Toph6888

Ive had my WRX wagon for about two years and I still really enjoy it. Its the 2014 hatchback, basic bolt on car (turbo back exhaust/intake/cobb tune/lowering springs/wheels&tires). Its not the fastest car out there by any means, but I have had a fun time in it for daily stuff, and the hatch has been super usable/handy. Lots of space inside when you fold down the rear seats, and comfortable seats to me. Be prepared to pay a bit extra for a hatch though if you want it because they seem to keep a higher value since they don't offer a new WRX with a hatch. I haven't had any engine issues (ringlands) like others have, but I also keep up on oil changes and don't get on it till it warms up and don't get on it and shut it off immediately,maybe I'm just lucky. I find them easier to work on, but parts can be a bit $$ depending on what part it is.

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Looks like it uses the Bosch 4.2 sensor based on the connectors. It has all of 3-5k miles on it. This part number isn't the molded one in the gauge, its actually the AEM 4100 gauge pack.

Aem wideband. Had it in my turbo mustang, now doing an engine swap so I don't need it anymore. Worked really well. Price is or best offer. Located around Dublin. Includes both the sensor, gauge, and both wiring looms. The interior wiring loom also has the 5v output to datalog afr with a handheld that can log auxiliaries.

Looks for some leads on where to get a good price on a Ford Mustang coyote engine, 2011+ 5.0L. Looking for a friends side project. If any one has some hook ups or can get a good deal on used engines let me know. Pick and pull isn't gonna cut it on this one lol.

PM'd

AN brake lines were the way to go. I did the same thing, looks good. Much easier to deal with if you ever do have an issue in the future.

Lockton gets cheaper if you're running a lower price car. Fiancé' mini with value of $12k was $85, my mustang with listed mods and $15k value was also $85 for carfest. Thankfully for the mustang my parts transfer over to any new edge mustang (or even fox body really) so for track if I trash it it's only $1500-3k for a clean body and swap all the parts over

Damn, sorry to hear. My fiance and I were out there Friday, but we were both going pretty slow as it was our first time. What day were you out there? I was assuming this might have been due to the oil spill on saturday, but that was at the keyhole, not turn 12. Hope you get it all figured out.

Went to Mid Ohio this weekend for Carfest 2016. Did acclimation program (super novice) on Friday on track at Mid Ohio, and then did all the autocross sessions on Saturday AM/PM and Sunday AM / Sunday PM (BMC event). Fiance was with me too in her mini, she had a blast. It was tough getting her there, but she got comfortable once she realized how the passing worked. Overall it was a great weekend and a lot of fun to finally get the car on the track that it was built for. Either the 3rd or 4th session I got the car up to 120mph on the back straight easily before my instructor suggest I focus more on learning the line than trying for top speed lol. I was able to do 120 at or just after the kink, so the car still has some power in her which was fun to find out. By the 3rd and 4th session we were finally getting some speed in the corners and really feeling what the car was doing, overall it did better than I thought it would. Responded very well and any time that it was about to step out it was easy to bring it right back in. During the 4th session my shifter took a shit though. On the back straight we were going about 110 and I was in 5th, started slowing down for the turn out of the straight and reached to shift down from 5th to 4th and the shifter was jelly. Tried for 3rd, no luck, tried for 5th, no luck, coasted around the next two turns, and then finally got it into 4th and just stayed there the whole session. Thankfully the car made plenty of torque and I was able to keep the speed up enough to where they were actually some of our better runs. Pulled it in the pits and it was done-zo. A bunch of set screws that set spring tension had backed out and some of the plastic bushings were gone. Neat. Missed out on the 5th session of the day, but a friend was coming up for the sat/sun sessions so he stopped at jegs and brought me a steeda tri ax shifter that we replaced sat am. Much better than the cheap $50 shifter I had been using for the past 2.5 years. Busted shifter Overnight parts from japan, err, columbus Main take away from the track day was to just get more comfortable with braking and carrying more speed through the corners which will come once I can get some more seat time. Also, after the session coolant temps were great (180-190*F on the track at all times) but oil pressure was starting to get a bit low off track (oil temps around 210-220*F, no cooler and oil pressure around 20psi) so my instructor suggested trying to run 5W40 over my current 5W30 to try to help keep the pressure up on the track when warm. Autocross sessions were pretty fun, had some good competition on a very fun (but short) course with a ton of elevation change for the size Best run from Sunday AM: Best run from Sunday PM (this was a buckeye miata club points event, so they changed the course up a little bit): Finally starting to feel comfortable with the car on the autox, but still need to get comfortable with braking later/accelerating through corners better. Overall everything held up great! Will hopefully be able to make 2 or 3 track days next year at mid ohio and start finding some more time.

