The air bags go to nozzles on the L/R rear of the truck and can be inflated per side to level out the load. That's cool and all but I think that I'm just going to 't' them and use one nozzle that fills both bags simultaneously. I don't have flat enough ground to measure left to right heights anyways so it just more of a pain in the ass to fill em both as opposed to just one and go.
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So after getting the Raxles into the car and fitting the new booster-less BMC I decided that it would be a good idea to test the car at least once on the weekend before HFF Rd 3 at SOW. Once at the Walt James oval I had an empty track to test on. After some warm up and feeling out the brakes I picked up the pace. Things felt okay, the pedal feeling was a bit longer than before on account of the 13/16 MC, you had to use more force to push the pedal down but it was definitely usable. Main thing was it lacked in consistency, which is they key to braking confidence. The Walt James oval is basically just a big 3rd gear circle track with a figure 8 cut through, so there isn't really anywhere to test a downshift side to side weight transfer or trail brake. The pedal would feel good then all of a sudden after a change of direction it would catch pressure a half inch lower in the stroke than before, I assumed that there was air in the system and pulled the car in to check everything out again.
Once up in the air we noticed that there was literally fluid hissing out of the banjo bolt seat on the rear caliper. After pulling the line off you can see the knick on the seating surface of the caliper. WTF. This was never a problem before and the lines hadn't been off in a while so I have NO idea how that got there and just now became a problem. I called around to local shop in the hopes someone close would have a replacement caliper that I could swap on at the track, but alas i had to call it a day. After getting the car home and back in the garage I also noticed that there was a small weep again from the drivers side rear caliper stainless to braided line junction.
This is something that I had been dealing with for a few weeks now and at this point I was thoroughly annoyed at them. I would tighten them- and it would be okay for a while then the leak would reappear. I was postulating that the lines would vibrate themselves just enough to get loose and weep and had been devising a stabilization bracket as a fix but figured it'd be a good idea first to pull them off and have a look at the mating surfaces. This meant that once again id be draining the brake fluid out of the system. (sigh) Once I had the line off I saw what was supposed to be a 'seamless' stainless tube actually had a visible seam that when flared created enough gap to weep when i pressurized the system.
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| seamexposed |
Needless to say again but pretty fed up was an understatement I took the whole back half of the lines out of the car, and tossed them in the corner- which is a bummer because not only did they cost some coin and effort to build, but I chose to do them like this so that I would AVOID this very same type of situation. Pretty disappointed.
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| removed and trashed |
I'd also decided that since I had to drain the system again that I wanted to switch the size of the BMC piston to lessen the pedal stroke... and since I had that all apart I may as well build a new BMC mounting plate to raise the BMC... then id need to redrill the pedal arm to increase the mechanical leverage id have on the pedal. At this point I was careening full speed down the slippery slope.. "while i'm in there"
Before I knew it I had it all apart; which In my stupid garage this is no small feat on a car that is up on jack stands with a full cage and so close to a wall that I can only open the driverside door 3/4 of the way.
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| go toward the light |
After doing some back of envelope math and figured out the approximate line pressures that are required to lock up the caliper. This, of course, is a sliding scale based on the tire compound and brake pad Mu's coefficient (friction) that I was planning on using. Once I had that I could determine the fluid displacement required to achieve said pressures and arrive at an appropriate MC piston surface area- (or one that was closest and still available) . After that I could figure out how much piston pressure would be required to achieve the line pressures. Once I had that I could determine what pedal ratio would give me the appropriate mechanical leverage to achieve the required piston pressures and still keep the foot pressure in a acceptable realm.
Not all that easy, and becomes much more difficult when working within the boundaries of whats already there. In cases like this i've found out that working backwards is usually the least complicated route. Initially the idea was to utilize the upper two mounting studs on the MC plate for mounting an automatic Civic 7/8 EX master cyl. Because the EX BMC uses horizontal mounting holes rather than the 45* mounting holes of the earlier EF chassis it would move the MC up 1.18 inches and allow a redrill of the pedal arm to achieve a luxurious 7:1 pedal ratio
SO alas, the most that could be done was to settle on the 7/8th MC size and to raise it as much as possible with out having to cut into the fore wall or any of the pedal brackety. Once that was done I'd move the clevis up to match and see where we landed with increased leverage.
