I didn't read this thread in its entirety but if you are going with a 6speed tranny, are you doing the RX-8 manual like you were talking about a long time ago? Last I talked to dave, it should bolt up fairly easily (to the FD anyway) I am assuming that the tranny bolt points for the engines don't change too drastically. Should be interesting to see and also I am assuming you are going to rebuild the tranny with your own custom ratios and make it able to take that much load.

Yup, its based off the FE tranny, with a different extension housing.
It will "bolt" up to any 13b rotary, problems with fitmewnt are the slave cylinder and the overall length of the thing. As far as custom ratios, not a chance for 2 reasons... the cost would make a dogbox seem cheap, and the ratios of the stock FE box are damn near perfect. My only complaint is OD should be in the low .7's, not the .84 that it is.
As far as strength is concerned..... without giving away any secrets, think about what's going on when all these trannies "blow-up." It has nothing to do with the strength of the tranny, mine included. Although that did stop us from cryo treating it JIC... afterall, I'm putting more than 2x the tourque of the silly little renni through it. For for few auto-x's that it did survive, the tranny was AWESOME! It failed on me pussy footing home... go figure.

Yup, its based off the FE tranny, with a different extension housing.
It will "bolt" up to any 13b rotary, problems with fitmewnt are the slave cylinder and the overall length of the thing. As far as custom ratios, not a chance for 2 reasons... the cost would make a dogbox seem cheap, and the ratios of the stock FE box are damn near perfect. My only complaint is OD should be in the low .7's, not the .84 that it is.
As far as strength is concerned..... without giving away any secrets, think about what's going on when all these trannies "blow-up." It has nothing to do with the strength of the tranny, mine included. Although that did stop us from cryo treating it JIC... afterall, I'm putting more than 2x the tourque of the silly little renni through it. For for few auto-x's that it did survive, the tranny was AWESOME! It failed on me pussy footing home... go figure.

That's too much braking power for an FB, not only will the windshield pop out, but the car will nosedive then flip on it's top.

If he did the open the door thing and drag the pad.... I concur... however.... if he's thinking about taking the whole brake setup he would first need to upgrade from the 115/110/10 tires that are on there now

Did I mentioned that I envy you??? LOL

I've done pretty much everytihng on my car, and I can attest that there is nothing like having the right tools (and space to have them)

Yup, I had to cut off a lot of material from the bumper cover, and the ducting... What ducting LOL! Since I went with a water to air setup, I might have space to mount an oil cooler near the factory place. I like you idea, but at this point, I want to keep hings stupid simple. Dont tell anybody, but I am getting tired of all work and no fun with this damn car :svengo:

I ended up using a used reman rew engine, there shouldnt be a need for a break in :suspect: Dave asked me to call him on Wed, cant wait LOL!

The only problem with that is the brake kit is so awesome and would work so well that his FB wouldn't even be able to move even though the brake pedal isn't even depressed.

Its a trap Vex - he's a hater :)

With all the simplicity, he won't know what to do! Honestly though, he's a baller... :grouphug:

DON'T! I've got too much on my plate and things keep popping up! Right now my FC is back on jackstands for a few "minor" things :rolleyes:

The Landi is still here and I haven't TOUCHED that in about 6 weeks :banghead:

The 'vert is still waiting for my loving yet "forcefull" touch :suspect:

The FD is covered in little helicopter seeds and the first thing I need to do when I get started with that PJ is build a "frame" dolly and a hydraulic rotisserie

My buddy is going to be bringing his FD over so we can pull the engine, paint the bay, do some repairs and more modifications

I want to get the boat out of storage
aaaaaaaannnnnnnddddd I'm working 6+days a week and 10+hrs each day.... I need a clone...


That's something to be proud of right there. Tools are great, space is key..... I've found that cars are much more compact when you don't take them apart :rofl:

Yeah, the stock ducting leaves alot to be desired, that's for damn sure..... That's kinda why I ditched everything and started anew. I've found that ducting is key...... And each heat exchanger having it's own source of fresh air is key as well. The exit speed of the air after it passes through the exchanger is abysmal, so having an uniterupted flow is trully beneficial.