My fiance has an 09 Cooper S, and ultimately the main saving grace on it is I can do the work myself on it. It has 50k miles on it, and I've put in a clutch, timing chain and thermostat housing. From what I have learned, be ready to pay a lot for parts, and when something needs done just pull the whole engine / trans (actually really easy on these cars as the whole front clip comes off as one piece) and just replace everything when its off of the car. The thing that sucks about the manual is at least the second gen had a dual mass flywheel, which you can't get turned/resurfaced, so be ready to buy a flywheel everytime, and the clutches don't seem to last that long as it is (we replaced hers at ~42-45kmiles, but other minis have had clutch repairs as early as 20-30k miles). We put in a solid mass flywheel though that we can turn, and it was half the cost of the dual mass. We haven't had any issues with it. The R53 engine was a bit more of a pain to work on from what I have seen in the forums. Plus to me the R56 with the turbo response is way better than the R53 supercharger response. I was not impressed with the supercharger at all, it took a lot of clutch work to get it going. We tried multiple (so don't say it was just a weird one) before we got the R56 with the turbo. Engine work aside, the car has been awesome. Regularly gets great gas mileage, is surprisingly big inside, and fun to drive around some corners. The alignment from the factory is definitely set up to understeer like a pig. A rear sway bar and alignment adjustment takes care of this. I still look at getting one every now and then to strip and run as a race car only just because they are a blast to throw around, and the parts aren't terrible figuring its a Euro car.

Spent a lot of time fixing up some issues on the mustang since the last autox. Last BMC event, about halfway through the run I lost most of my brakes. Neat. Thankfully I had already shed a lot of speed and was able to get it back to the pits, and was then able to limp it home. After reviewing what happened, I realized I had a clusterfuck of parts all around the power steering reservoir/master cylinder. 1) The battery connection from the trunk battery wire to the starter/fuse box was right under the master cylinder. Some shade tree mechanic (who me? couldn't be! then who? Ya I did it) decided to get a replacement bolt on terminal connection, clamp the starter/fuse wire onto said terminal connection, bolt the terminal connection to the socket on the battery wire, and then electrical tape the shit out of it. SOLID. 2) The master cylinder lines had been remade and overall were ok, but during hard braking the master cylinder would flex so much that the lines would rub up against the electrical connection for the battery/fuse box/starter. Neat. Also, there wasn't enough flex in the hard lines to really allow this much movement. 3) During hard braking, due to the hydroboost and the "vent to atmosphere" power steering reservoir cap, whenever I would slam the brakes, a small jet of power steering fluid would shoot out of the cap. The best part of this: it was aimed directly at said master cylinder hard lines and the electrical terminal. So essentially over time the power steering fluid destroyed the electrical tape, and a small metal edge made its way through the tape due to the rubbing against the master cylinder lines. The master cylinder lines was that replacement Ni/Cu hard line, so it was softer than steel lines, and the electrical terminal eventually ate its way through and poked a hole in the brake line = loss of front brakes. NEAT. Second win: Because the electrical terminal was now slightly exposed, I realized why sometimes during hard braking I would lose my gauges, and that was because the battery terminal was shorting out against the frame. SECOND NEAT. So the past two weeks I have been working on moving EVERYTHING away from that area that I can. Bought a new battery connection box and mounted up out of the way of everything. Then I moved the valve cover catch can to where my AC big bottle thing (maybe an expander?) since I don't have AC in the car, and that moves it to a much easier to deal with location on the passenger side firewall. Next I put in my new wilwood adjustable proportioning valve. Decided to say fuck hard lines all together and bought all -3AN lines to replace everything. I decided to go this route because I already did the rears and have had no loss in pedal feel, even though everyone says I'm gonna die with soft lines "expanding", and because if I do have issues with losing a line again, it will be easy to replace. Getting all the right adapter fittings sucked, but I got it all bled last night and everything feels pretty good. And finally, I bought a new reservoir cap for the power steering fluid, drilled a hole, put in a brass fitting and used epoxy to seal/hold it in, and then bought a master cylinder reservoir for a motorcycle and ran a line as a secondary catch can for any power steering fluid that hence tries to escape the system. Seems like a lot of BMW guys do similar things on their cars... I have another autocross this weekend on Sunday, so hopefully all these changes help the car in terms of dependability. Still need to play with the prop valve to get it proportioned right, but should be able to take care of that on Saturday.

