Alrighty then.. Figured id try and get an update in even though I'm still in the middle of a bunch of things on the car. I've been doing so much I know i'm going to start forgetting details and would rather put stuff here as its fresh. I try and refrain from posting about stuff that's 'in progress' in case I end up changing it mid course (which is not uncommon) but im going to hit every thing I can think of and maybe go back and edit once they finish.
I have been doing research onto intake systems on B series race motors. One thing they all seem to have in common is they use an "induction box" around the intake. Ram air collects in the box at higher-than-static pressure and therefore is instantly sucked/expands down the throttle body as the butterfly cracks open. The engineers are taking advantage of an atmospheres almost instant ability to equalize pressure. Since the air isn't just being vacuumed down intake pipe by the stroke of the piston you get a sharper, more instant throttle response. This of course varies with speed re: the pressure built up in the box- but I am curious to run some of my own 'butt' testing.
To accommodate this I built a 8x4x6 deep bumper duct and terminates into a 3" smooth mandrel tube that will do a 90* up into the bay. the box will be sealed off air tight, which is essential to maintain a higher pressure than ambient, this box will be built around the biggest filter I can find that will fit in the space, the more filter surface the more instant the air can move.
Once the car went off to fab all was quiet for a couple weeks while it was pushed around the shop and SMP finished up other projects. Once they dug into my car progress started coming fast.
Some shots of the cage taking shape. Upper halo cross bar. Not necessary in the rule books but something i decided on anyways. You can see the intersection angle that was necessary where the main hoop and halo meet. this was mid progress before it was reinforced.
Since I was no longer going to run any dashboard I could have the cross bar put in its place. This will now serve as the back bone of the instrument cluster and switches. Its nice to have something substantial to mount things too instead of the flimsy plastic dashboard. . I kept the OEM steering wheel bracket since the pedals and steering column are all tied into it. I'll maybe think about removing it at some point-- but it'll require quite a bit of things that id rather not deal with like aftermarket pedal set and re routing master cyls. So far its fine, I was able to lower the column with some studs and some spacers to account for my new seating position farther back and its holding firm. I also like to have the tilt feature so i can move it up and down to work under the dash and get in and out of the car. Again unless I come up with a good reason to take it out it'll stay where it is.
Here is a good side shot where you can see how the door bars angle out and joint at a point in the center of the door. The foot plate has an angle and is welded to the door rocker and the floor.
To accommodate me sitting farther back the switch panel legs were moved up about 8 inches so I could more easly reach battery master switch while fully buckled in.
Below, you can see the seat bracket permanently welded into the floor, much stronger than the OEM floor spot welds and it gained me about 3 inches of head room to clear the top bar with my helmet on. This has also allowed me to sit farther back almost dead center between the front and read axles of the car. You can see peaking up in the top of the picture I ditched the shitty NRG disconnect and spline adapter that the car came with and installed my Sparco weld on disconnect. This is a HEAFTY part and is the used on Ford and Subaru WRC cars as well as other series' touring cars . The length of the steering column was extended and a tube sheath created so it could be welded around the edges and then butt welded though holes drilled into the tube directly to the shaft. This. is .going. nowhere. Now I can have the steering wheel sit closer to me and a better angle = more control. You can also see a plate in the backgroung was built to hold the battery and SPA EFF fire bottle. More on these later.
Here you can see the filler neck mounting, i felt the angle of the fill pipe would have been too shallow of an angle to run from the OEM location. Also there wasn't a good way to beef up the stock fuel mounting point for the fill neck which would need some strength To support any weight of fuel left in the neck after a refill. The filler cup It has a built in drain dump port that i am routing off back under the car away from hot components in case of an over fill. On the cage you can see a diagonal cross bar has been added to the rear 90's style square cage down bars.
Also been gusseted to the shock tower for added support.
I had Steve add an anti-intrusion bar for the foot well (those two nuts hold the footrest) In a bad accident I have seen wheels come into the cabin area and brake ankles. This bar will stop that from happening.