I knew that it wasn't that bad before, certainly within usable levels so- if anything, it'd only improve from there.
Armed with this knowledge (and only 4 days till the next event) Art came in clutch and water jetted the new MC relocation plate
CAD file
1/4 inch plate in the jet ready to make sparks fly.
Because of the relocated mounting holes some studs had to be welded from the back of the plate for some nyloc nuts to hold the BMC in place.
I had also cut my titanium bolt and rounded the tip to act as the plunger for the BMC
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| pic was taken pre-smoothing of the domed tip |
Now that I had the plate, rod and new MC i removed the pedal cluster from the car so id be able to accurately see what I was working with.
I then mounted the plate to the MC and then to the pedals with the appropriate spacing that it'd see when affixed to the firewall.
Once I had the assembly level (even though on the car the BMC is angled slightly upwards)
I jigged up a bubble gauge to determine where I would need to make the new hole in the pedal arm. You don't want the rod pressing the piston unevenly. This can potentially bend the rod, clevis or damage the brake master cup all of which will cause brake failure.
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| leveled out the rod |
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| Marked the pedal arm for the new provision |
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| new hole drilled |
All assembled and measured I found out that i would have exactly a 6:1 peadal ratio which is smack dab in the middle of the 'recommended' zone for booster less brakes.
After that I picked up a new set of rear calipers and swapped them in. At the same time i got the new softlines from the builder. You can see the new softline routing here.
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| Opted to not use the rear junction |
They go from the first junction after the bulkhead back to the rear tabs. From there they connect to another softline that passes through the chassis to the calipers. Basically I had gotten all this finished Friday night the day before the event. After some super frustrating issues with the reinstall and bleeding of the new MC and a problematic rear right caliper the car did a slow lap in the dusk around the block. I have to be honest, I was so over it. The older I get the more i despise rushing to get things finished. I was basically talked into loading the car onto the trailer that night. *I* wanted to do another test session before committing to actual track time and really only agreed to bring the car because I would be going to officiate HFF timing anyways. I figured that I may as well use this as an opportunity. Just bring the car to test it over at the balcony or the oval and if it was good enough i could decide whether i would get it on track.
Once at the event i unloaded and bled the brakes again. To my mega-frustration.. and after all that work I just couldn't get the pedal to feel consistent. It was the same problems all over again. It'd feel OK for a bit (when it was good it was even better than before) then it would fall away. I was totally stumped. i was thinking that maybe I had damaged the inlet ports on the calipers somehow or was somehow getting a small leak under vacuum; but there was no air coming out when bled and there was no fluid leaking anywhere. I then got thinking that the internal mechanism on the e-brake cable was not set correctly inside the new rear calipers and could have been possibly retracting the piston from contact with the rotor. This would take up the majority of the pedal stroke and make it feel like it was. I unhooked the e brake but still had the problem.
Along those same lines, I thought, it could also be bad front wheel bearings. They could be causing the rotors to tilt and push the pistons back into the caliper which would take up pedal stroke to recontact them with the rotor. Yanking the wheels around while the car was up in the air didn't immediately give anything away, but again the forces of R compound tire acting on a 2000lb chassis at 90mph is much much more than i can do by hand.
After a few session went by and I had bled and bled and checked for leaks i decided that the problem was a bummer but 'manageable' using some left foot braking to reset the pads after a heavy turn or breaking zone.
The car was all aeroed up in full track spec, I was here with it, and had paid for the day. I figured 'what the hell' i may as well get out there and run a few laps. After all, if it was to-to bad i'd just coast back to the pits and call it a day.
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| It'd been a while since i had the splitter all bolted on the car. |
Since I wasn't sure of the car i placed myself in the blue group (for slower drivers)
Once on track and after a few laps to get used to the process of re seating the pads before a turn- i realized that I was on a 1:25-1:26 pace with almost zero effort trying to go fast. The pedal was shitty and I was working hard nurse the issues, but the car still had pace. I decided to build enough gap in traffic to throw down one 'real' hot lap.
It was a BUSY, sketchy lap but i was able to run a 1:24:2 beating my old CRX PB by almost half second.
