build diary

April 5, 2006:
Longer, stiffer springs for the rear.
Why longer? Because it's almost impossible to get 9" springs in the rates I needed.
entry 1182

April 6, 2006:
I popped the front springs on last night, added some rear wheels and dropped the car down.
Holy cow, those new rear springs are stiff. The front seems a less drastic change. I realised that I needed someone else to help me set up the ride height and I was fresh out of helpers. Nuts. Decision time - do I have the car aligned on the rack to make sure the fundamental setup is good without any wheels pointing off in strange directions even though the corner heights will change, or do I do the cornerweighting first? I know it would be ideal to do the cornerweights first, but that's not going to happen. I decided to go ahead with the alignment anyhow. I did pop the car on the scales though, it's down to 1311 lbs wet. Not bad!

So, out of the garage. The rear end is definitely firm. I might have to back that off a touch. The fronts seem to work well but honestly, driving to work isn't a tough test. I may end up disconnecting the rear sway bar to get a good balance but the rear is actually softer than it was before if you compare it to the front. Trust me, that last sentence makes sense! The rears are 43% stiffer while the fronts are 66% stiffer. There's certainly much less roll on the street.

Obtaining the springs themselves was a bit of a trial. I ordered the fronts directly from Pro Shocks - they showed up three days later, just what I wanted - and ordered the rears from Pit Stop USA. It wasn't until the first box arrived a few days later that I realised I'd ordered Pro Shock springs from both companies. Pit Stop USA was less expensive though. Well, until their package showed up. I wasn't able to track it due to a mis-entered tracking number. This was after I had to determine what the mystery password created for my account was and a long conversation full of comedy with the customer support line. When it did show, the springs were the wrong size. After a couple of days, it was determined that the springs I'd ordered did not exist despite the happy writeup on the website. In fact, Pro Shocks doesn't even make springs in that length and diameter. So they had to ship me some others that were an inch longer. All in all, a pretty messy customer experience and there were some notes on the return label that have me concerned. I'll be watching my credit card statement. Next time I'll go directly to Pro Shocks and spend the extra $20 per spring. Either that or find out how to order some of the 10" Legend springs from various online suppliers.

As a complete contrast to Pit Stop USA's fumbling around, Jim Coveland at Coveland Motorsports managed to find the wiper wheelbox I needed in a 1967 Spitfire. He's sent it my way and is asking only for thanks. It's fairly obvious who's going to get my business in the future. Thanks Jim!

Some fun stuff. I've mentioned this site once before due to the models, but I neglected to look around. Check out some of the links - a visit to Arch Motors with some stunning pictures, some beautiful illustrations and of course, Out-of-a-Box Designs. Worth a few minutes.
entry 1183

I can't stop taking pictures of the new "trunk" - but I can't take a good one.
Thos one certainly illustrates how much the rear suspension is on display. I never thought I'd regret writing on top of the differential!
entry 1184
At work with the new exhaust.
Some of us at Flyin' Miata have bigger toys than others.
entry 1185
A couple of stickers on the rear bulkhead.
What can I say, I couldn't resist.
entry 1186

April 7, 2006:
I boogied on down to Scotty's Undercar this morning to put the Seven on the rack.
The technician isn't the chatty sort, trying to preserve syllables for the future. After we'd done a baseline, he asked what kind of car it was. "A Lotus Seven replica", I answered. "I think Steve McQueen had one of these when I was working on his cars" came the reply! Turns out, he used to work near Hollywood in the 60's and would prep McQueen's Porsche for the track on Friday then realign it for the street on Monday morning. How cool is that?

What about my own little car? Well, I'd done a pretty good job in my garage. The camber was fairly well matched up front and the right rear was good. The right rear was toed out slightly though - and the left rear was out even more. Yoiks, no wonder the car was happy going sideways. We tweaked the rear to give a touch of toe in (about 0.03") and matched up the rear camber. Now I have about 1.8 negative in the front (easy to adjust) and 1.9 in the rear. The weird thing was the caster at 12 degrees! I might try to dial some of that out. Overall, though, I'm really looking forward to the track this weekend.
entry 1187

April 10, 2006:
Track day!
My goal: to beat my existing lap record of 1:05.585 seconds.

First, there was time for a bit of setup. After leaving the alignment rack, I put the car on the scales to cornerweight it. This went fairly easily. The end result had a 20 lb weight savings from last year, but more weight on the light right front wheel and a nice 45/55 weight distribution. Just what I'd hoped for with the battery relocation. An interesting thing happened though. I was finished with the scaling when I noticed that the right rear tire was very low. I'd forgotten to set my tire pressures before scaling. The left front was the one that had been flipped on the wheel and it turned out to be quite high. By adjusting the pressures, my cross weights went from 50.5% to 49.5%. This let me back off on the adjustments I'd made a touch and left me with the ideal 50% cross weighting. I also took some time to install the wiper wheelboxes - more on that in a future update.