Once I got the car home I test fit everything again and took measurements and made lists for things that I would have to start to figure out, like wiring and brake and fuel lines. These tasks come with piles and piles of list of things that I would need to buy.
You can see here the dash layout with the shift and emergency light being the most front and center. If its not buzzing or flashing at me it means its within spec and I don't care about it at the moment. The space in the center of the between then orange red and blue light is for the laptimer. Because, you know, that IS important.
The fuel cell (the original reason for tearing apart the car to make crx v3) had its provisions welded into the car too keep it everything in place. After i brought the car home I did a quick mock up and took measurements, its nice too start too see everything coming together (even though at this point there is a LONG way to go)
You can see in better detail here thick reinforced steel pads had been welded into the chassis and cage, the bottom is held by thick steel straps running lengthwise in the OEM location, the top is secured by two thick straps coming from mounting points on the cage down to pads and bungs welded into the step area of the back seat. the top is redundantly held down by 40 or so 1/4 inch hardened black oxide screws and lock nuts, 4 of which pass through the top straps.
Pic here of the bottom, aerospace gold foil added to the outer can to deflect up to 85% of radiant heat from the exhaust. There is also a layer of closed cell non crush foam between the bladder and the aluminum wall. The gold foil was probably over kill but it sure looks cool.
You can see where I had started to seal the aluminum box in place with chassis sealer. Its waterproof, fire proof and semi flexible but also hardens into a rubber like stiffness to seal up the inside from the outside. For whatever reason I have built this car to be water tight and spent extra time sealing up holes and figuring out solutions to closing gaps, which is a bit funny because the car will never have windows on while racing on track.
As I was cleaning up the windshield gutter I noticed that it was a bit rusty. Nothing that would be a problem but I took the time to take care of it correctly anyways.
3 coats of rust-stopper gel. after scraping off all the old windshield sealant.
5 coats rust-stopper gel.
Then a quick mask and spray with zinc based rust inhibitor paint
After cleaning off all the metal dust from the fab shop and wire wheeling the slag spatter from around the welds I masked the car and gave all the new metal a fresh coat of epoxy.
Looking at running the stock trunk popper i'd decided to lose the rear hatch mechanism all together and replace it with some toggle latches that my friend Dave had given me from his Alfa restoration project. I knew already that the car would never be parked outside and these toggle latches added an element of safety for someone outside the car being able to get in the car if they needed too.
You can see the well cell bladder that would soon be in the containment box, the surge tank is at the bottom and the fuel feed and return lines are hanging out the top. I'm using this box as a leftover from the initial phases of the ae86 build. I had thought about getting another bladder but why spend a grand when I already have something that will work. I did however replace the stock fill plate with a fancy-smanchy gold aluminum-alloy one-- I think i talked about earlier in the blog.
After plumbing the lines and securing everything in the containment box my buddy Allen and I tq'ed down the zillion small screws.
Once it was all together we CAREFULLY positioned it into place in its box. You can see here I had already sealed the chassis to box gap and painted it. it looks pretty seamless and pro.
From the backside.
Not much too see here, but that's the point. I filled all the small holes in the floor with goop. I'd go back through later and clean up the excess when it has semi dried.
Painted my steering column. You can see that I'd also drilled out and removed the steering lock and ignition tumbler, which is in the SCCA and NASA rule book.
I needed a solution to the missing door frame since I no longer had a place to put a door opener. I found these aviation chords with integrated clevis at a parts surplus store and they looked like they'd do the trick.
I was right, they were the perfect size- I used a nylon slippery washer on both sides of the clevis and a nylock nut to hold everything together with the slightest amount of free play. You can push down on any part of the cord and the door mechanism will actuate opening lever. This is a perfect solution for use with racing gloves or of you are in a hurry to get out.
You can see the OEM crash bar is still on the door, at this point they're just dead weight. I spaced on having them removed when it was at the fab shop the first time, I'm going to remove them from both doors as they apparently weigh 30lbs a piece
Next up was starting to plumb the stainless steel hard fuel lines. Id been a bit nervous about tackling this as the work will come out as good as the tools your using will let it. You can see here i fire sealed the fuel pump and filter box earlier too. I measures and drilled holes for the hardlines to enter the box, this took quite a bit of math and time to get right.
