It Gets Old Fast | Real Life: Modding a Nerf

[Braces]

Dezoris ... Your reads are always excellent and backed up with real world experience.

I believe you are just bored with the FRS. You seem to refer to it as a NERF car. Probably time to move on to a different car. But realize ... ANY car that is tracked is going to require maintenance and hours of prep time. Comes with the territory.

Personally .... As I got older .... I modded my cars less and less. I have other uses for my valuable time.

[Model Citizen]

Originally Posted by ZDan

It really seems to me like a LOT more work is being done than necessary.
Point 1: Did you try tracking the car with the stock brakes with good track pads and DOT4 fluid? That would have saved a ton of time/effort/$$$ right there.
$400 *street* pads? For why?
I run low-noise/low-dust inexpensive street pads on the street on my street/track car. Centric Posi-Quiet, $65 all around, no problemo. I even did an unplanned track event with them and they were actually fine (I did lift VERY early on the longest straight to preserve them).
Also, I wouldn't throw away "grooved" pads, especially if they were expensive. I also use rotors to the bitter end (min thickness) and never have them turned. Grooves and all. I haven't experienced warped rotors in forever (not since I stupidly had my old 535i's rotors turned a couple of decades ago).
Do you *really* swap out the rotors and calipers between seasons? Waste of time/money/effort again.
Q: the "cheap Hawk pads" you used, were they HPS? If so, they're likely worse than OEM. Centric street pads are mucho better-o.

2. Tires. Of course tires get used up. I usually *enjoy* the opportunity to buy and try new tires. Getting NT01s for the RX-7 this year after suffering at the track with street tires...

3/4. Revised kit for more power? New spare tensioner because they are known to fail? Of course aftermarket mods are not as well developed for reliability vs. OEM, so some issues are to be expected. Would hope this would become a non-issue at some point...

5. I always ship tires to where I'm going to have them installed. And they keep my winter wheels/tires in the summer and my summer wheels/tires in the winter. Same with parts I know I'm not going to install myself, I have them shipped to the shop. You might see if you can do this with your shop, saves a lot of hassle.

6. Swapping brake systems between winter/summer is, again, IMO, a waste of time/money/effort. I drive on the big brakes all year on my FD, even New England winters (do try to avoid the salt though!).

7. I bleed brakes before ever other track event (of course including the first event of the season). No big deal, especially as the wheels/tires are being swapped for the track event anyway.

8. This also seems a ridiculous waste of time/money/effort. I wouldn't worry about 0W20 synthetic oil not getting "up to temperature" in the winter months. Do you have a thermostat for the oil coiler? Good on you for inspecting, but all this additional labor removing/re-installing the oil cooler and lines is not buying you anything IMO.

9. Periodic inspection is of course a good idea...


TL/DR: You're doing a LOT more work and spending a LOT more money than necessary to run a modded street/track car.

shhh

he needed a topic for a new article and there weren't any mods left to buy

[tennisfreak]

Thanks for the insight OP. I had been wanting to do some forced induction mods to my car for a while and just could not come to a decision on whether it would be worth the time and money. Plus after my wife totaled my truck I suddenly needed to make sure my car stayed daily driver reliable.

Your post plus what I have gathered from the forced induction and tuning threads just reinforced the premise when you start tinkering with the engine you have to be willing to invest some serious time and take some risks. I wish I could do this but I dont have the time or another vehicle.

So for my track days I decided to go another direction. I bought this:


No need to mod her to go fast or be ready for the track as she came off the showroom floor ready for track use.

Already scheduled first track day in may.

I'm hoping that in the next year or two tuning/forced induction for our car will have some maturity and offer some proven solutions that dont require a lot of tinkering to get going/keep running.

[thill]

I always love reading your stories and watching your videos. If nothing else this has been a great learning experience for you, and those of us that got to watch you along the way which is pretty cool.

