Bringing Back the Dead.

[Antnicuk]

i also fitted the water injection and boost controller.

[stylussprinter]

Tank fitted and working Dashboard Mk 2 made and fitted with Oil temp, pressure, boost gauges and low pressure warning light. Shift light with digital revcounter in the middle of it, fitted. Sorted my roll cage design, just waiting for the CDS tube to be delivered. Took her out for a spin and it seems the few tweaks i have made so far are making a difference. There is no (that i could tell) understeer anymore which is nice but i now have another issue. I think my prop is touching my tunnel just behind the drivers seat. I have about 5 mm between the drivers side tube upright and the prop but on a roundabout its touching.

I still have to align the rear axle by adjusting the p/hard rod but i dont think its too far out. Is it worth using rose joints on the panhard road to stop the little bit of movement the rubber bushes will be giving?

I'm going to book in my mapping soon, i havent done as many miles as i'd hoped but with weather we have been having i'm just not getting a chance. It will be nice to be able to rev it properly once its mapped

I very much doubt that the bushes are allowing prop' movement. What's more likely is that your rear springs are too soft allowing more travel on cornering and the TUNNELL isn't perpendicular so the prop' gets closer in compression plus the panhard allows more sideways movement because it works like a pendulum when there's lots of travel on cornering . Is there a scratch mark around the prop If not it could be tyre wall hitting the inner body.
I only get this problem at 130 mph on right handers so it's likely to be one of the above.

[Antnicuk]

i had a look last night and it is the prop but isnt touching the tunnel upright, its the flange where it meets the noss of the diff touching the seat tub, although the prop must be close as i have about 5mm between the prop and the upright and about (had) about 9 mm between the edge of the flange and the seat tub but i have expanded that gap a little ( i have an atlas axle so the diff is a lot bigger)

I think with sticky tyres i could make the prop touch as i have cheap road tyres on at the moment. I'm looking into a set of slightly stiffer springs for the back, i have 180's so i'm going to try a set of 225's.

[stylussprinter]

i had a look last night and it is the prop but isnt touching the tunnel upright, its the flange where it meets the noss of the diff touching the seat tub, although the prop must be close as i have about 5mm between the prop and the upright and about (had) about 9 mm between the edge of the flange and the seat tub but i have expanded that gap a little ( i have an atlas axle so the diff is a lot bigger)

I think with sticky tyres i could make the prop touch as i have cheap road tyres on at the moment. I'm looking into a set of slightly stiffer springs for the back, i have 180's so i'm going to try a set of 225's.

I take it that you've had a hammer to the seat pan side then 225's will be fine if you're roading it as well as tracking but an ARB will reduce roll , in turn in , and therefore stop the contact that a panhard allows with excessive roll.

[Antnicuk]

i assume you mean a front ARB and not a rear

[stylussprinter]

i assume you mean a front ARB and not a rear

Yes

[Antnicuk]

spent yesterday afternoon at a friends workshop using his tube bender, bending some cds tube for the roll cage, then spent today cutting it and fitting it. No pictures but i will try and take some tomorrow. I will hopefully finish welding it tomorrow. It took a lot of tweaking to give the protection i wanted without making it too difficult to get in and smack my head while wearing a helmet.

I have got to wire up the tow bar i fitted to the wifes shogun last week so i can tow the stylus to portsmouth (115 miles) to the dyno shop for its dyno session on thursday. I found a bargain car trailer which (hopefully) is perfect for the stylus, it also fits in the garage with the car on it.

I also still need to fit the rear springs and make higher mounting points on the rear arms so i can raise the back of the car a little as my current shocks springs are set as high as they will go and i need a bit more adjustment.

Then on saturday i have my first track day to see how things go. As long as it dont meet any problems mapping it. Once i have a feel for the car and know what its doing, i will pay Rob a visit if he's got time.

After the track day i have one week to finish preping the body work as it then goes into the spray shop. I managed to wangle a bit of sponsorship from my friends garage. He is going to paint it in return for some stickers. I also have some stickers from Retro motorsport for helping me make the cage.

All being well, on the 15th of november i have an RX7 club trackday at rockingham with a couple of magazines there covering the day. hence the sudden rush to get the car in a spectable state, at least to look at anyway. There is a lot that could go wrong before then but i will still try

[Antnicuk]

Went for a dyno session today to map the stand alone ECU, had a few hiccups. Left the house at 5.30 am with the stylus on a trailer and headed to Portsmouth. Event free journey down there. First of all fitted two 1000 cc secondary injectors, (rotaries run 2 primary and 2 secondary), I didn’t want to change them before as the ecu wouldn’t know and would just flood the engine. Got the car on the rollers and found the first problem. Couldn’t get the exhaust probe up the side exit exhaust as it touched on the rollers so had to quickly weld a bolt into the exhaust to take the lambda sensor. The next problem, Geff (ReWorx) went to set up the timing, couldn’t get the strobe light to work, discovered a trailing coil wasn’t working. (Rotaries have 2 coils for each combustion chamber so it doesn’t notice to drive. I had a spare set of coils so quickly replaced it. Started dynoing and all was going well but when they started doing the cruise and hard loading, it built up a lot heat from the exhaust (more than it ever would on the road as there is no air circulating and the car is never driven like this) and the throttle cable melted. This was more of a problem as to get to the floor mounted pedal box I have to remove the exhaust and disconnect all the brake and clutch lines. Quickly connected a boot release cable to the throttle body with a hand lever so they could carry on dynoing.