I think I'm going to try an A2W setup on the next engine that I build... especially since I'm looking for a stock TII pull-out and I'll be using the stock TII TMIC but with some mods done to increase the flow through it... I'll also be using the Atihun hood that is upstairs in my closet sandwiched between the Landi hood and the carbon fibre Atihun hood for the FD.... yes, that's right, there are currently 3 hoods in my closet.... before DGRRXI there were 4

Cool..... I was SUPPOSED to be @ Dave's on Wednesday for the tranny.... but work said, "NO DAY OFF FOR YOU!!!!!"

That's becuase the 12a lacks the torque to rotate those 13.25"x 1.25" front and 12.2" x.81" rear rotors :rofl:

[QUOTE=WE3RX7;149433]Its a trap Vex - he's a hater :)[quote]

Yup, so much a hater that I'm think about hitting up C. Ludwig for a SRE for the 'vert if I can't find a complete pull-out...

This is true.... you'll have to walk me through the helltechs DOS based software :smilielol5: oh wait..... :biggrinjester:

Shit - I'm not even that big a haltech guy. My use has been 75% revolving around microtechs. LT8, LT8X and the LT-10s... then later the interceptor-x. I've only used one haltech before and that was the e6k about 10 years ago, lol.

I think you'd be wise to go SRE on the vert though, it seems like a good unit for the price and can get you where you want on that car.

post the fucking pictures you have been hiding. :fawk:

:rofl::smilielol5: I'd say I'll stab you in the eye but
1) You're alot bigger than I am
2) You saved us from the "GRASS!!!!!!!!!"
3) I needed that laugh today ;)

I'll get to them..... eventually :rofl: hopefully tonight after I go through some laundry and get some stuff organized.... I just yesterday cleaned my car out from DGRRXI.... I found 2 empty 20oz RedBull cans :smilielol5:

Oh, you mean that ecu that's so powerful it can't save different maps for fear of the universe imploding? :rofl:

That's what I'm thinking... plus I can build my own harness.... It'll either be the SRE or the RTek 2.0 someone found me a bitchin' deal on :suspect: Now I just need a turbo longblock hint hint anyone hint hint.....

Tell ya what.... I've got like 100 or so pics, So I'll do like a system a night until thier all done with.... tongiht will be cooling system becuase well, that got the most attention over the winter.....

You can save different maps now, but on the dongle. As far as I know, the ecu still doesn't store them. Not a big deal though really... I can save all the config files to the laptop.

Make sure that RTek is for a turbo engine, not NA :)

I think if I showed TTT my engine bay he would rage and make me his little midget bitch... Though I think I'm bigger than him.

Diary of a MadMan's cooling system
 

So, one of the things that I wanted to address over the winter was the cooling system in the little piece of poo. Not that it wasn't running as wonderfully as it should, becuase my coolant temps never got above 175* on the highway as long as we were moving, and never breached 180* on The Dragon or HellBender, more, it was a few little quirks that bothered me about them. One, was the lack of -16 lines on the rad :rofl: Two wasthe perpetual air-bubble that was ALWAYS in the radiator becuase of how I mounted it, Three was the sheer hideousness of the factory T-stat housing and the maze of passageways in there, four was the air-bubble that always presented itself on first start-up after refilling the cooling system. THe SOP for purging said bubble WAS to start the car, let it get to 185* when the fan kicked on, watch the temp skyrocket to 195*, shut her down, come back in 20 minutes and carefully crack the AST open and let all the air out, add approx 2 pints of coolant, be on your way..... kind of a PITA if you ask me.... so lets address these problems shall we?

First thing I did was get rid of the stock T-stat housing in place of a piece that I built. Pretty simple actually, and very atractive if you ask me. At the end of the day I didn't even need any sealant either, the flange mounts tight enough to use the factory t-stat gasket ring. @ 20psi, there are no leaks. I was pleased

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305686525

Next up, was tackling the same but this time on the lower rad hose. This is probably the least close to a stock waterpump housing as you can get :lol: All the barb fittings have been removed. THe return from the heater core, which also collects from the AST has already been converted to a -10, and right below the new upper rad hose connection you can see what was once a plug has been converted to a 1/4"npt to -4 fitting. This -4 fitting connects to the coolant outlet at the rear iron. This is where I believe the air was being trapped. A long time ago when I first built this engine I took the barb out and tapped it to 1/4" npt and put an allen plug in it. Over the winter all I did was pull that plug out and put in an AL adapter, built a line and plumbed it from the rear iron to the WP housing. I believe this was key to eliminating the air pockets, as well as the mods I did to the rad. You'll also note what was once the return from the turbo's has also been converted to a -6, as was the feed on the back on the WP housing... so yeah..... there is a distinct lack of hose clamps :rofl:

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305686525

Here we have the completed WP housing. Everything powdercoated as well.... all the little pieces that I can fit in my electric oven I powdercoat. Anything bigger I send out to a guy I have local who does incredible work.

