Sprocket's Competition

[clocker]

LS, here we come...

Man, I wish.

Being currently involved with the cold air intake, the LT's weirdness (oval throttle body flange and gigantic MAF) stands in stark contrast to the LSx arrangement.

Sigfrid has always advocated the LT because of it's reputed ability to handle boost (either super or turbo- charged) better than the later series...which he now realizes is bunk.
A swap to a later LS (or even LQ) series engine would not only gain us net HP and lower weight (approx. 125 lbs.) but with the lower, simpler intake, make that area of fabrication much simpler.
We could even use the stock, uncut hood.

Oh well.

[j2k4]

Give it time.

Time has been good for you guys, y'know?

[clocker]

Well, another 13 hour day on Monday and good progress was made.

We first removed the dash ( a simple 10 minute procedure with two people) to make a few wiring changes and final install of the gauge wiring.
I've now modded in the gauge cluster from a 2004 Japanese spec Miata and we have everything functioning save the speedo (need to switch the signal source at the ECU) and the tach (works, but reads twice as high as it should- this was expected and all we need to do is "condition" the input signal with a resistor).

With the dash reinstalled, we moved on to a few fiddly things we've been putting aside, primarily installing a hood strut to replace the hood prop.
I've pulled several struts from the junkyard and the most useful came from a 2nd gen Nissan Maxima.
I like it so much I put one on my car...


Not earth-shaking but a nice touch anyway.

At this point, the car is almost as far as we can get her with what we have.
The only remaining mechanical-type job is to drop the fuel tank and find out where the constant gas smell is coming from.

I have a Corvette intake snorkel coming from eBay (I hope!) and, should it prove suitable, the intake can be finalized.

With those two jobs finished, all the major work will finally be behind us and we can start upgrading the interior pieces at our leisure (and Sigfrid's Visa card's health).

She's a daily driver now.

[clocker]

The project came to a temporary halt as we accumulated parts for the next stage, which should begin this weekend.
We have a better air separator tank to replace the plastic Volvo unit and the cooling system should finally be configured properly.
Also finally got the Digital Dakota signal conditioner for the speedo- this translates the output signal from the transmission into a wave form the Mazda gauge can understand, so the speedo should be functional.

I came up with a Corvette intake snorkel that may-emphasis on "may"- finally allow for a nice looking intake.
I need to do some research, and possibly prototyping, to see if it can be used.
It looks cool as hell and I'd really like to try it, but there are technical obstacles to overcome (mainly, placement of the MAF).
Today I'm going to attempt to get some questions answered by a Corvette specialty shop, we'll see how it turns out (they haven't been very cooperative in the past because we don't have a "proper" Corvette and they are total snobs).

I installed the hood strut last week and it works as well on the FD as it did on the FC- better, in fact because the FD aluminum hood is a featherweight compared to my much larger panel.
Pull the hood release and the hood rises all by itself...quite disconcerting if you're not expecting it.

I can't wait for Saturday to get back to work.

[clocker]

Air separator tank installed.
We need better fittings than the generic hardware store ones that we have and I'm waiting to take pics till I can find them.
At least we can see if the cooling system/recovery works right now.

Installed the Digital Dakota unit and finally(!!) got it working properly.
The weirdest thing was the lack of proper setup info- not from Digital Dakota, that's very straightforward- but from the forums.
Were we using a stock FD speedo all the info needed is readily available, but we're not, so we turned to the Miata swap forum and found a gaping hole in the knowledge base.
Even the big "tuner magazine" article they produced glosses over the issue by claiming they ran out of time and didn't get to the speedo.

I don't believe it, I think they failed to get it working and didn't want to admit it.

The DD is simply a solid state device that conditions the speed signal (either straight from the transmission or semi-preconditioned from the ECU) so whatever speedo you are using can read it properly.
It's actually quite a nice piece but the various options are vast and our first problem was just getting into the ballpark so the speedo would do something.
This took several hours and just as we were about to give up, we found the settings we needed.
(There are five different output port options, and four dipswitches...so you can see how many possibilities there are to explore)

With the speedo finally moving, the next step is to fine tune the signal so it's reading correctly.
This can be done in a couple of ways, we chose the "measured mile" approach (in our case actually a measured 3.3 miles) and finally got it to within a few dozen yards of being correct.
The ultra fine tuning will require following a car with a known correct speedometer and syncing the readings down to a fraction of a MPH.
At this point (we ran out of time) I'd guess that at an actual 60 MPH we're reading about 61-62 MPH.
Not too bad but we'll get it closer, it will just take some time.

