Got the last miscellaneous bits done on the mustang tonight and back out of the garage/test drive around the neighborhood.
Here are pics of how I clearanced the front bumper so that it didn't block the top 1/3 of the intercooler. It is at about a 45* angle on the bottom, so still structural, just with a sweeping angle so air can still get into the cooler.
Got the car back together and worked on clearancing the front bumper for the tow strap. Decided the best way was to just F'it and just cut a small hole into the bumper. Easiest way to access it. Might go ahead and find or make some kind of cover for the hole, but for now its fine.
Can just tuck it in for daily driving then pull it out (woot) when at the track.
Everything back together:
Finally, picked up a set of new motive 3.90 gears for the rear end.
Now, I know a lot of people are going to say don't go 3.90s, that I need more load for the turbo, blah blah blah. The fact is, my turbo isn't huge. It spools just fine, and I get over 150% load on my engine already, so getting load into the engine isn't the issue. Looking at overall gear ratios compared to my WRX it will be almost identical to the mustang with the 3.90s and the t5 trans. Also, my turbo size to my engine size is about the same as the wrx engine to the wrx turbo, so I don't have any concern about the turbo being able to spool up. Its honestly a smaller size turbo as I'm not trying for high end hp, I want mid range for autox/trackdays, and also being more street friendly would be a lot nicer. Anyone who has driven a wrx will know their 1st and 2nd gear is where the money is, but then the stock ecu starts pulling boost out of the engine at higher loads and makes 3 and 4 not quite as fun. Anyways, long way of saying its worth the gamble to me for how my car is set up/what I want it to do.
been sitting on this car for the winter due to having to rebuild my old outback's engine after it ran out of oil and chewed up the cam bearings/snapped the camshaft.
After fixing that and making a little profit for my time, I have been saving up and buying some parts that I am finally working on putting in.
New Parts:
Rear maximum motorsports coilovers / revalved bilstein shocks
Eibach sway bars front/rear
Maximum motorsports adjustable rear swaybar links
Torsen T2R differential
3.90 Gears
Ford bearing kit / diff oil
Ford racing IRS cover
Managed to get all the IRS suspension parts out and the differential out of the car this weekend, should be able to get the new diff/gears installed during the week and hopefully start getting the rear end back together shortly. Also going to be fixing up the coolant hoses since they are a bit too wide and putting pressure on the couplers (they are solid steel coolant lines from the turbo conversion) and also a small oil pan leak that I will have to drop the front suspension to pull the pan out. The joys of project cars.
Made my pinion flange tool out of some 1/4" x 1" x 36" stock from lowes, just needed two holes and a bit of grinding to fit. Shouldn't be an issue to hold that when I need to torque the crush sleeve / check backlash.
been sitting on this car for the winter due to having to rebuild my old outback's engine after it ran out of oil and chewed up the cam bearings/snapped the camshaft.
After fixing that and making a little profit for my time, I have been saving up and buying some parts that I am finally working on putting in.
New Parts:
Rear maximum motorsports coilovers / revalved bilstein shocks
Eibach sway bars front/rear
Maximum motorsports adjustable rear swaybar links
Torsen T2R differential
3.90 Gears
Ford bearing kit / diff oil
Ford racing IRS cover
Managed to get all the IRS suspension parts out and the differential out of the car this weekend, should be able to get the new diff/gears installed during the week and hopefully start getting the rear end back together shortly. Also going to be fixing up the coolant hoses since they are a bit too wide and putting pressure on the couplers (they are solid steel coolant lines from the turbo conversion) and also a small oil pan leak that I will have to drop the front suspension to pull the pan out. The joys of project cars.
Made my pinion flange tool out of some 1/4" x 1" x 36" stock from lowes, just needed two holes and a bit of grinding to fit. Shouldn't be an issue to hold that when I need to torque the crush sleeve / check backlash.
Didn't do too much last night as a guy in the same complex stopped by to check out hte mustang and to show me his older 240 that he is workong on LS swapping.
Was trying to work on the diff on the bench, but it just wasn't having it. After going back and forth on how to work on it and making a jig to hold it, I looked in the corner at my engine stand and just said "duh". Got the cover off and drained it of the old gear oil, then started working on how to mount it. These are the little things that take an hour or so that you never plan on when working on a project car.
Little bit of angle iron and some 1/2" all thread mocked it up pretty well. 1/2" fit the front bushings/sleeve, and I just used a set of nuts/washers to set teh spacing dependent on the upper mount.
