hmmm
but-****-man

3 words that probably shouldnt be used together


nice write up though keep it comming


Its about time someone has done somthing like this


*v8kilr starts chanting praise mar3*

 

good stuff so far.. So no run without the flap?

And.. the more I see them wheels the more I wish i had some...

 

Sorry for the delay, familial responsibilities torched all of my scheduled fun for today...

As mentioned previously in a past "rim" thread, when I first put the Weds on both the '84 red rex and this '83 RX-7, Furious Rex, I had tire rubbing problems. On the '84, it was the rear only. On Furious, it was both front and back wheelwells. Very strange. Anyway, one solution to tire rubbing problems when you're "stuck" with a particular wheel and tire combo is to roll the inner sheetmetal lip on the offending wheelwell. To do this "fenderwell rolled lip" styling mod, you'll need

• Floorjack or some means of raising the car to remove wheel on fenderwell lip to be worked on
• Floor jacks
• Sockets or keys for whatever lug bolts or lug nuts holding your rims to the discs/drums
• Torque wrench
• 3M Masking tape or better yet, that crazy blue tape that construction workers use to note repairs on new house interior walls
• Metal body working "dolly" or 2" X 4" X 4" block piece of wood
• Hard plastic faced hammer...in a pinch, you could use a rag doubled and fastened to the head of a normal hammer

The procedure loosely described...

• Raise the car on level, flat ground to get the wheels off the ground on the front or rear half of the car that has the rubbing problem
• Secure on jackstands...this point can never be emphasized enough...DO NOT trust your floorjack or whatever to keep the car in the air while you work. It's never a good idea in any circumstance and especially for this mod.
• Remove the wheel to get a clear work space around the fenderwell
• Use the masking tape to cover and "hold" the paint in the area to be rolled...best advice is to look for black marks or shiny areas on the fenderwell lip that will show you exactly where the tire is hitting and then go 2" further than those points to get clearance...here's how far I decided to tape off my fender
  
  
  
• Obviously, you'll be using the hammer to pound the sheetmetal lip up, then back on itself to get a "rolled" edge. Not so obvious is that a dolly or wood block should be on that outside taped fender edge opposite the hammer blows to control the energy of said mighty blows and help the paint from splitting. Take your time, start from the center and work to the front and back sides
• Once done, peel the tape off the fenderweel...don't let it sit there for more than a day or let it get wet before removing the tape
• Put your wheel rim back on and you're finished. Check for your specific torque settings, but cast aluminum wheels are generally torqued to 50, 65, then 80 ft.lbs

Here's my rolled fender showing no paint damage to the outside...this is an old hot-rodder trick that works rather well...




OK, what's that buzz?

 

Sorry, just trying to build anticipation..lol...

After the two base line runs, Chris was kind enough to let me scramble around on the dyno platform since no other cars were waiting to get tested. The modified air cleaner with the thermal coil and air flapper removed was put on the engine and hooked up. I should mention that the K&N air filter was magnificently dirty, so a new stock replacement paper Fram air filter was used for all three pulls here. The swap done, I got off the platform and then stepped back to see what and/or how big of a restriction that flapper was to engine efficiency. If you can see the monitor screen, the green arrow points to the "pie" image that is the "tach" hitting 7100 rpm...

Third run with modded air cleaner, no air flapper...




Final graph with the good news...




A 3 HP gain at the rear wheels...IOW, this simple, no money mod is worth 5 horsepower now documented for historical purposes. Flywheel horsepower for this mod comes out to 104.67 for the interested.

As much as I wanted to put some smaller "cross" rims I had brought with me to see what kind of HP the Weds were eating, Chris told me the Dynojet software compensated for any tire diameter and gear ratios under load so a difference would never be seen, to answer '79+'80+'84_rx-7's question.

My next move is bolder...I plan to take the two air cleaners and the cross rims to my local community college's parking lot this weekend to test a controversial point.

Namely, just how accurate are those G-Tech meters? I have the original one and I know how to set it up, so it's just a matter of doing the tests and running before the cops show up...

Thanks for the many compliments on the rims. The story on how I got them is pretty interesting in itself...one of those "right place, right time" stories...

Last but not least since we see these kinds of threads started almost every week...

 

Back to infamous dowel pin oil leak. The oil leak was atrocious at the beginning and I decided last year to test the JBWeld theory that the uninformed believed would solve the problem. I knew it wouldn't, but you never know for sure until you do it, right?
Well, JBWeld won't cure it, so don't bother. After I fixed the clutch hydraulics (Detailed story a little bit later...), the clutch itself got progressively worse and couldn't hold the engine or got stuck inbetween gears. Talking to Scalliwag at the DFW/every other Car Forum in the Metroplex car meet on March 6th, he thought the pilot bearing or clutch fork may have been on its way out, also for the gear problems.
On this particular problem, I farmed the job out to Sportscar Performance of Arlington, TX. I eBay'd a complete clutch kit and then delivered the car to them with the engine spinning happily and the smell of clutch in the air...the time factor prevented me from tackling this myself, but I wasn't looking forward to popping that flywheel either which was necessary to attempt 680RWHP12A's on-the-cheap fix for the dowel pin oil leak.

The problem here is that no one knows a specific torque to tighten the four tension bolts around that "ear" where the dowel pin resides. Robert could only say to tighten until you feel them stretch. Since Joe at Sportscar works on vintage Lola's and a customer 60's Brabham F1 car on top of his regular mechanic work, I felt confident he would have the "touch." As it turned out, he took the bolts, normally torqued to 24 - 33 ft.lbs each, to 56 ft.lbs before he heard them creaking and stopped. This slowed down the leak tremendously, but did not eliminate it...

