Saturday, December 7, 2013
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Wrapping up 2013
2013 Nationals felt good, the car continued to run strong, and executed most everything we asked of it.
2 enjoyable seasons were enough to keep us motivated on this mid-engined journey. Here starts vol.3 .... good bye to faithful yellow peanut (just outside the window), for a new to us 2009. Some new acronyms to get used to, DFI, PDK, LC, and maybe others we have not found yet.
It will be a busy holiday season starting the teardown of the 2008.
2 enjoyable seasons were enough to keep us motivated on this mid-engined journey. Here starts vol.3 .... good bye to faithful yellow peanut (just outside the window), for a new to us 2009. Some new acronyms to get used to, DFI, PDK, LC, and maybe others we have not found yet.
It will be a busy holiday season starting the teardown of the 2008.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Spring Nationals
We added some new graphics for this event, still not sold on it yet. The car had been handling great since the College Station event, so not much setup changes were needed.
Andy S. took this great picture from the national tour course.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Mineral Wells ProSolo
Our car made the title page of the SCCA video for the event :) Follow the jump to check it out
http://vimeo.com/64652370
Some great pictures from our friends at dfwmiata.com. The cayman had good speed all weekend, but cones and red lights put a damper on the party. The courses were very challenging, with the 2nd half demanding a much looser setup than the high speed start.
This is one large site, we just ran on about 1/2 of it.
A little tire width mismatch in the L1 ladies class
http://vimeo.com/64652370
Some great pictures from our friends at dfwmiata.com. The cayman had good speed all weekend, but cones and red lights put a damper on the party. The courses were very challenging, with the 2nd half demanding a much looser setup than the high speed start.
This is one large site, we just ran on about 1/2 of it.
A little tire width mismatch in the L1 ladies class
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
So it was a busy year in 2012...
Sorry for the lack of updates, but between work, and car prep and racing, there has been near zero time to keep things up to date. The car showed some promise at the Pro Solo's and at the 2012 Nationals, and will be back in 2013 with just a few minor enhancements. Some pictures over the season will follow:
Things that worked:
Guard TBD diff - super smooth, no noises, just works!
Sachs clutch and light flywheel - still smooth and solid after over 150 pro solo launches
WEVO trans mounts - now zero axle hop
Softronics flash - perfect driveability, no codes thrown, just works.
Things that could have worked better:
Fabspeed race exhaust and long tube headers - great performance, light weight, but 105 db sound levels. We ended up with supertrapp plates added to the outlets to tame it down. I have built a 2nd system with larger diameter magnaflow mufflers, but it is still too loud at high revs.
AOS (oil separator) failed when I tried out running the stock throttle body/plenum. The stock TB uses 2 vacuum ports to the AOS, where the IPD plenum uses just one. After one event with the stock TB/plenum the AOS started letting oil by and giving us smoky startups.
Power steering overflow line - for some reason ours was routed to the valley on top of the engine, causing the excess fluid to puddle there. Not great as it has been known to catch fire. It has been rerouted to below the engine bay now.
Assorted Cone mangled body trim
Duck tail rear spoiler - it looked nice, but not sure we could feel the difference...... 3M trim tape will allow you to build a no-drill spoiler though.
Things that worked:
Guard TBD diff - super smooth, no noises, just works!
Sachs clutch and light flywheel - still smooth and solid after over 150 pro solo launches
WEVO trans mounts - now zero axle hop
Softronics flash - perfect driveability, no codes thrown, just works.
Things that could have worked better:
Fabspeed race exhaust and long tube headers - great performance, light weight, but 105 db sound levels. We ended up with supertrapp plates added to the outlets to tame it down. I have built a 2nd system with larger diameter magnaflow mufflers, but it is still too loud at high revs.
AOS (oil separator) failed when I tried out running the stock throttle body/plenum. The stock TB uses 2 vacuum ports to the AOS, where the IPD plenum uses just one. After one event with the stock TB/plenum the AOS started letting oil by and giving us smoky startups.
Power steering overflow line - for some reason ours was routed to the valley on top of the engine, causing the excess fluid to puddle there. Not great as it has been known to catch fire. It has been rerouted to below the engine bay now.
Assorted Cone mangled body trim
Duck tail rear spoiler - it looked nice, but not sure we could feel the difference...... 3M trim tape will allow you to build a no-drill spoiler though.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Wow, busy day yesterday out at Mineral Wells.
Tested the shocks out at the NTAXS event.
Overall a very good day, but not without some pains.
The mood of the day started Friday afternoon with Stan getting sick, and even though I don't think he got any sleep Friday night/Saturday morning he insisted that we head out. He said that too much work has been done on it, he wanted to go and play.
Saturday was a very windy day, mostly overcast, but it stayed dry all day.
