rwyatt365

Friday before the track day I got an email from Discovery, "Sorry, but this is out of stock and won't be in for about a month." Needless to say, I was pissed but I kept the order in. Checking around this morning, most of the "known quantity" sources are out of stock but there are a few "unknown quantity" sources that claim to have them in stock but, who knows...

I could feel the clutch slipping when I tried a fast transition into power (i.e. a stomp on the "go pedal"), and WOT in any gear lower than 5th would slip as well. So I know what I have "...can't handle the TRUTH!" I can baby it around on the street, but where's the fun in THAT?!

So I'll order the FM Happy Meal, slap it in (as if dropping the trans is EVER a "slap it in" kind thing) and see how it runs. And when the ACT disc shows up, I can decide whether to swap it in or sell it off.

"And now, for something completely different..." (next post)

rwyatt365

At the track day (which, engine-wise, was an unqualified success - nothing blew up) I experienced two electrical gremlins;

1. After the second session, the car refused to start - as in, the starter refused to engage. I could short the terminal on the solenoid and it would start just fine. That was later discovered to be a loose screw on my EBay BRB (Big Red Button, starter-flavored).
2. This one is weirder...after I did my jury-rigged starting procedure and while the car was running, I noticed that the fan(s) would not turn on at the designated CLT. BUT I have a switch in the cockpit to turn them on manually. I flipped the switch and...nothing. So I went to turn off the car - so as not to overheat - and when I turned the key to the ACC position, the fans came on AND the engine kept running!? So I did a little experiment; Hot engine, key in RUN, engine running, manual fan override ON = no fans, Hot engine, key in ACC, engine running (WTF?), manual fan override ON = fans. Later, when home with a "cold" engine (CLT ~150); Cold engine, key in RUN, engine not running, manual fan override ON = no fans. Cold engine, key in ACC, engine not running, manual fan override ON = fans.

I'm officially mystified. This was NOT the behavior prior to the track day, and I expect that something got disconnected, or shorted - but I'm not sure what. I'm going to dive in with a multi-meter today. Wish me luck

PS - I looked at the wiring diagram (upper picture below). But it doesn't tell me what's connected to what in the ignition switch. Then I dug up another picture off Google (lower picture below), but that one confuses me even more. Any help from the "electrically gifted" would help.

rwyatt365

Okay, I spent a few hours poking around with wires, only to come to the conclusion that (it seems like) everything is as it should be. Looking through the data logs from Saturday, somewhere between session 2 (when everything seemed to be okay), and session 4 (after I had to start the car by shorting the solenoid) the fans stopped operating from the CLT sensor. The temperature was being read, but the fan wasn't being triggered.

I spent several hours checking continuity between the CLT sensor and the ECU (everything seems fine). The only thing I didn't check was the wiring between the ignition switch and the fan relay - which on the NB1 is semi-buried between the main fuse block and the right fender well. I didn't test that, because I can turn on the fans (only while the key is in the ACC position) with my cockpit switch. That's going through the fan relay, so that circuit is good.

I'm beginning to think that the problem is either in the ECU (no, Megasquirt, no!!) not properly grounding the fan circuit when the temp setpoint is reached, OR it's in the ignition switch itself because of a slightly anomalous behavior there. When the key is in the ACC position, the red/black wire (IG1) is supposed to be hot, this activates the ECU, backup lights, fans and the instrument cluster. Instead IG1 is dead and none of those circuits is live (naturally). When the key is in the RUN position, both IG1 & IG2 are supposed to be hot - which they are - and all of the above circuits (and more) are supposed to be live...and they are, EXCEPT the fans (which go dead). This makes me believe that something inside the ECU is "killing" the fan control circuit when the ECU is live.

All of this is my best guess. I'm far from an electrical engineer and I'm deathly afraid of even thinking about going inside the MSPNP2 to dig any further. So, if anyone has any other thoughts, I'm all ears.

