Hey Dave, with all the power you will be making why didn't you go wide enough to run 335s all around? The car is prone to understeer, even with same size all around, wider fronts would allow lower spring rates making it a nicer street ride. The car looks very nice, how did they form the side skirts? Hopefully they removed enough of the stock body to drop the car enough. That is the one frustration I have with mine, I just cannot get it as low as I would like. Anyway, I look forward to seeing it, mine has become quite the diamond in the rough, courtesey of a couple hundred track miles. When I repaint this winter, I will be sure and use the protective tape, there not alot of paint left on my flares If I can get out the driveway of the hotel we'll have to go cruising at SS8. See you soon, Carl

 

Did you say your flares cover the back of the rear tire?what are the diameters of the front, and rear tires

 

By relocating the suspension points I assume. Don't make me do the same just to stay bigger
I talked to Tri-Point about this and depending on how it is done, you may have to increase the spring rates as there could be more mechanical advantage in the lower control arm.
You can see from the pics how much better they cover the tires than the Tri-Point flares. That is one thing I never liked about the Tri-Point flares and was something I made certain to have fixed along with being able to lower the car more than what was allowed with the Tri-Point flares. These are basically completely different fenders now after starting with the Tri-Point setup.
Having so much of the rear of your front tire exposed is one of the main reasons the front sides of your rear flares get hammered.

Fronts: 295/30/18's on 18x11 w/ 5-1/2 backspacing.
Height: 25.25" Section width: 12" tread width: 10.5"
Still have about a 1/2" to spare.
Rears: 335/30/18's on 18x12 w/ 6" backspacing.
Height: 26.25" Section width: 13.5" tread width: 12.0"
Still have 3/4"-1" to spare.

As far as the height, I'll be able to lower it as much as I want, but seeing as how it is mainly a street car and a track car second (though everything I do to it says otherwise), I am limited by things such as driveways and speedbumps unlike a dedicated track car like yours. Basically I set it up for the track but definately make sure it will work on the street.
I wasn't sure how big the fenders were going to grow. I may go bigger down the road, but not until I need to replace what I have unless someone else is paying.
My car has a pretty good street ride currently. The spring rates are nowhere near a dedicated track car and besides, I'm not really worried about stuff like that. Also, I do not have power steering and basically will never have the option, especially after I stick the 3-rotor in this thing. I do have a manual rack if needed but prefer the quick response of the ps (disconnected) rack.

Get a hammer and beat that quarter panel up and out of the way. Currently as the car sits, I have plenty of room to drop it and I only plan on lowering it about 3/4", otherwise I have problems with my driveway. Additionally, if the car is lowered too much, there is no way to dial out all the camber gained as a result of the drop, not to mention you don't want to run as much camber with this much tire to begin with. I already have the adjustable main sub-link and each trailing arm sub-link installed btw.
The best way to lower the car is go with shorter rims/tires.

The sideskirts were once fc3s.org pieces I had laying around in the garage for a while. I decided to bring them up to the shop as an afterthought to see if we could get them to work. They were sectioned up and glassed back together in the way we wanted. They really make the difference in the way the car looks by bringing the front and rear together imho. There will be molds of these made also along with the front splitter too.

Cruising is all I'll be able to do since the engine won't be dyno tuned until the day after Sevenstock but that sounds good nonetheless.

Carl, you realize that you will just have to get a set of fenders from me now.

 

Nice 1st gen. Has been on of my favorites since I first saw pics of it.

 

Shouldn't you be assembling my engine instead of making wisecracks online
btw, be sure to wear your safety GOGGLES.

 

do you got the hood pins on there now? i want to see how those look

 

Didn't have time to install those yet but they are going in before the car gets sprayed.

 

Like I mentioned earlier, what do you plan to do for the paint?? IIRC you wanted to spray it the same white... Are you dead set on white? or are you exploring other options... I personally wouldve like another color such as, silver or black..

 

I do agree that it would look good in other colors, perhaps even better, but I am dead set on white.

 

It will be nice to see what a good shop can do in terms of a widebody vs my garage special. You'll unfortunately be able to see why the car is getting paint this winter. As far as ride height, Aero that is a year away is really the main reason. Currently my front cross member is 4.25" off the ground, quite tall compared to EP cars. I like the skirts, but I doubt I'll be able to use them due to the different fenders. How much wider is the front fender than the tripoint? My lowering issues are due to tire width, and type. If I were running radials, I would be running ~2.5 negative, but with Bias Ply slicks its closer to 1.25*. As such, the tires will not tuck into the fenders, rather they are ~flush with the fender. My rear tire is 24.8 tall, 13.7 section width, 12.4 tread, fronts are top secret My rear tire looks to have just rubbed the trailing arm, must likely on a first lap when my pressures are down around 16-17lbs. The offset is the same as yours, so you should clear easily with the 13.5 in the rear. Your front must be extremely close to the spring/perch, I am not sure I could have cleared a 12" section width with my original set-up. I will be interested to see if my rear tire will tuck up inside your flare. Hope everything goes as planned, Carl

 

Smart ***!!! j/k

Just finished assembling your engine. Gonna call up Fedex right now to make sure they're coming tomorrow so that you'll have your engine on Tuesday. It's already 12:15am here. Gotta go home, take shower, and goto sleep so that I can wake up at 7:00am tomorrow to work at Motorola tomorrow morning. I know I'm gonna fall asleep tomorrow since I have 4 hrs of conference call I have to attend. those things are so boring. LOL

 

So I'm using my laptop at school and checking out this thread..... and my friend walks up to me and asks why I have a stupid grin on my face...

