slammed200

iTrader: (8)

Nice to see your progress! If I may offer a couple of tips that we have learned

Add a splash of coolant to the water for corrosion resistance. Also water wetter if you have it.

Curious for my own knowledge, why are you moving the fuel pump wiring?

Instead of cigarette lighter outlets, you can also add in "gps power" adapters that hardline into your 12v system. We run a camera and a GPS booster off these that way you can tie them into an external fuse block setup.

I would consider offset bushings in the control arms so that replacements can be had easier.

I've also got some recommendations for a great cheap radio setup as well. PM me if you're interested

CTSparky

We aren't allowed to run anything other than water in the radiator system... Lemons rules.. We may splash a bit of water wetter, but we are content to just flush after every event.

For our communications we are using chinese radios, and they come with a battery eliminator that plugs into a cigarette lighter. For the gopro we are also using a common usb cigarette lighter adapter to provide power to it.

Both of these are tied to a fuse block that we put into the car last race. The following things are powered from that block: our gauges, and the radio and gopro.

For offset bushings: We may use that in the future but it was cheaper ($free$) to just take an air hammer and slot the arms. there is no limitation for what we can do there in terms of rules, so if we wanted to get 5 degrees of camber we could. (not that we want to) For our first race we had the stock suspension maxed out at just over 1 degree of camber. Now we will have more.

We do seem to have an "issue" tho. Our bilsteins were meant for a NB. We did put the NB tophats on, but when we set down the car we are very high in terms of wheel gap. As much as 4". while the spring rate should still be good, do you advise cutting the springs to get a lower CoG?

slammed200

iTrader: (8)

You're not allowed, but it's helpful to run a bit of coolant, just a splash in equivalent to what you would have leftover from a drain and refill with water. Helps you detect leaks from the distinct smell too.

On the wiring we found the cigarette lighter connection with the usb adapter to have robustness issues, this is similar to what we moved to
Chinese radios paired with a nice PTT car setup like from NerdieRacing.com (Talk to Troy and tell him I sent you) works great.

Yes the stock NB springs will hike up the NA ride height a bit. I would definitely cut them to get the car down to 12-13" range and make it a bit stiffer as well. You can also remove the lower rubber noise isolator in the NB top hat giving you more shock travel and helping you get towards 12". Here is a now famous article on trimming springs and the resulting change in spring rate FrankenMiata - Handling with a Hacksaw > MotoIQ - Automotive Tech, Project Cars, Performance & Motorsports

CTSparky

Funny enough but where did you think I got my radio equipment from... Troy. and boy can he talk your ear off.

I'll pass along the information about the springs to the rest of the team members.

Thanks!

Chris.

barbiemx5

Why couldn't I find people like you when I lived back in New England?! Good luck with the car and your upcoming races!

slammed200

iTrader: (8)

Where are you at now? There are crazies like us all over!

CTSparky

barbie,

If you are serious... then follow the link.. register and start asking away.

Drivers/Wrenches Looking for Teams (Page 1)

CTSparky

A couple of weeks later, but my report:

DNF Racing NHMS Oct 2014 24 hours of Lemons "Halloween Hooptiefest"

So a couple of weeks ago me and the rest of the team headed up to Loudon NH for the lemons race.

We were going to be doing testing on Friday and then racing on Sat/Sunday.

Thursday it rained and was cold so we arrived in the cold and dark and had to unload the car:
20141023_122040 by CTSparky1, on Flickr

Then on Friday we got to try ot the new all season tires for the rain. Well they weren't much better than our dry tires (BFG Rivals) and since we didn't do a full bolt check on Friday this happened during my stint:

20141024_111558 by CTSparky1, on Flickr

20141024_111606 by CTSparky1, on Flickr

20141024_112142 by CTSparky1, on Flickr


The rear caliper bolt loosened causing the caliper to slide forward and rub the wheel eventually puncturing the inner barrel.

We changed out the wheels/tires; ordered a new wheel to be brought up by a friend and checked the rest of the drivetrain.. the caliper was still good so we went out on the dry tires.. and the course dried and warmed up allowing us to complete some good test laps.

Saturday dawned and we were ready to race. For this race we had in car communications and although it wasn't perfect it did help several times... While we were getting ready for the race we had the old tire mounted on a new wheel.

Then during the race we had another event: While I was driving all of a sudden my windshield was covered in water...
radiator blow by CTSparky1, on Flickr

I drove the car into the pits after ANOTHER lap, and we went to work putting in a another old radiator from a Miata... that was just lying around waiting to be bought by a lemons team trying to run one. $500 later and we bought the radiator complete with another car.

Then we were back out in 18 minutes.... and ran the rest of Saturday mostly penalty free.

Sunday came and we started really driving the car... Some would say driving too hard, and we kept accruing penalties... that caused us to do silly things like carve a pumpkin with our car symbol on it:
20141026_153030 by CTSparky1, on Flickr
20141026_135137 by CTSparky1, on Flickr


And we finally wound up finishing the race with the car in THIS condition:
20141026_163519 by CTSparky1, on Flickr
So thoughts on the race:

Loudon is a nice course... it takes a bit to get used to it but it was fun, and once you get the hang of it you are constantly doing something in the car.

Going up the hill on turn 3 we need a limited slip differential. We kept loosing traction and having our car slide a bit.

The new aero mods were fine, and the car stayed balanced.. at least up to 95 mph. more testing will need to be done with higher speeds at the next event.