I think the point you make that you cannot just slap a bunch of aftermarket performance parts on the car where everything just fits and works and has the same maintenance as OEM (and still warrantied) is a really valid one and there are many people on this forum that should put that into perspective before they start modifying their car. It is a really interesting perspective and one you don't usually read about because most people (I believe) that mod their cars sugarcoat the time, money, and headaches and tend to post mostly about how great everything is. And then these same people sell their cars 6-18 months after buying them.....

It seems you have come full circle. Which I can appreciate. I like cars too. I just work a lot and have three kids under the age of 10 and have come to the point in my life that I just don't have the time and patience to spend on my cars all the time. I also don't want to worry about my daily driver not running, or dealing with warranty denials because my car has been modified more than Frankenstein.

And for those of you saying "you should just wait 5 years until things mature" well spend some time on Evo or STI forums. Modifying is modifying. Yes many of these kits will be more proven and there will be more experience and knowledge around them, but there are still headaches along the way and the money and time never gets better.

Kudos to you Dezoris for documenting your journey and sharing it.

[ProjectGT86]

[QUOTE=ZDan;1669244]It really seems to me like a LOT more work is being done than necessary.


I live 15 min from providence!

[extrashaky]

Originally Posted by Tromatic

Mr. Tada (san means drinking buddy and is pretentious if you are not)

Where the hell are you getting that? The -san suffix in Japanese is a formal honorific that is attached to the name of someone who is at your social rank or higher. It's the rough equivalent of using "Mr." in English, except that it is expected to be used much more often, in social situations we would consider much less formal. It has nothing to do with drinking buddies.

If you were addressing Tada directly or referring to him in Japanese, you would include the -san on the end as an expected gesture of respect.

[Dezoris]

1. Spent months testing the car stock in autox, street and track. This was to gather base line data, dyno, temps etc. Before the tracked the stock car we swapped out, Gfour fluid and PMU 800HC pads. Also tried DBA Rotors.

2. Carbotech 1521s are some of the best street pads but they are for the CP8350 AP Calipers, more expensive. But since they were ruined I was not going to buy another set when I had gotten a set of Hawks from Essex for next to nothing. They are the HPS but like I said I have run other street pads that are more aggressive and the transfer layer disappears. Like yesterday it was 75 during the day and then was almost 35 this morning. I needed the mildest compound for street, nothing else seems to work.

I also have sitting in a drawer the following pads:

• Carbotech XP10
• Carbotech XP12
• Ferodo DS2500
• Ferodo DS UNO
• Project Mu 999
• Project MU 800HC

So I did not just randomly just decide, on pads and brakes, we tried plenty.


3. I do swap rotors out when they old ones were warped and pads were getting destroyed yes.


4. Tensioner, I am going to have 4 belt swaps so far on the kit. One to upgrade the belt, the other proactive, the other because I took the blower off to inspect pulleys and now finally to swap in the new idler and new size belt vortech released. Not sure how much pulling and prying on the stock tensioner has effected it so bought a spare, as it is noisier than it once was.


5. Again I know you dont follow my build but if you did you would see I posted all my logging of track temps, street temps and winter temps of oil.
The thermostatic plate opens at 185F but there is always trickle flow to the oil cooler for pressure reasons etc. When it drops below 40 degrees running 0w20 redline oil I could never get the engine oil pas 170 degrees after a 20 minute commute it would settle around 160F. Thats not good.
That's over cooling. So it was disconnected.

Originally Posted by ZDan

It really seems to me like a LOT more work is being done than necessary.
Point 1: Did you try tracking the car with the stock brakes with good track pads and DOT4 fluid? That would have saved a ton of time/effort/$$$ right there.
$400 *street* pads? For why?
I run low-noise/low-dust inexpensive street pads on the street on my street/track car. Centric Posi-Quiet, $65 all around, no problemo. I even did an unplanned track event with them and they were actually fine (I did lift VERY early on the longest straight to preserve them).
Also, I wouldn't throw away "grooved" pads, especially if they were expensive. I also use rotors to the bitter end (min thickness) and never have them turned. Grooves and all. I haven't experienced warped rotors in forever (not since I stupidly had my old 535i's rotors turned a couple of decades ago).
Do you *really* swap out the rotors and calipers between seasons? Waste of time/money/effort again.
Q: the "cheap Hawk pads" you used, were they HPS? If so, they're likely worse than OEM. Centric street pads are mucho better-o.

