rxsumo

Seen in Munich tonight

Matt Black SL500

Tidy Porsche 356 Super 1600 Cabrio

See quite a few old cars around Munich over the last few days, XK series Jag, couple of BMW Z8s, Ferrari 400, BMW 2000, old Porsche Turbos, and 70's Merc SLs

The car went pretty good over the weekend - no dramas apart from the understeer issues - that got parked while the priority was getting the engine back together.

The weather was pretty iffy with a damp track in the early sessions and high wind in the latter sessions - so only 1:24s

Heres a clip taken from the front of a Lotus I was out with - I think this was our second run, I managed to get passed it coming into Coke on the last lap (not the cool down lap - as the comments say) interesting to see the RX3 from a rear perspective - certainly dance around lots in the corners

The car is back together - now all I've got to do is run the motor in before next weekend.

Looks like it was running too lower oil level, caused the oil pressure to surge.

We are guessing that the bearing locked momentarily on the crank - caused the rotor to move around and it broke the apex seals....

The damage...

Not so fine apex seals

These aint fancy multi piece seals...

And the bearing...

These early rotor bearings are located by a grub screw....unlike the modern bearings which have a punched tab.

When the bearing spun - it causes the grub screw to distort the bearing  - which in turn locks the bearing to the crank

The bearing spun for nearly 360 degrees

And eventually ground down the grub screw

Lesson learnt - dont let the oil level fall below the full mark.....

There is no issue taking food and drink into the venue - they are mainly checking that liquids are in non-glass containers. They wont let you take alcohol in unless you are camping. Some of the guys on the tours we have done either just taken the spirits in their chilly bins either in the chilly bin liners or frozen - as the slushy"ice" in the chilli bins.

If you have food in the chilly bin they are hardly going to check every drink container - to see what is inside

Toyota Mega Web in Tokyo is pretty cool...Parts of Toyota's car museum collection are here on a rotating basis.

BMW's Museum at Munich - BMW Welt, and the factory tour of the 3 series plant at Munich - however to get the real factory experience also do the tour at Dingolfing - its the 5 and 7 series plant , 100 or so kms out of Munich, and you get to walk on the factory floor, rather than the "sanitised" tour of the plant at Munich.

No pics as yet - engine components were still in assemblies, waiting for cleanup to confirm the thinking to why the engine broke like it did.

Well the first round didnt go so well

The good news...

I ran another 1:22

I managed to complete 1 run, although the last lap was slow so that I ended up in second place in class for the round

However the bad news.....

Engine broken again - albeit my fault - I now know that running the oil below half on the dip stick will result in oil surge issues.

So at the moment - its broken apex seals on the front rotor, probably due to running (and spinning) the rotor bearings, and some damage to the crank - although this might be recoverable. There is also wear on the end plates.

So hopefully will have the engine back together in the next couple of weeks ready for the next round at the end of next month.

The CH was the luxury Valiant, like the VIP was in the late 60s, both Sedan and Coupe

Most of these were brought in as the Todd Motors executive cars, although there were a few sold to the public - although these were mainly 318s, seen a couple of private imports as well.

The Todd Motors executive cars were all 360s.

I used to work at a Todds owned Service Station, and the boss owned one - a Yellow one that was brought as a "staff purchase" when the models were updated.

Awesome old beast - so long as the rust hasnt gone crazy under the vinyl roof - should be a gret wagon - buy it

There were a couple of things that was unique about Sybil's car....

One was the colour, it was custom painted at the factory a metallic pinkish/brown colour, that matched her evening dress - the factory used a material swab to match the colour

The car also ran weber down draughts (IDAs?), the front carbies housings were machined with a taper, to fit into the confines of the bonnet.

I also thought that Sybil's car was a roadster not a coupe

I can assist as well, we have some spare space beside the garage, where my garden trailer sits - out of sight...so all good

Its been awhile between updates - had a work thing going on, so the car hasnt been touched.

The last outing was pretty cool as it showed what potential the car has, now that the motor has been sorted.

There are some images of the RX3 on the Sportimages website

http://racepics.biz/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=340273&g2_page=10

So now its time to sort out some of the niggly little things....

Both the front lower ball joints need replacing

Fit the anti-drive blocks in the front- apparently this will sort out the remaining understeer

Find some cold air ducting for the air cleaner

Replace the RR wheel bearing - the retainer has some pitting which is causing an oil leak.

Solder the starter motor pig tail wire onto the starter motor

Replace a drippy oil coller line

Long term plans are....

