sailaholic NA8

[sailaholic]

Continuing the updates,

Last weekend also saw an injector change. Again thanks to Plohl spares, I had the use of a brand new set of rx8 - 440cc injectors. This proved slightly tricker then anticipated due a couple of dropped plastic isolators requiring trumpets to come off the throttle bodies.

The Rx-8 injectors also needed the rubber "washers" on the bottom of them which weren't supplied with the injectors. Luckily the boys at automotive plus were just down the road and were able to find the required bits for us in their parts supplies.

Luckily for us Jason took long enough to find the injector feet for us to have a chat to Danny while we ogled the 20B.

Lokiels car was also sitting on the hoist in a state of final assembly and assimilation by The Borg, so got to check that out.

Installed the injectors, changed the injector size in the adaptronic and it booted up straight away. Happy Days!

Test driving indicated that the misfire had gone! YES FINALLY! However the car was now running a bit lean at high throttle loads. Googling showed the dead time on the injectors to be quite different to the previous (which I had just left in at the default values in the base map - silly me).

Adjusted the dead times and went out for some for some more testing and tuning. Adjusted the target afr's a bit and the car was misfire free at lambda’s around 1.0. Still a touch lean at high throttle and overly rich (but much less so) at light throttle. So I assume Andy did more than just adjust the AFR targets at low throttle load.

I assume the lean is caused by not having input the correct dead time for my old injectors before having it tuned.

The car drives much smoother and surprisingly a bit quieter now (but perhaps this is just in my head or the hardtop is muffling the sound more then I remember). I might have to put the car back on the dyno and have the map tweaked a bit, but hopefully this can be avoided.

[sailaholic]

Some other bits and pieces that have been happening while the rest was going on.

I bought a second hard top for the car. Andrew had sold the hardtop the car came from the factory with prior to putting the car forsale. Luckily for me it came up at a price i could justify the likely price differnce vs the sale of the one i had.

Might seem a bit odd to some but i can be abit OCD like that sometimes. Anyway happly reunited now.

I had also purchased a hardtop hoist not long ago to aid me taking the hardtop off and storing it out of the road where it wouldn't get damaged. So at the moment the old top is sitting in the house waiting for it's new owner to pick it up and the new top is attached to the car.

Now that i am back to driving the car more regularly the stock seat is really irrating me. I find it quite uncomfortable, mainly due a lack of lower back support.

I've had a fairly upright and forward driving position drilled into me through the various company and otherwise driving training sessions, so maybe this contributes to the seats uncomfortableness. It's certainly contributing to having trouble seeing the 11 o'clock to 1 o'clock position of the speedo and taco. So far I've found the best option is to just slump and slide foward in the seat slightly, but this brings my knees higher.

I've been on the lookout for another seat for a number of years off and on. I started with a Mazdaspeed fixed back but found (like many) it a bit tight when i tried sitting in it for a while.

I also found the sparco sprint V a bit narrow across the shoulders for me when testing it in others cars. So then set my aim on a Velo GPT-1, being australian made and ADR compliant. I had also heard that fiberglass seats are often alot more comfortable then a steel framed version.

However after testing one at Racer industries i found i like the Sparco Rev better. The guys are Racer industries also voiced concerns about getting the GPT-1 to fit in a mx-5. However they didn't think the Sparco had ADR certification.

So i left to do some more research ...

[Lokiel]

:
I had also purchased a hardtop hoist not long ago to aid me taking the hardtop off and storing it out of the road where it wouldn't get damaged.
:

If the hard top's not ON the car, a roof hoist is the best way to store it since it's so big and no matter how careful you are, you will find a way to knock it about even if you don't go anywhere near it.

If you bought this kit (this is the common MX5 one which I have):



DO NOT USE THE PROVIDED CLEAT. The cleat is low-grade metal and very thin - if you pull the rope perpendicular to it when you tighten a loop, it will snap very easily.

Given your other hobby, I suspect you've already replaced it with something more substantial.


I didn't really trust the ceiling mount either and upgraded with something more substantial from Bunnings.

[sailaholic]

Yup that looks like the one.
I was pretty appalled by the pulley block actually. If it was a decent pulley you could halve the number of times is goes back and forward for the same effort.