2. Tires. Of course tires get used up. I usually *enjoy* the opportunity to buy and try new tires. Getting NT01s for the RX-7 this year after suffering at the track with street tires...

3/4. Revised kit for more power? New spare tensioner because they are known to fail? Of course aftermarket mods are not as well developed for reliability vs. OEM, so some issues are to be expected. Would hope this would become a non-issue at some point...

5. I always ship tires to where I'm going to have them installed. And they keep my winter wheels/tires in the summer and my summer wheels/tires in the winter. Same with parts I know I'm not going to install myself, I have them shipped to the shop. You might see if you can do this with your shop, saves a lot of hassle.

6. Swapping brake systems between winter/summer is, again, IMO, a waste of time/money/effort. I drive on the big brakes all year on my FD, even New England winters (do try to avoid the salt though!).

7. I bleed brakes before ever other track event (of course including the first event of the season). No big deal, especially as the wheels/tires are being swapped for the track event anyway.

8. This also seems a ridiculous waste of time/money/effort. I wouldn't worry about 0W20 synthetic oil not getting "up to temperature" in the winter months. Do you have a thermostat for the oil coiler? Good on you for inspecting, but all this additional labor removing/re-installing the oil cooler and lines is not buying you anything IMO.

9. Periodic inspection is of course a good idea...


TL/DR: You're doing a LOT more work and spending a LOT more money than necessary to run a modded street/track car.

[RobbyS]

.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[ric342]

Originally Posted by ZDan

$400 *street* pads? For why?

Because Race car

[DarkSunrise]

First off, agree with the premise that significantly modding any car (aftermarket FI, BBK, oil cooler, etc.) is going to be expensive. Not just money, but time. And it will be doubly expensive if you will be taking the car to the track, where you absolutely must make sure everything is functioning properly. This point is often forgotten, so glad you're posting your experiences on this.

If you've got lots of time to devote or enjoy modding cars, then it can be worth it. But if not, then the car will feel like a big drain on your time and money. And I'd argue you'd probably be better off buying a more expensive car that fits your needs more closely. Or lower your standards for how fast you want the car to be.

In my experience, the FR-S can be tracked with fairly minimal mods. Brake pads + fluid, and tires. Possibly an oil-cooler. It's when you put the car on super sticky tires that you need to upgrade the suspension. And when you start making the car significantly faster (aftermarket FI) that you need significantly better braking (aftermarket BBK) and cooling (aftermarket oil cooler, radiator, etc.) And then you find yourself in the vicious cycle of spending more time and more money on your car.

Comes down to setting a goal for how you want to use your car and how fast you want it to be, then being realistic in terms of how much money and time it will cost to achieve that goal.

[spdfreak]

Regarding that oil cooler issue:
Have you considered putting an oil bypass valve in the lines between the adaptor plate and cooler unit? That way when winter comes; instead of actually removing parts, you just pull the lever on the ball valve.

[Dezoris]

Originally Posted by spdfreak

Regarding that oil cooler issue:
Have you considered putting an oil bypass valve in the lines between the adaptor plate and cooler unit? That way when winter comes; instead of actually removing parts, you just pull the lever on the ball valve.

Never thought of that, I assume I would have to make new lines and place couplers on send and returns?

[post_break]

Originally Posted by Dezoris

Never thought of that, I assume I would have to make new lines and place couplers on send and returns?

Why not rip the oil cooler you have out, and do the forester one? It's been proven on the track by one of our members (albeit NA) but supercharged can't be that much more heat on the engine.

No more oil lines, just a few coolant hoses. I have it on my car and its performance is pretty remarkable.

[spdfreak]

Originally Posted by Dezoris

Never thought of that, I assume I would have to make new lines and place couplers on send and returns?

I'm still trying to figure it out myself. I saw a part somewhere that I'm pretty sure would work. I'll get back to you.