Dave, you have got to be shitting me, that 'vert in insane!! I really wished you still kept the widebody 10th AE, but glad to see you kept the 20B. The 'vert has come a long way since I saw it last year. Can't wait to see it completed.

 

Looks great Dave. Can't wait to see what paint will do. The current primer makes it look sort of Area 51ish.....

 

Beware of unidentified low-flying objects closing in fast for a kill....

 

Kill, or be killed...

 

Dave what clutch are you going to run on the 13B?

 

I like it. I like the wing. I even like the bolted-on skirts. I love the front fenders.

I like the way it looks from the very front.

I don't like how "narrow' the bumper looks compared to the front fenders, and how steep the angle is on that. I think (if I was doing it) that I'd probably widen the front bumper or something as well, maybe add some materal on the sides of the bumper and front of the fenders, just to make it more even.

I just picked up a widebody turbo vert of my own, it used to be Lawyer's sprit's car... lucky for me, only minimal bodywork is required, most of the hard stuff has been done allready. It's got an after market front bumper, and I have NO idea who made the kit, but it's a pretty car. I gotta find me some wheels, though... it's just got TII stockers on it right now (on spacers)

Are you planning on (or have you allready) installing a rollbar? (for track events at least)

 

I'm running the ACT street/strip clutch. I want to avoid going with a puck clutch if I can seeing as how I have a 9 lb. flywheel, big *** wheels and tires, my car is a tank and I live in SF with lots of hills.
I admit it seems a bit odd from the pics but looks different in person. There is no abrupt change in angle at all. The transition is very smooth and flowing. I will be adding some cf canards at some point down the line.
By all means post some pics.
I have a kirk racing roll hoop installed as of now. When it goes up for paint, it will aslo be getting some additional diagonal bracing, triangulated door bars and a harness bar.

 

Well the car made it down to Sevenstock...barely due to wrong parts being delivered by Mazdaspeed. I got the engine in and running the night before. I also received a great response from everyone down there as they were all excited about the car. I ended up driving down with a huge caravan along I-5 with about 20+ or so other RX's of all years.

I'm currently looking into having molds made by a few people. I don't think I will be able to gather enough deposit money from interested parties to cover the costs of getting the molds done so I am exploring other alternatives. I don't want to cover the expense out of my own pocket as it would be basically spending roughly 3k on something I "might" need down the road. Just not worth it imho and I'm not interestd in producing the kit myself anymore. I hate working with fiberglass.

I contacted Dave Gibson of fc3s.org and Speed Machine Performance to see if he would be interested in making the molds and covering that expense. He'd benefit by be being able to keep the molds for himself and expand his already large selection of stuff for us fc guys. We'll see how that goes as I just contacted him....

We hooked the car up to the dyno on Sunday following SS8 after breaking in the new engine with 650 miles. I came close to popping my motor.
My wastegate got stuck closed and the engine overboosted to 28 psi according to the Haltech datalog. We were running 91 octane and were certain there was a mistake with the Haltech so we then checked the Profec B which read 29.4 lbs.
I have ceramic apex seals and an Aquamist system that runs 66% Methanol and 33% water. I'm sure the two of those saved me from another engine build.
Never did get the wastegate problem sorted though.
fwiw, the car made 397rwhp and 392rwtq at around 5300rpm before Steve let off. He has the dyno chart.

On with the pics....

 

few more

My car in front of a TII powered widebody first gen. Won best first gen trophy. Very nice car

 

you need a good pick from the front with the top and hood down< it looks way better with the top down

if i was gonna put a bar in it i would have went if the individual bars like the miata but that is just me

looks sick as hell man i want it

 

if that kit did become available, any idea on cost? im a fan of it

 

You have $10,000+ laying around to handle this?
If not, stop asking.


-Ted

 

whoa ted settle down! anyways,since were talking body work here, anyone know what a good size rivet to use for fenders? Im not going to mold my fenders in(different fenders then RX Heaven) Im going for more of the race car style look. And getting a body shop to mold and paint isnt cheap

 

People don't realize how much trouble (and money) it is to do this kinda thing properly.
I'm getting tired of all these "newbies" who say they want to do this / they want to do that, but have no clue on the actual work and costs involved.

Adding body kit pieces to your car isn't cheap!
Think of it as repainting the car *PLUS*!
Even if you take a "$500" RaceOn cheap-*** body kit from eBay, don't even think you're going to spend $500 + S&H, and viola, you can is instantly going to be transformed into some gorgeous work of art that everyone is going to uuuuuh and ahhhhh over.

No, after getting that $500 body kit, you need to add a couple thousand just to get a competent body shop to mold the pieces onto your car properly.
Sure, you can just slap on the panels and rivet them on and call it a day - it's going to look like ***.
High strength epoxy plus lots of time and man hours shaving and forming the raw body kit to fit properly actually take up the most time, effort, and money.
Unless you're some super auto body guy, or con someone who has this kinda talent for a couple cases of beer, it's EXPENSIVE.

We haven't even touched the paint part of it yet...

Ask RX-Heven how much it's costing HIM to complete this project - I'm sure he doesn't even want to recall all the receipts!

I guess this is my weekly rant...
When I see comments about - "yeah, I want to do this to my car, how much would it cost?" replies - I know it's some kid who has no clue what they are getting into...

/RANT

-Ted