Street Prepared build

[xelderx]

how far overbore are you going? .040?

you definitely need to get that bad boy on a dyno at some point!

depends on which ring set is available. I want to save myself some room to get at least one more rebuild in. The dealer said that he might not be able to get the rings for the first overbore, so he is going to check both and get me pistons and rings for whatever is available. She will go on the dyno as soon as this new motor is broke in.

 

[01bluemp3]

Word...I'm working this weekend, but n9ght shift so I might work a little in the afternnon. It just depends if the new parts get here or not.

just give my cell a call, i get off work at 6 and have sat afternoon and sunday off

 

[xelderx]

just give my cell a call, i get off work at 6 and have sat afternoon and sunday off

I don't have enough parts in yet to really start working on anything. I'm waiting on my new service manual before I tear down the tranny. My Accusump came in yesterday, but it will be one of the last things to go back in the car. Right now I'm waiting on all the motor internals, LSD, flywheel, and header. As soon as the internals get here I'm sending them off to be balanced and the cylinders bored. So I have to wait for all that to get done before any of the real work begins.

I also have to say that I just won 3 Hoosier A3S04's off of Ebay and I'll be ordering new Kosei K1's (15x7) and another A3S04 on Monday. I can't wait to get these 225's under this car.

 

[01bluemp3]

wow, your car is gonna be 10x better when its done, i didnt know you were gonna go this far

 

[xelderx]

i didnt know you were gonna go this far

Neither did my credit counselor

 

[xelderx]

Update

I haven't had much time to work on the car in the last few days due to being on 3rd shift at work this week. I have all weekend off and I plan to make some progress.

I got my new wheels and 2 of the tires in. Here's the story on those.

Wheels---Kosei K1's 15X7 38 offset

Tires---Hoosier A3S05's 225/45-15

I tested the fit on the car with the 2 tires that I have mounted on the rims. The front looks really good with plenty of clearence all around the tire even at full steering lock. The tire doesn't stick out from the fender at all and it looks like it should still clear just fine under full suspension load, but I won't be able to make sure of that until the motor is back in the car and I get to drive it.

On the back is where the problem is. The inside of the tire only has about a centimeter of clearence before it hits the strut which is perfect. The outside of the tire however sticks out from the fender about 3/4's of an inch. That just isn't going to cut it. I thought about solutions to the problem, but the only viable one is to run a smaller tire on the rear of the car. I ordered 2 leftover Hoosier A3S04's 205/50-15 for $117 each. This is the same size that I run on the car right now and that size fits well on the 6 inch wide rims that I have now. Putting the 205's on my new 7 inch rims should give them a little bigger contact patch and they should still fit in the fender nicely.

Since I don't have all the parts I need to rebuild the motor or tranny yet I spent a few minutes figuring out where I was going to mount the Accusump. My original plan was to mount it in the engine bay under the coolant resevior, but it is about 1/2 inch too long. I tried to see if it would fit behind the front bumper anywhere, but I just couldn't find a good spot that didn't make it vulnerable. I hadn't planned on doing it, but I went ahead and decided to mount it inside the car. It fits really well in the passenger floorboard right in front of the seat so I went ahead and bought the fittings to run the oil line through the firewall.

I'll hopefully get some pictures once things start happening, but right now it's just a pile of parts in the garage.

 

[proman]

good news that the 225's fit up in front. are you allowed to roll the fender lips in the rear to gain the clearance or is it still not enough?

 

[xelderx]

good news that the 225's fit up in front. are you allowed to roll the fender lips in the rear to gain the clearance or is it still not enough?

It is no where near enough. These things stick out pretty bad. If you look from the rear corner of the car the tire sticks out past the fender almost an inch. 225's just won't clear without some sort of widebody flair.

 

[xelderx]

I just went searching for the width in inches of the Hoosiers. It looks like the 205's are almost an inch more narrow than the 225's. If that is the case then I'll have at least a half inch of clearence between the tire and the strut with the 205's. That gives me enough room to have the rim machined down a little to tuck it under the fender better. Once the 205's come in I'll mount one and test fit it to see if I'll need to machine the wheel down any.

