mitch_f1's mariner NA6

[Jeo]

You know VLC has a screen grab function?

So the seat mount didn't fit the Evo? Sad face.

[mitch_f1]

I do now, and no not really. which is very disappointing as the seat ia phenomenally comfy

[Regie]

good to see you again Mitch....the Blue beast is looking tops as usual

[mitch_f1]

So yesterday was the first trackday of the year. How exciting!! Forecast was pretty sh*t, but in the end there was only really one wet session, the rest was essentially dry. I am still having the same previously mentioned understeer issues which are really pissing me off now. I kept tyre pressures the same at 32psi hot all day. Swaybars are on medium at front, and started with soft at rear, got understeer and went to hard at rear which gave me too much oversteer so went back to medium. I was also playing around with coilover stiffness, and found that at the end of the day it was at 10 clicks front and 5 clicks rear, which seems a bit strange but it really was deleting some of the understeer.

In regards to the understeer I am thinking of going back to stock swaybars. Because I am an idiot I didn't really research the whole swaybar thing properly, and after looking through what everyone else is doing it seems to be quite common for the top running cars to have either stock swaybars or no swaybars. Very few have very thick adjustable swaybars. Thoughts?

I also had the same issue with my brakes of the pads (QFM A1RMS) overheating in the first session. In between the second and third session I re-adjusted the rear piston adjusting screw, which seemed to fix it, but I am still pretty disappointed with the overall performance of these pads vs the S500 pads I had previously, so I am currently trying to track down a couple of sets of these. Also in regards to brakes I have found that I have gone through 1.5 sets of front pads for 1 set of rear pads, so I think I might do the NA8 prop valve swap, which is supposed to give a more rear-ward bias.

Also, quick question about tyre wear. As I said before, I had 32psi hot all day, which is what was recommended on a spec miata R888 setup guide that I found. At the end of the day I noticed wormies on the outside block the tyre. What does this mean??? (in the photo the top is the outside block, bottom is the inside)




Also this would not be a post by me without some pretty pictures. A while ago I delved in to the rear parking lights in my rear bumper, and found that someone had taped them in with surgical tape. I replaced this with duct tape and went on my way looking for a suitable replacement because one had been taped in to far and had melted the reflector a bit.









I found a set of red reflectors with a bayonet fitting on it and went to pick n payless to find a bulb holder for them (came from the number plate light from an MX83 Cressida). Emily and her soldering skills came over to give me a hand with this, with the end result being a much more functional bayonette fitting with a clip as well!! Thanks Emily!!

[evil_weevil]

Hey mate,

I have no rear bar and I think a 24mm whiteline up front which is on medium.

understeer - whats your camber? may need more? what was the toe front and rear again?

so what was track like? only 1 wet session hey? lets hope it stays like that on sunday!!

edit - wow, the QFM's overheating?
3 years I havent had any!

sure it wasnt brake fluid or anything?

[mitch_f1]

This is where it gets weird. I just looked up the last photo I took of alignment specs but I am not sure if this is a before or after photo. Basically it says I have -1.5* camber front and -2.10* rear. But my toe!! Front left is -3.6mm FR is +1.4mm, rear left is +2.6mm, rear right is +0.5mm. So I have NFI what is going on there; I could have sworn I gave them specs that I wanted and that i checked the screen before leaving. So I think in light of this I should ask them to max out my front camber and have the rear camber less than front??? Also more toe out??

Track was real good. They have resealed a couple of sections which means different grip levels but in terms of weather we got a big downpoor at lunch (started at the beginning of my session), the next session the track was dry apart from 2 places, after that dry track.

I don't think that it is the fluid as I am using RBF600, which is pretty high temp. Right now I have S500 pads on rear so I might change them to QFM pads and bleed the brakes and see how I go. Fluid has only been in there for 5 or so days

[mitch_f1]

So what do you do when you have writing on your reflectors/whatever else...YOU REMOVE IT!!

Started like this:


Hit it (brutally) with some 1200, slap some plastic polish on it, and you have an AVO against you and a shiny indicator!!


That's just the start of it, however...






Your life is not worth living without one of these contraptions by the way. It polished them up brand new in like 5 seconds


What do you do when you are too lazy to reach over and grab a rag...use your shirt of course!!!


Next stop is the brake lights (purchased 3 sheets of W&D, need another 4 for each brake light), and then when I can find some front indicators that are melted/cracked/broken to replace mine which are melted/cracked/broken I will do those as well.

[rascal]

This is where it gets weird. I just looked up the last photo I took of alignment specs but I am not sure if this is a before or after photo. Basically it says I have -1.5* camber front and -2.10* rear. But my toe!! Front left is -3.6mm FR is +1.4mm, rear left is +2.6mm, rear right is +0.5mm. So I have NFI what is going on there; I could have sworn I gave them specs that I wanted and that i checked the screen before leaving. So I think in light of this I should ask them to max out my front camber and have the rear camber less than front??? Also more toe out??

That toe out is all over the shop. I'd fix that first, either 0 all round or a bit of front toe out to get it to turn in better.
I'd also up your front camber relative to the rear as well.

I am thinking of going back to stock swaybars. Because I am an idiot I didn't really research the whole swaybar thing properly, and after looking through what everyone else is doing it seems to be quite common for the top running cars to have either stock swaybars or no swaybars. Very few have very thick adjustable swaybars. Thoughts?

