Project rebirth, FRS - STX and trackday/TTD log

[RayRay88]

Originally Posted by redlined600

Road America went ok, it rained pretty much all of one day. The new splitter gained me back a couple of mphs in the straights so that was somewhat of a success. The car continued to feel great however I'm starting to build enough evidence that the aero for the tracks I run at is pretty much a wash. Road America is very long and the drag penalty is just too much in the straights to over come the rest of the track.
If I decide to stay stock I may remove the aero and go back to the trd style rear spoiler.


Which brings me to the next post......

You could always run a low drag trim, a smaller/shorter splitter with no diffusers and a 0 degree AOA on the wing.

[redlined600]

I currently run 0-.5 aoa so not much I can back out, the current splitter seems like a good match right now.

[NoHaveMSG]

I know it would suck to redo, but maybe try a smaller airfoil. My setup was pretty draggy and I was able to take a bunch of height out of my wing stays and it helped a ton. I don't think taking any height out of your setup will help since it is not a 3D airfoil design.

[redlined600]

I found a couple potential issues, one is the alignment was way off, nearly .5" of toe-in in the rear. This was for sure not helping my straight-line speed.


As long as I was changing the alignment, it was a good opportunity to install the racerX toe arms I had laying around.


Additionally I found the trunk lid was flexing/moving quite a bit with the wing(enough to abrade the top of the taillight), this was allowing the wing to change somewhere around .5 to .8 degrees. I have some ideas to fix this pretty easily.

[redlined600]

In my last post I hinted at the trunk compressing under the downforce of the wing, now I have some confirmation of that.
0MPH


60MPH


80MPH


Next up is a way to stabilize the trunk lid.

[redlined600]

To stabilize the trunk, I used the holes where the factory bumpers were and added rivnuts so I could use a flat head screw with a locking nut. appears to work as the trunk barely compresses down anymore. True test will be this weekend when I'll be running the long course at BIR.

[redlined600]

BIR was a mixed bag. Good to see some friends I haven't seen in a while and the trunk supports seemed to work well. Additionally, I was a little unsure about how the car was going to handle after removing all the additional rear toe-in. The good news was the car handled well, slightly more tail happy but more predictable if anything.


The bad, was I went through 2 coil packs (both used oem). Then in the afternoon, coming down the front straight, I saw a large cloud of smoke in the mirror. Fearing the worst I pulled off in the grass. Under the hood was dry, jacking up the back and it was obvious what happened. The drivers side CV boot over-heated and burped grease all over including the exhaust(which made the smoke cloud). Looks like I'll be rebuilding with vent tubes now.
This picture is after I cleaned it up but you can see how everything is shiny. I called it a day after this as I can't imagine there was much grease left in the boot.

[redlined600]

This one is a bit of a doozy.

Since I built the splitter I've also wanted to make some vertical fences to block air from hitting the face of the tire. I was finally able to mock some up using some left-over ABS sheet.

Without:


With:


Makeshift test rig (carbon composite mounting arm ):


Here is a video comparison with and without:

I found out a few things;
1. I need to seal the airdam to the bumper a little better, a couple of the tufts got sucked behind the airdam.
2. The air is very chaotic behind the front tire.
3. The vertical fence appears to work, as the air looks like it's piling up and spilling out to the side as expected as opposed to coming off the bumper straight into the tire. This should lead to some additional down force and maybe a slight reduction in drag.

Over the winter I'd love to try and make some out of carbon fiber.

One last pic, I tired to get a little artsy.

[redlined600]

Small update.
Turns out I got totally hoodwinked on the k24 I bought. Not only is it not a 2006, but it had really bad leakdown across all cylinders.
So here is where I'm at, head refresh for sure and ill go from there (I'm hoping its mostly carbon buildup). Cylinder bores look pretty good. Crank thrust is within spec. Not the end of the world but potentially adds to the swap timeline, I, hoping to have it all buttoned up by spring.

[redlined600]

It’s been a minute so I’ll break this into multiple posts
First, this spring it was maintenance time. From the previous post I had some axles to rebuild, 3 since I bought a spare. Of course nothing comes easy and while the passenger side popped right out the drivers side required substantially more work. I ended up puling the whole upright assembly to pound the axle out. Rebuilding the axles wasn’t hard but sure is messy. I added vents in the inboard CVs even though I’m not 100% convinced this is the correct course of action. I also need to fab up a heat deflector as I’m pretty sure the exhaust is cooking the grease in the CV.

