Mx7? rx5? Newbies build thread begins

[antnicuk]

you wanna bet,   ignore the commentary!  it looks and drives very different now but i wont hijack yourth thread with my pictures.  I went with a microtech running a street ported 13b turbo engine and gearbox from a TII

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhU3kVfoDag

[Steve-A]

haha ok, maybe mine was slightly more elegant......

Just ordered another wideband sensor and controller. Should be here friday, so I should be able to get some tuning done, and get out and drive it. Next step after that will be a proper alignment then I can stock my good wheels back on the front.

[od404]

Awesome to hear it\'s up and running Steve! :driving

[Steve-A]

Few picture for you all.

This is how the interior stands right now. The new wideband controller should be here tomorrow morning so it can all go back together then.



This is how the engine bay was this morning:



And this is how it looks now:




I\'ve given it all a quick wipe over, and tucked the various wires I\'d pulled out over the last few days of problem solving back into the loom. More importantly I\'ve swapped out the coolant expansion tank for one I had in the garage from a Suzuki RG250 motorbike. This means there\'s now room for an air filter behind the passenger headlight where it should get a pretty good cold air flow. I\'ve just gotta order a filter now that will fit in that space. For the moment the tights will do!! :p

[Steve-A]

Lambda sensor came today

Plugged it in and it worked! Though had a bit of an idea about what might be up with my other one so will still try to fix that one too.

So I\'ve been out driving, 60 miles or so down, gonna go out and do another 50 to pick up the girlfriend later.

Map still needs lots of work, but its drivable! Still concerned bout the volume, might try putting the cat in next week, so how much quieter it is compared to how much performance lost.


eres a couple of quick pictures I took of the car in her natural habitat, the B road. Cant wait to get her aligned and get the proper front wheels back on!

[Steve-A]

Well the cat went in, cant feel any loss of performance, it is a veyr free flowing cat designed for turbo use, but it is a bit quieter. I\'m hoping the noise might further reduce once I\'ve got an air filter rather than tights too
 
I\'m having a bit of a lean time for work, which sucks, but it does mean I\'ve got lots of time to spend on the car.
Today I finally got to the bottom of my CAS noise issues with megasquirt. I gave the CAS a good clean out, and then fitted a .1uF capacitor across the 2nd trigger input. The mods recommended for stock mx5 CAS always say to do this, but the rx7 guides dont mention it so I haddent bothered. Fitted it and bingo all is well
 
Yesterday I spent some timing making sure the exhuast was properly sealed up. I also phoned a guy who does classic car and race car fuel and oil systems about the best way to re-route my fuel lines. Despite boxing them in and doing my very best to shield them from the heat, and having driven 200+ miles without exploding, I\'d still sleep better at night knowing they were far far away from, the hot exhaust. Hes gonna look into it for me and call me back
 
My megasquirt map is coming along very nicely too, I\'ve got a pretty good fueling tune for power and I\'m working on effeciency. Done about 21-24mpg so far, which is promising for a mis tuned map and plenty of shortish drives with thrashing. Hoping to get nearer 30mpg on the commute (lots of motorway).

[Steve-A]

The final pieces of the puzzle ( for now!) are falling into place

Yesterday I went to get the car aligned, I knew the front was a mile out because i\'d had the subframe on and off a few times and had just put it back together with the alignment bolts centered.



Went with slightly lower front to rear camber ratio than before. I had gone for the 0.75 degree difference previously where as this time I\'ve gone for 0.4-0.5. I\'ve also  had some of the toe taken out of the rear as I never really felt I had the power to need its extra stability and liked the idea of a little more throttle controlled steering. I\'ve been for a bit of a drive this morning and its great. Its not overly aggressive or tail happy but when pushed I can feel all 4 wheels moving together, and when on the power exiting a bend the little extra rear steer from the lower toe is really pleasant. I suspect if I was tracking it a lot I may find I\'d want a little more toe again but for b road fun its a nice balance I think.

I\'ve also been working on my map and I\'ve added a few degrees timing up the top end. Its really starting to feel as I\'d hopped now, happily signing away at 5-8k and is such a nice fun engine to blast some b roads with. As I\'m using premix I decided against activating the overrun fuel cut, so there was still a little fuel and oil getting to the tips, which is making for awesome overrun pops and bangs  :Giggle

Yesterday my air filter finally arrived too.