I have one suggestion for your brake lines, and that's bc you are mounting the prop valve to the frame, and the master cylinder is on the brake booster/firewall. I am currently replacing those hard lines because during hard braking my fire wall would flex and cause the booster/master cylinder to flex up and down, causing the brake line to get fatigued and one of them to finally get a tiny hole in it, which obviously stopped my brakes from working. I would suggest making the lines longer from the master to the prop valve and also bending a circle into the line to give it a bit of "flex section" so that you hopefully won't have the same issue I'm dealing with right now. Awesome build and can't wait to see it done!

Finally got the car onto the alignment rack at my work. Overall the alignment wasn't as bad as I thought in terms of camber/caster, but the tires definitely were pointing all different directions. Before: After: Note: it looks like toe in the front is off, but the rack has plates that allow the car to move, so after I adjusted the front, I adjusted the rear, and the slight movement changed the reading on the front from side to side. There is a total of 1/16" of toe out, 1/32" on either side. I talked with some other guys about my mounting of my front control arms since my K member has two allocations for mounting, and I have it currently in the lower one. My front control arms are almost level with the ground with the car being slightly lowered, so they suggested that I put the control arms in the upper mounting location to try to improve roll center, so I'll probably work on that later this weekend. I also had put camber bolts into the struts to arch the wheel away from the coilover due to extremely tight clearances. The only problem with that now is that I can only get about -1.7*camber on the driver side on the top hats, so I'll have to take some camber back out of the bolt to let me put it in on the tophat. Hopefully that all makes sense lol.

Video from buckeye miata club today. As others who were there noticed, the course was extremely tight and i learned i desperately need an alignment, still a lot of fun though. Mustang is running strong and i think its finaslly through its shakedown as there really isnt anything the car needs besides more run time for me to get more seat time.

Taken care of a couple small things. First up was getting some 17x9 rims to replace the 17x8 rims that my 255/40R17 tires were on to get a bit better use out of the tires. Went with reproduction 1995 cobra rims, pretty happy with how they look. They all also balanced out really well, each only needing about 1/2oz to 1oz of wheel weights to be good to go. Last night I finally got around to putting on my new front coil springs. When I first got them, I purchased them with 14" tall 150lb/in springs. These were super soft driving on them, and going around corners at autox would see a lot of body roll, not to mention a lot of up and down during braking/acceleration. Put in 10" tall 350lb/in springs to replace them. Changing them out is pretty simple. Undo strut bolt, drop down control arm, remove old spring, put on new spring, reassemble. Old spring on left, new spring on right. Didn't know where the car would end up height wise with the different lengths of springs involved and the different spring rates/preload, so I just put them up all the way. Ended up with about 3" of wheel gap lol Adjusted the heights and we are good to go. Looking at 14" of height from fender to wheel center on the front, 14-1/8" on the rear. Or about 1.5" wheel gap front/back. Not into that slammed lifestyle, and I would rather have the available shock travel. This is about 1.5" lower than stock height. Gonna be at BMC this weekend to see how it all works now.