EDIT: I just remembered, "You have I/O Test Mode, dummy!!". So I tested Output 1 - where the fan control is - and IT WORKS! So that means that the trusty MSPNP2 can control the fans, and the problem is not in the ECU. That means that the problem is somewhere in the ignition switch (and if I can find a work-around, that's what I'll do - my car is one giant work-around as it is).

Stay tuned for the "Further Adventures of (Pseudo-)Electric Boy"!!

rwyatt365

Do you ever get the impression that your car is laughing at you - and not even behind your back?

After my "test mode revelation" this morning, I set the trigger point for the fans to turn on relatively low. So I could test that functionality "live" without fear of getting into overheat territory. Well, just now I started the car and let it warm up and...wait for it...the fans turned on just like they were supposed to. It's like my car was saying, "You think you're so smart, with your multimeter and wire probes. Well I'm going to work now, just to spite you and lull you into a sense of false security. Then BLAMMO! I'll leave you stranded on the side of the road and have you question your sanity and reconsider the course of your entire life."

In the meantime, I'm ordering a new ignition switch. Nothing makes you feel better than to buy new parts only to find out that the problem was wholly unrelated to the part you just purchased.

rwyatt365

Updates:

• The Fan Dilemma; After going through all of the wiring and finding nothing obvious, I put everything back together and guess what...the fans are now working just as they should. Like I said, my car is mocking me.
• I replaced the old, restrictive, 90* oil drain with a new, "full flow", 45* drain fitting at the oil pan and a "full flow" fitting at the turbo. We'll see if that suits the EFR better. I've also ordered some aluminum tubing and I'm going to try my hand at fabricating a more open -10 flange at the turbo. My concept is; cut a section of tubing, tap it to accept a -10 fitting at both ends, hog out the aluminum flange and a -10 bulkhead fitting, screw them into the tapped tube, braze them into a single unit and bolt that onto the turbo. That way I'll have max flow from the CHRA into the fabbed flange, then into the oil line to the pan. We'll see if this works...
• Installed a new Skunk2 TB. I got it for one reason and one reason only - to forestall a potential TB screw "incident" from my 22 year-old stock TB. I don't expect any significant power increases, it's only for peace of mind. I may, or may not, have dodged a bullet here - but why continue to roll the dice?

Gee Emm

Yeah, I have a proud history of broken TBs, and one of the first things I did on the new car was put a Junk TB on as a preemptive fix - because turbo! You did the recommended modz to the Skunk before installing, I presume?

rwyatt365

You betcha! I read all of the tales of woe and was even dissuaded from buying the Chinese knock-off version. So far, after one day, it's been trouble-free.

rwyatt365

Skunk2 update; All's well EXCEPT on the "cam" that the throttle cable attaches to, there's a little screw that serves as a landing spot for the throttle stop set screw. Well, that little bugger started backing out and caused the closed throttle to be "less closed". While driving one day I noticed that my idle kept getting progressively higher and higher until I was "idling" at 4K RPM. It took a little bit of head-scratching to figure out that it wasn't the throttle stop set screw that was (somehow) turning down, but that this little screw on the cam was backing out. Good thing it didn't fall out somewhere on the road. Anyway, a dab of red Loctite has solved that.

But I just discovered another problem. My venerable FM IC hose looks like it's getting ready to bite the dust (see the red circle in the pic below). I was noticing some "extra" noises coming from the engine compartment under heavy boost and couldn't figure out what it was. I tightened everything I could think of until I saw that there was a little tear in the silicone hose just below the clamp. I guess it's about time after 8 or so years of use, for it to finally let go. I'll try to jury-rig something until I can get a proper fix in place (Silicone Intakes, here I come!). What's funny is that I didn't notice this - there's obviously a boost leak - without the "extra" noises. I guess that's a symptom of experiencing REAL boost for the first time.