The new to us suspension is still soft, but not too soft and we like the compliance with the car. The bilsteins are not blown.

We need a front sway bar and possibly endlinks to stiffen up the front and correct a bit of understeer in turning on acceleration. Either that our we bump up hot tire pressure by a few pounds up to 34psi.

We need to quell getting penalties, and work on being ready unexpectedly in case the course goes full yellow to do pit stops faster.

We will invest in true high flow fuel canisters.

Sparky.

CTSparky

So it has been a while since I posted last in here, and at the end of this post I have some questions for the group mind.

First from the October Race this is where the radiator blew. Thank goodness we run heavyweight oil 20w-50 in there since when I took the car in all we had to do was replace the radiator and go.
radiator blow by CTSparky1, on Flickr

and now to the off season. As part of getting a new radiator we bought a whole parts car for $500. It just so happened that a fellow racer brought along his rolled miata to sell to some lemons team, and well he parked it right next to us.

So we took the car and afterwards brought it back to the garage to take all the spare stuff we could use on it.

a month and a half ago we stripped the car, and cut the shell. This isn't our first shell cutting, and as usual it was fun.
20150106_184433 by CTSparky1, on Flickr
20150106_185048 by CTSparky1, on Flickr
20150106_190918 by CTSparky1, on Flickr

Then we started doing work on the car again this weekend to make some repairs:
20150125_125806 by CTSparky1, on Flickr

and also put in some parts that we happened to find on the spare car. of course we needed to "Fix" the frame rails.
20150215_122047 by CTSparky1, on Flickr
20150215_122108 by CTSparky1, on Flickr

and now we are on a quest to get new bushings put in. So I need your help.

For a race car, what sort of plastic/ poly are you guys using? Do you know where to get stuff cheap? We have the dimensions to make the bushings, but need the material. Do you guys have any good links on the How to's to get and shape the material?

20150215_143218 by CTSparky1, on Flickr

Thanks guys...

Sparky

cyotani

iTrader: (8)

Lemons looks like so much fun. Thanks for documenting this adventure.

russian

Good luck this weekend! I am planning to stop by and chat with you guys since building a 91 for 2016 Lemons season

CTSparky

so there have been some things going on with the car since my last time that I visited this site.

First: The rest of the winter in preparation for the May race;

Since you saw us cut up the spare car for parts we spent the majority of our time in the winter to prep the car for the next season. The overall thought was that we would do all of the work over the winter and leave the car as is during the season with the only replacements being expendable parts. Then after this racing season we were to look at what improvements we needed to make to the car.

So the improvements for the May race were:

• rebuild the engine
• Put in cams for said engine OBX cams
• Tune said engine
• Big *** front sway bar and mounts

and we did just that in prep for the may race. In our tuning session we eeked out 122whp /120 wtq on a Mustang Dyno (EFI Logics) using resistors and other old school fangled contraptions.

Then the team packed up the car and headed to Jersey for the race. I Couldn't go since it was mothers day weekend, I have a new baby, it was my wife's first Mothers day, and the child wound up getting sick and we were in the ED all weekend.

So what happened to the team? Excessive oil consumption lead to blowing the engine. that ended day 1 and day two was stopped when lift off oversteer put the car into the tire barriers on the back end of Thunderbolt.

During the race the front end got crumpled and the lack of aero caused the car to understeer through the corners.

They brought back the car home battered and we had to go to work to fix it for the following race (August)

Cause of the engine death:
When we broke down the engine we noticed a few things. Some of the rod bearings were totally crushed, a nut in the throttle body backed out and spent time in Cylinder one, then cylinder 4 before exiting the exhaust; this bent the #4 sparkplug so that there was no gap, and inefficient cylinder scuffing and lack of rings seating caused myriad issues.

So a new list was made for August:

• Fix the body work
• Rebuild the engine again
• Cut the top of the doors so we don't need to open them
• Cut the lower part of the quarter panels to let airflow behind the wheels
• vent the top of the fenders
• replace the rear brake light with a LED light
• added wink mirror
• formed new roof without the side walls

So aside from maintenance, we started working on rebuilding the engine again. In the process we ordered all of the wrong bearings, and rings, and had to buy multiple sets, and finally got the engine in the car the day before we had to leave.
Also last minute we added in a cool suit cooler and shirts to keep us away from the red mist.

Here is a picture of the car in August racing at Thompson:
Pic-6360 by BPOS.P, on Flickr

Post race: We wound up in 15th place overall and 11th in class A (We had no lap penalties)

Also during the race we lost 3rd and at the end 4th gear so we have to replace the transmission for the next race.
The car did run well but we did consume oil, and we think this is due to not having a catch can/ aos setup. Thompson is a very difficult course with lots of compromise corners and little relaxation, and other teams were having oil consumption as well.

Finally we did hit some debris which caused the loss of the splitter, but not the air dam, front, and the car still behaved well. So our splitter doesn't do much, but as long as we have the front air dam we still have front traction.

So now we embark on prepping the car for the next race:
Our regular maintenance is to replace/ repack hubs
Change motor oil and filter
Change transmission fluid (Full flush after a season)
Bleed brakes/ add fluid Every race) flush after a season

and now change transmission.
Our cold compression is around 130# and although low seems even throughout the cylinders.
and finally make an air oil separator on the cheap and make it work well.

russian

How confident you are that your aero is helping you? I believe there is an opinion that aero does not work at Lemons speeds. There is also an opinion that with aero you can reduce brake ventilation and ruin your brakes?

time for a turbo to get into top 5?