On the cleat.... Yeah still in the ziplock bag. I have timber shelfing in my shead the had a convenient placed 2x2 to tie off against.

Did have the hardtop slip in the straps one day due to not being careful enough with getting the straps exactly right. Ended up sliding past the widest point and allowing one corner to drop.

Now I have tie some line onto the hoist strap where it goes the the rear brackets and have a spring loaded clip on the other end so the straps cant slip past the metal parts.

Being in the shed I didn't use their roof hook either, just chained it around the roof truss.


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[Lokiel]

Agreed that the pulley block is fairly ordinary at best.

The only piece of this kit that's actually decent is the straps that go around the hardtop, everything else would be better sourced from a boating store or Bunnings.

[sailaholic]

Continuing with seats.

I asked some questions from Sparco Australia through their facebook pages. They were worse then useless as they knew less then i did already. I hate sales people with no product knowledge.

Basiclly they said Pro-2000 is ADR approved, when prompted they also remembered that the Sprint might be ADR approved. The didn't seem to know anything about HANS approval, and said no of the seats had it.

I had already seen a Sparco PDF that had HANS approvals for various modles listed. A bit more google searching turned up this one which must be a bit newer showing the Evo to be aproved for use with a HANS device.

Sparco Size Chart with HANS approval status

They had a suggestion that you can get any FIA seat engineered because rally car use them and they are registered dosen't hold a lot of water either. As part of rally rego (in QLD atleast) you specify the items in the car that Do not meet ADR requirements and get exemptions, but that's not an option for a conventionally registered road car.

In the mean time i had recived some copies of an engineers (RPEQ numbers and offical letter heads) test reports on a number of sparco and COBRA seats saying the passed ADR's and another saying that the requirements of the FIA testing (with listed procedure number) meet or exceeded the requirements by the ADR and hence are ok to use when the are Labels text along the lines of "This seat meets ADR Blah blah". I'd say it's still likely to be a grey area with police accepting it on the side of the road. I haven't run it past an engineer yet.

I'll get around to hosting it somewhere, but if anyone wants it in the mean time i can email it too them.

[sailaholic]

So i went and did another come and try at the IWMAC.

unfortunately things didn't go so well this time around. Where i'd never had problems with rocks before now i was hear alot bouncing off the butterfly brace (very thank full it was there).

I was also letting dad drive the car this time around which game me a chance to see the car from the outside. It was quite obvious the car was squatting massively with the wheels disappearing up into the wheel arch and stating there.

I had also been starting to have (in hindsight) increasing problems with speed bumps / driveways and my rear wheels scraping on bumps where previously I'd not remembered having the issues.

Had my instructing friend Luke take the car out to give dad some tips. His response was car was super hard to drive, very skitish like there was no bump travel, causing the car to become unsettled easy.

So the following weekend we pulled the shocks and springs out to have a look for suspension problems. There was no obvious problems such as failed bushes etc so the only option we were left with was the spring had sagged. Quite a disappointing outcome given they are Eibach units and not that old in therms of km.

We looked at swapping the springs with the Tien springs on his spare set of koni's. Having a look at the two sets they were completely different! The springs were different length, shock bodies were different. One set of springs had the wire formed to a flat on each end the other was just "cut" mid coil and used a shaped spring seat.

As an interim measure we ended up just putting the Tiens and matching knoni's in to get the car back up so i could get in and out of the driveway etc while i sorted out some new units.

I had always wanted a set of MCA coil overs, but given that what is now known as the Gold series was the only option available when i started looking i could never justify the price. Luke has said that MCA were almost done with the Red and Blue series design for the mx-5. So after making some inquiries and thinking about it for a month i ordered a set of MCA reds.

The reds are now sitting in the shed waiting for a free weekend to install them, and given the money spent seats have kind of fallen of the radar. I'll probably just keep an eye out for a cheap Sprint V and go that way for now. I did a driving course for work and the instructor looked at my seating position, which he said was good, but too far back much to my surprise.

I've now adjusted my driving position in most of the cars i drive which is ok in most, but now means i can't see most of gauges in the mx5 anymore due to the upright and forward seating position, so quite keen to get something that sit me lower on the floor.

Other things i'm working on are
- a mysterious water leak. The overflow bottle lowly empties itself but there is never water on the garage floor or in the cabin. I've going to try and start paying attention to if the water level drops from driving or sitting to try and narrow it down.

