build diary

March 20, 2007:
While I've been patting myself on the back, the Seven has been sitting disassembled in the garage.
I'll take the head to the machine shop tomorrow and see if they can figure out how to get that lifter free - if it's possible. If not, I'll give them a spare head to work up. I might even stick a stock head on the car to make it drivable again.

In the meantime, it's time to get some serious work done on the Targa Miata.
entry 1353

April 6, 2007:
I've decided to install a stock head on the car.
The porting on the previous one was "nothing special", according to Bill. So I just need to pop in some valve springs and swap the cams. I have the head already, it's from a 323 GTX. The way things are going with all the other work I'm trying to get done, it's tempting to simply swap the cams out and deal with the springs later. But I made that decision once before, and look where it got me.
entry 1354

April 12, 2007:
I was driving to work yesterday and I was a bit ahead of schedule.
What the heck, the Seven's damaged head was in the back of the car and I was going right by the machine shop. So I pulled in to see what they had to say about my jammed lifter.

They had good things to say! Joe - the machinist - figured there was a good chance he could get it out. I left the head and went on to work. A couple of hours later, I got a phone call saying the lifter was out and that nothing was damaged other than the lifter and the valve. No worries there, they're littering the place. While installing my new springs, he also found that all my other lifters were showing really odd wear patterns from constant valve float. So he replaced all of them with the set I had pulled aside for the Targa Miata head.

As I might have mentioned, I had the redline set a little high so I could stretch out one of the short chutes at the local track. Down in Texas, I think Burt had been leaning a little harder on the limiter to stretch a longer straight and the abused valvetrain just gave up. Well, I had told him it was safe to work the car hard.

At lunch I stopped by to pick up my repaired head - one new (used) valve, 16 new (used) lifters and a new (new) set of valve springs. The used parts came out of the piles of spares that are sitting around at Flyin' Miata and in my garage. That was faster and easier than I'd expected!
entry 1355

Back in December 2004, I had the head off the car to fix a problem with the pistons and I considered installing new valve springs to handle higher RPM.
At the time, I decided against it. If I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have suffered a failure at the track in Texas. So I'm not making the same mistake twice. Aluminum seats, titanium retainers and a reasonable $366 retail price. Not bad really.
entry 1356
Preparing the block for the head.
I have to start using multi-layer steel head gaskets on this engine. I'm getting sick of cleaning off the remnants of the composite ones! This is at least the fourth head gasket to go on this engine thanks to the various rebuilds. It should be good for years of hard service now though.

If you look carefully at the exhaust valve cutouts, you can see where the valves were hitting the pistons. I didn't see this the last time the head was off, so the float was obviously extreme recently despite the same redline. I cleaned up the pistons with a dremel to take the sharp edges off and some fine Scotchbrite soaked in carb cleaner removed the carbon. Cleaning the headgasket was done with a plastic scraper and a Shop-Vac powerful enough to lift carb cleaner right off the head. No metal shavings in here! At least, I did my best to avoid it.
entry 1357
The Seven and the Targa Miata, in a race to see who gets on the road first.
Given that the Seven now has a head and the Targa car doesn't even have pistons in the block yet (tonight it will!), it's probably best to bet on the Seven. Soon I'll be able to get back to testing those new control arms.
entry 1358

April 16, 2007:
It's alive!
I installed the new head for the second time, and... second time? Yes, I'd pulled the head off in order to verify some questions about the new valve springs. So it's back on and the car fired up happily. Excellent - now I can drive! Which means, of course, that it rained today. The Seven hasn't lost its magic.
entry 1359

April 19, 2007:
The June 2007 issue of Grassroots Motorsports has an article on "15 tips to Locost success".
I think it's brilliantly written and insightful. Careful observers will also notice that it is illustrated with many pictures of my car and that I wrote the article.

If you're interested in a free copy, just stop by the GRM website and ask.

The Seven is also featured on the front page of B.S. Levy's website along with the Atom.
entry 1360

April 30, 2007:
At long last, the Seven meets the FM Westfield.
We took the two cars down to Moab to check out the car show there. It was a sunny, warm day that was perfect for a road trip.

It's really interesting to see the cars together for the first time. We didn't spend a lot of time standing around looking at them, but you can see the differences in scuttle height and placement in this picture. I didn't have the ECU in the Seven set up for high altitude after the trip to Texas, so I was down on power a fair bit - this made the cars fairly evenly matched in a straight line until the Seven could clear its throat at around 5000 rpm.

The biggest difference was in the suspension. The Westfield is much softer than my car and rides incredibly well, but I could see it running out of travel once in a while. I'd brace for the bump and the Seven would just drive right over it without any trouble. Bill turned up the damping a bit to compensate (he was running with two people, as was I) but I haven't heard what sort of difference that made.
entry 1361
Now this is why I built the Seven.
This, plus fun on the racetrack. It's easy to get the impression that the car is almost exclusively a track trailer queen, and it's certainly doing a whole lot of that. But it does get out to play once in a while, and it's good at playing. The difference is that on the road, I don't get to push things much. There's a whole level of the Seven's performance that can only be accessed on the track. The first time Janel rode in the car on track, her impression of the car changed dramatically - she had no idea of the rabid hard edged performance that was hidden inside.

Naturally, Bill and I had a bit of fun on this road. It's about 40 miles of twists and turns and I know it pretty well. We had traffic on the way in to Moab, but we got a pretty clear run on the way back. For some reason, the Miata that was also running with us took a bit longer to get to the end of the road.
entry 1362
Bwaaaaahhhhhh!
entry 1363
The Seven now has a stereo.
It's great for longer trips, as it cuts down the noise from the exhaust and wind as well as keeping the driver entertained on the highway. The little Shuffle clips on to the harness so it's both easily accessible and out of the way. This was a birthday present from Janel, and it's no coincidence that it matches the Seven!