I still have to spread the case to get the diff out, on the IRS cars you have to spread the case I believe 0.030" to account for expansion when the differential is warm. Just gonna use some angle iron on either side and either some all thread or some spring compressors to hook onto the angle iron and then expand the case. Something like this:
Spent the weekend with a lot of friends so only limited work done on the mustang. Differential was being a real bitch.
Got the spreader set up and with that was able to get the diff and ring gear popped out. Still took a bit of heat and a pry bars on either side.
Now for the pinion gear. WHAT. A. BITCH.
Got the pinion flange off easy enough with my flange holder to get the nut off, and then got a 2jaw puller to pull the flange off.
Then the garage was filled with a lot of cursing since the pinion bearings wouldn't come off of the pinion gear. Wanted to save it so I could sell it, then the 2lb sledge came out for 15-20 mins, then I finally had to use my press to push it out of the housing finally with a thunderous pop.
The remaining end of the pinion shaft:
Once those were out the remaining bearing races came out really easy with the brass drift and hammer. No issue there surprisingly.
Tried to get the large bearing off of the pinion shaft but my press is too small to allow the pinion gear to slip through the holding bar, so I'll have to get that one off at work. Hoping that the reassembly of the parts goes much smoother than the disassembly.
Its been a while since I've been able to put some solid time in to getting this diff and housing together, but over the last two nights I got it all pretty much together.
Last night got the pinion races, small pinion bearing, oil slinger, and seal onto the back of the housing. Then got the pinion shim (Stock ford one) and the large pinion bearing pressed onto the pinion, then put in a new crush sleeve and took my time getting close to the correct preload. That was one son of a bitch to get right. Ended up with about 20-23inlbs, and target is 16-28inlbs of preload, so I'll take it.
Tonight I got the bearings onto the diff and torqued up all the bolts for the ring gear onto the diff. Started with my new spacers to start messing with backlash. Original diff spacing had 0.000" backlash, so I ended up having to mess wtih the shims multiple times, taking the caps off multiple times and pulling out the diff multiple times. What a process.
Ended up wtih right about 0.009" - 0.010" backlash around the gear (checked about 4-6 places). Target is 0.008" - 0.015", so I'm right on the tighter end where I want to be.
Initial reading:
Backlash:
Then checked the gear tooth pattern. rotated the diff around a full 5 rotations either way after marking up a bunch of teeth. Checked both the drive side and coast side. Both patterns are centered in the depth of the gear tooth. While the contact is a touch closer to the inside diameter than the outside diameter, both patterns are similar and considered to be acceptable gear patterns, so that't what I'm gonna go with.
Drive side (clamp shown for reference due to difficult pictures)
Coast side (again, clamp shown for reference)
Acceptable patterns: (mine is A)
All in all, it was nice to learn how to do it all. Would I do it again? idk. It was a pain in the ass. If you can find someone to do it for you for around $300 youre prob better off paying someone else to do it lol.
Got the cover drilled and tapped for the temp sender
Nice thing about this cover is that when I start doing more track sessions it will be easy to install a diff cooler later on down the line.
Got the cover onto the diff with high strength grey RTV (required due to the mounting of the cover/housing to the IRS frame).
And finally got my new gauge pod for the engine oil temp/diff temp gauges and all the wiring done up for them so they are ready to go in. Waiting on some new LEDs for the main gauge cluster.
I remember doing tooth patterns in college, we used that same chart. Awesome work and props for doing it right, keep it up.
Thanks. I'm glad I did it at least once. next time I may go about getting some quotes from shops before I decide to tackle another one lol. Time wise and schedule wise it took a lot longer than I thought it would.
Got a couple "fun" bits out of the way. After I got my extra gauges set up for blue lights, I had some time today waiting for a friend to come over to help me with the diff. All blue lights in the HVAC controls as well as the center stack gauges (makes the red pointer stand out way more than the red leds let them)
The main oem gauge cluster uses a different LED, so I ordered those as well. Should be able to finish up all the gauges later this week when they show up.
Then finally got this bastard into place. The new diff cover is a lot thicker, so getting it by the exhaust hanger mounts and the tie rod mounts was difficult, we ended up having to angle it in crooked on our backs, not fun.
Put the driveshaft on with some red loctite on the bolts. I put one axle in to just make sure it slid home as I have heard some cobra guys say there are a couple different torsen diffs out there and maybe some early model ones don't fit the IRS axles, but mine slid in just fine.
I have to pick up some new diff oil (i decided not to use the royal purple since I don't need and don't want to run it with the friction modifier). Will pick that up tomorrow, prelube the axle bearings on either side, fill the case, and then get all the IRS ends on, torqued and fuel tank back up into place.
