Build thread

[speedjunkie]

The red in this pic shows where the filter is hitting.


Andy and Kevin came over today and we got the car started. We just pulled it up the street and it started the first try popping the clutch. I drove it back into the garage and put the Lisle funnel in right away so I could bleed the coolant. I let it run for about an hour or so. Then I turned it off and tried starting it again. No luck. I contemplated doing a compression test since it was warm, but we talked it over and I'm going to drive it around a bit tomorrow to see if I can burn off some old gas and see if it breaks anything loose in the engine, maybe carbon buildup or something. I put ATF in and it fired up immediately, so that doesn't make me feel too good haha. But I really can't see how it could get low compression just sitting there for a few months and not running. While it was running I linked the iPad to the ECU and then showed it on the stereo. I love it lol.


I'm trying to decide how to do everything I need to do. I need to figure out this non-starting issue, but in order to do that I'd like to drive it around for a while tomorrow. But before I drive it too far I really need to get the alignment done (and ideally the tune but I don't foresee that happening until after I get back from Florida). I also need to bed the brakes but I might be able to do that tomorrow. I guess I'll take the bottle of ATF with me to get the alignment done so I can start the car and drive it home after lol.

[speedjunkie]

I drove the car Sunday, took Andy for a ride and decided I'd try to get the alignment done so I went back and picked up Kevin and Andy followed us to Firestone. They couldn't get me in anymore so I'll get one next Sunday when I get back, or early next week. Then I'll bed the brakes.

The car drove pretty well despite not having a good tune, but I didn't get into boost or anything so that was to be expected. And I just realized I never hit the lean spot so I'm wondering if it's gone now.

I do need to rewire my stereo a bit. It recognized that the parking brake wire was grounded so it just gives me a warning screen I can't clear.

[speedjunkie]

I ordered a 2kw RX-8 starter from Amazon tonight. I also read an update about the Holley Hydramat that it's compatible with 2 cycle blends up to 20:1, so it's looking like that's a possibility again. WOOHOO!

[speedjunkie]

I discovered last night that I didn't actually order the RX-8 starter because the account I used didn't have any money, so I ordered it again today. I raised the car up a little more today and then took it for a drive. I did what I could to bed the brakes during the drive but I discovered pretty early that I couldn't slam on the brakes because I locked them up and slid haha. Totally forgot I don't have ABS, and I'm not so sure I like it.

While I was in Florida I looked up a way to fix the issue with the stereo, and I found a way to disable the parking brake wire safety feature. I tried it today and it worked. I also discovered that the stereo will tell me when I'm over the speed limit. That's gonna get old real fast. LOL

I also discovered this morning that my OMP tank was leaking from where the fitting screws into the bottom. I re-wrapped the threads with teflon tape (I used fuel/oil compatible tape this time) and then sealed it with black RTV.

I scheduled the alignment for tomorrow morning at 10, after that I'm going to drive it around town to burn off the old fuel and go over to Andy's and we're going to see if we can adjust the fuel map. I've tried emailing Chris twice now (all emails were rejected) and texted him and haven't heard anything back.

[Saul_Good]

Try driving around while pressing the brake with your left foot.

Also you don't need to slam on the brake. Press it gradually but quickly (oxymoron) so as not to lock it up. You will press it just enough to feel it then add more pressure but not to the point where you exceed the tires grip. This is also good to practice your braking finesse skills.

[speedjunkie]

Ok I'll give that a shot.

Yeah I found that happy medium yesterday lol. Enough pressure to stop quickly but not enough to lock up. My problem will be remembering this lol. What really got me was that I was locking up on dry ground, I always thought I'd be good on dry ground and wet was what I'd have to worry about. It's not like I was going that fast.

[speedjunkie]

I had to do some digging to find my mileage at the time of swapping to the Speedhut gauges because I wanted to put the correct mileage on them. So I did that this morning, almost 190k miles lol. Yikes.