Cant feel any extra restriction to airflow from it at high revs, MS is showing no extra vacuum at WOT. But it has brought the volume down once more. I\'d say its now basically the same volume as my 1.6 piston engine was, so not exactly subtle but not widow shaking loud! If anything it has added a little drag to the intake noticeable at high vacuum and idle, but this has actually helped stop the wild vacuum fluctuations and oscillations I was struggling to tune round at idle.

Because I\'d had the alignment done I was able to put my good wheels back on without worrying about destroying the tyres




Thing left to do are the speedo drive, which Ramon should be posting to me next week , and I\'d still like to relocate the fuel lines to the other side of the engine bay for piece of mind. I\'ve got some nice braided fuel hose in the post and I\'ve bought a bead maker so I can shorter my hard lines and still make a proper safe connection. So in a week or thereabouts time it should be pretty done. Just in time for rotorstock  :burnout

[od404]

Awesome work mate, glad to see it\'s all come together!

Will make sure I catch up with you at Rotorstock!

[rossonza]

INSANE! so excited to be going to RS7 in this bad boy

[RamoNZ]

I got a bread maker - they are well good. I love the smell of fresh bread :mmmm

[Steve-A]

Right today was fairly average. I\'ve been waiting a little while for my fuel lines to arrive so I can replace the standard hard lines and run the new braided lines up the far side of the gearbox from the exhaust. Today they finally arrived!

Heres how my fuel lines used to run:



I\'d boxed them in with sheet steel and covered that in heat reflective tape, but I was still uncomfy as they are mighty close to the exhaust.

So the day started with the now familiar sight of my car up in the air...



Then I cut out the old lines



And found the £40 beading tool I\'d bought was incorrect. Arse! In the picture below the lower line is the original hard line end. The beading tool I bought would have been able to replicate this exactly. With tomorrow being rotorstock I really needed to do something! So I wiggled a file about in the end of the line to try and create a basic flare. In the end I think its just as safe just really awkward to put the hose on! The line pictured was just a practice, for the final lines I made a slightly more aggressive flare.



Here the new line run:




For most of the run there\'s either an engine gearbox or good 2ft of space between the exhaust and fuel lines. The closest point is as the lines come down to the floor level and curve towards the hard lines. They are around 1ft from the cat there, but thats still 1ft instead of 2" ! The braid should help dissipate any heat a little anyway.

Quick start up and test and all the joins are making a good seal, so all good to goto rotorstock!

[Steve-A]

Today at rotorstock was great. I really enjoyed it, thank you to everyone who came up and talked to me about the car


The journey home wasn\'t so great. About 10 miles into my 100 mile journey the temp gauge suddenly jumped off the scale I pulled over asap and found this....



Here she is abandoned at the road side some where in northants!



The one section of cooling alu piping that didn\'t have a bead on the end of it had popped out, dumping the coolant all over the a45. Ross and I were stuck in the middle of nowhere. We flagged down a passing runner to ask if he knew where we could get some water and he said from a village about 1/2 hours walk from where we were But then he offered to bring us some, he said it would take 15 mins to finish his run to the village then he;d be back. 20 mins later he came back in a car with loads of water for me. It was amazing, we were so lucky to have found such a generous member of the public I couldn\'t thank him enough.

After filling the system we drove home very carefully, I shan\'t drive it again till I\'ve had the pipe beaded and have filled it with proper antifreeze mix again. I just really hope I\'ve not killed the water seals with the heat We managed the 90 mils home with no drama, temps stayed good and it hadn\'t pushed any extra coolant into the overflow tank. I don\'t think it got hot for very long, but I know it doesn\'t take much.

[captainbizzaro]

Good to meet you today mate-hope no long term damage was caused,sounds like you caught it in time.

[od404]

Sorry to hear about your luck Steve.  I think we actually passed you at one point on the A45 while it was bucketing down with rain (3 FD\'s) so I did wonder what had happened as you left well before we did.

Good luck getting everything sorted mate!

[Steve-A]

Did the champagne test this morning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yazP38SAeKc

Watch in HD and you can see more.

Water stayed totally bubble free till it get upto temp, then it started to bubble as shown in the video. Rate of bubbling increased with revs.

I presume its f**ked?