Rear suspension / drivetrain / gas tank are all back in the car. No pics bc thats pretty boring. Been taking apart the front of the car so that I can drop the k member and drop the oil pan to redo the gasket since I have a small pin hole leak thats right by the crank pulley that is slinging the oil everywhere on the bottom of the car.
Last night I finished prepping the car for that and also getting the rest of the blue led conversion in on the gauges and running the wiring for the additional two oil temp gauges (one for engine one for diff)
That looks like a hell of a place to sit, definitely reached "Cockpit Status"
Love to see it coming along as spring is getting here!
Ya, there are quite a few gauges lol.
I would have preferred to put a couple of them in the glove box, but the glove box in these cars is pretty small/shallow, so there just wasn't enough depth for the gauges/wiring (at least the ones I have).
On these cars the engine oil pressure is redundant (its just an on/off switch once the pressure is over a set value, it reads OK), so I added that.
Then the water temp was added so that I can see the actual value since I have change the thermostat on the car from 194*F to 180*F.
EGT for the turbo since its oil cooled and I wait to turn the car off so that I don't coke the oil in the bearing.
AFR gauge and boost controller for the turbo/datalogging.
Diff oil temp bc that is a problem on these cars with the IRS since the IRS housing only hold 1.5 qts oil as compared to the solid axles 2.5qts, and the IRS exhaust runs right under the diff housing. At track sessions others have reported as high as 240-260*F diff oil temps, so I put this in now since I was already redoing the diff assembly. Later on I will probably be adding a diff oil cooler.
And finally engine oil temp since I have wanted to see where I am during autox sessions and eventually HPDE, and will also probably be adding an engine oil cooler in the future as well. My thought is to do similar to the OEMs though and use an engine coolant to engine oil cooler system vs an air to oil cooler system, still researching the best way to accomplish this. Few reasons for this is 1) heats the oil when cold, 2) cools the oil when too hot, and 3) doesn't take up space infront of the intercooler/radiator since the mustangs don't have a ton of air flow up front to begin with. Concerns would obviously be the oil and coolant mixing, but a proper cooler shouldn't have any issues.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Toph6888
Got the last miscellaneous bits done on the mustang tonight and back out of the garage/test drive around the neighborhood.
Here are pics of how I clearanced the front bumper so that it didn't block the top 1/3 of the intercooler. It is at about a 45* angle on the bottom, so still structural, just with a sweeping angle so air can still get into the cooler.
Got the car back together and worked on clearancing the front bumper for the tow strap. Decided the best way was to just F'it and just cut a small hole into the bumper. Easiest way to access it. Might go ahead and find or make some kind of cover for the hole, but for now its fine.
Can just tuck it in for daily driving then pull it out (woot) when at the track.
Everything back together:
Finally, picked up a set of new motive 3.90 gears for the rear end.
Now, I know a lot of people are going to say don't go 3.90s, that I need more load for the turbo, blah blah blah. The fact is, my turbo isn't huge. It spools just fine, and I get over 150% load on my engine already, so getting load into the engine isn't the issue. Looking at overall gear ratios compared to my WRX it will be almost identical to the mustang with the 3.90s and the t5 trans. Also, my turbo size to my engine size is about the same as the wrx engine to the wrx turbo, so I don't have any concern about the turbo being able to spool up. Its honestly a smaller size turbo as I'm not trying for high end hp, I want mid range for autox/trackdays, and also being more street friendly would be a lot nicer. Anyone who has driven a wrx will know their 1st and 2nd gear is where the money is, but then the stock ecu starts pulling boost out of the engine at higher loads and makes 3 and 4 not quite as fun. Anyways, long way of saying its worth the gamble to me for how my car is set up/what I want it to do.
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Toph6888
been sitting on this car for the winter due to having to rebuild my old outback's engine after it ran out of oil and chewed up the cam bearings/snapped the camshaft.
After fixing that and making a little profit for my time, I have been saving up and buying some parts that I am finally working on putting in.
New Parts:
Rear maximum motorsports coilovers / revalved bilstein shocks
Eibach sway bars front/rear
Maximum motorsports adjustable rear swaybar links
Torsen T2R differential
3.90 Gears
Ford bearing kit / diff oil
Ford racing IRS cover
Managed to get all the IRS suspension parts out and the differential out of the car this weekend, should be able to get the new diff/gears installed during the week and hopefully start getting the rear end back together shortly. Also going to be fixing up the coolant hoses since they are a bit too wide and putting pressure on the couplers (they are solid steel coolant lines from the turbo conversion) and also a small oil pan leak that I will have to drop the front suspension to pull the pan out. The joys of project cars.