Then I went to the Firestone at Stetson Hills where I had my 10am appt. As soon as I shut the car off one of the guys walked out and said he didn't think they'd be able to get the car up on the rack as low as it is, even though I told him I'd had it done there a few times. I also told him the car was deceptively high, that I clear the speed bumps going on base very easily. He said the only guy they had that was used to driving lowered cars up on the rack was out to lunch, and that the Firestone on Cascade and Bijou had a lower rack. He also said the one in Castle Rock has one that's built 2ft into the ground. I told him there was no way I was driving to Castle Rock on my eyeballed home alignment, but I'd go to the one on Cascade. I called and they said it might be a few hours but they'd get me in today. So I drove downtown and I explained my situation when I got there and they said they had the exact same racks that the Stetson Hills branch has, only they were a bit longer to do extended bed trucks. But after talking to them we decided to at least give it a shot and it paid off. The front bumper barely scraped on the way up and on the way down we just pushed it off so it didn't scrape at all.

There were some other problems however. I'm pretty sure I swapped the toe links when I put them back in, and both my rear tires were aimed at the driver's side of the car. That coupled with possibly getting the subframe back in crooked, my driver's side toe link is maxed out on adjustment and it can't be adjusted in any further. He got it down to 1.88 degrees, and with adjusting the camber to 2 degrees he got it to 1.13, but it's still in the red and I'm not crazy about having the camber adjusted for the sole purpose of getting the toe in far enough. I'm thinking about taking the toe links out and cutting a bit off each end, maybe about 10mm, but first I'm going to see if the threads inside go deep enough to allow the heim joints to turn in further.

He also ran into an issue on the passenger front, maxing out the camber adjustment, but it's pretty close to within specs. Here is the spec sheet.


And here is the car up on the rack.


All in all, all the people working down there were awesome. One of the ladies working the front called the Stetson Hills branch and basically told them they were idiots LOL, it wasn't that harsh but it was comical. Both the ladies up front were awesome though. The floor manager was awesome. The guy that did the work was awesome. I think I'll be going back there if I ever need anything again. Not to mention the view is much better lol.


Then I went to Andy's house and we went for a ride. That's when we discovered the OMP is guzzling 2 cycle. I topped off the tank before I left the house. I drove to Firestone at Stetson Hills and then over to Cascade. Then I drove to Andy's house, then we went to Garden of the Gods. In there I stopped and checked, the tank was completely empty, and I think it went empty around the time I was at the Cascade Firestone because the car stopped smoking so much, and it wasn't smoking at all when I stopped in GotG. So that narrowed down the smoking issue lol. I saw a little more oil on the floor this morning so it might still be leaking, but I didn't see any oil any other time I stopped.

Then I drove back to my side of town and put more gas in the car. I still used ATF just because I didn't want to sit there trying to start the car at the gas station, but when I got home I shut the car down and tried starting it again and it started fairly easy, but totally on it's own this time. At the first Firestone I tried to start it without ATF and it didn't work, so I put some in just the rear housing. That didn't work, so I put some in both housings. That didn't work either, so then I dumped a lot more in both housings and it finally started.

Chris got back to me today about tuning so we were going to try to do some stuff tonight but he needs me to install Team Viewer so he can remote into my laptop and it was being an a-hole. I might get a new laptop or one of those surface things tomorrow. I'm getting really sick of my laptop and I don't really use one much anymore so it should last longer than usual lol. We're going to try to take care of things tomorrow night. The car runs pretty good during normal driving, but it gets lean pretty quick, which is to be expected with a larger turbo lol.

If you guys don't know, Brett took this Saturday off and wanted to meet at the morning car show and then go to the Golden Super Cruise. I'm trying to be ready for that.

[RX-7 Chris]

I should be able to do that. I'll let you know.

[Saul_Good]

I liked your starting camber numbers

[speedjunkie]

Ok Chris, sounds good. I hope you can make it.

Yeah it was a bit rough, eyeballing it is definitely not preferred lol.

We ended up not doing anything with tuning until tonight, and even then we didn't do much. We looked at why the OMP was using so much oil but we didn't figure it out so he's going to talk to Syvecs about it. And we didn't install the new firmware because he thinks I won't have the OMP working again, so he's going to check on that.

I got a new laptop yesterday to use solely for tuning. It's crazy how cheap they are these days. And I couldn't help but decorate it lol.


I still have a 2 cycle leak somewhere I think. There is just too much oil on the floor every day.

[speedjunkie]

Today was fairly eventful. After running errands all day, filing my VA claim and picking up things for the car, etc, I finally got to work tonight. Jacked up the car yet again, dropped the front right strut and raised the left rear, investigated the 2 cycle leak, investigated the exhaust leak noise, and figured out why the left rear toe link wouldn't adjust.

