The Money Pit!

[Trotty]

Awesome video. Quick car too. U are very sympathetic to ur car, but they do say smooth is fast so.i must say I drive harder everyday to and from work.

[DEADEYES]

Man that looks like so much fun, I would love to get start doing this. Also love the kids with the little tool belts haha

[4g63lover]

I am so itchy to get on a track and yours and Martins videos are not helping. Unfortunately I dont think I will get on a track until next year.

[xd_01]

Yea my wife likes to accessorize the kids lol , made lots of people smile!

Jigz, dont wait take your daily youll have fun and be hooked. Its better to start in a stock
car, at first its not about all out speed its about car control and learning the line. Its actually harder to
learn in a modified car, I mean people do it all the time but its easier the othe way. Atleast this way
youll have some basics down once your car is ready.

To bad you dont live closer, we could hang out for the day and I could give you a ride-along if you wanted
although its usually not a fun ride for the passenger, I guess its the whole control issue. Or if anybody in there area wants to come down to hang out or even give it a try by all means hit me up. We usually bbq too so theres that to look forward to also.

Were headed to VIR June 19-20 and then well be back at Summit Point in August unless I decide to go on a mission
and head to Road Atlant that month but thats probaly not likely.

[6G72gearhead]

Learning to conserve momentum is the biggest part of being fast on a track, which is easiest to do on a slow car, that will barely accelerate and really talks when its on the limit. Which is why the Miata has been so popular.

Hopefully I will get out to Heartland park this summer. I've got a friend with a turbo 6.0L RX-7 who needs to start getting seat time in with the monster he's created.

So what are the next plans for the car?

[xd_01]

I got a bunch of little projects on the list but I have to pick my battles with this car in order to keep it ready for the track weekends. At the moment its just fill with gas and drive which is the way I like it but Im a gear head so Ill eventually stick my hands in there and change something. Maintenance wise I have to change the front pads, oil change and drain the anti-freeze and replace with distilled water.

[xd_01]

whats up everybody, we've been house hunting for the past month and finally went in to contract on a real nice house near us so I haven't done much to the car. I was able to have some bungs welded on to the coolant system for my wastegate but that's it. Sucky thing is I filled it with water today then started the car and the ports were leaking on the wastegate. I overtightened the fitting on the wastegate and the 8mm washer spread out enough to leak water. So I gotta go look for something tomorrow to fix it cause I have to flush and fill the coolant system by end of tomorrow. I have event next weekend so its gottta get resolved some how.

Heres the thermostat housing, tapped for 1/4 npt


back of the housing I had capped off since it was part of the HVAC system that I don't have anymore.


the inside where they put a slug in order to to get it very hot while welding with out damaging the cast.


here you can see were the old stock turbo coolant line was cut and capped and a 1/4 bung was welded on the opposite side for the wastegate. Next to the nipple for the throttlebody was a nipple for the hvac that was also cut and capped.




and on the opposite end a 1/4 bung was welded on for a coolant temp sensor, its not for a gauge but for a warning light that will be installed later on at the gauge panel. At 225 degrees its lights up nice and bright.






hard to see in this pic but there a 1/4x-4 90 threaded into the bung.


Done

[xd_01]

Some pro shots from last month

[4g63lover]

Car is looking good B!

[2002BlackDragon]

Hells yeah!

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[melwood513]

Wow, this is really amazing. The abilities some of you guys possess is jaw dropping and the vision displayed here is really inspiring. Thoroughly entertained reading through this, can't tell you how many times I said OMG, and passed it around the room, lol. I do some work over at Rockville Lexus once in a while, I would love to see it.

[xd_01]

Thanks for the props, just hit me up when ever your town.

[6G72gearhead]

Fantastic looking welds on both the thermostat housing and the coolant pipe. Hope all goes well on your event coming up! Get some good pictures and videos!

[spdracr]

I saw those water-cooled wastegate before. What is the true benefit of being cooled??

Sent from my Galaxy S4

[xd_01]

Longevity

[xd_01]

I know I know longgg read!!


I haven't had any good luck with the car since the last event at VIR back in July so I really havent had anything good to talk about. No accidents If that's what you thinking just mechanical.

1st session I was bedding in new brake pads so it was a throw away session, as soon Im done with the break-in procedure I pull it in to the paddock and let the pads cool down for 30 min. It was waste of time though because I was getting brake shudder later on in the day which means I didn't bed them in properly.

During my first session though I notice I was getting some boost spike exiting certain corners leading into some long straight aways where I would normaly start to go flat out.
Being that I was not doing any hot laps I was a lil worried what the rest on the day would bring.

2nd session I miss the warm up lap but doesn't matter cause I usually warm it any way if Im late, I let everyone by and Im still noticing some boost spike even though a was going fairly slow. Once I completed a lap I start accelerating hard when I feel a sprinkle of water going up my arm, Im like what the fvck and immediately pull it into neutral right before turn 1. Im like fvck it Im gonna keep going, at about turn 3 I start feeling water spraying on my ankle and of course I wasn't wearing any socks so now Im starting to get a little worried lol. I pull back to about 5/10's and about halfway around the track the water temp is getting close to 225, I pull it back into the paddock.

