Gotland Ring, slow motion of fast cars

Quality edit with nice music. Look at that 911 tearing up the tarmac in the right left combo. Delivering the neccesary torque in such a contolled manner with a peaky turbocharged 1.8 would be a challenge.

Gotland Ring from Anders Bäckman on Vimeo.

ECO Tec engine with some nice bits

I found this picture on deathmachines.net. I'm not 100% sure but I think this is the 4-cyl ECO Tec engine that Ryan Tuerck from Gardella Racing used in the Formula D Pontiac Solstice ( aka the Opel GT here in Europe) It's basicly a GM Opel engine with some very trick bits on it to make it competitive with the rest of the V8 freak show drift cars. That intake manifold looks awsome. Two chamber plenum, individual roller throttle bodies. That should make a very optimal and responsive setup with the ramhorn turbo manifold.

I wonder what that alu rail above/left of the fuel rail does. coolant manifold for the head ? staged secondary fuel rail and injectors ?

Flyin Miata offers ECU reflash for 99+ Miata/MX5

It only took 11 years for someone to crack the code :-)

This is pretty cool. Especially for the NC guys that have a very powerful OEM ECU with a wideband and stuff. If they can control bigger injectors like the newer generation ID or deutchwerks we could be seeing a new range of cheap OBDII compliant "smog safe" turbo kits.

http://www.flyinmiata.com/index.php?deptid=4527&parentid=0&stocknumber=07-14000

New Flyin Miata supercharger kit for the NC MX-5

I saw this pic on www.flyinmiata.com:

Thats most likely a MP62 blower with a water to air IC integrated in the intake manifold.

I love how both the Cosworth and this design is totally stealth from the engine bay. Not so for the Moss unit.

I suspect we'll se a Rotrex based kit from Kraftwerks soon.

Nice to see more forced induction option for the NC.

Innovate LC-1 install

I did use an LC-1 on my previous 95' turbo build. Back then I mounted it in the engine bay as the O2 bung was located near enough to route the sensor wire down with the DP.

This is not possible with the "FM" sensor location so I had to route it down the gear leaver with the control unit secured to the PPF. I found a nice stealth location under the ashtray for the calibration button and control LED to prevent me or other organisms starting a calibration by accident.

I will be feeding the O2 signal via serial to the Adaptronic but I also did connect the aux2 output from the LC-1 to my MPM dashlogger to use as a meter.

BTW the blue thick wire going from the ignition switch is the best source for a switched power +

.

A quick peak at a Toyota Land Cruiser

Some new guys moving into the garage are heavily into old Toyota Land Cruisers.

I didn't know anything about them before they gave me a quick tour. I actually thought Land Cruiser was some kind of Land Rover or Range Rover and my experience with off-road vehicles are limited to a Yamahahahah dirt bike I owned when I was 18 and me driving my 76 VW Golf into a ditch the year after.

Anyways, these cars are super cool. Not in a performance car type of way but as a cool looking super sturdy retro kind of way. Just look at that beefy classic design.

I belive this is a 40-series ( , or the Toyota Macho, hoho)

When I mean sturdy I mean massive 9.5" diffs and OEM 4-pot vented brakes, up to 4.2 litres 4-cyl (gasoline) with 130 hp. I mean , 4-pot disc brakes. Thats what you find on super cars from the same area and later JDM icons like the RX7 FD3 and Toyota Supra MK3 etc.

With 1.9 tonne dry weight those breaks might come in handy.

The car in the front of the pictures are semi pimped with big mud tires, suspension mods and misc. modifications and are currently getting new fenders. I think that is a 3.4 l diesel which is preferred by many owners due to lots of torque and less problems running under water :)

Flyin Miata FM IIR turbokit ?

From flyinmiata.com:

Horsepower is coming to town
At the last count for Summer Camp, we're going to have five v8 powered Miatas stopping by. We also have at least two supercharged NCs and of course a whole posse of turbo cars including the first appearance of the high power FM IIR setup.
It's going to be quite an event.

Interesting. FM IIR that is.

I hope this is more than a T25 flanged GT3071 on the same FMII hardware.

FM needs an alternative for the big hp guys and serious track driving. The M8 bolted T25 manifold wont cut it imho.

They should also ditch RC injectors for Injector Dynamics or similar brand current generation injectors. And maybe the most important, drop Hydra and their money sucking upgrade policy, rewired cheap NTK widebands and laughable tuner software. They should work with AEM for a fully PnP V2 solution or even the Adaptronic.