I discovered the 2 cycle oil was leaking from the bottom oil line at the OMP. I'm not sure if it was not tightened enough or if it was pressing against the screw head and not allowed to seal properly, but I loosed it a little and changed the angle so it wouldn't contact the screw head. It still kinda looks like it does in the finished pic, but it isn't. I ran the car and watched and it seems to be fixed now.




Then onto the toe link. As you can see, this nut wasn't tightened down again after the alignment, but the other end was so I'm not too worried about it.

The other end obviously should have enough threads left to collapse the arm more, they both do actually.


I took the good end out of the arm and measured the depth inside the arm and the length of the heim joint.



Here is the comparison of the two. No way it's bottoming out.


Then when I removed the other end, the problem became obvious. The threads that were exposed corroded, and it messed up the aluminum threads inside the arm when it was turned in.



I was able to get the threads on the heim joint cleaned up and it still threads into the arm. So I reassembled it using anti-seize on the threads and installed the arm and eyeballed it. I'm going to see if I can get it in for an alignment tomorrow. I might remove the other arm sometime to inspect it and put anti-seize on those threads too.

I got a call from Weldcraft, my wheels are finished and they shipped them back today. WOOHOO!!! I also got a new gas can and went to Lanier's Speed Shop and got 3 gallons of Methanol and picked up distilled water and mixed it all. Spent about $20 on the Methanol and water, not too bad. I also checked the exhaust in the back while I was under the car and it's definitely rubbing against the diff brace. I'm going to see if I can get two heim joints and threaded bar and see if I can use it where one of the exhaust hangers is to push the exhaust away a bit.

Oh, and I also finally got a few walkie talkies to use when cruising together. They only have a 16 mile range but I figure that should be far enough in most cases since I mainly got them for when we're all together.

I'm fully planning on going to the car show and Golden Super Cruise on Saturday. If I'm still burning a lot of 2 cycle I'll unplug the OMP and just premix more again.

[speedjunkie]

This OMP issue has gotten really bad. The car died on me several times today. It was perfectly fine while driving, but if I sat for too long at idle (sometimes only about 30 seconds) it would drop down to about 700rpms and just keep dropping until it died. It smokes like crazy at idle and when I let off the gas, but when I'm moving the smoke isn't even a noticeable amount. Brett and I believe the excess oil is fouling the plugs because it will sound like a stuck apex seal, but if you hold the rpms up and rev it high, it will eventually burn off and idle like normal again. When we got to Golden I revved the car as I shut it down and when I started it again it really helped, but then it died within a minute. I used ATF to get it started all the times it died, but it barely helped. I had to hit the gas pedal at the right time and hold it until it burned off the plugs and started idling correctly again.

I found some Lucas semi-synthetic 2 stroke at O'Reilly today, but it's $10 per quart. It's not TCW3 but it's smokeless and ashless. I picked up all five quarts that they had lol. I topped off the tank with it in Golden before we left but I didn't see if it killed any of the smoke, and it still has some of the other oil in there still anyway so it's still going to smoke at least until that stuff is burned out. But at that price I really don't want to burn the Lucas oil while it's burning so much.

I really need to get the tune done and get the OMP issue sorted. I thought about disconnecting the OMP today but I thought it might cavitate the pump or cause other issues since the pump would still be driven mechanically.

[Dwduc]

Whaat?! Even with the Soopa-starter?! That is odd, is there any way to monitor what signal the Syvecs is sending to the OMP through your crazy phone/stereo/data acquisition? I think maybe it just needs a track day to clear it up.

[speedjunkie]

Yeah the Soopa-starter still won't start it if the spark plugs are fouled lol, but it certainly doesn't hurt. Chris and I have already looked at the OMP through the software and it's not doing anything. He believes it's stuck full open. So until we (and by we, I mean Chris and Syvecs lol) get it sorted I'm going back to just premix.

Now I'm just trying to nail down whether I need to pull it out and use the block off plate or if I can just unplug it and leave everything in there. I'd prefer leaving it in, obviously. If I have to pull it out I might just pull everything and forget using the OMP. Now that the Hydramat has been proven to work with premix up to a 20:1 ratio I'm not restricted to using an OMP as well. I like the extra insurance on the life of the engine but is becoming quite a hassle, and after talking to Chris recently it almost seems like they're just guessing at how it works lol.

I'd like to have this sorted and tuned BEFORE a track day lol.

[RX-7 Chris]

It's a smoke screen.