Picture;

rwyatt365

It's been a LONG time since I last posted in this thread. I've been doing some mundane things like tweaking my tune to "ultimate perfection" and tending to "life matters". But NOW I've got three new winter projects that might be of interest;

1. A new hardtop (wrapped to look like carbon fiber because, why not?)
2. A new nose from Carbon Miata (which I'm intending to fabricate a quick-release system so I can change from my current banged-up, soon to be race-ready nose, to my new, sleek, street-nose in a matter of minutes)
3. A new wing and Sturdy Boi splitter mount from 9Lives (if they every respond to my inquiries about my order)

Where I stand currently:

• Hardtop; It was ordered in early Feb '22 from Prestige in the UK. I was expecting a late 2nd quarter delivery which turned into a late 3rd quarter delivery, which turned into a November delivery, which resulted in a December receipt. ANYWAY, I had already decided that I was going to wrap the top because the grey color wouldn't work with my resplendent, color-shifting, purple Plastidip body color. I decided that a faux carbon-fiber wrap would be tastefully subdued. After two attempts (documented
  here
  and
  here
  ) I managed a semi-successful, kinda-nice, 30 foot wrap).
• New Nose; After looking at the sad state of my current "Duraflex" nose, I decided to spring for a new one by Carbon Miata all the way from Japan (China?). I also decided that I would emulate a synthesis of a couple of folks on YouTube who had made a quick-release mechanism for easily detaching the nose. The intent being that the CM nose would be for the street and the old nose - plus an air dam, plus a splitter) would be for my HPDE adventures. After waiting 3 months for fabrication and cross-ocean shipping, it arrived this past Tuesday. Today I begin fabrication my version of a quick-release system.
• Wing and splitter; I ordered the Medium Downforce wing, Sturdy Boi and Damn Dam from 9Lives Racing in early October, thinkig it would get to me before Christmas. Progress towards delivery was reported early and often (which I appreciated)...until early December, when all messages stopped. I though, "Well, it's Christmas-time and no one is working, so okay". But since then I've sent email, called, DM'ed on Facebook and have heard nothing - not even a "Stop bothering us, kid!" - so I'm stumped.
  • Trunk lid; As an adjunct to the wing, I knew that the trunk lid had to be notched to accommodate the wing supports. I didn't want to cut up my "purple fantasy" trunk with the massive (totally decorative) ducktail, so I found a "used" lid (thanks ozbrock) for the right price that would serve as my race-ready lid. Of course, the carbon fiber wrap frenzy took over there as well (that saga is documented
    here
    ) with a slightly better (but still not perfect) result.

So, today I will be resurrecting my horrible welding "skills" to create my quick-release system.

Wish me luck!

rwyatt365

Quick update: For the quick-release of nose I'm forgoing creating a sub-structure for the nose itself because the Carbon Miata nose emulates the stock upper mounting points, only in fiberglass. This is good because then I can re-use those mounting points. But it's bad because it's fiberglass which means that it will be prone to fatigue cracking, AND it uses bolts - which are not "quick mounts".

So, here's my idea, which is two-part;

1. Reinforce the fiberglass with some glassed-in sheet metal that will take up the load and reduce the potential for fatigue cracks. The idea is to spread the loading over a wider area to reduce the strain.
2. Replace the bolts with Dzus fasteners. That way a quarter-turn and pop-pop, the nose can come off. The only downside to getting to that point is the removal of the captured nuts where the stock mounting points are. I believe that I have two options there:

• Drill out the captured nuts, but that could be tedious and potentially drill bit-breaking.
• Cut out the place where the captured nuts are and spot-weld in some plates that the Dzus fasteners can mount to, but welding is not my forte so the potential for an epic fail is significant.

So if anyone has a better idea, I'm all ears.

rwyatt365

Okay, the delivery of the "quarter-turn" (not Dzus) fasteners came in today and those things are TINY (see picture - nail cutter there for a size reference)! I was expecting something more...substantive, but I guess they'll do.