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305686525


The thing to note on this pic is the tapped fitting at the top of the WP housing. This is now the highest point of the cooling system on the engine. This get's plumbed into the custom AST that I built that mounts on the passenger side strut tower.

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305686525

Here we see it plumbed in place. I took the Tweakit Racing Idler pulley kit and drilled and tapped it to mount an adel clamp the keep the line secure and free from the rather quickly spinning belts. I know it's not an ideal routing as this is what is supposed to collect and purge all the trapped air, but it seems to work quite well actually. I believe because when you first start the car up, the waterpump is of course going to try to move some coolant. With the T-stat closed, and no jiggle pin (which I found odd considering it's a Mazda genuine part) the coolant is circulating through the path of least resistance. This would be through the AST and the heater core and that particular line and of course the line from the rear iron to the lower side of the WP housing. I believe that all the air is purged from the system upon first start-up. Any air that makes it's way back into the system upon cooling is instantly purged as well. This is probably why I was able to run 1500 miles without any coolant in the overflow tank and a bunch of air getting sucked back in.... yeah yeah my dumbass didn't fully tighen a cap after checking the coolant and it got lost somewhere in Virgina doing a burn-out infront of some car with the license plate FRSH-SXY :smilielol5: I NEED to find a pic of this car... it was epic.... anyway... I knew of the coolant and decided to test how well it all worked... I was pleased. Why everyone ditches the AST is beyond me. I went to great lengths to add one for a good reason.

Next on the Chopping block was the radiator. When I first had Griffen build me this rad, they built it with 1.5" inlet, 1.75" outlet becuase someone didn't read carefully (not a big deal and to Griffins credit, they wanted me to ship it back to them on thier dime, send me a new one with the proper size on it. I ended up just hitting up my tub of ky (seriously) and smearing it on a stock hose and on the barb, adding a little heat and it slid on and never leaked, so I didn't see the need to send it back, but kudo's to Griffin for their service, couldn't be happier) ANYWHO.... I never liked the way I had it plumbed. It just bothered me. It didn't leak, but getting the t-bolts on was a pain and it just wasn't very visually appealing... so out came the hack saw.

OH NOES!!!!

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305687964

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305687964

After that it was pretty easy to weld on the -16 bungs. Griffin warned me about transferring the welding heat to the epoxy on the sides. The answer was to just fill the rad with water. What you DON'T want to do though is fill it with water and then seal it off. When you're welding, the heat from the welding heats the water. This causes it to expand. If you're unlucky enough you get a blowout and hot water in your face...... :willy_nilly: and no this never happened to me ;)

When Griffin originally built this rad they added a 1/4" female NPT bung on the passenger side tank for the AST... however they put it in the wrong spot. Not a big deal, just add another one :D higher though, on the adjacent plane where the top of the rad will be. This is the second fitting that is connected to my AST. You can see it on the top right in the pic. You can also see the -6 Male bung lower left that I use for flushing and draining. It works very well and again, no hose clamps.... I CAN'T STAND IT when people plug unused coolant fittings with bolts and RTV... some may or may not remember this rant... you probably would as I had almost completely lost my voice and was getting rather worked up about it :rofl:

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305687964

And the rad mounted..... damn that looks alot better than what I started with

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305687964

Lastly is the AST. I really didn't have to do much to this except add a 2nd 1/4" npt bung for the outlet from the rad. That and scrape off all the old powdercoating so i could recoat it..... OH... and I FINALLY after looking for like a year, found a rad cap that matches all of the other caps that I have under the hood. I was so happy I literally jumped up and down and did the bus-driver after I bought it.:party:

The AST is pretty simple and very effective at purging air from a cooling system. Basically you plumb in the two highest points in the cooling system, the highes on the engine, and the highes on the rad, this if course being a rad without a cap, into the AST. The AST has the pressure cap on it.