After drilling the holes in the right spot I bent a piece of test wire with my hand held tube bender in the shape and path that I wanted. This stuff is not easy since you are working on 3 dimensional planes of X,Y and Z you have to be dead on on the lengths of the tube that you are planning to use. You need to take into account the radii of the bends eating up tube length. kinda a pain.
Here is the finished product of ONE of the fuel lines that is bent into place.
After cleaning the cut with a deburing bit and trying to flair the captive nut onto the tube I realized pretty quick it wasn't happening. The tools I had bought were not up to the task. Turns out they were spec'd for much softer aluminum tube and this stainless was just slipping through the holder as I was cranking down the fairing cone. After a bit of research into how much the correct 37* hydraulic flaring tool would cost it started to become clear id save quite a bit of cash by putting this on a list for SMP to do when the car goes back in.
Moving on to the next item I decided to rust blast the drivers side quarter window and install carbon where the glass used to be. I repeated the steps Id done on the windshield.
After cutting and shaping a carbon square I riveted it into place. This wont be a blind-spot since I could never see out of this window while in the HANS seat anyways. Painted and again I weather sealed all the seams to insure this was watertight.
Once the carbon replacement window was in place and I could finalize the fill tube and its connection with the fuel cell.
I bought Coast guard approved fuel filler tube. Its got stainless steel coil wound around a rigid kevlar skin and 4000lb burst pressure rating. Its puncture proof up to 22 caliber and you need a heavy duty chop saw to cut it. I wrestled with this for longer than id like to admit but finally had everything in the correct angle and all clamped down with 1 inch wide bolt clamps.
I mocked everything up again so I could start to brainstorm the best and most clean way to wire everything.
After getting my head around where to start I turned to my hacked circuit board builder program and made rough schematics so I could come up with a list of connectors, fuses, buses and wires lengths/gauges id need to buy.
My next step is to figure out lengths and layout for the essential components that I will have to account for in the new layout.
More labeling and measurements are taken and much more research was to be done.
Again, the majority of the time was spent figuring out what the PO had had done to the harness. I had every intention of turning it back to stock layout with removed unessential connectors and wires but before doing so i had to understand why he'd gone and done certain things
Like this...
To make it just that much more complicated I had decided to run a coil-on-plug set up. I would no longer be using a wasted spark distributor so ide be able to gut the internal coil ignitor and rotor. This meant that I had to make sure that requisite wires and signals were in place so I could incorporate the new hardware.
Test fitting the coils on the motor... the ugly wire sheathing will be gone and integrated into the harness im building from scratch
I did notice that i may have clearance issues with the s2000 coils i'm using. The hood is already touching the valve cover and these are sticking up past that. I'm looking into different options for this, sorta on the back burner for now,
In preparation for building a harness from scratch I bought many many wounds of military aviation spec wire, tools, crimpers, connectors, connector pins, cable saddles, pins, heat shrink, fabric shrink, relays, deutsch connectors and shielded wire. All in all I have spent more on just tooling up to build something myself that to just buy an off the shelf mil spec harness.
Junk yard run for any connectors that I couldn't find. new old stock or new off brand are next to impossible to stupid expensive. I grabbed all the oem ones i could find so I have spares.
A big change to the driver/car interface layout is i've decided to use military spec circuit breakers in place of rocker switches. These are push/pull type which means they can be used as a switch on circuits as needed; or simply left in 'contact state' to power up items when I flip 'on' the master battery breaker. I've also invested in a better master switch to be able to accommodate power delivery to them as well as and alternator surges when shutting the car down. A bonus of using these breakers is things like fuel pump and ignition circuits can be reengaged on the spot if they are to blow. So instead of having to get a tow off and ruining the session for everyone else i can simply push them back in to reengage current flow and get off the track under my own steam. Much more on this as i get into the wiring post next.
Lastly for this post I cut and shaped aluminum plates and riveted them on with watertight sealant to the wiper cavity. It cleans up the lower windshield considerably
Next time- on to the wiring...
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