Considering their size, they should fit in the same space as the original 6mm(?) bolts that tie down the nose. Now, as far as the attachment option is concerned, I think that the cut and spot weld option is the way to go considering the size of what I'm working with. Drilling out that captured nut will make too big of a hole.

rwyatt365

Just a quick update;

• The new nose is on and (more or less) painted. The quick-connects are operating as designed and I can take it off in less than 30 seconds.
• I've received the wing from 9Lies and it is installed, but not without some "tweaks" - primarily, getting the wing supports appropriately mounted. The biggest deal was the fact that the edges of the trunk opening sit about 15 degrees off the vertical which makes mounting the wing - if you leave the uprights as-is - impossible. What I ended up doing was fabricating some wedges that sit between the trunk opening and the upright to bring it back to vertical. I'm curious how others have addressed this.
• The Sturdy Boi mounts have also arrived and I had another (expected) issue, and that was "How to deal with interference with the intercooler piping?". I'll provide some pictures later, but my solution there was to utilize a crossbar that I fabricated (I've cut out a center section of the stock front substructure and put in a removable crossbar to tie the front "horns" of the unibody back together) as a mounting place for the Sturdy Boi. This puts each side of the splitter mounts about 3-inches forward and 2-inches inboard of where 9Lives intends for them to be. This makes the outside edge of the splitter a little less stable (i.e. they can wiggle). I think I'll fix that with a couple of splitter mounts...we'll see.

I have a few other "gotchas" that I've had to work around:

1. I screwed up the measurements of the splitter and cut the plywood wrong (yeah, yeah - measure twice...blah, blah, blah") so this proof-of-concept splitter is in two mirrored pieces. I'll re-do it from a single piece of wood, but for now it's a "bifurcated splitter" (a split splitter?).
2. My oil cooler is mounted on a plate that sits horizontally behind the roll bar and just under the crank pulley. The downside of this is that the "standard" splitter would extend into that space back to the front subframe, so I've had to cut the "tail" of the splitter off. The upside is that this effectively uses my oil cooler mount as an extension of the splitter.
3. Because of how my front crossmember is mounted, it's tilted about 5.5 degrees off of vertical (trigonometry DOES come in handy sometimes!). I didn't account for this when I attached the Sturdy Boi's to it, so that has pitched my splitter "up" by that amount which is "No bueno". I'm going to put some wedges behind the mounting plate to pitch the spoiler back to horizontal. I' going to mock that up temporarily to make sure that I got it right and then fab up a more permanent fix later.

DNMakinson

iTrader: (3)

More pics, Roger, when you get all that completed.

DNM

rwyatt365

Crappy cellphone pictures follow;
This is one of the the quarter-turn quick release fasteners for the top of the nose


This is the button quick-release on the side of the nose. Push the button and it releases.


Here is my crossbar with the Sturdy Boi's attached. How? The crossbar is made up of a 1x1 square steel tube (poorly) welded onto two 1/8" plates that are bolted to the "horns" of the front subframe. At the inside edge of the plates are about 4 inches of 1x1 square tube perpendicular to the horizontal crossbar. Those short sections are cross-drilled and the Sturdy Boi's are bolted to them, flush with the edge of the plate and 90* to it. I would have liked to have welded the Sturdy Boi mounts to the short sections, but steel don't weld to aluminum (at least not at my skill-level).

Of course it's hard to make out because everything is painted black.

And here is the infamous "split spliter" (don't panic, it's a proof of concept until I get another one cut). It's 3/4-inch plywood and the seam in the middle is a steel "L" channel, cut in half and welded back-to-back to make a "T" - which is then bolted to the two halves of the splitter. Then there are two pieces of wood screwed onto the top to keep the whole thing from flexing. It's remarkably sturdy and I can stand on it (180 lbs - don't tell my wife) and it doesn't flex.


I'm working on eliminating the tilt of the splitter, but more on that later.

rdb138

iTrader: (1)

I'm in the middle of installing all of my 9LR aero too...so very timely post. What I ended up doing was loosening the uprights till they were barely installed (after installing them tight). All 3 of the bottom bolts with only a couple threads engaged and then I laid the wing across them while they were bowed out and installed the wing's back two bolts very loosely. Then I installed the two front bolts on the top of the wing, I believe I had to tighten the back bolts some to get the fronts threaded, because everything was so off still. Once I had that the wing attached to the uprights by all 4 bolts, I tightened each of those bolts, each one a little at a time till they all got tight, that brought the uprights in and a lot closer to straight. Then I started on the bottom upright bolts. Again, tightening each one a couple turns and going around like that till they all got nice and tight. It's not the best feeling slowly bending the metal to the direction you want it, but it did work. For what it's worth, Marcus from 9LR said they were supposed to be in tension, otherwise I wouldn't have installed them like that on my own.