While I was in there I found the Heim joints from the SPL arms where worn and needed replacing. Per my luck they initially sent me the incorrect joints but got me sorted quickly.

Additionally the rear swaybar links were bad as well so I replaced those as well.
I found someone local selling a Perrin front swaybar so I thought I’d give it a go.

And finally new front brake rotors (more on this in a min.), a fresh alignment, oil and brake fluid and I was feeling pretty good going into the season.

[redlined600]

On to some action. I went to BIR without any issues, had a good time and got so see some people I haven’t in a while as well as meet some new people.
After that was a trip to Road America where the wheels really fell off (not literally but close).
Earlier in the week I asked my daughter to help bleed the brakes and as I pulled the rear wheel I got that sinking feeling. Yep, cords showing.

I call up my buddy who runs a mobile tire business and he’s able to locate me a set of 235/45-17 Falken 660s, Not ideal but much better than not going. Even better, he’s able to mount them the next day.
With the new tires on it’s time to load the car…..except it’s barely running. Thinking about it, I did swap a coil pack in preparation. Long, frustrating story short, it was a bad plug. A bit of a chicken and the egg situation. Were the coil packs going bad due to a bad plug or did the bad coil packs cause the plug to wear faster, or something else.

Day 1 at RA was mostly good, set a new personal best despite the non-optimal tires. Here is how the car sits now. Aero improvements include tire blockers and new wing endplates.


Then at the end of the day I went to swap tires and noticed oil all over in the passenger front wheel-well. The top nut that holds the shock together backed out and it pumped a large amount of fluid out. The whole strut was loose to the point where it probably wasn’t too far from coming apart. Also remember those new brake rotors, turns out they were the wrong size(too small) and were wearing the pads at an alarming rate. Lesson learned that many online retailers offer the smaller rotors (which I don’t think were even available in the US)



Now KW claims an 8 wk lead-time for rebuilds so I’m looking for alternate solutions to finish out the season.

[redlined600]

On to better news, while it’s been slow going, I have been working on the K24.
Type-S oil pump modified and on.

Head is back on and timed along with new chain, tensioner and RBC VTC actuator. Leak-down numbers look good now.

I just need to adjust the valves and bolt it all back together. Over the winter I’ve been purchasing additional parts. I have a Kpower inkate manifold ready to go on as well as a S2000 header to modify. New belt tensioner, belt and alternator are on their way as well.
Stay tuned.

[redlined600]

Placeholder for Blackhawk Farms Raceway

Since my coilovers needed service and weren't going to be done in time I had to find an interim solution. These popped up locally, Konis with RCE yellow springs and RCE camber plates. The sphericals were shot in the camber plates so I replaced those. After speaking with RCE there is an issue on the camber plates where if they are allowed to articulate too much the spacer will collide with the inside edge of the spherical mount damaging it. While I had them apart I machined the spacers to allow for additional camber/articulation. You can see how much longer these are than my coilovers.


Overall they performed better than I expected..... but I'm still happy to have my T2s back. They required a little different driving style as the chassis felt like it was so much slower to react. Basically it felt like I could initially start turning the car, wait for it to roll over and take a set then I could turn in the rest of the way. The car also felt like to wallowed around rather than predictably sliding but that could be more due to the equal spring rates where my T2s are stiffer in the back as well as the soft rates in general.

While I had the T2s apart I noticed the Vorshlag camber plate sphericals had a little play as well. I sent them out for service as well.
Too often people are critical of companies but they don't always give them props when things go well. Well here is a shout out to Vorshlag for their service. Not only did they replace the sphericals and radial bearings like I asked but they went beyond and cleaned them and replaced pretty much all the hardware at no additional cost, maybe that's their SOP, I don't know. They even took the time to re-write my notes on the plates.


I'll post up some videos from Blackhawk farms raceway once I have a few minutes to edit something together. Fun track, really made for cars like the twins. I can't wait to go back on a more optimized setup.

[redlined600]

Update on the Kswap.

Engine is mostly ready, I still need to order a damper/pulley and I need to modify the intake manifold.


I ordered most of the hard parts to get me going. Adapters, mounts, coolant neck.
This will allow me to get started on fabbing the things that need the most work. I'm going to take a stab at making my own oil pan and I have a s2000 header to modify as well as a stock driveshaft to modify.

I also took the car to get dynod. 1 to get a baseline, 2 to have record of clean bill of health when I go to sell it. It made 190hp on e85 with the same Cal. nasa uses. This is roughly in line with some of the other twins that run with nasa.