I am using the stock turbo which I knew was way too small but I would get me going for now. I was hoping for 300 fwhp but was realistically expecting 260 - 280. The stock engine makes 200 at 7 psi boost. I ported the engine a little so knew the turbo wouldn’t be able to supply as much air as the engine needed but I didn’t realise quite how short it would be. It didn’t matter how much we adjusted the boost controller the boost would peak a little higher but it quickly dropped off by 5k rpm back down to 6-8 psi each time. This was a little disappointing as I was hoping to be able to map it to 15 psi. All my disappointment waned when I saw the figures. With boost controller off I made 250 atw's which is 300 at the fly (18% losses through the drive train) this was at 7 psi peak dropping off to 5 psi higher up the revs. Set up the boost controller and tried again, peak boost went up but dropped off back to 5 psi again. Didn’t matter how much we adjusted the boost controller the little compressor wheel couldnt make more than 10 psi peak but soon dropped off to 5 psi. It was still making power to 7500 rpm but had dropped off down to only 4-5psi of boost. With some tweaking of the map she made 262 at the wheels (317 flywheel). She made 330 fw ftlbs torque. These figures are excellent for the stock turbo at such low boost. There are guys on the Mazda club with bigger hybrid turbos making less power and torque at more boost so I am well chuffed!. Only problem is I haven’t driven it yet as the there is no throttle Thankfully the trailer has a winch So by building the engine and mildly porting it I made 117 more bhp than a stock engine at the same boost with the same turbo!

Also, water temps never went over 88 degrees but 86 mostly which is very good for a rotary on the rollers.

Now I have to fix the throttle cable and get it ready for the track day Saturday. I have dyno graphs which wifey will scan in tomorrow at work and I will post them tomorrow night.

Tired now so off to bed, now where did I leave my traction!

if i can get the car weight down to 650 kg, thats 490 bhp per ton if my calculations are correct

[Antnicuk]

took the car to woodbridge today and did a Javelin Trackdays event. I have been there before but not in the stylus.

I had a set of old semi slick tyres (acb10's) i think, they are least 2 years old and had god knows how much use from the previou owner, there isnt a lot of meat left but they were all i had. They are no where near wide enough though. They are only 195's and i have too much torque, i was spinning the wheels in 4th in the dry with the boost controller on so i had to switch it off which made the boost come in a little slower but still lit the wheels up most of the way through 3rd on the straight. To say its a handful is an understatement. forget 2nd gear, i could do the whole track in 3rd gear and the car pulled all the way from 2000 rpm upto 7.5k which was taking me to 125 mph. The diff is a 3.09 so is really tall. The stock mazda diff that would go with the gearbox is a 4.1 so at 70 mph i'm only doing 2250 rpm (dream on BEC's ).

Only one car overtook me all day and that was a Turbo Busa powered Dax Rush that Duncan Cowper used to own and he only managed it once when i went a little too sideways at the beginning of the straight. He came upto me at the end and asked what i had under the bonnet and said i was the only car there today that challenged him, although he had 255 semi slicks on the back. He found it funny watching me trying to control the rear end. Once he over took me i stayed with him through the twisties which suprised both of us.

There was also a turbo busa powered Westfield XTR 2 (radical type thingy), he came up to me again asking what engine i had and said he was suprised i was quicker than he was round the bends but he could pull away on the straights. I didnt tell him that i was going to turn the boost controler off to get more traction and when i did in the afternoon i overtook him on the straight! (you are not allowed to overtake on the bends)

The brakes were good but i lacked confidence to brake too late but that will come. The pads are the ones that came with the calipers so i dont know what they are but they didnt overheat, considering there are two 125 mph straights on the track so they worked well. The suspension hasnt been set up yet, i havent even done the geomitry so i think the suspension has a lot to give with some help from Rob.... Hopfully.

The engine temps were great also, water was constant 86 and oil peaked at 95.

[norma]

sounds like a TOTAL MONSTER - nice one!

[Antnicuk]

a little pic taken by a friend

[DH2]

a little pic taken by a friend

roly-poly!

I'm interested to see what you have done with the cage, if you have a few minutes to get some pictures at some point.

DH2

[Antnicuk]

i have had a couple of days off work so started to strip the car ready for painting on monday. I have removed everything including the whole of the interior and dash. I will cover the dash and the centre tunnel cover while its being painted.

She is looking a little sorry for herself at the moment. I hate body work, my arms and shhoulders are aching. I have spent the last 2 days rubbing her down and repairing bits that needed. Thankfully it looks a lot worse than it is and a good rub down sorted most of it. The bit i still have to finish is moulding the front vent which is not easy. I have no patience fibreglass, sand, filler, sand more filler, more sanding When i drag her out of the garage i will take some pictures.

[Antnicuk]

finished the bodywork today and gave her a coat of primer, i'm quite please with how it has come out as its my first attempt at bodywork and spraying.

Taking her to the paint shop on monday morning.

Here are some pics so you can see the roll cage.

[Werner Van Loock]

Can't comment on the bodywork as i've got no experience there, but i really like that rollbar. Did you do that yourself? Looks like that rollbar gives good clearance for high back seats