Been a hot couple days. First up, Buckeye Miata club autocross. I knew going in being able to control the backend on the car was going to be my difficulty due to how it likes to step out. Really was trying to focus on my braking lines, and ended up with a best of 45.90x. Not super competitve in the "fast" class, but its hard to compete when a bunch of the other guys were running slicks and I'm on 200TW tires. Super fun day though. My fastest lap of the day: My issue with the slaloms on one of the runs and getting a bit TOO greedy lol: Next up, Tuning! I went to Dyno Tune motorsports to have Brian dial in the afr curve and to start playing with some boost/timing now that I have the fuel to support it. I will start off with changes since I did my last tune: Went to stock camshaft, HPX slot style maf, 60lb injectors, twin 340lph fuel pumps, torsen differential, 3.90 gears to replace the stock cobra 3.55. Still running on 93, and after multiple suggestions from Brian may start looking into E85 more. Car ended up making 311rwhp and 350rwtq. Timing was 15*, 90*F ambient, 110*F intake temps. So a pretty hot day to try to be making some power. Power does come on quicker faster with the stock cam, and I have some other street logs where the car pulls a lot harder down low with the stock cam vs the other one. Old Dyno Graph (11/22/13, weather was ~50*F out that day) New Dyno Graph (6/20/16, 90*F ambient) Dyno Run (fun BOV noises) Had some issues with boost controller not wanting to work on the dyno. Started with 8psi spring to make sure afr and spark were where we wanted them. Then did a small adjustment on boost controller, still 8 psi, another small adjustment, and shot way up to 16psi. Instead of trying to mess with the boost controller I had my 12psi spring with me, so we put that on. 14* timing was good, put another degree into it and made some more power and the final result. Overall I'm happy with how linear the curves are since its set up for the track, so I'm hoping it should be very predictable when whipping around some curves. Based on how the dyno looked, the cam is definitly dying off at the top end. Will look into maybe trying to find a cam profile that can give me the same response but still hold out up top. Wondering if the turbo is getting a bit limited up top as well. In the end, the car isn't so much setup for power producting (Could have had a v8) but the real money in the car is in the suspension/drivetrain and its really set up for going around tracks, and its been a blast so far with the Hankook RS3 tires and nothing is breaking, so I cant complain too much. Next year though, probably going E85.

Been making some small touch ups on the car. 1) Replaced the soft brake lines with stainless ones (required some new hard lines since my original 16yr old ones did not want to cooperate) 2) Got some whine from the diff, but overall its not too bad. Depending on how it does during the rest of the season I may try to pull it out during the winter, or just deal with it. 3) Been working on the tune a bit. Originally in boost the car wouldn't even register on the AFR gauge, it was showing super right (< 10:1 afr). Got the maf curve dialed in a bit to where I'm around 11:1 in boost now. Also got the spark dialed in to about 12-14* timing in boost to keep it conservative for now. 4) I purchased some spare 17" rims a bit ago, and finally paid to get some 255/40R17 Hankook RS3 for some autox/track tires. Took them and mounted them up at work. 5) took it to kilkare autox on 6/10. The main goals were to a) make it to the autox, b) run all 10 runs of the autox, and c) make it home from the autox. The car handled really well and you could really tell a difference in the car with the 3.90 gears, torsen, and coilover/swaybar setup. It was very predictable to drive, easily controllable, and came to center almost instantly after turns. Will take a bit to get used to, but hopefully will start putting up some quick times. video of one of the runs: Fiance ran her mini and had a good time too. She is realizing now that she has summer tires (direzzas) that her suspension needs some work (lots of body roll) 6) I will be at BMC this sunday, and the Monday after (6/20) I will be going back to dynotune motorsports to get the tune dialed in more. Hopefully get the car up higher in boost to try to hit my 400-450 hp/tq targets.

How many years did it take to finish all the welds on that intake manifold, mother of god.... Looks good!

