| MIATA BUILD |
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 | February 22, 2007 - The final positioning of the brake proportioning valve.
I can't take credit for this, Josh Castaldi emailed me with pictures of his own setup. I'll have to buy some touch-up paint due to a bit of paint damage, but it's very well placed to be out of the way and easily accessible. The brake lines stay in the transmission tunnel and a minimum of alteration is required. Very nice!
entry 80 - tags: ergonomics, brakes |
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 | February 25, 2007 - The rear brake plumbing from under the car.
A new line was run from the master cylinder to the valve, then the stock line was cut, reshaped and reflared to meet up with the back of the valve. The rear line still needs some work to anchor it down, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
entry 81 - tags: brakes |
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 | February 25, 2007 - The 6' (180 cm) length of new line wasn't long enough to reach from the valve to the master cylinder, and it's quite difficult to find brake line on a roll in this town.
So a short extension was used. Just to keep things interesting, the female fitting is from an old Land Rover. I had to use at least one part from that car!
entry 82 - tags: brakes, interchange |
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 | February 25, 2007 - It doesn't take much to keep me entertained.
Since I'm scavenging parts from a variety of cars, I have fasteners with a bunch of different colors of paint. Why not use them for some nice little accents? These nuts originally held the hood on a Mariner Blue Miata, but they look really good attaching our headlight mechanisms to the car!
entry 83 |
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 | February 25, 2007 - I swore I wasn't going to do this.
But it bugs me to know of all the airbag wiring in the car, and when I came across the rear window defroster and the power antenna connectors I just couldn't help myself. It's sticky work with miles of masking tape involved, but it's also really good to know that a number of useless wires are gone. That not only lightens the car, but makes troubleshooting easier.
The airbag harness is the thick section that's still wrapped up in black loom. It's all out of the car now, and the only other system that is affected is the horn. That's easy to put back.
entry 84 - tags: wiring, weight loss |
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 | February 25, 2007 - Mystery box.
I've commented before on the importance of labeling everything as you work on a car.
Edit: Aha! It's the cruise control brain!
entry 85 - tags: wiring, tips |
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 | March 6, 2007 - There hasn't been much work on the Targa Miata for the past week because I was off in Texas.
Grassroots Motorsports magazine asked if I could attend a track session to provide a counterpoint to an Ariel Atom that they were testing. It's a long way to go for a track day but I was curious about what their drivers - BS Levy and Tim Webb - would have to say about my little homebuilt Lotus clone. We'll have to see exactly what the article says when it comes out in a few months, but both drivers were very impressed by the handling and setup of the car. It was fun and controllable. They were also impressed by its speed. It's good to have some independent judgment of the setup of the car, and it bodes well for the Targa car.
entry 86 - tags: other cars |
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 | March 7, 2007 - Lightweight lug nuts!
Fellow racer Joe Woodward at the Tire Rack sent us a set of these. It's a little eerie to hold them in your hand as they're less than half the weight of a set of stock lug nuts. I've been using these on the Seven for the last few years.
entry 87 - tags: weight loss |
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 | March 7, 2007 - The Hydra Nemesis computer that will control the car is going to be wired in.
It's available as a plug-in installation, but we can get rid of a whole bunch of wire by splicing these plugs right into the harness. The stock ECU is mounted behind the passenger's seat, ours will be under the dashboard.
entry 88 - tags: wiring, engine |
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 | March 7, 2007 - We were originally going to run a clutch from a Mazdaspeed MX-5 turbo car.
It's a great setup, with a smooth take-up and a light pedal. But our clutch got sold to a Flyin' Miata customer.
This particular clutch is a prototype unit of a model that will be available from Flyin' Miata in about six months. I had a chance to test its twin in a car earlier this week and it's a beauty. It will have no difficulty handling the power we need, but more importantly it's a real sweetheart to drive with a light pedal. Excellent.
entry 89 - tags: interchange, drivetrain |
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 | March 11, 2007 - Driver development time!
Most of my track time is spent in the Seven, but it's time to start paying more attention to Miatas. So this weekend I was at the track with a big blue car instead of the usual little orange one. The Miata is supercharged (about 155 hp at the wheels, I'd estimate) and has an off-the-shelf suspension from Flyin' Miata that works very well - FM springs, Tokico Illumina shocks, FM rear shock mounts and FM sway bars. There's one of Flyin' Miata's "butterfly braces" underneath so it's a good solid chassis. I was also running a set of Toyo RA-1s that were nicely broken in and some autocross brakes. Overall, it's a pretty good test bed for the rally car as it's running the same ride height and spring rates we expect to use.