 

[dmitrik4]

i'm surprised there's so much less clearance in the back. but i suppose it's better than not having it up front....

two thoughts:

1. with those 475 springs and a big bar in the rear, you might not even get down to the fender lips under full compression...esp since the 225/45/15s are about .7" shorter than the stockers. keep in mind, they don't need to be covered by the fenders...the rule was changed to allow tires to stick out. then again, i don't know what your ride height situation is.

2. sawzall!

i can suggest #2 b/c it's not my car. however, i've seen it done very successfully.

ps. we got a second grey. she's quite a ham...but now i wish i had a P5 instead of the sedan.

 

[xelderx]

i'm surprised there's so much less clearance in the back. but i suppose it's better than not having it up front....

two thoughts:

1. with those 475 springs and a big bar in the rear, you might not even get down to the fender lips under full compression...esp since the 225/45/15s are about .7" shorter than the stockers. keep in mind, they don't need to be covered by the fenders...the rule was changed to allow tires to stick out. then again, i don't know what your ride height situation is.

2. sawzall!

i can suggest #2 b/c it's not my car. however, i've seen it done very successfully.

ps. we got a second grey. she's quite a ham...but now i wish i had a P5 instead of the sedan.

You are correct about the rules, but it just doesn't sit right with me. It sticks out so much more on the back relative to the front that it looks like I know absolutely nothing about offset. It bugs me too much. I like the car to look nice and clean. I might have to drop my rear springrate a little depending on how the new tires do. If she is still too tail happy I'll be ordering new springs...probably 400 lbs. I have the bar set almost all the way out and she was very loose the last time she ran. I might get the AWR rear camber plates and add about -2 degrees out back to help it settle down a little as well.

Tomorrow and Thursday will be my true test. I have a little over 48 hours to completely rebuild the motor, tranny, install the accusump, new clutch, flywheel, and put the motor/tranny back in the car. Then I need to machine the rear wheels down a little and put enough break-in miles on the clutch and motor before Sunday so it doesn't fry itself. My whole setup is changing and I'll be re-learning the car all over again with the new tires and LSD. Wish me luck. It's going to be an interesting and frantic end to a very long project.

It looks like I'll be getting another hound soon too. My girlfriend fell in love with a jet black female last weekend when we went to the rescue for play group. My apartment is getting very cramped...time to go house hunting (large garage with nice house attached hunting).

 

[dmitrik4]

you don't want to go for the "muscle car RWD" look?

sounds like you're going to be busy...so get the hell off the computer! definitely keep us posted.

we're going to be looking for a place as well- a fenced yard w/ a house attached. a garage would be nice too....

 

[xelderx]

I hate having to rely on other people to get stuff done. 75% of the time they just don't understand how much of a hurry you are in.


I spent all day Wednesday gathering up all the pieces I neede to start putting the car together starting with the bored, balanced, and blueprinted internals. After that I had to replace the oil squirters in the block that shoot oil on the piston skirts and wrist pins. Those things are absolute bitches to remove. It took me 3 hours to completely replace all 4 and I still didn't have the torque specs I needed to start building the bottom end. I took everything to the garage and started putting the tranny back together which didn't take too long so I went ahead and got the block on the motor stand and got it ready to rebuild as soon as I got the torque specs. I had to run by UPS and pick up the tires they tried to deliver while I was out earlier in the afternoon. That pretty much finished up Wednesday since there wasn't anything else I could do.

Thursday started with me calling Sunbelt motors, Mazda Competition, and TriPoint Engineering trying to get torque specs which no one seemed to know. About 1 pm I finally got the dealer to call Tech Line and get them for me. The engine build started at 2:30 and I had the shortblock completely finished by 4:30. By 6pm I had the motor completely rebuilt and ready for the new flywheel and clutch. I was waiting on a friend to bring my load leveler back so I went to clean out the intake manifold and noticed that my fill job on some of the VTCS rod holes had come out...hmmm...I wonder where those little hard particles went? I had to go get more epoxy to fix that and once that was done we got the clutch and flywheel together and remounted the tranny.

