Well I had my car on the lift today to check my new diff that I put in a month ago. As I was looking at everything I saw my ppf was cracked on the top and bottom right at the first diff bolt. So now im wondering if i could some how delete the ppf and make mounts that bolt to the body. Any ideal would be great for deleting the ppf.

 

If you're going to go through the trouble of deleting the PPF, might as well stuff something more serious in there.
Personally, I do not like the concept of removing the PPF on a street type car; it's one of the key components that gives the car strength in an accident.

 

damn..looks like someone is making big boy power

...or wheelhopping like a madman

 

Floating the drivetrain vs bolting it to the chassis makes it stronger?

I'd like to hear some thoughts behind this.

 

^ what he said!!!

 

I don't think you guys grasp the idea behind "crumple zones."

 

Um... PPF isnt exactly part of that system.

 

its essentialy a 3rd frame rail imo. I would weld reinforce of reegineer the ppf before i dumped it though. Unless you go through the same trouble as most v8 swap guys then it likely wont be as strong etc.

 

...yes it is. Float the drivetrain and it moves freely in the car during an accident - that PPF will twist up like a pretzel under any sort of serious accident force. Bolt the diff and (more importantly) the tranny to the car, and all of a sudden you've added a massive brace to the core of the chassis and essentially fucked the crumple zones.

 

Hey sav, I know the pics in this post are down, but one of our MSM'rs broke his pretty bad. What they did and you might not see it, is basically "box" it in in the rear. broken ppf MSM You know how it only attatches on one side, well, they added an extra brace on the other side of the PPF and welded it all together, gusseted everything up, it looks like a pretty legit fix. The shop which did it is listed on the 2nd page, and I'll keep digging to find more info on it. I think this would be the ticket.

Another thought is the RX-8 uses a steel PPF, and although none of the attatchment points are going to be of much use on the NA/NB, something custom might be possible and its in the right range of dimensions. What would be nice is the RX-8 PPF and RX-8 diff fit in the NC maita and all you've gotta do is cut out a section and splice it.. ok, useless to know, but interesting.

Gl with the fix, I don't think removing the ppf or drastically modifying the design is the way to go, Mazda had a pretty good reason for doing what they did, even if it can't handle the power, I'd try to make it so.

 

I thought the crumple zones were outside of the passenger compartment.

 

last i checked all our ppfs where steel.

 

nope there all aluminum

 

definitely not steel

 

dumbass

 

You bring up a good point, in my mind. We need "intelligent" crumple zones that actually crumple around the passenger compartment if the accident was caused by driver of said vehicle in accident because of some gross amount of stupidity, I.E. not signaling while changing lanes while not looking and crashing right into someone else at 90mph. ECU corrects things in the chassis, moves a few hydraulic things, and BAM, whole car crushes around driver.

Darwin wins.

 

on your next PPF, make sure you attach all the bolts BEFORE tightening them so you dont have a torque load on the PPF because you attached and tightened the diff bolts before you mated the PPF to the tranny.

Or hell, with 349 hp, get a good shop to tig some reinforcements on there for you

 

Its funny how we talk about crumple zones because any form of chassis bracing like fm butterfly brace will make it harder for a car to crumple same as if you put a cage in too.

 

Also the bolts where tightened after the had all been threaded in by hand.

 

Pinion angle?