New cold side intake piping fitted

Great piece of "soft-"ware. Very flexible and easy to adjust without the need to secure it to the frame. Not as restrictive as the OEM pipes.

I had to cut a couple of cm at the IC end to not interfere with my oil-cooler setup.

Comparison of OEM vs. FM :

Bigger ID, less bends, less restrictive transitions.

I also shaved off some weigh as the pipes are lighter and I could get rid of the OEM IC brace/frame.

Don't do like me when installing the FM IC on stock MSM pipes an let the pipe protrude into the reducer silicons coupling like on the picture. Not very optimal for flow. Nice to know thats not an issue anymore:

Installing Injector Dynamics 1000cc injectors

As mentioned in this post I will use the Injector Dynamics 1000cc injectors and installed them yesterday.

Nothing special during install. You need to use the included harness clips and the blue anodized spacer since the package is put together to fit a broad range of vehicles.

Some comparison pics with the stock MSM injectors:

One of the big challenges will setup and tuning with these on the Adaptronic. Based on the included datasheet they will deliver over 1000cc at as low as 45psi. Dead time (?) decreas with higher voltage but I can't find any dead time settings/compensation nor voltage in Adaptronic.

I will try to measure both fuel pressure and injector output voltage anyways.

Chris Rado and his new 1100hp AWD Scion tC

This must be the most extreme Time Attack build to date.

1100 hp, crazy aero, tube frame layout. Just look at that ridiculous exhast, 4" DP straight out the hood with twin dump tubes. That's what I call a non restrictive downpipe and WG setup.

This almost rivals the Pikes Peak unlimited class cars.

Can't wait to se how this will perform compared to the Sierra Sierra EVO and the Cusco Impreza, Cyber Evo etc.

http://speedhunters.com/archive/2010/08/05/announcement-gt-gt-team-nfs-time-attack-extreme.aspx

Project update: Hotside parts back on the car.

Manifold, turbo, DP, exhaust, piping and other misc. stuff are now back in the car. It took forever due to all the small things that needs modifying or improvement.

The install process are now a bit harder withthe new WG return pipe. My goal was to be able to remove the DP without removing the turbo. That turned out to be impossible with the available space. Instead I made turbo removal faster by extending the oil-return hose and rerouted the oil supply line which makes it possible to just loosen the 4 nuts to the manifold and stow the turbo with the lines attached out of the way. That could save me a lot of time.

Here are some pics complete with DEI heat insulation and stuff:

The FM exhaust brace did fit my custom exhaust with som spacers. In fact I belive that with this method any decently routed 3" will fit. The exhaust is now rock solid tied to the trans. It will definitely offload the 4 turbo to manifold studs and hopefully have an effect on the stud stretching problem.

TODO list:

- Install ID 1000 injectors

- Reroute and secure the Coolant reroute return line ( That a lot of "re.." in one sentence..)

- Replace cold side IC piping

- Install LC-1 WBO2

- Install Adaptronic

I have decided to not do anything with brakes or suspension before I got the car running on the new ECU. As it turns out the NBB adapter board is not completely Plug'n Play on the MSM.

The IAT sensor is read from the airbox sensor and needs to be revired either on the adapter board or in the enginecompartment. To avoid calibration problems I bought a new IAT sensor that there already exists a calibration map for and will fit nicely in the new FM cold side intake piping.

Amazing pictures from Le Mans Classic 2010 by Laurent Nivalle

I saw this on Speedhunters.com
http://laurentnivalle.fr/LMC2010.html

I don't know much about photography but I know a good picture when I see one.
These are just phenomenal pictures of cars and racing. The soft tone and editing takes you back in time.

Great resource for different racing series and cars

I found this link on the interwebz the other day. http://www.conceptcarz.com/view/racing.aspx

It is a thorough introduction to all of the most famous racing series and cars both past and present. I have never been very interested in vintage racing or the cars but after visiting the Oldtimers GP at the famous Nürburgring I have to admit being a little excited when seeing and hearing 800+ hp alcohol powered, hilborn injected CanAm cars or a 700 hp Porsche 935 squatting out of corners with a glowing turbocharger dangling out the back.

Sprint cars are just cool (1962 Meskowski Sprint Car). All nonsense with lots of hp. Mirrors or safety not allowed:

1970 Ferrari 312 from the F1 days before Bernie and his wallet:

The 1973 Porche 917/30. 5.4 liter V12, 1200 hp as raced in the Can-Am series:

88 IROC Camaro. Optional color scheme...

Great Swedish article on race car aerodynamics

I found this great article on rejsa.nu covering aero modifications to racecars.