Right now the motor/tranny is ready to drop back in the car. I had to work this morning so I didn't want to start it last night and I still need to do a little plumbing in the firewall for the accusump before I put the motor back in. SHe won't be ready for the race this weekend, but my 4-2-1 header won't be here until Monday anyway. I have a few pictures, but they probably won't be posted until late this weekend.

 

[Lord_Zath]

Wow sounds like some fun times w/the engine! Keep us posted!

LZ
Z

 

[xelderx]

Update

I just got back from the first autocross on the new setup. Let em just say that the car is very fast. I got a good idea where I am in the big scheme of things since there was a national Solo II competitor there in his VW Rabbit. Him and his co-driver finished 1st-2nd with me 1.8 seconds behind them in 3rd. I went back and looked at last year's Solo II National results and the Rabbit finished 3rd which if my times stayed consistent behind his similiar to what happened today I would have trophied at Nationals last year. Thats all just bench racing though.

The cons of the setup right now...

1st. The revised LSD from the MSP is pretty crappy. It has a delayedd engagement point over the original LSD and by the time it grabs I'm either already letting off for the next turn or the motor is making enough power to spin both wheels. With the 3 degrees of camber in the front it doesn't take much to get them spinning when your not turning.

2nd. I think my springrates are just a hair too high for the Hoosiers. The front had a few small moments of understeer and the back was still loose even with the Hoosiers. I'm going to try and tighten everything up by loosening the swaybars to give the car a little more dig and grip.

The Pro's

1st. Hoosiers are the s***. Period.

2nd. Kosei K1's are the s***. Very light.

3rd. The new motor/flywheel setup gets the car moving much faster.

I'll be getting some pictures up soon and I'll have some more updates with new car weight and dyno #'s very soon.

 

[mp5smuggler]

thats great man.... now wheres my clutch and fly lol.... seriously though thats great news on the setup man

 

[xelderx]

thats great man.... now wheres my clutch and fly lol.... seriously though thats great news on the setup man

I have it boxed up...I've just been cleaning up the mess I made while I was redoing my car. I'll try and run it by the UPS store tomorrow. I'll give you a call if I do.

I'll also have my computer back at home running really soon so I'll be able to get some pictures posted.

 

[xelderx]

Update

The bad news...

My valve seals are most likely toast. The car just won't stop burning oil...massive amounts of oil...I could fog for mosquitos/ James Bond smoke screen kinda burning oil. It mostly goes away after the car warms up, but still smokes a little when it's pulling hard. I'm going to order new seals tomorrow and hopefully have them in time to rebuild the head...again...before I go to Lexington, Va to race next weekend. I like this new smiley by the way...kinda how I feel...(deadhorse


The good news...

I'm bidding on a Haltech E6X and I'm determined to win it. The auction will be ending this weekend so I may have some tuning headed my way next week as well. Not that I need much more power right now, but my car is running uber rich and it's annoying knowing that I have a lot of power in the motor that the stock ECU can't do anything with.

 

[dmitrik4]

oi. my hat off to you on your patience. and your garage....

good luck. DYING to know how much power you're going to pull out of that motor.

wondering how it would work in a 2100-lb prepped 1st-gen....(cheers)

 

[xelderx]

oi. my hat off to you on your patience. and your garage....

good luck. DYING to know how much power you're going to pull out of that motor.

wondering how it would work in a 2100-lb prepped 1st-gen....(cheers)

Once I get the oil problem fixed she is going to the dyno. My friend has a N/A 91 240SX...around 140hp I think. I was carrying 1 passenger and my race tires in the back of the Protege and he just barely pulled away from me.