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build diary << | show individual entries | >>August 16, 2004: In terms of the instruments, some quick probing hasn't given me any clues. The speedo cable snapped about 10 miles after installation due to a nasty tight bend in the cable. That's going to be difficult to avoid given the packaging. The oil pressure gauge and tacho are the two that interest me more though. I'll try to work that out this week. I'm leaving the car at the Flyin' Miata shop because I won't have plates again until Wednesday night. Most of the work remaining is just fettling although it might be good to have a wind deflector of some sort - passengers seem to mention that a lot. Eric has asked for more photos of the car. I'm constantly taking photos of it because I still can't believe it's out on the road - so if there's anything that you want to see in particular let me know either via email or the guestbook. One comment from Bill is that it's more orange in person than in the photos. I have a tendency to show the yellow highlight in the photos but most of the time it looks like the basic orange you see in photo 438. It looks like I'll have to do a little work on the exhaust tip - my rear fender is getting most of the heat and I'm sure the tire isn't appreciating it either. I also weighed the car last night. It's a little heavier than anticipated - I probably underestimated the exhaust system. Still, a full wet weight of 1257 lbs isn't bad at all. That's with a full tank of gas, water, all the body parts and even a fire extinguisher. The empty car is slightly tail heavy (52.7% on the rear) and almost perfectly balanced left to right. The cross weights are also very good. The moral? It'll handle best with a passenger. I don't think it will be a problem finding one this weekend. Pulling into my garage last night, it looked odd. It was too big and too empty. It's the first time the Seven hasn't been there since January! All that's left is a bunch of debris. Bill does some investigation on the wiring. After some talks with my friends down at Scotty's Muffler, I've worked out a slip-on exhaust tip that should drop the sound level a bit. The track day is under some extreme noise restrictions due to small-town politics - a community across the interstate, underneath an airport approach path have decided that their ambient noise cannot go above 55 dB. The use of the track this Friday is a test to see if cars can use the kart track without causing noise problems. Only Miatas are allowed to take part but we're going to run the Seven. Obviously there is some concern about the side exhaust being loud although I believe it is now at the same level as the turbo Miatas. The brake bias adjuster has been labelled. How did it work? In short, I never expected the car to be this good, this early. Through a series of downhill S bends that involved some good berm hopping, the car swallowed up the bumps and the tail stayed faithfully on line despite my fairly ham-fisted driving. The suspension was obviously working well although it has a lot of lean. It was easy to break the rear end loose with power but the front was well planted. The brakes have a firm, firm pedal and I never really got on them too hard - I was a little tentative with such an unknown car of course! A couple of harder stops showed me that I had to add a little more front bias so I did that on the next straight :) Noise? Well, the first session was a worst case scenario. The dB meter was set up halfway down the straight, right where I was reaching about 6500 rpm in 2nd. Yes, it's a slow track! The meter was on the left side of the track. Now think about where my exhaust points...Yes, I failed pretty badly. For a second session I popped on my diffuser tip. It's a bit low to the ground and scrapes on all right turns, but it dropped my sound level by 6 or 7 dB - that was enough to make me legal. A BIG thank you to Rodney at Scotty's for the help in setting that up. There were a couple of problems with the car of course. My right rear brake caliper needs a rebuild as it's leaking slightly. A gasket on a water fitting started to drip a little and the car started to miss under load as time went on. The gasket was fixed this morning and I'll try a good set of coils to see if one of my junkyard units is bad. The most entertaining failure of the night was when my tachometer needle blew off! No, I don't have glass on the gauges yet. That was a bit of a problem but I have to laugh. Now if only I can find another set of needles! Oh, and I can also report that driving this car in the rain is not a terribly pleasant experience even with good wraparound glasses. The diffuser tip. |