After going out for the second session the pedal was definitely getting worse. I drove it in the next 2 sessions and was hovering at the low 1:26 range, these were mostly test sessions for the motor at this point, hoping to chase some other bugs out of the car. The track was slicker than normal and the heat started to soak in. By now the pedal was also falling lower to the floor after almost any input on the wheel or undulation on the pavement. It'd also developed a weird studder on throttle after some corners that i realized was fuel starvation. I'd watch the gauge go from 53psi under full throttle to 9psi and back. This started to happen more and more frequently on different corners as i was under half a tank of gas. In the end decided to park it for the rest of the day and regroup. I had at least banked some time in the competition which was more than I had expected I would be doing the night before.
Due to getting assigned a bunk transponder when i checked in for the HFF competition i wasn't able to use the first sessions 1:24:4 toward the competition. luckily I had remembered to log the sessions times and data on my q-starz timer before going out on track.
As far as the competition I had to use my 3rd session time that i'd run later in the day with the failing pedal and fuel cut issues. Had the transponder worked outta the gate I would've gotten First place in the Ultra class for rd.3. But as it played out I'd happily settle for a second place finish with a time of 1:26.3 from the 3rd session. It was, after all, the first day back on track in the CRX since a total rebuild.
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| STOLEN PHOTO. Call the Cops. |
Once I got home I made a short list of thing that i'd want to sort out.
1.Figure out the braking issue once and for all.
2.Figure out the less-than-half-tank fuel cut issue.
After looking into both I decided that I'd just go ahead and get some parts that I had been eyeing for a while but didn't have a good excuse to get. I had seen some of the Karcepts billet hubs for EF's on the website a few months prior. They are apparently MUCH stronger than the OEM hubs which are sort of known for cracking or blowing bearings after sustained track use. Flashback to when i first bought the car. I had replaced the bearings as a matter of course. When I did that I'd also pressed in brand new ARP studs too. Because this had been done so recently I wasn't in a hurry to do it again.
Now that I narrowed down what could be causing the pad knock i decided that i was over the threshold of reason for their replacement and ordered. Along with the new billet hubs I also got ARP studs and Koyo bearings. While I was at it I decided to replace the front and rear pads with brand new Porterfield R4-S as they are my old 'tried and true' compound. I've had them on a BUNCH of different car and always really like them I was trying to start from a baseline i was familiar with going forward. I had also suspected that I could have had uneven (non flat) pad surface causing them to roll inside the caliper which would have also contributed to the weirdness.
Meanwhile i took off the knuckles and knocked out the bearings that I had pressed in last year. They had only a hand full of track days but i started to recall what Marty over at Raxles told me about the axles that i had been running. He'd said they were 1/2 inch too long; and after thinking about it, this could have very easily contributed to premature wear on bearings as the inner race would have had a constant lateral load applied to it by the bottoming out of the axles.
After a few days the new hotness showed up. I really like shiny new parts- the old hubs went into the spares box
New bearings followed shortly..
A quick degreaser bath and some polishing of the mating surface i had the knuckles painted and ready to press. I had thought about using my spare set of knuckles for this instead only to find that Blue Motors had given me a set of Integra DC knuckles by mistake. Kinda bummed because its waaay too late to return them- but whatever. Ill just pass em over to Nate to use as spares.
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| fresh and clean |
Pressed in installed and ready to go
The other Major thing to do was to sort out the #2 on my list. The fuel cut issue.
This was going to be the biggest job by far, basically similar to pulling a motor. There is so much in the way and a bunch of small steps that have to be done right or you risk having to start all over again. Throw in the fact that you are dealing with flammable, stinky, liquid it just makes the whole thing rather unpleasant.
The first thing was first. I had to pull the cell out and have a look. I took off all the fuel lines and checked for the same seam problem that i had seen on the brake lines, fuel lines turned out to be fine.
I built a drain hose with an AN fitting and a length of hose that piped the fuel into a clean dry gas can. I attached it to the firewall bulkhead on the engine side then jumped the fuel pump at the rear with a spare battery. This was to get as much fuel out of the tank as I could. I knew I had around 6 gallons left in the lines and bladder and I needed it empty it as not to make a mess when I pulled it out of the car. This also would be a good test too see how well the internal windage box from ATL was really doing. Turns out, not so good. I had a bit more gas than i thought, but after around 5 gallons the hose was only spitting aerated fuel. This meant that in the fuel sump in the tank wasn't able to draw out the last gallon and a half.