The reason I bring all this up now is related to dyno day. With the car getting to and holding 7200 rpm easy, the fix doesn't really hold up...look at dis...




That's just from the three runs...in conclusion, I'd say the bolts need to be torqued higher than 56 ft.lbs and will update the true figure once this engine dies and I have it out of the car. I'll torque that ear area tension bolts and spin the engine by hand until I reach 125 ft ft.lbs or the bolt heads snap to get the real torque values.

 

But what I was saying, the weight of those rims... Its like adding a lighter flywheel.... Maybe it wont add any power, but it will accel faster.... right? So maybe it wont show any gains.... humm... I gotta get back to school work, laters.....

 

You'll see the difference at the track or in a street race, but you won't see it on a dyno run and, I suspect, with the G-Tech runs...

 

In reference to the dowel pin oil leak, I would just like to know ( now don't laugh at me lol ) ... What the hell ? loll What is that pin ? where is it ? and is there a way of me knowing if it's getting worst or ... ??? thx :P

 

Kudos Mario! (Pats self on back) I told you guys that flapper is a big restriction. Da' flowbench dont lie boys and girls! So when you wanna test my modded airbox?

Dude, dont torque those things that much! Even 56ft lbs is too much. IIRC I used 35-40ft lbs on the IT motor to help stabilize it at hi rpms (it regularly sees 9k). I had reliable documentation for the torque specs. I'll look for it and get back to you.

 

are you talkin about the 4 bolts that are on the e-shaft pulley? if so might explain why i noticed mine begining to leak after i put efan on and removed all unnecesary **** .

 

Good to see "paper" on the flapper mod. I have already done the removal, plus cut a large chunk of the metal out of the opposite side of the air cleaner housing to get more air in there at the filter face. Unfortunately I didn't notice any increase in intake roar Guess I'm not sucking in enough air yet or my exhaust and vibration noise is still louder than the intake.

Also did the direct fire mod using the FC leading coil the same day. Noticed right away that the idle was smoother and the exhaust note seemed to become quieter if that is possible. My gas mileage has increased too which is a good thing with these price increases we're seeing right now. Glad I only have to pay for 87 and not the 93 like my other car.

Keep the writeups coming!! This is great stuff

 

Hey guys, this is a great write-up; a very rare opportunity where someone gives a **** enough about the rotary community to bother documenting everything.

Let's all stop puffing it up by asking basic questions to topics that you're all too lazy to search about.

 

Do the G-tech runs yet? I wanna know the results....

 

Hmmm...I can't believe I typed that and no one trashed me....of course, the G-Tech runs will show the difference...I'm planning on Sunday when the lot is empty and the cops are on the interstates busting the Sunday drivers...stupid cops...

 

Do you not have luck on sunday highway's?

I dont think anyone really has room to trash you....


Give us another write-up

 

Well, the only progress to date has been a little preliminary work. I got a new steering wheel, a Sparco, with a nice trim ring and some buttons for later use.

The new Sparco wheel...

 

no picture....


edit: when tried the link to be posted into the browser


"You are not logged in or you do not have permission to access this page."

 

Whatsamatter, man, you blind or something? It's right there....

 

Its there now!

 

That's a really small steering wheel. Can you see the speedo at all with that thing? My Momo cuts off the upper-right quarter of the speedo and the top of the tach, it's very annoying.

 

OMG It's GOT NAWSS!!!!!

Not sure how I missed this thread before - I suspect it was during one of my prolonged absences when I decided catching up on 15 pages of threads was just too excessive Nice writeups. Shame it's not in a situation where you could test the difference with a ICAI a'la mazspeed tutorial

 

When i get back later tonight i'll go out and take pics of my airbox. ALL the emissions crap had been removed and plugged up it gets way more air especially with a K&N.

 

An interesting fact, especially during these times, has also been discovered regarding the air-flap mod. Since the flapper is gone, hot air will always go up the heater tube into the engine, so I unhooked it until it's time for the **** emission inspection time. It's something the State of TX Inspectors sometimes will nab you on. What's interesting is that the fuel mileage of Furious has changed along with the increase in power. Before, she was averaging 15.9 - 16.5 mpg. Furious now is averaging 17.0 - 17.6 mpg. Whether that is a function of the air cleaner being changed is up in the air, but that change alone couldn't account for such a leap...if it did, I'd recommend changing filters every year, regardless, and cleaning the K&N filter on an annual basis as well. Well worth the savings in gas, currently $1.91 for 87 octane at Phillips 66 (no Middle East oil used by them, BTW, so I'm not a supporter of terrorism like the Exxon/Mobil cartel......), in my book...

 

do a write up on the correct way to remove trim and dispose of it


Do those g-tech runs yet?

 

lol....still haven't cleaned that up...and no, no G-Tech runs yet...I don't even know they'd be valid anymore since the weather is so wildly different now than the dyno run days.....welp, the big bass lasted only two weeks and I've discovered I have to fix all 8 of my 12" Petra's DVC subwoofers before I can press them into duty....huh? Oh, yeah, the stereo write-up is coming next sometime. In the meantime, here's a little addition I added to make up for the custom 3 trim-delete Furious has had to endure lately and, no, it's not the license plate...



Yeppers...