Rework the oil cooler into the factory race postion, and replace the Savanna lower nose cone with the period splitter

Redo the seat mounts

Find some "teacup" tail lights, and fit rear indicator lens

Rework the throttle cable

Rework the bonnet release cable

Fit the factory flares, and then go to 15 x 8 rims - Watanabes?

Mazda 1500 and 1800 sedans also had the same style hubcap, it's more likely off one of those two.

+1 for the 1500

These were all chrome, the Cosmo Sport L10A ones had the black ring as per photo

I would have thought its highly unlikely that you would find a L10A one lying around, as they are JDM only, and the cars that have been imported, would be for restoration rather than wrecking, whereas there are a few of the Luce/1500/1800s around.

However the hubcap is probably the same part, as the L10A used 14 inch wheels like the 1500.

The 110S and the L10B, used 15 inch wheels and the small hubcap

I think you will find that the RX7 series, use the MX5 gearbox as the control gearbox.

A mate of mine runs a MX5 Mazdaspeed C/R 5 speed box in his 12A PP powered RX7, and he is just in the process of upgrading to the later 6 speed MX5 C/R box.

Generally its the torque that kills gearboxes, so the 12A (unless its turbo'ed) will have similar torque to the B6/BP 4 cylinder engines.

The S1 box is crap for reliability - it has a poor selector design, that when either you get bearing or selector wear will allow the selector rings to over select....and the gearbox will "lock" in gear.

The later S2 and S3 gearboxes had ridges machine in the gears to prevent this happening.

Watch out for the HB Cosmo boxes as they had a really tall fifth gear...whereas the RX7 didnt.

If you are going to generate serious torque, you should probably look at a Turbo gearbox in the first instance - S4/5 or Batty box.

The side seals didnt really cost me as such, I have been accumulating 10A engine bits over the years, so have enough bits to rebuild around 3ish motors. We only had to buy the casement o-rings and springs.

The engine has been back on the dyno 2 weeks ago, and is developing around 160 hp at the rear wheels - at 9000 rpm.

The factory 10A PP were estimated at 200 hp at the flywheel, with better exhaust ports, and a better exhaust system than what we are running...so I'm pretty happy with the result.

The dyno was a worthwile exercise, as the engine was now running a little lean at the top end, so we ended up changing the emulsion tubes, enlarging the main jets and reducing the airs

The last figures - with the misfire, where probably reading a little high, due to the ramp up speed selected when the guys were diagnosing the misfire, on the dynapacks - apparently if you slow the ramp up speed - ie labour the engine, you can artificially raise the HP figures.

Good video. Gutted my car is not ready yet.

What class are you running in?

In the Intermarque series we have a cc based, and modified/stock class system

The 10A runs in the M2 class - modified between 1301 and 1800cc class, the 10A with the rotary multiplier comes out at 1796cc

Eagerly awaiting some drive by videos, bet it sounds so good from the outside.

first 20 seconds of this has the drive by

Its been a while between updates, the motor finally went back in the car a couple of weekends ago, and its first outing again was on Sunday last.

The issues list from the engine was quite extensive..

Sticky Apex seal - rear rotor

Side Seals cut too short - rear rotor

Rotor Bearing Clearances to tight - both rotors

Rotor Stationary Gear moved out of position creating zero rotor to end plate clearance - front rotor

Oil Pump drive chain not aligned

We managed to get the laptimes down to a 1:23, and then down to a PB of 1:22.43 when I reattached the rear rollbar.

Heres some video of the last run, all but the last lap clocking 1:22s - enjoy

http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a273/rxsumo/RX3%20Racer/?action=view&current=SeptFinal_zpse3517099.mp4

Heres a inside cockpit view of the practice session (I had a bit of a lose with the GOPRO - too smaller SD card...so only got practice captured). The flying laps were 1:24s, and you can see I was struggling a bit with understeer, that improved in the later sessions once the rear bar was attached. The sound is a little better than with the rollcage camera, still work in progress. FYI, the changeup light is set at 9500 rpm.

Other thing you would require is spiggot bearing for crankshaft, assuming that the crank is already drilled for a bearing...otherwise the crank could need machining.

Also need to locate the neutral/park cutout switch wiring to bypass.

Wont the Cortina be a Borg Warner 35 transmission?

Assume that it would be the same as a early Hillman Hunter and a number of other British cars, and thats probably the reason the parts are getting dearer to repair the box...BW35s havent been in fashion for a few years.

Might be worth looking at going to the later Hunter auto - BW45, and get an extra gear as well

We have used the 3.0S for weddings in the past...so happy to assist if required

Does anybody have a recommendation for a company to clean car carpets?