A different ECU might be able to compensate better with a blend of throttle position and pressure sensing. Perhaps a bit more adjustability in the breakpoints in the fuel map would help as well. But it's always going to be hard to be my particular setup to behave with massive altitude changes. At least it's easy to change out the program in the ECU (providing I remember!) and it's a whole lot easier than messing with carbs.

I should also point out - in case it's not clear for those reading along - that the problems I was experiencing in Texas for the Car and Driver test had nothing to do with tuning. It was due to the broken PCV valve, something I didn't diagnose until I got back to Colorado.
entry 1367

May 15, 2007:
Time for a little more progress.
I've fitted the upper control arms from Kinetic to see how they work out. My thick spacers limit the amount of angle that can be reached by the rod ends, so the only way I can fit them right now leads to a loss in caster (fine with me) and camber (not good). I'm going to see if I can hunt down some different spacers or do a bit of grinding to regain a few degrees of misalignment. I might also shorten the front arm in order to improve the camber situation a bit more as well.
entry 1368

May 17, 2007:
I drove the car in to work today with the new control arms.
They're not an unqualified success quite yet. I've lost so much caster that the car is very twitchy. That's not so good. A bit of adjustment to the bushings and I can get a little more caster out of the setup, that should help. I've also lost steering lock as the new arms interfere with my fender stays. I'll find a way around that if the geometry of the arms works out.

It's kind of fun to be doing some development on the car again, not that I'm hurting for projects right now.
entry 1369

May 25, 2007:
Eric was in town for the weekend and got to see the Seven for the first time.
He's been a cheerleader of the project since I first started talking about it years and years ago - we've known each other about a decade now. He's seen the entire process, from my "Lotus fever" every Canadian winter, to the decision to finally do something, to all of the various problems and solutions that have come up during the build and tuning. It was great to finally give him the chance for a ride.
entry 1370
It's fairly easy to tell that Eric enjoyed his ride!
This was just a quick blast around the block, although my "block" takes about 10 minutes and includes a couple of decent curves. It's always a little frustrating to me because it's nothing like driving the car on the track, but Eric was laughing like a loon when we returned.
entry 1371

June 4, 2007:
It's autocross time again.
For the first time, I had another Seven to play with at the autox. The car - the FM Westfield demo car - is down on power compared to mine, doesn't have years of setup and Bill isn't much of an autocrosser. Doesn't matter, it's still fun to have someone to play with.

The course was a pretty good one. Not as fast as I'd like, but it's a narrow venue so there's not a lot of opportunity for high speed. There were three "turnarounds", cones that were basically the center of a 180 degree turn. This was a busy moment for me, as I was at maximum braking from the fastest part of the course, double-clutching down to first and (sometimes) pulling the handbrake. We all got 10-12 runs on the course, a hallmark of this particular race group.

Those with sharp eyes will notice that I'm running my old Falken Azenis tires. This is important.
entry 1372
On the course, I just couldn't get the Seven to hook up well.
Temperatures were nice and warm, but I either had the front end sliding or the rear spinning - sometimes both, of course. There was a real problem getting the front to grip on turn in. I was running on the Falkens instead of my usual Toyo RA-1s because I just plain ran out of time when loading up for the event. I didn't think it would be a major problem. But the car just didn't feel precise and it was smearing all over the pavement. On one part of the course this was a riot as I let the car swing around a series of four cones. But for most of the turns, it was a frustration.

We had a great race going on for the fastest time of the day. A turbo Miata, a well set up and unbelievably fast 1.6 Miata, an S2000 and the Seven all traded back and forth for the crown. The odd thing is that I've run with that turbo Miata before, and when I was driving a supercharged Miata we were very closely matched. The Seven is faster than that supercharged Miata, so why were we so close now? Heck, why was he ahead of me?

I spent a lot of time grumbling and grousing about my tires, and no matter what I did I just couldn't quite catch the others. I was running at the back of our little pack and had resigned myself to the fact that I just wasn't going to catch them. The fastest time of the day was a 1:19.185 for the turbo Miata while my best for the Seven was 1:19.881.

Just for fun, at the end of the day, I hopped in the Westfield for a run. Right out of the starting gate, I found what I'd been missing. The car leapt forward with that urge I'd been expecting from my car, and diving into the first gate was a revelation. Here was the front end grip and accuracy I'd been hoping for. The car didn't have enough horsepower to light up the rear tires so I couldn't steer from the rear at all. I didn't have the right shoes for its smaller footwell so I was a bit concerned about hitting the brake pedal which made me more hesitant. When I pulled into the pits after my run, I thought there was going to be a mutiny. I'd set a time of 1:17.435, about 1.7 seconds faster than anyone else. And it was all thanks to a good set of tires.

The RA-1 isn't usually viewed as a good autocross tire because it doesn't heat up fast enough, while the Falken Azenis is put up on a pedestal as the almighty champion of all. I'm not a big fan of the Falkens - too heavy and too stiff for my taste - and this proved why. Sure, the dedicated Hoosier race slicks will outrun the Toyos but you can't drive them up to the track. I don't think the Seven is ever going to leave the garage on Falkens again. Since the suspension is set up for the Toyos that might be part of the problem of course.

Nobody else got that Westfield around the track faster than 1:21.605. So it's not all tires!
entry 1373
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