On to the track. There's always a bit of chaos at this particular organization. At least, there was. I hadn't been to the last couple of days run by these guys and they've become much better than before. Unfortunately, a snafu meant the transponders hadn't been charged so we had to wait for a while before timing started. It's a bit of an odd setup. Due to the size of the track, only four cars run at a time. You get an out lap, three hot laps and an in lap. Then you line up for your next baby session a few minutes later.

The Seven felt strong. The first session, a heavily modified WRX pulled out on the track in front of me. It was driven by a friend who's usually pretty close in lap times. Well, he miscalculated. By the time we'd been around a couple of corners, I'd glued myself to his tail. He couldn't escape in the corners, under braking and - surprisingly - under power. It was pretty obvious that the Seven had too much rear roll stiffness so I removed the rear sway bar after a few laps. That helped although I still had corner exit oversteer. Of course, some of that could be the result of 145 hp trying to deal with only 400 lbs on each driving wheel. The problem with bottoming out the rear was completely gone and I was still able to drive over berms without any concerns. A slight softening of the rear shocks and the car felt nicely balanced.

My boss Bill showed up late and he could tell just from looking at the car that it was moving fast. The body roll that's plagued me for so long was gone. It felt pretty good but only the transponder would tell. Well, if I managed to pass sound check that is. My new muffler is no quieter than the previous one according to the sound meter although it sure doesn't sound as loud. I went back out with my little Supertrapp tip on...and it made no difference. Well, no wonder. It had fallen off on the first corner! We found it, stuck it on well (I'm not sure if it's going to come off now actually) and I was given the green light. Phew!

More entertainment came from the throttle cable. Coming out of turn 1, I noticed I'd lost my throttle cable. No problem, I knew it had just popped off the wheel I use to turn it 90 degrees. But why? I idled into an access road, pulled off the hood and restrung the cable. Now the throttle was stuck wide open! I managed to unstick it and drove back to the pits at 2000 rpm. After a bit of investigation I found that the throttle position sensor I was using was binding enough to prevent my throttles from closing properly. Odd, it's been on there for a while. No matter, I wasn't using it anyhow so I just removed it.

Ah, finally. The transponders showed up. We stuck one to the back of the Seven and I headed out. I didn't feel very smooth and figured I'd just run about 1:06 on my laps. To my delight, the time was a 1:04.630 with another to back it up! I was ecstatic. A new lap record for "not a kart" vehicles at the track!

Next session, 1:04.301. Not bad, I was shaving some time off.

While kicking around between sessions as the drifters covered the track with rubber (this is difficult to ignore as a car guy because it sounds like a constant accident!) and dirt, then swept off the dirt, Bill borrowed my new tire pressure gauge. He compared it to our tried-and-true Longacre one and discovered it was about 5 psi high! Hmm, that means my tires were currently at about 13 psi cold. Not ideal. We didn't have a temperature gauge so I'd simply been driving. I added 5 psi to get to the range I wanted and headed out for the next session. The car felt really good, with almost no tire noise and a more stable behaviour. I came in unsure. Was I simply feeling better or was the car actually faster? I knew that I'd been much smoother. The word came in on the radio - 1:03.777 with a following 1:03.8 to back it up. Much rejoicing in the pits from everyone! I went back out for a final set of laps and came back in with a 1:03.368 and a backup 1:03.439 and 1:03.582. Since my goal had simply been to match my earlier 1:05.585, you can imagine how happy I was to take over 2 seconds off. As far as I know, only one other car has only managed one lap below 1:06. There will be some competition when Skip Cannon shows up this summer with his 275 rwhp Caterham, but for the time being I'm very proud of my little toy.

Most importantly for my own skills, I'm very proud of the consistency. One of my competitors came over to let me know that I had to watch my back, he'd just pulled a 1:07. This was still 2.5 seconds off my pace at the time and his next fastest lap was a 1:09. True, when it comes to lap records it's all about That Single Fast Lap, but it's a faster driver who can consistently turn the same times.

Bill took the Seven out for a few laps and complained about fuel starvation in some corners. He also mentioned the brakes weren't too impressive. He'd been driving the 2006 MX-5 which has aggressively servoed brakes and amazing stopping power, so I didn't think too much of it. I packed everything up in the car and jumped in to drive home - and discovered the brake pedal was super-soft. The front master cylinder was dry! Some feeling around showed a bit of a leak under the cylinder itself. I'll have to investigate that tomorrow. I drove home on the rear brakes and compression braking. I own an old Land Rover so I'm used to bad brakes. I also only managed to put 3.5 gallons in the fuel tank. Hmm, maybe those baffles didn't work so well after all.