All of the air in the cooling system collects in the AST. The bottom of the AST is plumbed on the vacuum side of the flow, lower rad hose going into the engine. in my case I have a T-fitting on the frame rail that is also the return from the heater core. From the T it goes into the -10 bung on the lower portion of the "stock" :rofl: WP housing. So, air and coolant go in, coolant comes out the bottom. Air stays in the AST. The AST is also the filling location

When the cooling system heats up, coolant expands. The air is purged from the AST through the pressure cap, and into the overflow tank. Plumbing from the pressure cap MUST be into the bottom of the overflow tank otherwise the system will just continue to suck air in when it cools. This is what was happening to me the entire trip, but I knew about it and it actually was never a problem

So, on my AST, the top fitting on the side comes from the top of the WP housing. THe highest point in the cooling system on the engine. The bottom fitting comes from the rad, the highest point on the rad. The one in-line with the cap is plumbed into the overflow. Isn;t that a damn good looking cap??

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305689036

That's right bitches.... them 2 fittings be PERFECTLY aligned... yes, I spent the time to fit the fittings and double check before I welded them up for certain..... hey... suck it... I am that guy and you all know it accepted em for it :lol: Isn't that a damn good looking cap though?

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305689036

When I get some batteries tomorrow I'll add a pic of the fitting from the radiator to this post.... until then... I hope Hades is happy :biggrinjester:

You still have to buy extra shit to make it work..... that's pretty lame

:rofl:

I might... I just might... but you have good reason... it's in development.... when it's all done though I'm going to come down there, tear it all out and say - NOW DO IT AGAIN!!!!! with paint and powdercoat and ceramic coat and well.... you already got that Raychem so at least that's one thing that you don't have to do over ;) I wanna see it damnit

Shoulda tig welded it lol.

Ask and ye shall receive... :rofl:

http://www.illicitperformance.com/images/freshsexy.jpg

Always improving, wonderful! Definitely giving me ideas about my future setup :)

what is the gray "tank"? that would be under the UIM?

I hear you about the AST. Cummins is a whore about radiator fill and de-aeration testing.

More pictures. :suspect:

Vacuum and pressure tanks for the sequential twins. Not only did I not have a place to mount them cleanly, but if you look at and read through all of the sequential diagnosis (at least the ones I was seen years ago when I first started this ever lasting nightmare) no one ever mentioned testing of the tanks. One of the tanks I bought for volumne measurement WAS leaking. Makes me wonder how many people poorly running sequentials were dropped becuase of a bad tank. Anywho, I thought this was cleaner, more elegant, and probably got rid of some headaches as well.

It makes sense, that's a whole lotta load and heat. I think one of the reasons people overheat, blow engines, warp shit, whine, is because of airpockets trapped and creating hot spots. Just my thought though

Soon.... SOON...

good solution for the pressure / vac tanks.

we vacuum fill the trucks at work. Its still a challenge to get a good fill because of all of the variations of trucks we build. Its hard not to get an air pocket trapped until after the dyno. Still I wish I had a vacuum fill at home.

FYI - since you are banned.

Tom94RX-7 dyno'd his car on stock non-seq. twins (street ported).

411hp max. 386 max torque. @22.9 psi. the different runs is base, 2% less and 2% more boost to hit 411.

just thought it would be interesting compare your numbers once you are tuned. But then again you do have those BNR's now. what were your old numbers?

Thanks man.... I dunno what a vacuum fill is... but it sounds cool



nice sig btw :smilielol5:

Damn.... that's impressive but that is an ASSTON of boost!! Those turbo's won't last more than a few hundred mile at that boost level.... still though, impressive. He's also running a correction factor of 1.04, so pull the correction factor out and he's @ 395rwhp which is still impressive. I was @ 405 NS and 400 sequential and that was @ about 14-14.5 psi. I've got to get back now that we've got the BNR's on there and holding 17psi. One of the most impressive things about the BNR's was that it shifted the peak torque about 1000rpm. Peak torque was at about 7800... in other words, the thing just hauls ass and continues to accelerate till redline.

Oh, EMAP was reduced across the board as well, meaning that the BNR's are more effiecent that the stockers at any boost level. Need to get back on the dyno and get some real nuimbers then report back.