NTAXS runs a different format than a normal autocross. They have morning and afternoon sessions. Each driver gets 4 runs in each of those sessions. They pull up 6-8 cars at a time and you run your 4 runs in back to back in that group.
The course on Sunday was a 90 sec long monster, very physical and very mentally taxing.
I started off first in the morning session. The car was strong and there wasn't any obvious tire rubbing after the shock replacement and the (much) lower ride height. Unfortunately, a noise that Stan and I had both heard on Friday made itself obvious, the collector bolts between the header and exhaust had fallen out on one side and loose on the other.
Stan lost his morning runs, the runs were replaced with a run to Tractor Supply for hardware. During the lunch break we finished up the exhaust, made a rear sway-bar adjustment and Stan headed out for his first runs.
His first run of the day ended up being FTD for the event. But, with the lower air pressures the tires finally rubbed. The front tires started rubbing on the front springs, spinning the springs and mounts, changing the ride height, making it rub more.
Back to the trailer, added another wheel spacer, reset the ride hight. Back out for 2 more runs for Stan and a couple for me. Stan couldn't match his first run time, we both agree that we lost a little rake when we reset the ride height. We will double check that (and lots of other stuff) before this next weekend.
Last hiccup for the weekend was on my last run the car went dead in the hard left handers on course. Took off on the run with about 12 miles to empty on the gas gauge, when I got back it was just simply '-- to empty'. I guess we just found another limit to the car.
After a good night sleep last night, time to put in the race seat for next weekend. Picking up the harness bar from the powder coater tomorrow. 'Red Baron' red, just like the wheels.
Tested the shocks out at the NTAXS event.
Overall a very good day, but not without some pains.
The mood of the day started Friday afternoon with Stan getting sick, and even though I don't think he got any sleep Friday night/Saturday morning he insisted that we head out. He said that too much work has been done on it, he wanted to go and play.
Saturday was a very windy day, mostly overcast, but it stayed dry all day.
NTAXS runs a different format than a normal autocross. They have morning and afternoon sessions. Each driver gets 4 runs in each of those sessions. They pull up 6-8 cars at a time and you run your 4 runs in back to back in that group.
The course on Sunday was a 90 sec long monster, very physical and very mentally taxing.
I started off first in the morning session. The car was strong and there wasn't any obvious tire rubbing after the shock replacement and the (much) lower ride height. Unfortunately, a noise that Stan and I had both heard on Friday made itself obvious, the collector bolts between the header and exhaust had fallen out on one side and loose on the other.
Stan lost his morning runs, the runs were replaced with a run to Tractor Supply for hardware. During the lunch break we finished up the exhaust, made a rear sway-bar adjustment and Stan headed out for his first runs.
His first run of the day ended up being FTD for the event. But, with the lower air pressures the tires finally rubbed. The front tires started rubbing on the front springs, spinning the springs and mounts, changing the ride height, making it rub more.
Back to the trailer, added another wheel spacer, reset the ride hight. Back out for 2 more runs for Stan and a couple for me. Stan couldn't match his first run time, we both agree that we lost a little rake when we reset the ride height. We will double check that (and lots of other stuff) before this next weekend.
Last hiccup for the weekend was on my last run the car went dead in the hard left handers on course. Took off on the run with about 12 miles to empty on the gas gauge, when I got back it was just simply '-- to empty'. I guess we just found another limit to the car.
After a good night sleep last night, time to put in the race seat for next weekend. Picking up the harness bar from the powder coater tomorrow. 'Red Baron' red, just like the wheels.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
More suspension installation details
Wrapping up the moton coil over installation. New holes drilled for the reservoir hoses in the rear, and slotted upper bolt holes to gain some rear camber with the AST upper mounts. Over 3 degrees of camber now without having to use GT3 lower arms. This only worked because of the shortened strut, and 'flat' upper mount instead of the OEM 'tower' style mount.
The AST front camber plates are nice peices, with some useful camber/caster adjustment range when combined with the alternate bolt holes for reverse mounting. Holes for the front hose were trickier, ended up going through a double walled section in the trunk floor, in hindsight I may have tried to route them up high into the battery compartment. There are existing holes there that just need enlarging.
Front reservoir mounting on the tool cover.
Lessons learned from this week long trial fitting and installation
- Bleed the reservoir gas pressure before disconnecting the quick disconnects. They work very well, but take tremendous force to reconnect if there is much pressure in the reservoirs.
- There is a crazy amount of sound insulation in the rear engine area of the car, including some memory foam material in the carpet pieces. Easily 20-40lbs. Will have to see if the Cayman R uses less that I can update to.
- Since this car had the PASM electrically controlled shocks, it threw an error code once they were disconnected, and would not allow 'sport' mode to be enabled. RAC performance was able to delete the PASM function from the cars programming using AWE's instructions: http://awe-tuning.com/media/pdf/AWE_Tuning_PASM_Delete.pdf
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