After all the time spent in the lightweight car, it's good to see how well a sorted Miata works. It's forgiving, it's controllable and it sticks like crazy. There's obviously more weight transfer going on (and this car is heavier than the Targa car will be) but it's easy to use this as part of your driving technique. The autocross brake pads weren't up to sustained hard braking, so this meant I had to carry in higher entry speeds and worked as an excellent training tool. We'll be running better brakes in the Targa.
I spent some time driving "off line" at the track, pretending I didn't know where I was going and trying to deal with very different situations than the usual ideal line. I also tried to avoid using all of the track to give myself some extra room like we'll have to do in Newfoundland. It's tricky to pretend you don't know a track that's quite familiar to you, but it's also quite eye-opening how a well-known corner changes when you enter it from a different angle! Not only did this help me improve my skills, it also illustrated quite dramatically how much of a difference it makes in speed around the track.
Luckily, there were very few cars on the track so nobody thought I was crazy.
A good day overall. Time to get back to work though!
entry 90 - tags: testing, other cars, skills |
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 | March 16, 2007 - Our Corbeau seats are here.
They're the FX1 Pro, a nicely fitted fibreglass seat that fits in small cars. We also have a set of Corbeau harnesses for each occupant of the car.
entry 91 - tags: sponsors, seats, ergonomics, safety |
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 | March 16, 2007 - As we've found with some other Corbeaus, the padding is a bit on the thick and firm side.
This puts the driver too high in the air while not providing the comfort you might expect. We've ordered some memory foam to fill this cushion. Well, what I really did after calling upholstery shops was order a mattress topper from Amazon. For about the price of 4 square feet, I can get a whole bed's worth of the stuff!
There's some experimentation ahead.
entry 92 - tags: ergonomics, seats |
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 | March 20, 2007 - In order to make the seat sit as low as possible, the rear factory seat mounts were removed.
So much for having the interior of the car nicely painted! I'll have to get some more of the paint in an aerosol can for this sort of fix. Then again, it'll be under the seat so nobody will see it.
entry 93 - tags: ergonomics, seats |
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 | March 20, 2007 - The next obstacle in the battle against seat height?
These nice little feet. The seats have both side and base mounting options, so we'll use the sides.
entry 94 - tags: ergonomics, seats |
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 | March 20, 2007 - The risers at the back of the seat are no longer.
They were actually wooden pegs inside, that was a bit of a surprise. This seems a terrible thing to do to a brand new set of race seats, but Miatas aren't that big and I have a tall torso.
entry 95 - tags: ergonomics, seats |
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 | March 20, 2007 - The result of all the seat abuse.
The driver's seat is well placed and ready to be bolted down. The codriver's seat is unmodified. There's a drastic height difference.
entry 96 - tags: ergonomics, seats |
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 | March 20, 2007 - Along with seats, Corbeau supplied these 3" harnesses and pads.
While the pads might be overkill, I know how bruised my collarbones get after a track day. Perhaps this will help with comfort a bit.
entry 97 - tags: sponsors, safety |
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 | March 20, 2007 - The end result, being tested with the hardtop on the car.
It's a snug fit, but everything goes nicely in place. I always like to get the ergonomics sorted out early in a build, as an awkward driving position causes all sorts of problems down the road. All that's left to do is build the side brackets for the seats and mount the sub belt.
entry 98 - tags: seats, ergonomics |
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 | March 22, 2007 - The memory foam for the seats is here.
It's really odd stuff to work with, in a constant state of slow melt. It's easy enough to cut with a good set of scissors though.
How does it feel? Good. A single 1.5" layer in the bottom cushion to replace the stock hard foam (shown here on top of the memory foam sheet) lets me sink much further into the seat, while giving better comfort than either the stock foam or nothing at all. I'll call that a win.
The co-driver's seat has also been modified to sit a bit lower, so I'm almost done with them. I'm going to trim a little bit of 'glass off the side of the seats to allow them to sit inboard a touch, but first I have to figure out how to disassemble them far enough to do that without hurting the cover.
entry 99 - tags: ergonomics, seats |
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THE DIARY