I've got the interior out of my 3.0Si, and as the carpets are close to white, they are pretty grubby, so now would be a time to get them sorted, before reassembling the interior again

Prefer somebody in the Wellington/lower North Island area

It been a quiet few weeks on the car front, as the RX3 isnt living at home right now.....

A couple of longish dyno sessions, including one with a engine analyser, and finally a break through on the engine miss problem.

The good news is the we think we now know was is causing the high rpm misfire, the bad news is that the engine is now in pieces.

In the first dyno session, the guys sorted the fueling, and got close to the correct timing, but ran out of time to look at the misfire, and at that stage they didnt have access to the engine analyser to see what was actually happening with all of the electrics.

Its had assumed that the engine state was okay, as while the engine had been built for 7 years, it hadnt done a lot of kms, and had been built by a top NZ rotary engine builder, who specialised in old school PP engines.

Between the dyno sessions, the compressions were checked and there was quite a difference in front to rear compression pressures, however the variance between the pulses on a per rotor basis were within Mazda tolerances.

We hooked into the second dyno session on Tuesday, and after a couple of hours of diagnostics including swappng the distributor and igniters, and the coils, it was concluded that the electrics werent the cause of our issue, so it was something else.

We did a couple of runs just observing the engine, while the misfire occurred, and it became apparent with the exhaust header colours while running up, that the rear rotor was lazy. So the air cleaner was removed and the main jets checked, and swapped front to rear, and the engine run up again. At that stage we saw that there was a huge fuel standoff on the rear rotor when the misfire occurred, at that stage the issue was isolated to a mechanical problem.

There was only likely to be two possible reasons for the standoff, blocked/bad exhaust, or internal engine issue.

So we dropped the exhaust off the headers and run it up again....and that run was interesting....it was unbelievably loud, and the HP was halved, so from a high of 150hp at 7000, it was around 80, the fuel standoff reduced somewhat, but the misfire was still there.

So now there was only one possible outcome....engine out.

We pulled the motor down yesterday, and think we have nailed the rear rotor issue. One of the apex seals, was extremely tight, and wouldnt move freely throughout its full movement range. We also found that there were excessive side seal to corner seal clearances on both sides of the rotor, so that probably wasnt helping the overall compression pressures.

Some pictures from the Sportimages website...

Video now up.....

Its been a few weeks since the last update, and the car has had its second outing at the track, and its now got a best time of 1:25.18, so we have taken 2 seconds off the lap times, and hopefully more to come.

Since the last update I've really been focusing on getting the engine running right, although we have done a couple of the small tidyup tasks.

I managed to score another "correct" white rim early grille off one of the fellow Mazda sprint competitors, so the car now has a grille with the grille emblem mounted.

The leaking RHS wheel bearing seal has been replaced.

Also repacked the rear muffler, which was virtually empty, which has quietened the car down heaps.

I've spent hours trying to sort out the misfire issue, which didnt go away after the reworking of the fuel delivery system.

So after chasing a over pressure - and subsequent carb flooding issue, and replacing the fuel pump and regulator, and the needle valve in the carbie, we have learnt something......

Holley fuel pressure regulators must have fuel being sourced from a straight pipe.....no elbows on the inlet, otherwise they dont work....

Anyway we got to the track, and after all the work on the fuel system, the misfire was still there.

Time to back the timing off, we eventually got the car running cleanish, but the timing marks are way off "normal", which leads me to suspect that the dissy might be one tooth out, or some other timing issue, potentially created with the conversion from twin to single dissy.

With the timing that far advanced, I suspect we have been lucky that we havent detonated the engine.

Anyways its on the dyno this week - hopefully to sort out all the isses for once and all.

Got some in car camera stuff for anybody that wants to go for a ride in the passengers seat at the track.

The sound quality is crap....like some of my lines....but here you go.....

Practice

Run 1

Run 2 - got the quick time on the 3rd lap

Run 3

Run 5 - wet

AV Gas doesnt equal 101 octane fuel, as it cant actually be measured on the RON scale....

The RON scale from what I was told only goes to 100, if AV Gas was measurable on the RON scale it would be typically between 125 and 135 depending on how old the fuel is.

AV Gas that has exceeded its shelf life in Airport tanks, will typically reappear in drums labelled racing 100.

There was also another reason that some cars run better on 91 rather than 95...dont know how current this is but 91 was weighted to work with carbied engines, 95 is designed to work with fuel injection, and is a lighter fuel.

The fuel engineers were quite worried when the lead free fuels got introduced, as the 95 was having issues running cleanly in carbied cars, and they were looking at recommendations of changing the spark plug types in cars to get full reliable combustion, in the end I dont think it was that bigger issue to joe public.