| MIATA BUILD |
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 | February 20, 2007 - Another bit of interchange information - one we weren't expecting.
It turns out that when the brake booster was changed in 2001, so was the vacuum nipple. And possibly the location of the brake fluid reservoir. So there are two different shapes of hose to join the hard vacuum line that runs across the firewall (visible in the previous picture) to the booster. It's possible to make the early one (top) fit, but the later one is much happier and gives more clearance.
Upon inspection, it appears the new design has less restriction in the hard pipe going into the booster. It's not drastic, but the Mazda engineers felt it was important.
entry 72 - tags: interchange, brakes |
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 | February 20, 2007 - Time to test-fit the cockpit!
The seat isn't the FX1 Pro that we'll be using, but an older Forza. But it lets us try things out while we wait. The pedals are the ones that were on our chassis originally, and have big MOMO pads on them. The one on the clutch pedal is in the way if I want to use a dead pedal, but the gas and brake ones should come in handy for heel-toe. The doodad taped to the transmission tunnel is the proportioning valve, as I'm trying to find a good place put it where it's out of the way, easy to plumb and accessible from the driver's seat.
entry 73 - tags: seats, ergonomics, brakes |
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 | February 20, 2007 - The co-driver's cell.
A panel from a 1991 Miata should fit in to give a nice solid foot rest. The seat is jammed in place pretty nicely - it's possible we'll have to do a little trimming. The passenger's side is slightly narrower than the driver's side, and the door bar ended up a touch more inboard than for the driver.
entry 74 - tags: ergonomics, seats |
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 | February 20, 2007 - The fuel and brake lines in place.
They're well protected by the armored frame rail. The lowest of these lines is the rear brake line - it will be rerouted along the top of the transmission tunnel for the proportioning valve.
entry 75 - tags: brakes, stiffness |
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 | February 20, 2007 - The part that nobody looks forward to.
Before assembly carries on much further, I have to install the wiring. I also have to trim it down so we don't bother carrying around the extra weight of stereo and electric window wiring.
entry 76 - tags: wiring, weight loss |
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 | February 21, 2007 - A few more things are bolted on.
The front subframe (from a 2003) and steering rack are in, along with the headlights and some of the mechanism for the wipers. It would be really nice to drop some weight off those headlights as they're really beefy. I think the steel covers for the lights are the heaviest body panels in the whole car! Maybe later.
entry 77 - tags: weight loss, interchange |
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 | February 21, 2007 - Another interchange discovery.
The power steering reservoir from the 2003 sits in a different place than the 1994, and interferes with the headlight. Not a problem, I'll grab a 1994 reservoir tomorrow.
There's some irony in this. Our car was originally an R package. One of the defining features of the R was the manual steering, and we're installing power. There's no way I'm driving the Targa with manual steering. The later steering rack that we're using is a better setup anyhow with a much more solid mount.
entry 78 - tags: interchange |
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 | February 22, 2007 - The current state of the cockpit.
I'm spending a lot of time poking and prodding at ergonomics right right now. Why? Because it's easiest to change things at this point, although I really won't know for sure until the real seats get here. But really, it's fun.
Note the gas cap release in the usual place. It weighs next to nothing and means I don't have to figure out a way to make it work otherwise. The factory dead pedal is in place and the MOMO pad has been taken off the clutch pedal. The one on the gas pedal might get shifted over a bit, it's a bit close.
entry 79 - tags: ergonomics |
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 | February 22, 2007 - The final positioning of the brake proportioning valve.
I can't take credit for this, Josh Castaldi emailed me with pictures of his own setup. I'll have to buy some touch-up paint due to a bit of paint damage, but it's very well placed to be out of the way and easily accessible. The brake lines stay in the transmission tunnel and a minimum of alteration is required. Very nice!
entry 80 - tags: ergonomics, brakes |
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 | February 25, 2007 - The rear brake plumbing from under the car.
A new line was run from the master cylinder to the valve, then the stock line was cut, reshaped and reflared to meet up with the back of the valve. The rear line still needs some work to anchor it down, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
entry 81 - tags: brakes |
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 | February 25, 2007 - The 6' (180 cm) length of new line wasn't long enough to reach from the valve to the master cylinder, and it's quite difficult to find brake line on a roll in this town.
So a short extension was used. Just to keep things interesting, the female fitting is from an old Land Rover. I had to use at least one part from that car!
entry 82 - tags: brakes, interchange |
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 | February 25, 2007 - It doesn't take much to keep me entertained.