Splitters, wings, skirts and diffusers are explained with examples and illustrations.

http://rejsa.nu/info/aerodynamik.pdf

I didn't know that a splitter can aid cooling by increasing the pressure in the front of the car. It makes sense though as its main purpose is to restrict flow under the car by forcing air to go over the splitter.

My plan in the future is to make a ghetto plywood 2 piece front splitter that can be mounted at the track and small enough to fit into the car

I would need to have some kind of mounts at the cross member that it could slide into and 4 or more mounting points in the front. It would also need to be ~ 50mm off ground so a 3rd piece would be necessary to fill the gap between the stock MSM lip and splitter. Hmm...

Right now it is way down on the todo list an will probably not happen before next year, or worse. Or never.

New ECU = Adaptronic e420c

I have done some heavy reading the last couple of days trying to decide which ECU/EMS to get for the MSM now that the Hydra is gone.

I used the following criteria to help me decide:

- Capabilities

- Client software/Usability

- Plug'n Play'ishness

- Online Support

- Local/comunity support (tuners and users)

- Sensor, injectors and peripherals support

- Price

- and bullshit written on the internetz of course.

After ruling out lots of brands mostly due to price, ancientness, proprietary hardware support and money sucking unlock policy for "common" features i ended up with:

- AEM

- Adaptronic

I'm not going to present a huge matrix comparing every technical feature for each EMS.

Adaptronic:

First of its very capable EMS compared to the price. It has launch control, flat shift, traction control. It can control fuel based on a shit load of inputs: TPS, MAP, combination of both, EGT temp, water temp IAT, external switch and more.

It supports dual switchable fuel and ignition maps. Lots of triggers on aux inputs that can perform logics for activating other functions. One example could be richening of the fuelmixture or engine cut off based on EGT temps

Autotuning seems very good with lots of modes and parameters not only for fuel but also ignition (!) by measuring time differences in rpm acceleration on the same load cells and speed sensor output.

Boostcontrol looks very straight forward and can be both open or closed loop with either WG DC% or MAP targets for each RPM zone.

There is continuous development of both firmware and client software (WARI) with new features added for each release.

There is pretty large user base on the Miata/MX5 on mt.net, ms.net and the adaptronic forum and there is a reseller here in Oslo which have done a lot of installs on Nissans.

The sensor support is very good with calibration options for any type temp, tps and map sensor and built in support for many 3rd party WBO2 sensors like the LC1.

It can also read WBO2 sensor data from the LC1 via a second serial port which makes it possible to use the LC1 internal functions for detecting a faulty sensor.

I also like the Gauge window and all the other real time graphs and data logging options.

The price is very reasonable compared to other brands on the list and there is no expensive extra costs for opening up features or possibility for greedy tuners to lock the maps or config settings. The plugin loom also makes the install fairly clean.

There are however a couple of things I have not fully understood.

There are only 3 dedicated ignition drivers but one of the generic aux channels can be configured as a 4th driver. The NBB base map I looked at only used 2 ignition drivers and ran waste spark igniton. The 3rd was used as a tach signal. It is possible that there is no benefit of running fully sequential ignition on stock ignition setup as there are only 2 coil packs anyway. Not a problem but a little strange that there is 3 driver and not 4 or 2. Anyways, 4 is possible if that is necessary in the future.

Another thing I noticed is that you have 3 dedicated outputs for the 3 LED light in the ECU casing that can be used for whatever you assign them to. The default is functions for autotuning but for those that don't want tha box on the dashboard Aussie style you need to use 3 other digital outputs instead wich sounds like a waste of digital outputs when you have the 3 LED outputs in the box. A solution to this could be to open the casing and just move/wire them some where on the dash... and void the warranty.

It also lacks some big $ EMS (Motec ) features like individual cylinder fuel and ingition tables and telemtry support which I don't need.

AEM V2:

Fantastic features, nice price, new and very capable hardware, the first to use USB and not 70-ties RS232 serial interface..., nice tuning software. Lots of internal memory for continuous datalogging that can be downloaded AFTER a session instead of having to have a PC connected for logging via serial.

I think the AEM hw platform and the focus on usability in the tuning software will make the V2 very popular among tuners and gear heads in years to come.

No plugin for Miata yet which means a lot of work to adapt it to the MSM wiring loom and no basemap available. I would probably be the first Miata running on V2 if I did but it would take a lot of time that I don't have.

As the title reveals im going for the Adaptronic and its already on its way across the pond with a GM 3bar map sensor and plugin loom.

I will document my install and any problems that may arise during startup and tuning.

Hopefully the basemap will save me a lot of trouble.