- Getting the Adaptive tuner app to work on my phone via USB so i can view the gauges and fiddle with the tune. I'm still keen on getting indications on Oil temp, proper water temp (i don't trust the stock gauge for detailed info) and oil pressure. I'd like to integrate it with the ECU using andy's new Engine protection functions with use a innovate SSI-4 as a port expander for more sensors.

It's surprising, for the price of a few good gauges your are in similar dollars to a digital dash purchases.

Progress will be slow for a while though on anything that requires money as i need to start putting cash away for my wedding next year.

[Magpie]

The reds are now sitting in the shed waiting for a free weekend to install them, and given the money spent seats have kind of fallen of the radar...
It's surprising, for the price of a few good gauges your are in similar dollars to a digital dash purchases.

Keep us informed on the MCA Reds as they are on my radar as a possible replacement for the BC ER's.

I looked at the digital dash and it is not as cheap as it would appear. Whilst the guage itself is not that expensive (unless you add logging and GPS) you still need to buy the sensors. If going IQ# then you would need racepack sensors and these are not cheap. Plus most digital dashes do not have indicators, idiot lights etc so you would need to custom wire these as well. I still believe that the way I have used the Innovate stuff is cheaper than a digital dash, however the Haltech ECU can not used any of the information, maybe your ECU can.

[corners]

I am thinking you and I know the same Luke.

[hks_kansei]

One set of springs had the wire formed to a flat on each end the other was just "cut" mid coil and used a shaped spring seat.

That's the difference between NA and NB springs (well, on OEM anyway. Aftermarket tends to do whatever they want)

NA uses the flat ends. NB uses the stepped end.

[sailaholic]

Corners, Luke Page?

Mapie: the adaptronic has direct serial out to the race technologies dash so shares all the sensors. An extras the adaptronic can't handle can go into the dash though the upcoming use of the innovate makes that less likely.

I was thinking of basically running a standard dash for normal driving and just "clipping in" the digital dash (seems to be one main connector) for events etc. which gets around the pain of working out the indicators, fuel etc.

If I can get the inputs into the adaptronic via the innovate serial link and display it on a free app then that wins cost effectiveness.

Hks, thanks for that. I new you couldn't swap Na and nb springs with out a height difference but thought that was just the top hat.


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[corners]

Corners, Luke Page?

Yep thats him.

[PaulF]

In the mean time i had recived some copies of an engineers (RPEQ numbers and offical letter heads) test reports on a number of sparco and COBRA seats saying the passed ADR's and another saying that the requirements of the FIA testing (with listed procedure number) meet or exceeded the requirements by the ADR and hence are ok to use when the are Labels text along the lines of "This seat meets ADR Blah blah". I'd say it's still likely to be a grey area with police accepting it on the side of the road. I haven't run it past an engineer yet.

I'll get around to hosting it somewhere, but if anyone wants it in the mean time i can email it too them.

Interesting. Do you reckon you could send me a copy, or chuck it up on a hosting site? Probably not something that will be particularly relevant to NSW but I'd like to have a look anyway.

[sailaholic]

Hi Paul,

One of the test documents on the Sprint was from NSW. It shouldn't really matter though as the documentation states that the seats meet ADR. So as long as you have a label stating it meets ADR it should be good for any state.

Linky -> Sparco & Cobra Seats tested to meet ADRs

[sailaholic]

Thought I would give some more feedback. At this stage the car still has the bigger sway bars in it. I have just put new re002 tires on.

We did done testing on the back side of mt glorious with another na8 that manages 63 seconds laps at lakeside with Avo coil overs with spring rates about half that of MCA

My car sits extremely flat, is reasonably comfortable on normal roads. In the mountains the car handles very well, looks and feels very controlled. Mid corner corrugations that proved challenging for the other car were barely noticeable in my car.

Balance wise at the moment it's heavily skewed to understeer and really needs to have decent power being applied. Once applied it comes through corner nicely and very predictable.

Oversteer can be created with enough throttle and very controllable with out any tendency to snap oversteer.

Now I've had a chance to drive it with just the coil overs in ill put the standard bars back on which I expect will take out the understeer.

Pretty happy with the purchase so far, keen to bench mark against some ohlins too.



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