This is what mine looked like with just the wing laying across the top...it was 6 inches off on each side. (I should have taken some better pictures, but best I could find.)

rwyatt365

@rdb138 ; Yeah this is almost exactly what I was seeing. I started doing what you did, but then i thought "It's only the tension of the bolts pulling on the lower outside edge of the upright that is keeping everything secure". I thought that having more "contact patch" would be good, thus the wedges.

After sleeping on it last night, I came to the conclusion that using spacers on the upper bolts of my crossmember to tilt the splitter down by 5.5* was not a good idea. Considering that all of the aero loading of the slitter would run through the 8 bolts connecting the crossmember to the unibody "horns" - having the top 4 bolts spaced out 3/4-inch was not a good idea (but a GREAT place to snap off some over-loaded bolts). So, now my approach will be to re-drill the holes that secure the Sturdy Boi (SB) mounts to the crossmember to change the angle.

Right now, there are only 1/4-20 bolts securing the SB mounts to the crossmember. The final iteration will use 8mmx1.25 bolts. If I slot the upper hole in the SB while keeping the original hole centers in the crossmember, then the aero loading on the splitter will tend to push the nose of the splitter down (if the clamping force isn't enough to keep the mounts from rotating around the lower hole).

Crude drawing for reference;

rwyatt365

Update;

• The Sturdy Boi mounts have been slotted and rotated and it's working like a champ.
• My "new and improved" splitter is fabricated and in place

Next Steps;

• Because I've had to relocate the Sturdy Boi mounts about 2 inches forward of their normal mount points, the placement of the Damn Dam is too far forward now. So I have two alternatives:
  • Forget about the Damn Dam, or...
  • "Re-profile" the Sturdy Boi uprights to adopt a steeper angle for the airdam. Since I have to "clearance" the uprights to clear my mount points for my flat-towing rig anyway...why not? Who says you can cut up your brand new $300+ part to accommodate your present setup?
• Create a quick-release mechanism for the Damn Dam so that it can come off for street driving.
• Create a "street-only" setup for the nose, i.e. fabricate a "Shorty Boi" clone of the Sturdy Boi uprights whereby I make an undertray that clips into the Sturdy Boi mounts but without the splitter. That way I have a street-only setup that can be put in for hassle-free street driving. I've ordered some .090" aluminum for that task. All I have to do now is to (try to) copy what 9Lives has done and make it work...wish me luck.

rwyatt365

Notched Sturdy Boi;

rwyatt365

The adventure begins...


So, before I go slamming the Pro in place, I should get one of these (Option Port Connector) 'cause the MSPNP2 uses a 26 pin D-shell connection for the option inputs, whereas the Pro uses a push-in connector not unlike the stock ECU connectors/

Curses! Foiled again.

But at least that gives me some time to do some reading and planning (even though I was expecting to just slam it in, transfer over some tables from the PNP2 and hope for the best). This way I adhere to the Sextuple-P Rule ("Prior Planning Prevents ****-Poor Performance).

rwyatt365

I'm waiting for the Option Connector to come, so I haven't run with the "Pro" yet. I spent yesterday transposing my maps from the MS2 to the MS3 and looking at everything I've been missing for all of these years (yeah, yeah, I know).

ANYWAY, I'm going to turn off knock sensing (which is an order of magnitude more complicated on the MS3 than the MS2), and I'm not even going to TRY to get into sequential injection and/or ignition yet. I'll just stick with the basics for now and get the car to start, run, idle and then sneak up on these other things onver the next few weeks (months...years).

This is going to be a fun journey!