I believe he has it. Clearance is still super close though, and we've seen a little variation from car to car. I'd like the think the hood could be spaced up a lot less than it is. Josh?

 

Yeah i could probably reduce the spacing a bit, I have you valve cover that is nicely powder coated, with no spacers and all bracing removed from the underside. I have less than 1/8" clearance to the hood (checked with clay).

These give be around a 1/4"-3/8" clearance and also extra clearance to the header because that was close as well. The Garage Vary cowl hood is $900+250 shipping!!!!

I should use this dilemma as an opportunity for my 1st composite project and make a hood blister to clear the valve cover.

 

What happens if you put a 1/4" or 3/8" spacer between the subframe and the body mounts. Seems like that would give you more clearance to the hood, then just adjust your front coilovers down to get your ride height back. Seems like all you lose is that little bit of ground clearance. It also slightly changes the part of the suspension motion your are operating in but I don't think that's harmful. Happy to be corrected if this is a bad idea for other reasons.

 

Maybe ask @Blackbird Fabworx to create drop mounts for K series :3

 

You can't drop the motor further, the oil pan sits on the rack.

I could remove the spacers and hope the hood doesn't contact the valve cover, or make a carbon blister panel to rivet to the hood

 

/Kmiata thread drift

 

Yeah ventured off there, we're done.

 

I'm having a hard time tracking down all the data between a half dozen grassroots articles (I have a subscription) and 24 pages here to compare the 225 rs3 to the 245 vr-1 both on 9" wheels.

I love the grip of my 225 rival s but it won't last when I get into more track events next year. If I'm going to shackle my self with a 9" wheel I'm looking for the fastest tire that won't go up in smoke like a rival S or re71 will.

 

I had planned to go with VR-1's to replace my RS3's next year, but RS3's are $108 and VR1's are still $148. $40 difference per tire pays for a cheap track day, so I'll be sticking with RS3.

 

Good point, and if the performance is similar it's a no brainer

 

The VR-1 would be faster. Just not worth it for me personally.

 

10" 6ULs coming in Saturday, fresh 245s will be here Friday. We'll test them vs 245s on 9's and 225 Rival (Original) on 9's next weekend at the same track for a Practice and 7+7hr race. Practice time is not only me so it may be hard to get a direct compare but I'll share what I can.

For reference, this was the full set of 245s we ran on he 9's last month finally pulled off of the car.











I don't see any major chunking or unexpected wear behavior. Comment if you notice anything, the angled center section seems to be common with the softer 200TW street tires, maybe a characteristic of the deep tread but Phil's was out of stock and is the only place I found that shaves them. Wear was just a little faster than I would have liked (still good test day tires), but then again we are using a LOT more of everything including fuel and brakes... this was a set of 16mm thick Cobalt XR2 pads that wore out in ~6hrs! Want some race take-offs @aidandj? On that note, Andrew is shipping me some 3" brake ducts to swap out our old 2" ones now

 

This is the V6 car right? I imagine the car is fast enough for XR1 pads (my favorite sprint racing pads), but honestly the Cobalt XR pads are not endurance pads. The XR1s should last longer than the XR2s though, they have a little higher max temp they can tolerate. Once your brake temperatures get over a certain point the XR pads will start to breakdown and wear very quickly. We had trouble getting them to last 2.5 hours on our grand am cars, even with super duper extra thick pads made special sauce for us.

 

Yeah Cobalt's are definitely not an enduro pad, we switched back to Raybestos ST-43 ... they are half as expensive and twice as nice!

 

My problem with cobalts is the rivets keep you from being able to use as much of the compound as a bonded pad.

 

I assume you know but to those that don't and track their cars. Running a pad until it's gone on a track car is the quickest way to boil the fluid. Big brakes or not. You won't know until the pedal is gone.

 

Thus is initiated the discussion on pads that require bedding transfer layer vs the pads that don't. G-Locs require a transfer layer because the bonding agents need to be cured by out gassing. They do not rely on rivers to retain the friction material. Most other US made race pads rely on the rivets, les s adhesive thus don't require the transfer layer. IMO its a direct trade off in function. One is a PITA to bed but has more useable friction material and more benign wear limit behavior (soft brass rivets).

Bonded pads require a specific mold be made for the friction material. I asked Danny at G-Loc to expedite getting a mold made for the 890 plate, 01-05 Miata Sport Fronts. That little bit of extra material where the rivet countersinks are adds up in pad volume.

 

This was the other side, my driver didn't complain about brake fade, rather we brought it in for fuel at just the right time. You can see the outline of the rivets there.



In other news, I can no longer upload photos to the site, do I need to delete some?

 

Inspecting the Cobalt pads, I thought I had a little pad left.





Nope. Really big rivets.




At least my pads were wearing pretty evenly.

 

Freed up enough cash to get some real wheels, 15x10 Tungsten for this weekend's races.