The fuel bladder is held in the cell with about a bajillion 1/4" 20 screws- I was determined to pull the bladder without moving the seat, which made for some interesting contortions on my part. Seat removal and reinstall is equivalent to about 2 motor swaps in difficulty.. so yeah. Making it even farther from an option was the car being up on jack stands so close to the wall that i couldn't open the door the drivers door more than 1/2 way.
Anyways screws and nuts and washer and screws and bruised knees and ribs.. after some time I had the lid undone. Next I took off the fill hose then slid the top plate and gasket out. Getting the bladder itself out tricky I have to lift it straight up then tilt it and walk it out at a 60* angle between the cross bars. This was made MUCH more of a pain since there was still about a gallon of fuel at the bottom. Sloshing around, spilling and being a heavy object at an awkward angle.
Once i had it all out i removed, rinsed and aired the internal foam.
Now I was able to take a look at the ATL windage box. Right away I noticed that some of the sealing glue they were using around the trap doors was swelling and coming apart, possibly impeding the swing of the hatches. Another thing is that those trap doors are only about 2 inches wide; not ideal under the best circustances. You'd expect for such an expensive part it would actually work, that how I figured it anyways.
I had read about the Holley Hydramat a while back when it had made a waves at the tradeshows. People were calling it a 'game changer' and all the other marketing hype buzzwords, but after watching a few videos on it again while looking to replace the box with something I was sold. I mean surface tension and fluid wicking is not a new thing, BCE civilizations figured it out to keep their oil lamps burning all night; but this was a clever application of old tech.
Check it out if you haven't here:
Now that I had the bladder out of the cell I was able to measure the available space at the bottom and place an order for the largest mat that would fit. I ended up getting the 16x16 size with the single 1/2 inch NPT port. I'd obviously have to get an adapter to make it work with my -6an system but that's not a big deal. I also got the mounting tabs to hold it in place inside the rubberized bladder, this was probably over kill as the foam should have been enough to hold it down in place. Whatever. All in, its not cheap, but this is something that i didn't ever want to do again so some extra effort and money here and there goes a long way.
I got my Hydramat and the adapter a few days later- by now the bladder and foam had had a chance to air out enough to work with.
1/2 inch NPT to -6AN adapter in place oetiker clamped to Aeroquip submersible fuel hose.
The mounting tabs required epoxy to hold them in place and included very, very specific instructions. Measuring the spacing cleaning and mixing the epoxy took a lot longer than I expected it also smelled awful and i got dizzy from sticking my head almost inside the bladder to see what i was doing and getting big face fulls of fuel and epoxy fumes. I eventually done.
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| Tabs plastic welded in place to hold the mat. |
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| Hydromat installed |
Next I had to pack the ATL foam back in the bladder to figure out the pickup hose routing and top plate orientation.
Foam orientation (missing center)
The holes in the foam below are for the return line and the fuel level dip stick. Now everything was together it was just about ready to go back into the car.
A new cork gasket was purchased for the bladder opening and everything was re torqued on the fill plate.
Another great thing about the Hydromat that isn't really advertised anywhere is it also acts as a in-tank filter down to 15 microns. This meant for me that I could get rid of the Bosch fuel filter that I had housed in the box with the pump. Doing so reduces the amount of AN connectors tremendously. 9 connections including male/male adapters and lines down to just 4; two from the hard line to hose, and another two right onto the pump itself. Simpler is always better.
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| Cushion clamp the soft line to relieve stress on the fittings |
While I was at it I decided to replace the standard nuts on the filler lid with nyloc ones. When removing the lid to service the bladder I'd noticed more than a few were out of torque spec.
I also added spring latches to the box lid on opposing corners and re sealed the edges of the box with fuel safe sealant on the bottom and EPMD nitrile rubber cushion on the top and at the hardline pass through(s)
You can see in the pictures that I also used heat shrink Kevlar and Raychem on the fuel hard line where it passes over the tank strap. I had a cushion there before that worked fine but this is a much cleaner solution.
..also cushion clamped the evacuation line that would route and over flow out of the engine bay. Currently it runs under the car attached to the passenger side frame rail, but i'm thinking about having it protrude out the side of the fender where its less likely to spray on the rear tires.