Turns out that ONE of TWO rubber lines left in the whole engine bay that weren't converted to braided lines decided to blow off, theses were coolant lines to the t/b and I guess the stock clamp was too tired and had no more tension left. Luckily the race store on sight had one small overpriced worm clamp left in stock. Oh well at least I didn't have to leave the track for one but the funny thing was when I was trying to install it I dropped it and it got lost in the engine bay for like 30 min. I had to jack up the freakin car just to get a better shot at finding it. So I finished that and filled with water, took about a gallon and it only takes about a gallon and half so I lost a lot of water during this whole fiasco.

What did I learn from this? Cover up the holes in my fire wall lol ASAP

3rd session set the tone for the whole weekend I was getting boost spikes so bad exiting corners that the whole car would start to buck back and forth. After the seesion I started looking for anything obvious that would cuz this like a disconnected vacuum line or something but everything looked fine. The rest of the weekend was spent trying to make the best of it, wasn't pushing the car has hard as I would've like to, trying to stay out of 15 psi cuz as soon as it hit that number it spiked passed what the gauge actually reads. My videos are super boring to say the least, spent most of my time behind a couple of miatas Im friendly with.

Now I had 4 weeks to get this resolved till my next event so I thought I had plenty of time, I waited like a week and half to bring the car to the shop and they couldn't work on it until the following week. After they did all their troubleshooting they narrowed it down to the wastegate. They put in the softest spring to see if it would keep spiking and it continued to spike. Next they contacted Tial which is difficult to do because they don't provide a phone number everything is through email. After all the back and forth emails they told my shop to send it in so they can inspect it. They made the repairs and Im not even sure what they repaired because these things aren't that complicated, its a valve with seals and most parts are available for people to repair themselves so Im left wondering. They did say this thing is getting very hot and I might want consider relocating it so its possible they had to machine something but who knows but now I have another thing to worry about. Either extend the wastgate or just buy a different manifold which might leave me with re-fabbing a down pipe, dump tube and intake. Three things I don't want to do right now.

Well after all the back and forth emails with Tial they asked how fast do we need it back, my shop said overnite and they haven't heard back from them since and still no wastegate. So now I missed my track weekend which was today and yesterday, Im out registration fees and hotel. Im not blaming anyone but me for that since I should've brought it in sooner but Iam pissed with Tial. I mean what kind of customer service is that? Not even having a contact number? Cmon man its 2014, Im sure certain folks get a number but either way I don't think Im gonna buy anymore products from them in the future cause of this.

So there you have it, a long read for those interested and if you even made it this far thanks for listening lol. I wont be on track till October, feels so far away.

Ill try to get some pics of the July event

[Isaurio]

Just wow. Crazy. Dam galants. Lol. Sucks things are happening. Thats what happens with modified cars. A lot of variable for errors.

1. U dont need the coolant line to tb. Is there for really cold weather so it could warm up the tb so the butterfly dont freeze and get stuck. Take it off/ bypass so you could cool the tb and intake mani for better denser air. I dont know why is coolant on tb. Defeat the purpose to have a anti-cooler.

2. Boost spike. Where do you have your WG vacuum line. On intake mani vacuum. Or by the turbo compressor tubing? Do you have manual boost or electronic? What is your spring rate?


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[xd_01]

Yea modified cars suck at the track, sometimes I wish I had a nice stocker of sorts that doesn't require as much tlc. I know I don't need the coolant lines but it helps cold starts plus there already there so I might as well use them. I still would have to loop them which would leave me with 2 less connections that could blow but at the moment its a big deal. Just have to make sure my clamps aren't fatigued and the coolant system properly bled, that's probably what blew it off anyway. I did a coolant flush prior to that weekend.

I don't remember what the wastegate springs are but I do have EBC and the vacuum line comes off the compressor housing.

[kylecanthurdle]

tial wastegates are a dime a dozen in my crowd. im surprised you didnt have a friend who would let you borrow theirs for the weekend. i let guys borrow things off my spare kart all the time even if they're beating me in points. that def sucks, i never like seeing someone miss out on important seat time with their car. hope to see it back up and going soon and you in that drivers seat!

[6G72gearhead]

The coolant lines in the throttle don't really do anything other than keeping frost from forming under certain conditions, so that is about all that needs to be said there.

I'd be super pissed on that deal though. For the price of your hotel and entry fee's you could have just bought another wastegate.

Have you thought about taming the system down a little bit? Less pressure, little less power and just focus on conserving momentum?

If I can put together the money I will hopefully be running Hallett this year with a few friends. Should be a fantastic change to what I'm used to, I've never tracked this car on the current set up.

So is the radiator cap not the highest point of your cooling system? Even with the turbo cooling tubes added on I wouldn't think it would be that prone to capturing air bubbles.