If you keep near the same ratio of spring rates f/r to what the fact orig put in (approx 1.5:1 f:r) then you can match sway bars front and rear (ie both or neither)
Some people run a front and no rear bar, though imagine this is more due to them having a higher f:r ratio for spring rate hence need to remove the rear bar to correct this imbalance.
If you run no bars at all then you need to run much higher spring rates to compensate. Personally I'd prefer softer springs and let the bars control the roll, but others have had good results from the heavier springs and no bars. Each to their own.

fwiw I run adj 22 front and adj 14mm rear bars with Tein 7f/5r. On R specs I usually run the front on medium and the rear on soft which counters the slightly more rearwards bias of the 7/5 springs. Seems to works pretty well for me and my car sits quite flat and well balanced through corners and thus easy to drive.

[mitch_f1]

Thanks for the input Rascal. What I have decided to do in terms of my alignment settings is to max out my front camber, and have the rear as slightly less than the front. 0 toe at the front and just a fraction of toe in on the rear. I have also decided to look into what my caster is at, and to set that at about 3.75-4.24* (as per 949 suggestions).

In regards to swaybars, what I want to do is to go back to stock, do a trackday, see what the car feels like. If I feel I need swaybars then, then I will go for NB8B items rather than whiteline ones (which I think might be too thick, plus I still cannot get to the softest setting on the front one). My current springs are 7f/6r, which are the stock items for the Tein. When I removed the swaybar a while back and drove around for a week it was so comfy and not at all jarring, so I think I would like to stay with those spring rates for the present.

In other news, I spent a further 3 hours on the tail lights, putting my total hours worked on this project to around 5 hours!! It took a lot longer to polish these, probably because they are such a large and reflective surface that I really just wanted to get them looking perfect (damn perfectionism).

This is what I started with:




When I got the car I had a boot leak, and dad was going around with the heatgun and silicone sealant trying to fix it, and inadvertantly did this, which I was going to try and remove, but was unsuccessful in the end


For some reason there was also some paint splatter on the tail lights which would be easy enough to remove


Unfortunately the left hand side had a small crack in it, which isn't hugely noticeable, but it is frustrating to look at


Progress pics:




Final results:






Missed one bit of paint, which is going to kill me slowly now

[evil_weevil]

Id still look at a bit more 2 out up front as Rascal said.

i think I had a total of 2mm out up front last alignment.

havent had one since early october...oops...haha

with your current whiteline sway bars do you have the link to help adjust soft, medium and hard?
Ive got the factory links and it will go soft and medium but not full hard. (giggle)

[mitch_f1]

Okay, will try your suggestion of 2mm out up front. What do you have at rear?

At WP on Aus day Ihad the front on medium (the bolt won't fit in the soft hole despite the fact that I shortened it, and that the swaybar ends were bent in!!!), and the rear I tried on all 3 settings. Full hard was rediculous oversteer, full soft was rediculous understeer. Suspension settings remained same. I guess what I want to do is have one less thing to change, as I fear what I have done now is have too many adjustable aspects to my suspension, which isn't helpful at all.

[evil_weevil]

rear Im pretty sure was 0

also, if you have two big peices of wood/metal flat and simialr size to wheel. Had a mate help me at Wakie once..

put one on each front wheel hard/flat against it. measured distance from front of front wheel side to side
then rear of front wheel side to side

took measurements and gave us an idea of how the toe was. then we could adjust at wakefield between each session.

i.e. say 187cm front of wheel and 185cm rear of front wheel

now im not 100% on what we did or measurements, just using above as an example! as said in another thread Im not technically minded haaha and have been known to have passionate fingers. LOL

[username]

what polishing compound did you use?

[mitch_f1]

Used Mothers plastic polish

[mitch_f1]

So as I'm sure some of you saw, I was smart enough to lose my lock nut key. I went around maybe 20 different tyre shops/auto parts stores and none of them had anything (or were just f*cking lazy and didn't want to help). I went to Beaurepairs in Brookvale and they had a special little socket (with concentric circles inside) which he screwed on one and was able to remove it, but he was being a prick about it, and also I wanted to try and find the key. After hunting a few more days I gave up looking for a key, so went back to him and he pulled the whole 'ohhh welll, i told you it wouldn't work, and i'm flat out right now' and he goes back to sitting on his bum. Oh well. In my search someone mentioned that the good guys at Beaurepairs in Crows Nest also had a special tool. So this morning I went up and saw them, the guy I spoke to was epic helpful; we were talking about rare wheels and rotories while he was doing it, and in the end charged me $15 for the effort!!!

So after this I went straight back home, swapped the swaybars back to stock, pulled each 4 corners down 3 turns and put the track wheels on. I went to visit Ben at Jax Tyres in Pymble for a wheel alignment. We discussed it for a while, as in searching for specs I got a lot of conflicting views. In the end I went with this:

FL/FR
Toe: +1.6mm/+1.7mm
Camber: -1*55'/-1*55'
Caster: +4*09'/+3*47'

RL/RR
Toe: 0.4mm/0.4mm
Camber: -1*37'/1*36'

So I am going to see how that goes for me.

While the car was up I also swapped the rear pads for ones that didn't look like this:


I had also read a while back that in removing the aircon you remove one of the bolts for the oil pump at the front of the engine, which I didn't know and so didn't put back in. So I tried to do that. What I did was put the original bolt back in, because it was soo long I didn't have another. It was actually too long, so I put a nut on it, did the bolt all the way in, undid it one turn and then tightened the nut onto the engine. Before I did this I had to re-thread it as the threads were messed up:






I also noticed that the top radiator hose has sucked itself in. Not sure what this is an indication of?




Finally, I am going on a massive 3,000km road trip in the little car most likely leaving tomorrow, so wish me luck!!!