Brakes - Part 1 of 3
 

So tonight, to appease Hades we will be discussing my rear brakes..... These are what I believe one of the keys to significantly shortening stopping distances. I've NEVER been able to lock up the rears in this car regardless of how hard I tried, how many different pads I tried, it didn't matter, the rears just don't want to lock up. Hell, they don't even want to dust all that much! The brakes in the front are massive, and that's really just to deal with the heat, give me as much torque and clamping force as possible, and a WIDE selection of pads.

Here's what came from FastBrakes. We've got a set of custom hats, a pair of wilwood rotors - 12.2x.81", a pair of wilwood Combination P-Brake Calipers... single piston sliding with an ebrake mechanism, a Lokar e-brake cable kit and a set of wilwood BP-10 pads. Believe it or not, the stock... well, the stainless braided lines that I have fit perfectly. They just needed to be slightly re-clocked.

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305782919

Stock rotor on top, and the new bare rotors underneath..... more bigger = more gooder when it comes to brakes ;)

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305782919

You can see that the thickness of the disc is about the same. On the bottom is an assembled rotor, on the top is a bare rotor and the stock rotor ontop of it.

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305782919

Stock caliper in the wheel... as you can see there is plenty of room in there for something more gooder...

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305782919

Bare rear upright with the adapter bracket installed. I actually pulled those studs out and cut them a little shorter.... just because that's the way I am....

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305782919

And the installed rear kit in the wheel

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305782919

As you can see... there isn't much room for anything else....

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1305782919

The Ebrake cable kit was pretty damn easy to install. They had the wilwood caliper in mind when they designed it so mating it to the cali was pretty damn easy. I then ran the cables under and around the uprights, up along the swing arm and to that little sweet spot on the chassis where the stockers meet.... it really is a nice little kit. To attach it to the factory cable, I took the little block that was pre-drilled and tapped to use those little allen key set screws and welded that to the factory cable splitter. Then attached the cables, tightened them down and viola.... a wonderfully functioning e-brake.

Bleeding the calis was a PITA though, I mounted the left on the right and the right on the left to make it easier to run the e-brake cable. If I had mounted them on the proper sides..... the cable would've had to take a few really tight turns and I was afraid that it would wear fast, kink, not work very smoothly.

As you can imagine, bleeding a new caliper when the bleeder screw isn't on the top, can be a little................ time consuming I guess. Mazpower was intown and helping me out and he had a great idea.... cut a block of wood to wedge in the caliper to keep the piston from moving when you pull the cali off to bleed it. Damn good idea. I've since bought a really sweet little brake caliper service KIT that I can use to hold the pistons in place for bleeding.... pretty cool stuff. I keep finding myself tightening down the prop valve getting more and more braking force in the rear. One of these days I'll torture the car around a few local rds and quickly get out with my little lazer thermo-probe and decide if I need to bump up the rear pads. Sadly, there isn't a big selection of rear pads for this caliper. I'm thinking about buying the hotter set of pads and sending the pads I have now out to Carbotech... they claim they will build a pad for any caliper if they have a set of pads.... hmmmmmm... this is interesting for damn sure.

Anywho... that basically covers the rears... I'll try to get a few pics of the ebrake setup over the next day or two... I guess.... maybe..... GRASS!!!

just a fwe more pics....

we pull a vacuum on the system has its filled - in theory there should be no air trapped.

How well does practice line up with theory?

simple truck - pretty good.

when we have one with a lot of options like fuel fired sleeper heaters, fuel tank heaters, auxiliary power unit hook ups - then it becomes a little more complex. We have too much variation in the cooling system to define fixed amounts of coolant to add per truck.

Most car/truck systems are vacuum filled in the factories. We have less than 6 minutes to fill a truck. The car manufactures will have much less.

I did get to mess around with LNG fuel fill today. The fill hose is braided SS. It turned white from the frost that formed on it. Guess -235 deg F is cold.

Anyways - less about my work - more about your POS. More pictures!:biggrinjester:

maybe...... Tonight might be front brakes... or I may touch myself and go to sleep :rofl:

I just spent a bunch of money on dies to work with my new 12T something or other I picked up yesterday and have yet to assemble :suspect:

I hate you... I hate you for handing me the fastbrakes flyer... I hate you for causing me to add this to my spreadsheet.

:rofl: what's your addy? I'll send you some FastBrakes bottle openers and LED keychains that I found in the very bottom of the box....

Love them brakes... just don't like the pads.... must fix that issue and soon

beautiful car im currently building up a 13B-RE motor for my vert and ive got a carbed fb as a daily lol