff. Maybe it's just the way I drive it or the gearing. I think it's spun 3rd as boost came on a few times when traction was lower, but not usually. 1st usually spins pretty easily and second will struggle for grip, but it's not usually too bad. I'm probably just lifting out of habit once when I expect the tires to let go.

Having said that, at autocross the surface is slick enough to pretty easily spin the RT660+ coming out of a corner. Obviously that gets better once they've got some heat built up, but sometimes they'll spin for a good while.

ETA - After saying that, I did go to put a Lincoln MKZ in it's place the other day and first and second were pretty useless. Again, points to my driving more than the car I suppose.

 

I bet that 3.6 helps a ton with the 6 speed though. 4.3 and a 5 speed is like the worst combination you can get for a boosted car. ask me how i know...

We need some videos of pulls I think though ...

IF anyone is wondering for christmas i wear a size 3.6 torsen and 6 speed.

 

I'd appreciate it if someone could tell me I'm an idiot, but 4 of these should be mirrored right?

 

Correct. The flat portion sits facing the rotor, with the Z shaped clip outboard.

 

Yeah, as I feared, the packaged I got from RockAuto had 8 of the same clips instead of 4 and 4. I ended up getting the front calipers rebuilt and back on the car today. I had to use some of the old hardware, so next time I'm ordering parts I'll grab another set of hardware to replace the old stuff. Planning to head over to my buddies place to press the bearings/hubs on Friday.

I assume this is leftover grease from the factory or PO. Either way I pulled the backing plates, cleaned and relubed.



Stainless lines installed. I'm wondering if I should secured them to the control arms? The old ones weren't but these seemed like the might get in the way.





The caliper pistons both looked pretty good. I cleaned them up a bit with a wire brush.






Getting the dust seals on the pistons is a pretty fiddly task. The best approach I found was to lube everything with brake fluid and stretch the boot around the piston. You can invert the dust boot a little bit and get it right to the end of the piston. This allows the boot to be seated in the groove in the caliper and then the rest of the piston can slide through.

Kinda hard to explain, but hopefully the photo gives an idea. Also cool that Mazda had 5G tech in Y2K.





Don't forget to go fully Miami Vice on your slide pins.






Fronts are done. Rears still need the calipers to be attended to, pads and lines need to be swapped and the hubs/bearings to be done. That'll probably happen over the course of the next couple days.

NeoGens are in, so hopefully those will get installed tomorrow or Friday.




Also, snap rings are a PITA. These "hand tools" brand snap ring pliers did the job but just barely. I probably should've bought something a bit more robust, but they're out. Don't mind the chisel marks. I accidentally tried to hammer a bearing out with the snap ring still in place so it got wedged in pretty good. I had to beat it back the other way to free up the ring.

 

HA. I had the same experience with a snap ring when I did the wheel bearings. Glad you got that figured out!

 

I usually pull those snap rings out with a pick or screwdriver. Those pliers suck.

 

I use these at work: https://www.summitracing.com/parts/otc-4513?rrec=true

awesome on turbo snap-rings too. Much better than struggling to keep them clamped while guiding it into a grove barely bigger than itself, all while trying to keep it from falling off and (I'm assuming) cutting my fingers off.

 

I'd pony up for nicer snap ring pliers if I used them more than once a year. For now I think the "hand tools" ones will do for most of my applications. I'll bitch about them every time I have to use them, but I'm pretty stubborn.

For smaller snap rings I can use these needle nose pliers I ground down yesterday.


Because guess what I found out? You need smaller and longer snap ring pliers to rebuild the rear calipers. I guess I should go back to doing research before jumping into a job.

Also, for those of you who are going to rebuild your rear calipers at some point, here's a free tip. You have to unscrew the piston via the adjustment screw before you can get it out. You can't just turn your tire inflator to 160 PSI and pop it out...

Anyway, I got into a groove and stopped taking pictures halfway through, but the rear calipers got fresh seals yesterday. The adjustment screw area on both of them were pretty nasty, so I cleaned that out pretty well before throwing a new oring on each and putting them back together. Pretty sure this was needed, as my allen key was usually wet after adjusting the rear calipers.



Not nearly as bad as the fronts

Mmm, extra crust


Gunk that's old enough to drink


Heading over to @kb10ae's place tonight to press the bearings. The NeoGen's should be done by the end of the day and I'll snag the wastegate bracket while I'm out that direction, so hopefully the car will be back on the ground and reasonably refreshed tomorrow morning.

Next things I'm considering are redoing the turbo oil feed setup to remove the brass tee and add oil temp, cleaning up some wiring and refreshing some of the ducting that's gotten beat up over the year, possibly with some 3d printed additions, but we will see.

 

finding snap ring pliers to do the rear calipers is the mf worst. Also it took me a lot of anger and a break until i realized to get the piston back in, you have to screw it the right way. Wouldnt be too bad with the right tools, but sucks without them (and some common sense)

 

Very interested to see what your oil temps are when you get to that point. I remember my temps with a 25-row Setrab were safe in the track and canyons at 270-300whp (never saw above 250*F for the most part), but I'm curious to see what yours get to with no cooler. What oil are you running again?

 

Yeah, way too easy to forget about that adjuster screw. I'm hoping I didn't screw mine up because I did have some issues with it when I was getting the car back on the ground yesterday.

I'm running the classic Rotella T6 either in 15w or 5w flavor depending on the season.

My current plan is to go 1/8 BPST to 4AN 90 from the block to a stainless line to the turbo. Oil pressure and temp will go into a sandwich plate. I've debated on other methods but that seems like the easiest way to eliminate that brass tee. If other people have better ideas I'd be interested to hear them. If I was planning to take the pan off anytime soon I'd probably just tap that for oil temp and remote mount the pressure sensor somewhere but I don't think I'll do that with the pan on the car.