Since I was just about to refill the brake fluid and bleed the system again I decided that i'd check all the lines one last time. I wanted to be sure that i left nothing questionable. During this final inspection remembered that I'd used a heat gun to shrink a non chafe sleeve on a part of the rear brake line. I removed the chafe proof shrink and saw that there was a bit of residual fluid under the outer sleeving. This could have easily gotten there from the banjo bolt or bleed nipple during normal bleeding but it the back of my mind it also could have been caused by the heat gun creating some sort of distortion in the PTFE line that holds the fluid underneath the stainless steel braiding...
Once I had the new lines on order i cut the braid off of the old ones to check for damage. Of course they were PERFECT. At least I know for sure now.
I also took another step into insanity and bought another new Master cyl to replace the week old one... JUST in case i had damaged the seals by bottoming out the piston during the continuous bleeding of the brakes the previous week. This one was also from an automatic Civic ex too. Likewise I got another rear left SI caliper to replace the one that i had problems with the weekend before. Again this was all over kill but I just wanted to be SURE. I was mostly sick to death of buying brake fluid and wasting bottle after bottle fixing little problems that requires draining the system again and again.
I bench bled the new-new BMC over night and again once it was on the car, I wasn't going to take any chances this time.
All mounted up and plugged in to the system.
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| new, new BMC mounted |
Now that the brakes were all finished and bled and the car was back on the ground. I re-torqued the axles and decided that I would take it out to the track the next day and get everything up bed-in and up to temps.
Last thing I did was install my new camera, this time facing forward out the front of the car. Again i jumped the power signal from the main beaker switch so if the coil packs are getting signal then the camera will be recording. Deutsche connector utilized for easy disconnection, of course.
The next day I towed out to the track. it was around 103 and windy. I would have woken up and decided to skip a day in the desert but I was really looking forward too seeing how everything was working. I'd only refilled the bladder with half a tank of fuel so I could see how low id be able to run it before fuel cut occurred.
After bedding in the brakes and ripping around the oval we moved the party up to the Balcony so I could do some fast corner entry turns and trail braking. I mainly wanted to get my head around the pedal feel. This time was much better, the brakes engaged at the same height every time and had an even stronger bite. There is more modulation and could easily locked up when slammed to the floor. I may adjust the pedal height to optimize it, but everything was working as it should. I was starting to get some good confidence in the pedal now that it wasn't moving out from under me before each turn. All in all everything was great on the brakes, finally.
The fuel level and delivery seemed solid I had run the car lower and lower and didn't experience any fuel cutting. I'm hopefully optimistic on this but reserving final judgement until i'm actually on the circuit problem free. The layout of the testing facilities are such that it's difficult to replicate a sustained load around these small courses.
After a few hours of driving I smelled a bit of fuel. We were ready to load up and out of the heat anyways so I pulled it directly up onto the trailer. I took a quick look and found that there was a small weep around the new fuel rail filter. I assumed the o-ring boss was leaking since its not uncommon to over tighten and pinch the rings. At any rate I decided that I would fix it when i got home. After towing the car back home and pulling it off of the trailer i smelled gas even more strongly and noticed a wet trail id left while backing up the driveway into the garage. Clearly the leak had somehow gotten worse on the tow home.
We pulled off the hood and immediately saw it wasn't the o-ring boss as initially suspected, but rather the fitting itself had cracked and had covered pretty much the entire bay in fuel. Yikes. Luckily everything was cool and I quickly diluted the raw fuel with simple green and mopped it up as much as possible.
I guess the weight of the filter full of fuel, movement of the motor and G's on a bumpy track proved too much for the single band clamp in the intake manifold. The aluminum fitting looks like it twisted itself to death and came apart completely as I was unscrewing it from the filter.
Riveted in place.
A 120* and 140* fitting point the stainless lines in the correct directions to connect to the firewall bulkhead fitting and the fuel rail. The fittings are angled and cinched in a way that allows the fuel lines to free range of motion for flex and not come in contact with anything else in the bay
As of now the car is finished and ready to go for the next event. I'm going to check on a few other things before then but dont expect anything major to pop up.
FINGERS CROSSED.
until next time