I purchased these seats last year, and while they have been great seats I want to go a different direction with the car now (looking more like roll bar/fixed backs). The seats are Corbeau A4 WIDE seats, with 1" foam removed from the bottom seat to allow you to sit lower in the car. I'm 6'3", so that extra clearance is pretty noticeable. There's still plenty of foam for the bottom of the seat too so its not like you're going to be uncomfortable riding in them. They are mounted on 99-04 mustang seat rails, and also have the attachements for the stock seat belt connectors. They will also bolt into 79-94 mustangs I believe. They also have the double locking slider that is required by a lot of racing groups. The only issue is just a touch of wear on the boltster on the driver's seat, pictured below. I don't have to sell, and I'm not willing to ship as they are such large items. I am located in Columbus OH, and willing to travel about 45-60 mins outside of columbus to make the right deal. Looking to get $900 for them. New with the options they are $1200 with the sliders, and being only a year old they are in great condition. If interested and want to see more photos just let me know and I'll get them to you as soon as I can. Currently still in the car, so if you want to try sitting in them thats fine too. The only thing included in the sale are the seats, rails, and brackets. There will be no harnesses/seat belt buckles included. Driver Seat Minor Bolster wear: Passenger Seat

I have the dws on my Wrx. I've never had any issue with them on the street, and while autocross isn't great, it's not like you are pushing a terrible tire, definitely an all season I will probably get again for my stock rims.

Any update on the time lists for this event? Just curious to see where some of my friends who I didn't get to watch ended up.

Got the car finished up and back on the ground. Thursday night when it was still on stands I let it get up to operating temp and everything was going well, turned it off, went to put the wheels and tires on and the upper coolant hose coupler didn't hold tight enough and popped off. It was a 1.675" id coupler with an adapter to go down to 1.5", so that didn't hold. Got a new 1.5" silicone coupler on it last night and that held tight. Got the wheels and tires on and its back on the ground. Took it around the block and everything seems to be running well. Gears are a little whiney right now, but no more than the transmission gears are. The rear gears were set up a little close on teh backlash, so hopefully during break in it spaces out a bit and settles in. Rear is just a little high with the coilovers, so I will have to drop those down about 1" and that should level the car out pretty well. After that a touch up on the alignment and a little tuning on the maf curve and it should be ready to womp on this summer. No more immediate plans for it other than drive the piss out of it and hopefully have nothing break haha.

Been working on some of the other miscellaneous stuff on the mustang. Over the weekend we dropped the k member to drop the oil pan to replace the gasket on it since it has had a pin hole leak right by the crank and slinging oil all over the place. All the rods looked nice and straight and there was no obvious wear on teh cylinders from teh bottom, so looks like I'm not pushing the engine hard enough yet. No metal in the pan and no metal in the pickup, so that was great to see lol. Got that all put back together and got the new sway bar up on front. That took a bit longer since I had to cut out the old swaybar mounts (they were some of the few remaining stock bolts on this car) and then get new carriage bolts to put up to hold the swaybar to the frame. The last part was redoing my water pipe/hose since i was getting a small leak by teh coupler at the water pump inlet. When I put the new radiator in it was narrower than the previous radiator, so I was getting strain on the pipes/couplers. I tried cutting and figuring out a new hard way to mount the pipes, then my friend came over and asked why I didn't do a single 90* bend, and I honestly had no good reason not to, so I did. Super simple fix. Have a good inch of clearance to the radiator fan, exhaust merge and exhaust dump pipes, so I'll call that a win. Got the new oil temp sender in. I know its not the best place for it, but for now it will be fine. I bought the gauge just as a placeholder for now anyways, when/if I need to get an oil cooler I will install the temp gauge in the sandwhich plate of the kit and then have a proper location for the oil temp sender. Right now its just in the drain plug. Got all of the last bits put together on the engine like the exhaust and some electrical connections, only thing left is finishing the upper radiator hose (just gotta clean up some cuts) and then should be able to fill with oil/coolant and start it up tonight. Might actually make May 1st at buckeye miata club.

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