BEAVIS' White Track Car

Postby **beavis** » Sat Nov 15, 2014 11:45 am

An angle of an MX-5 people dont often see:

Things you might notice...
The Nitto's are gettin' low.
A lot of steel there that could get cut out someday.
I use a bit of aluminium tin for radiator ducting.

lightyear · Postby **lightyear** » Sat Nov 15, 2014 11:47 am

You are down to the wear indicators. Be carefull as it may be unroadworthy.

Postby **NitroDann** » Sat Nov 15, 2014 1:27 pm

CM sport · Postby **CM sport** » Sun Nov 16, 2014 10:01 pm

Looks very much how I have spent a lot of my weekends lol.

rascal · Postby **rascal** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 6:38 am

CM sport wrote:Looks very much how I have spent a lot of my weekends lol.

beavis' photo or Dann's?

CM sport · Postby **CM sport** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 7:00 am

rascal wrote:
CM sport wrote:Looks very much how I have spent a lot of my weekends lol.
beavis' photo or Dann's?

Both hahaha

Postby **beavis** » Tue Dec 09, 2014 8:52 pm

Bit of an update since last time... Have not done anything to the race car lately, just gotta check tyre pressures and refit the front bar before Broadford this weekend.
Given the tight nature of the track, I have fit the third element on the wing for "max downforce" mode.

I have been tinkering with the NA8B on and off when I have spare time.
Had to make all the rear NB electricals work with the NA lights. Have not done front lights yet.
The NB door trims have been fit to the NA doors, that was an interesting experience. I tried to maintain as much of the factory NB mouting points. The inner door handle needed a bit of love and attention to get it properly located and attached.
I used the nb door catch, sans the electric lock mechanism. Had to weld the outer door handle rod to the latch.
I have bought some bilsteins for it and an android head unit to make it a bit fof a usable weekender.....

lightyear · Postby **lightyear** » Wed Dec 10, 2014 6:34 am

Should start a new thread on the car. You must have some pics..

Postby **beavis** » Sat Dec 13, 2014 10:33 pm

Video from Broadford Today - was stinken hot.

lightyear · Postby **lightyear** » Sun Dec 14, 2014 7:40 am

Still prefer this video.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DTRuriXMIlw

16bit · Postby **16bit** » Sun Dec 14, 2014 9:26 pm

great video that shows the elevation, f1 could take note on that camera angle.

Postby **beavis** » Mon Dec 15, 2014 9:59 pm

So I was back at Broadford for the second time in a week last weekend... I was actually there last Wednesday to drive a formula ford. What an amazing car and unique experience.

The Formula Ford is damn tiny, I just didn't fit properly. The brakes were so firm (no booster), the power was very mild, and the ride was bumpy as hell.
I managed a 1:06 in the car, although I was not pushing at all, its so hard to get used to the car as its so unique and squished in the cockpit.

Then, fast forward to Sunday and I'm back there with the NB.
The weather was predicted to be warm, but damn did I get hot out there. The temp warning light for the motor kept coming on.
I was getting understeer through the longer corners (particularly exit of T1 and exit of the final corner). To remedy this I reduced the rear wing however that really just made the car more taily.

At the end of the day, I scored a reasonable time, I am sure the heat cost me a second or so.

I have bought an alloy radiator to throw in the car over the Xmas downtime, and I might redo the floor, rear diffuser & front splitter if I get time. All have suffered damage over the last 12 months.

Postby **beavis** » Mon Jan 26, 2015 12:13 am

Haven't updated here in a while.... mostly because I have hardly touched the car since last year.

So anyway, this weekend I jacked the car up and cleaned out all of the Broadford carpark from the side skirts and floor:

And, removed the front end to drain the coolant:

Have a look at the damage the front splitter is copping due to scrapage.
I was thinking i should run some strips of hard plastic, kinda like a kitchen chopping board, as scrape/wear pads. If you have any suggestions I am all ears.

I removed the stock radiator, it had a fair few bugs and it had certainly seen its fair share of track work:

And replaced with a new alloy rad:

I also gave the car a vacuum and cleaned the engine bay a bit, that was rather dusty.
Somehow, despite doing barely 1000km a year, the whole car gets rather dirty.

Lastly I swept the floor of the car with a broom. It had a mighty share of crud built up on the flat floor.

Also... here's a pic of something else I've been playing with, not quite finished yet.

lightyear · Postby **lightyear** » Mon Jan 26, 2015 6:49 am

Dash looks cool. Splitter could be raised a bit to help clearance. Or as you said, some tear drop shaped plastic would help. Your new radiator will make your car heavier..

Postby **beavis** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 10:17 am

Big post here with lots of info, probably needs more pics, but Im too stupid to take pics while im doing things.

Remove the Factory ECU

First up, the car is now running on a Megasquirt MS3Pro. It's a PNP unit from http://www.diyautotune.com
Hooked into it is an Innovate LC2 wideband and I have removed the Mazda MAF.

I decided the ECU would sit nicely in the dash, where the airbag once lived. Here also lives the wideband controller, and the bluetooth adapter which I used to hook up the laptop and tablet to the ECU.
I made myself a little DB9 extender to get the blutooth adapter located in a nice neat spot

I have fettled with the basemap to get the tune much more appropriate, improved cold start and idle and its running more aggressive timing and fuel maps.
That said, no dyno time so I have no idea what power it's running.

Tablet as a Dash

From a software perspective.... its kinda 4 parts:
1. Boot up when Power connected
First thing required was to tell the tablet to boot up when it receives power, that way it will start up when the car is running.
This first requires the bootloader to be unlocked. (note the below process is specific to the Nexus 7 2012)
I used the instructions as per this site: http://www.gencoupe.com/interior/126356 ... uired.html
1. Download and extract R3Superboot.zip
2. Enable USB Debugging on the Nexus 7 then power off the tablet
3. Connect the tablet to your PC
4. Press and hold Power + Vol Down button until you get to the bootloader screen (with the Android logo)
5. Now open Command Prompt
6. Type 'fastboot oem unlock' and hit enter
7. Press the power button to select 'yes' on the tablet
8. To tell the tablet to boot up on power connected, type 'fastboot oem off-mode-charge 0' and hit enter.

2. Root the Tablet & Install Lollipop (Android 5)
I wont go into how you do this, theres plenty of detail on the interwebs.
Basically, I just root it for my own satisfaction, in most cases theres no real need for it to be done.
This site seems to give you a nice idea on whats going on (not that i have used that page personally): http://nexus5.wonderhowto.com/how-to/ro ... 7-0158082/

3. Automate It
Cool little app that can run predefined tasks based on a set of rules.
You can find it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... ainPackage
I am using it to:
- Launch MSDroid when the tablet boots up (when MSDroid is running, the tabled will never turn off the screen)
- Launch MSDroid when power is connected (if the tablet is already on)
- Go to the home screen when power is disconnected (i.e. when i shut the car off) (this allows the tablet to put itself to sleep)
- Power off the tablet when it is getting low on power

4. MSDroid
Basically, an Android app to connect to a megasquirt ECU, and view/log/change/etc megasquirt stuff.
You can find more here http://www.msdroid.com/, here https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... om.msdroid and here http://www.msextra.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=136
So, at the moment I am only using this for the data viewing purposes (no tuning, or logging, yet...)