So, after all that, how's the car? A couple of small problems, but I'm ready for Car and Driver in terms of performance and setup. The Seven rides like a Miata with performance suspension on the street and is a total riot on the track. The engine feels good and strong and the car is at the peak of its handling so far. I'm a little sunburnt, bruised and tired, but I couldn't be happier.
entry 1188

My new wipers!
They're not hooked up under the dash but the nerve-wracking part is done - I've drilled the holes. And yes, the impact gun is really useful for this installation. Maybe not at full power.
entry 1189
On the track!
It's obvious from this photo how much the car is improved. By comparison, see what it looked like in October in the same corner.
entry 1190
Another track shot.
Just because. And here's the before shot.
entry 1191
Artsy shot.
entry 1192

April 11, 2006:
Last night I tore into the car again.
The nose and front fenders came off for a repaint so the car looks good at Car and Driver. The nose in particular was pretty battered with some missing paint due to a badge misadventure. Hopefully there's enough paint left from the original batch to cover it. I tightened some fittings on the front brakes and tonight I'll find out if that sealed everything. It looks as if the brake problem was simply a seeping fitting. I was putting a fair bit of pressure through the lines over the weekend! Mark commented that I had the speed in the straights of the fast Subarus, but the braking points of his naturally aspirated Miata with sticky tires. Anyhow, that was the accomplishment for last night. I'm pretty sure there was more but I can't think of what it might be. Oh well. The list of jobs to do before Texas doesn't seem to be getting any shorter, but it does seem to be more specific than before.
entry 1193

So, what does your car look like the day after setting a track record?
entry 1194
When transporting body parts for painting, it's important to take care of them.
This means putting them in the back seat of a 1966 Cadillac of course.
entry 1195

April 13, 2006:
The car isn't getting any more together than it was.
Less so - last night I pulled off the scuttle. The instruments were remounted (a washer had escaped and the needles were dragging on the glass), a hole drilled for a new oil pressure light, wiring for the light was put in place, the windshield was measured up for reproduction, wiring was cleaned up and the brakes were bled. I've heard that the body parts are painted so I'll go pick those up later today. Tonight I hope to reassemble the car and drive it in to work tomorrow.
entry 1196

I seem to have conquered my fear of drilling holes in my fibreglass.
This is for an amazingly bright "you have no oil pressure!" light.
entry 1197
Time to work on the new windshield.
This one will probably be too low of course, but I reserve the right to make that error.
entry 1198

April 14, 2006:
A frustrating day.
I stuck all the various pieces back on the car so I could bring it in to work this morning. Paint the grille surround black, fit the Dzus fasteners, new foam tape for the bonnet, bolt on the front fenders, install the wheels, install new fuel injector connectors and tape up the wiring - you know, the usual. I also cut the new windshield template. I jumped into the car to bring it down to the glass shop and...nothing. It cranked enthusiastically (good little battery, that Odyssey!) but there was no fuel whatsoever. We pulled the ECU out and found a problem with the chip, so I changed that and loaded in my special programming. Finally, a few hours later (I have a very, very understanding boss) Tore off down the street to see if an upholstery shop could make a little tonneau cover and of course I'm a little late to get all this done before I leave next week. Then outside the upholstery shop, same deal. Nothing. I borrowed a screwdriver, popped the top off the ECU case and wiggled what we thought might be the problem and the car fired up. Argh. When I got back, it wouldn't start. Later in the day, going to pick up the glass (the Glass Brokerage once again came through with a same-day windshield for $40!) it fired right up. I'll be into the ECU again tonight. Not exactly what I wanted to do of course. I have a few other things I was planning on doing.

A little treatise on my new oil pressure light. I used to use a gauge for the oil pressure. The problem is that it's constantly moving (of course) and I'm afraid I'll miss it if a problem shows up. So I elected to go with a light that's right beside my rev gauge. This way, if it lights up I'll know to kill the engine immediately. Ideally I'll have both. Someday I'll revisit instrumentation and do it then. I did have to plug in a sender from a 1995 Miata to make this work but otherwise it was the same wiring.

The new vs the old.
Well, the template for the new anyhow. It's not a major change but I think it will really affect the look of the car.
entry 1200
The new oil pressure light.
It's the brightest light I could find at Radio Shack and is nice and visible.
entry 1201
A gratuitous shot of the car.
entry 1202
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