2016 Autocross Season Over
Wow! The spring and summer flew by. We had our final events of the season Saturday and Sunday. I clinched the E-street championship on Saturday. I have to admit, my chief competitor missed several events which gave me the win. Had he been there consistently, I'd have surely been 2nd. Like any form of sport, consistency through the season is key and I was there to put in times at every event. How does it feel to win and be 2nd best?..........actually pretty good.In spite of some nasty weather Sunday morning, I just had to go out and give the 2002 one last set of runs. The RE71Rs have plenty of life in them so, why not. I just barely coned my final run, run 6, in the last slalom. Too bad, that run was really fast, almost a second faster as the surface continued to dry. Here's my fast clean run from Sunday, run 5.
Brakes
I've bled the crap out of these things using the helper method. Cycling the ABS pump hasn't really helped. Reading the forums, this seems to be a common issue.They're super soft with the engine running, so I thought the booster check valve might be stuck, no dice, it's fine.
Next I'll try a gravity bleed while tapping on the lines and components with a rubber mallet. If that doesn't work, I'll have to try a pressure bleeder. I don't own one and I'm hoping I don't need to buy one.
I'm still waiting on my replacement right rear control arm. It's been two weeks. My chainsaw has rotted fuel lines and I have a new hose kit. I guess I should work on that and the car will have to sit until next weekend.
On the ground!
Finally! After three weeks my replacement rear upper control arm arrived. I was ready for it and had it in and torqued in about 10 minutes. Kudos to AWR for providing this awesome product.
The upper arms are now full Delrin bushings and the lowers are poly. The zerk on the upper is left over from the previous poly bushing. These will allow on the fly rear camber tweaks with no impact on toe. I'm still debating adding Paco Motorsports eccentric locks on the 8 chassis alignment bolts.
http://pacomotorsports.com/eccentric-locks/
$100 for 8 seems about double what they should cost. I'll run it and see how the alignment holds I guess.
I'm back on the ground and at least looking square vs. before when I had crazy negative right rear camber. Ride heights are as even as I'd expect for a rough setting. I think those rears might even have some positive camber. Looking Phat!
Mechanically Complete!
Yep, I'm calling it. The car is mechanically complete. It needs the details sorted before spring which should be a fairly casual affair. The complete build took 15 months which is under my target. The original target was spring of 2017 and that was without the VVT swap in the mix. I probably spent a bit too much of my time working it, but I was having so much fun. So what does it need?- Set ride heights and corner weight
- Alignment in the garage and recheck at the shop
- Harness final installation
- Wash, clay bar and re-wax
- Re-install the flares and rear spoiler
- Decals.....we all love stickers
- Sort out the still somewhat soft brake pedal
- Improve the idle tune
- Dyno tune
Setup
After some internet research and a putting the Avons on the car at my expected pressure, I went to work.With the driver seat ballasted with 200lbs I adjusted my ride heights. My target pinch weld heights are 4.75" rear & 4.5" front. Although the shock heights were all pretty close, I was a fair distance off at the beginning. After 3 adjustments I was at:
LF 4 1/2" RF 4 9/16"
LR 4 3/4" RR 4 5/8"
These aren't perfect, but a good start for corner weighting. Sway bars should be disconnected during the corner weighting process. The car has about 5 gallons of fuel.
I put the car on the scales to check cross weights. Not so great:
Total weight 1959 lbs. (Crap still heavy and I probably have 25 lbs of stuff to add still)
LF 623 RF 516
LR 500 RR 522
Cross 46.82%
Not so great, lets figure out how to get it to 50%. This GRM article is a good start:
GRM understanding-corner-weights written by Per Schroeder
Based on this article we want to make small changes at all 4 corners.
From the article, but reversed for cross weight less than 50%:
To go from 46 percent to 50 percent cross-weight, try raising the right front and the left rear one-half turn on the weight jack bolt or spring perch while lowering the left front and right rear the same amount.
After several adjustments, I ended up here for ballasted results, about as good as I' going to get without moving weight around in the car
LF 608 RF 549
LR 536 RR 499
Cross 49.49%
Left side 52.18%
Rear 47.21%
Ballasted ride heights:
LF 4 1/4" RF 4 3/8"
LR 4 5/8" RR 4/58"
Un-ballasted ride heights:
LF 4 5/8" RF 4 3/8"
LR 4 7/8" RR 4/5/8"
Cleanup & Details
With the weather giving me a short break, I decided it was time to clean up the paint. There's a year's worth of shop gunk in the paint. I gave the car a quick wash and clay bared it. Next I hit the problem areas with Ultimate Compound and waxed the whole thing. It looks pretty darn good.I installed the fender flares and rear spoiler. I went ahead and started the decal work. Mazda contingency decals are on. This thing is starting to look like a race car. and I covered the car with the Tyvek shop cover I bought Summit Racing which will hopefully keep the paint in good shape from here out.
Brake Bleeding
I finally gave up and bought a Motive Power Bleeder. Honestly, from the feedback on the forums, I didn't really have high hopes for results. I went ahead and bought a clutch attachment at the same time. I had absolutely no reason to think there was air in the ABS block,. I never pulled the master cylinder out and it was never drained during the build. So I was down to air in the lines downstream or a failed master cylinder. I blew a full master cylinder to each corner going around the car twice while also tapping the brake lines. I got a fair amount of bubbles out of one corner. My pedal no longer slowly drops to the floor with the engine off and it feels better with the engine on and the booster engaged. It's actually firmer than my daughters 97 Miata, but I can't say I'm thrilled with it either.. It's nowhere close to my 2002. I may upgrade to a 2002+ booster with a Mazda 929 master cylinder later. For now, I think we're good.I also re-bled my clutch using the Motive and it also improved a bit.
I need to go for a short spin and test them, but it's pouring rain, have to wait.
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