Made my pinion flange tool out of some 1/4" x 1" x 36" stock from lowes, just needed two holes and a bit of grinding to fit. Shouldn't be an issue to hold that when I need to torque the crush sleeve / check backlash.
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Toph6888
been sitting on this car for the winter due to having to rebuild my old outback's engine after it ran out of oil and chewed up the cam bearings/snapped the camshaft.
After fixing that and making a little profit for my time, I have been saving up and buying some parts that I am finally working on putting in.
New Parts:
Rear maximum motorsports coilovers / revalved bilstein shocks
Eibach sway bars front/rear
Maximum motorsports adjustable rear swaybar links
Torsen T2R differential
3.90 Gears
Ford bearing kit / diff oil
Ford racing IRS cover
Managed to get all the IRS suspension parts out and the differential out of the car this weekend, should be able to get the new diff/gears installed during the week and hopefully start getting the rear end back together shortly. Also going to be fixing up the coolant hoses since they are a bit too wide and putting pressure on the couplers (they are solid steel coolant lines from the turbo conversion) and also a small oil pan leak that I will have to drop the front suspension to pull the pan out. The joys of project cars.
Made my pinion flange tool out of some 1/4" x 1" x 36" stock from lowes, just needed two holes and a bit of grinding to fit. Shouldn't be an issue to hold that when I need to torque the crush sleeve / check backlash.
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Toph6888
Didn't do too much last night as a guy in the same complex stopped by to check out hte mustang and to show me his older 240 that he is workong on LS swapping.
Was trying to work on the diff on the bench, but it just wasn't having it. After going back and forth on how to work on it and making a jig to hold it, I looked in the corner at my engine stand and just said "duh". Got the cover off and drained it of the old gear oil, then started working on how to mount it. These are the little things that take an hour or so that you never plan on when working on a project car.
Little bit of angle iron and some 1/2" all thread mocked it up pretty well. 1/2" fit the front bushings/sleeve, and I just used a set of nuts/washers to set teh spacing dependent on the upper mount.
I still have to spread the case to get the diff out, on the IRS cars you have to spread the case I believe 0.030" to account for expansion when the differential is warm. Just gonna use some angle iron on either side and either some all thread or some spring compressors to hook onto the angle iron and then expand the case. Something like this:
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caseyctsv
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zeitgeist57
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Toph6888
Spent the weekend with a lot of friends so only limited work done on the mustang. Differential was being a real bitch.
Got the spreader set up and with that was able to get the diff and ring gear popped out. Still took a bit of heat and a pry bars on either side.
Now for the pinion gear. WHAT. A. BITCH.
Got the pinion flange off easy enough with my flange holder to get the nut off, and then got a 2jaw puller to pull the flange off.
Then the garage was filled with a lot of cursing since the pinion bearings wouldn't come off of the pinion gear. Wanted to save it so I could sell it, then the 2lb sledge came out for 15-20 mins, then I finally had to use my press to push it out of the housing finally with a thunderous pop.
The remaining end of the pinion shaft:
Once those were out the remaining bearing races came out really easy with the brass drift and hammer. No issue there surprisingly.
Tried to get the large bearing off of the pinion shaft but my press is too small to allow the pinion gear to slip through the holding bar, so I'll have to get that one off at work. Hoping that the reassembly of the parts goes much smoother than the disassembly.
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Toph6888
Its been a while since I've been able to put some solid time in to getting this diff and housing together, but over the last two nights I got it all pretty much together.
Last night got the pinion races, small pinion bearing, oil slinger, and seal onto the back of the housing. Then got the pinion shim (Stock ford one) and the large pinion bearing pressed onto the pinion, then put in a new crush sleeve and took my time getting close to the correct preload. That was one son of a bitch to get right. Ended up with about 20-23inlbs, and target is 16-28inlbs of preload, so I'll take it.
Tonight I got the bearings onto the diff and torqued up all the bolts for the ring gear onto the diff. Started with my new spacers to start messing with backlash. Original diff spacing had 0.000" backlash, so I ended up having to mess wtih the shims multiple times, taking the caps off multiple times and pulling out the diff multiple times. What a process.
Ended up wtih right about 0.009" - 0.010" backlash around the gear (checked about 4-6 places). Target is 0.008" - 0.015", so I'm right on the tighter end where I want to be.