Our tach is reading @ 2x what it should, DD also makes conditioners for that and we'll probably need to get one.

That leaves only the oil pressure gauge non-functional.
It's hard to get good info since we're using a Japanese market gauge cluster mated with domestic market sending units (we have three Mazda sending units) and it's possible that the gauge itself is more of a dummy style than a full sweep real gauge.
(Mazda was fond of these "fake" gauges...my 2nd gen water temp gauge is one such and sits in the middle of the sweep from 160°F to 240°F...basically, by the time the needle starts to rise above "NORMAL", you're already toast. The gauge is more of a dummy/warning device than a real temp indicator).
We'll figure out something.

Ran out of time/daylight so no movement on the intake.

She's running well though, so daily driving is certainly possible (and, with a functioning speedo and fuel gauge, we'll finally be able to see what kind of gas mileage we're getting).

Next work session is in two weeks.

[j2k4]

Got the wheels done - the pics don't do them justice; the color is much hotter in person:









Also, those are the Nitto NT555s, and so far I like 'em alot.

What do you and Sigfrid think of them?

[clocker]

Wheels are beautiful, Kev...nice choice.
Car needs to drop a few inches, but...

As for the tires...I guess they're OK (on our car)...it's hard to tell.
I think we have too much rubber up front (255's), which is contributing to the slight kick-back on rough pavement and mildly heavy steering but without actually changing them (not gonna happen), that's just a guess.
I'm a granny driver anyway, so Sigfrid would be the one to ask.

What's with the swingset?

[j2k4]

Wheels are beautiful, Kev...nice choice.
Car needs to drop a few inches, but...

Thanks.

I'm thinking I might end up buying coil-overs just to get the drop I want; S-Techs would give me 1.5" in front, 1.3" in back - not enough, I fear.

As for the tires...I guess they're OK (on our car)...it's hard to tell.
I think we have too much rubber up front (255's), which is contributing to the slight kick-back on rough pavement and mildly heavy steering but without actually changing them (not gonna happen), that's just a guess.
I'm a granny driver anyway, so Sigfrid would be the one to ask.

The steering bump is probably as you say - the V8 does you the favor of keeping the front pretty-well planted, I would guess.

Smaller tires may help - what size rim, again?

What's with the swingset?

Grandsons - 3 so far, another due next week sometime.

[clocker]

The fronts are 18 x 9, rears, 18 x 10.

I'm hoping we just just need to tweak the alignment a bit.

[clocker]

Minor update.

Sigfrid and I worked on the car again Saturday.
We finally got around to dropping the fuel tank- surprisingly, much easier than I'd feared- and discovered that the vapor accumulation tank on the top was cracked in half (it's plastic).
This explains the constant gas smell we've always had, the tank was always venting to atmosphere.
Lacking a replacement tank, we simply bypassed the piece with a tee-fitting which goes to the stock evap charcoal cannister and the fuel smell problem is now eliminated.

We played around with the IAC solenoid and MAF (we have three IACs and two MAFs) and got her to idle and run pretty nicely- still needs a retune but not bad for now.

Dialed the speedo in a bit more, probably within a few percent of being spot on.

This pic shows the state of the engine bay as of this weekend...


Note the new strut tower covers, sourced from a Subaru.
Also, the hood strut (on the left firewall, next to the wiper motor).
This is the mate of the Maxima strut I put on my car and it works very well on his ultralight alloy hood.

Finally, towards the end of the day we decided to go get a VDO oil pressure sending unit, reputed to work with our new gauge cluster.
On the way home we took a detour to the highway, just to check out high speed running and Sigfrid hit a wheel eating pothole at @ 85MPH.
The tire still holds air but the wheel is probably bent.

I say "probably" because once we got home the car refused to start again...no idea what is going on.

We are both rather discouraged.
The closer we get to completion, the more finicky she seems to get.

Oh well, weekend after next we'll try again.