Since I'm scavenging parts from a variety of cars, I have fasteners with a bunch of different colors of paint. Why not use them for some nice little accents? These nuts originally held the hood on a Mariner Blue Miata, but they look really good attaching our headlight mechanisms to the car!
entry 83 |
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 | February 25, 2007 - I swore I wasn't going to do this.
But it bugs me to know of all the airbag wiring in the car, and when I came across the rear window defroster and the power antenna connectors I just couldn't help myself. It's sticky work with miles of masking tape involved, but it's also really good to know that a number of useless wires are gone. That not only lightens the car, but makes troubleshooting easier.
The airbag harness is the thick section that's still wrapped up in black loom. It's all out of the car now, and the only other system that is affected is the horn. That's easy to put back.
entry 84 - tags: wiring, weight loss |
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 | February 25, 2007 - Mystery box.
I've commented before on the importance of labeling everything as you work on a car.
Edit: Aha! It's the cruise control brain!
entry 85 - tags: wiring, tips |
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 | March 6, 2007 - There hasn't been much work on the Targa Miata for the past week because I was off in Texas.
Grassroots Motorsports magazine asked if I could attend a track session to provide a counterpoint to an Ariel Atom that they were testing. It's a long way to go for a track day but I was curious about what their drivers - BS Levy and Tim Webb - would have to say about my little homebuilt Lotus clone. We'll have to see exactly what the article says when it comes out in a few months, but both drivers were very impressed by the handling and setup of the car. It was fun and controllable. They were also impressed by its speed. It's good to have some independent judgment of the setup of the car, and it bodes well for the Targa car.
entry 86 - tags: other cars |
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 | March 7, 2007 - Lightweight lug nuts!
Fellow racer Joe Woodward at the Tire Rack sent us a set of these. It's a little eerie to hold them in your hand as they're less than half the weight of a set of stock lug nuts. I've been using these on the Seven for the last few years.
entry 87 - tags: weight loss |
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 | March 7, 2007 - The Hydra Nemesis computer that will control the car is going to be wired in.
It's available as a plug-in installation, but we can get rid of a whole bunch of wire by splicing these plugs right into the harness. The stock ECU is mounted behind the passenger's seat, ours will be under the dashboard.
entry 88 - tags: wiring, engine |
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 | March 7, 2007 - We were originally going to run a clutch from a Mazdaspeed MX-5 turbo car.
It's a great setup, with a smooth take-up and a light pedal. But our clutch got sold to a Flyin' Miata customer.
This particular clutch is a prototype unit of a model that will be available from Flyin' Miata in about six months. I had a chance to test its twin in a car earlier this week and it's a beauty. It will have no difficulty handling the power we need, but more importantly it's a real sweetheart to drive with a light pedal. Excellent.
entry 89 - tags: interchange, drivetrain |
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 | March 11, 2007 - Driver development time!
Most of my track time is spent in the Seven, but it's time to start paying more attention to Miatas. So this weekend I was at the track with a big blue car instead of the usual little orange one. The Miata is supercharged (about 155 hp at the wheels, I'd estimate) and has an off-the-shelf suspension from Flyin' Miata that works very well - FM springs, Tokico Illumina shocks, FM rear shock mounts and FM sway bars. There's one of Flyin' Miata's "butterfly braces" underneath so it's a good solid chassis. I was also running a set of Toyo RA-1s that were nicely broken in and some autocross brakes. Overall, it's a pretty good test bed for the rally car as it's running the same ride height and spring rates we expect to use.
After all the time spent in the lightweight car, it's good to see how well a sorted Miata works. It's forgiving, it's controllable and it sticks like crazy. There's obviously more weight transfer going on (and this car is heavier than the Targa car will be) but it's easy to use this as part of your driving technique. The autocross brake pads weren't up to sustained hard braking, so this meant I had to carry in higher entry speeds and worked as an excellent training tool. We'll be running better brakes in the Targa.
I spent some time driving "off line" at the track, pretending I didn't know where I was going and trying to deal with very different situations than the usual ideal line. I also tried to avoid using all of the track to give myself some extra room like we'll have to do in Newfoundland. It's tricky to pretend you don't know a track that's quite familiar to you, but it's also quite eye-opening how a well-known corner changes when you enter it from a different angle! Not only did this help me improve my skills, it also illustrated quite dramatically how much of a difference it makes in speed around the track.
Luckily, there were very few cars on the track so nobody thought I was crazy.
A good day overall. Time to get back to work though!
entry 90 - tags: testing, other cars, skills |
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 | March 16, 2007 - Our Corbeau seats are here.
They're the FX1 Pro, a nicely fitted fibreglass seat that fits in small cars. We also have a set of Corbeau harnesses for each occupant of the car.
entry 91 - tags: sponsors, seats, ergonomics, safety |
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