Initial reading:
Backlash:
Then checked the gear tooth pattern. rotated the diff around a full 5 rotations either way after marking up a bunch of teeth. Checked both the drive side and coast side. Both patterns are centered in the depth of the gear tooth. While the contact is a touch closer to the inside diameter than the outside diameter, both patterns are similar and considered to be acceptable gear patterns, so that't what I'm gonna go with.
Drive side (clamp shown for reference due to difficult pictures)
Coast side (again, clamp shown for reference)
Acceptable patterns: (mine is A)
All in all, it was nice to learn how to do it all. Would I do it again? idk. It was a pain in the ass. If you can find someone to do it for you for around $300 youre prob better off paying someone else to do it lol.
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Toph6888
Some better pictures of the contact pattern:
Drive side:
Coast Side:
Got the cover drilled and tapped for the temp sender
Nice thing about this cover is that when I start doing more track sessions it will be easy to install a diff cooler later on down the line.
Got the cover onto the diff with high strength grey RTV (required due to the mounting of the cover/housing to the IRS frame).
And finally got my new gauge pod for the engine oil temp/diff temp gauges and all the wiring done up for them so they are ready to go in. Waiting on some new LEDs for the main gauge cluster.
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Alex L.
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Toph6888
Thanks. I'm glad I did it at least once. next time I may go about getting some quotes from shops before I decide to tackle another one lol. Time wise and schedule wise it took a lot longer than I thought it would.
Got a couple "fun" bits out of the way. After I got my extra gauges set up for blue lights, I had some time today waiting for a friend to come over to help me with the diff. All blue lights in the HVAC controls as well as the center stack gauges (makes the red pointer stand out way more than the red leds let them)
The main oem gauge cluster uses a different LED, so I ordered those as well. Should be able to finish up all the gauges later this week when they show up.
Then finally got this bastard into place. The new diff cover is a lot thicker, so getting it by the exhaust hanger mounts and the tie rod mounts was difficult, we ended up having to angle it in crooked on our backs, not fun.
Put the driveshaft on with some red loctite on the bolts. I put one axle in to just make sure it slid home as I have heard some cobra guys say there are a couple different torsen diffs out there and maybe some early model ones don't fit the IRS axles, but mine slid in just fine.
I have to pick up some new diff oil (i decided not to use the royal purple since I don't need and don't want to run it with the friction modifier). Will pick that up tomorrow, prelube the axle bearings on either side, fill the case, and then get all the IRS ends on, torqued and fuel tank back up into place.
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Toph6888
Rear suspension / drivetrain / gas tank are all back in the car. No pics bc thats pretty boring. Been taking apart the front of the car so that I can drop the k member and drop the oil pan to redo the gasket since I have a small pin hole leak thats right by the crank pulley that is slinging the oil everywhere on the bottom of the car.
Last night I finished prepping the car for that and also getting the rest of the blue led conversion in on the gauges and running the wiring for the additional two oil temp gauges (one for engine one for diff)
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99StockGT
That looks like a hell of a place to sit, definitely reached "Cockpit Status"
Love to see it coming along as spring is getting here!
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Ya, there are quite a few gauges lol.
I would have preferred to put a couple of them in the glove box, but the glove box in these cars is pretty small/shallow, so there just wasn't enough depth for the gauges/wiring (at least the ones I have).
On these cars the engine oil pressure is redundant (its just an on/off switch once the pressure is over a set value, it reads OK), so I added that.
Then the water temp was added so that I can see the actual value since I have change the thermostat on the car from 194*F to 180*F.
EGT for the turbo since its oil cooled and I wait to turn the car off so that I don't coke the oil in the bearing.
AFR gauge and boost controller for the turbo/datalogging.
Diff oil temp bc that is a problem on these cars with the IRS since the IRS housing only hold 1.5 qts oil as compared to the solid axles 2.5qts, and the IRS exhaust runs right under the diff housing. At track sessions others have reported as high as 240-260*F diff oil temps, so I put this in now since I was already redoing the diff assembly. Later on I will probably be adding a diff oil cooler.
And finally engine oil temp since I have wanted to see where I am during autox sessions and eventually HPDE, and will also probably be adding an engine oil cooler in the future as well. My thought is to do similar to the OEMs though and use an engine coolant to engine oil cooler system vs an air to oil cooler system, still researching the best way to accomplish this. Few reasons for this is 1) heats the oil when cold, 2) cools the oil when too hot, and 3) doesn't take up space infront of the intercooler/radiator since the mustangs don't have a ton of air flow up front to begin with. Concerns would obviously be the oil and coolant mixing, but a proper cooler shouldn't have any issues.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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Miller
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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.
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