Rhyscar

Fan support off back of radiator looks complex - Would it be easier to place oil cooler in front of rad then run a flat sheetmetal plate spaced 10mm off the back of the rad? Also might be worth considering a oil cooler thermostat (if doesn't have already). Engine heat goes out through the oil OR water coolers (will take path of less resistance right).. if oil runs cold, less heat goes into water etc. Cold oil saps a lot of HP. I think on Kris' dyno it was roughly ~2-3kw difference between 70deg and 80deg oil. Mine runs a bit cold (not above 80deg) even on track. Ideally, I need to put in a hotter thermostat so the oil sits at 90-110deg where it's supposed to be working. RE ITB's - if you're 3D printing a manifold anyway, personally, I'd stick with the BMW 1000R throttles. A few mm offset isn't going to change flow dynamics. And they are a known quantity. Dave can chip in here and steer away from making throttle linkages and fuckery involved with 'off the shelf' ITBs. Unless you're buying top-end, purpose-made stuff, I think a factory solution is always better.

Welcome to the bendy trumpet club 😂😂. Loving seeing this coming together. Anticipation to see the results is project binky spec 🍿📺

Has been a few months of sorting out brake stuff. Not quite at the end, but there has been some interesting findings. I feel useless for how long this has taken, but I know enough to know how it isn't working wasn't right, and until I can satisfy myself that the braking system is 100%, theres no point wobbling around the track and wondering why its slow. So, I'm taking the time to get all this stuff right so I can confidently lean on the car and always drive it to the limit of the tyres. Firstly, got new pistons. @Geophy machined them down to match the height of the existing pistons. Fitted new seals, bleed screws etc all torqued to correct tightness. Reinstalled with my caliper crush tube and nord-lock washers. Been geeking out on fasteners lately. Then I test-fitted the calipers, and noticed the disc wasn't sitting central on the caliper. Then remembered when I went to replace the disc, the exact size wasn't available, so had to use a disc with 1.5mm more offset. Didn't think it would matter - but after some head scratching it really did. I found witness marks on the caliper showing the disc touching the aluminium inner. Meaning I was generating lots of heat but not via brake-pad contact. Which explains the overheating fluid and still under-temp pads. Once again @Geophy to the rescue, machining some 1.5mm washers that I tacked onto the brackets. Now sitting nice and central (ignore the unevently worn pads!). I also replaced all the fasteners on caliper brackets with Hex-head and nordlok washers (were cap screw/allen key prev), to make it easier to service and check for tightness pre-event. On the weekend, got the system back together and bled up. Temporarily installed a pressure gauge on the caliper to confirm if I was generating enough pressure. This showed approx 900-950psi for my 'normal' amount of braking leg force - which isn't enough (1000-1200psi ideal) to get the pads working properly. If I put all my effort into it, I could get up to 1300psi - so I don't think there's anything wrong with the circuit. These findings made me think about my pedal box setup a little more... This testing also uncovered an issue with ae101 hubs that the caliper/hub flexes A LOT under braking force. Solution is to move to Prius/CT200 aluminium hubs.... but unsure if I'm keen to undertake this job and deal with 5x100 to 4x100 conversion at this stage. So in hindsight, a floor mounted pedal box would have been a better idea in this car - I've got enough room, and a top-mount is actually more difficult. But live and learn and all that. What it meants, is I've got a set of spacers between the balance bar, and the master cylinders, which are mounted to the firewall (fabricated sheetmetal insert). One thing we noticed when bleeding it is the firewall flexes a lot (5-8mm) under load. This made me think of dual-spring suspension setups, and how the force is an average of the combined spring forces/lengths - and realised the braking circuit is acting like 1 spring, and the firewall as a second spring, resulting in lower output force on the braking circuit. I did consider whether changing master size would help me out - going smaller would increase pressure, but lengthen stroke - but decided removing the extra movement will increase effective pressure in system anyway, so I think I'll achieve the desired result by fixing the mounting. The best way to solve this is to move the masters onto the back of the pedal box where they were supposed to be. This requires a few mods involving a grinder but I'm confident I can achieve it... Splashed out and bought some liquid gold on a few peoples recommendation. Also confirmed without a doubt that the front cylinder is still leaking - so going to move to Tilton master cylinders because 2x successive failures is enough to not want to repeat again. Although, I'm 80% confident that sorting the mounting will sort the failures anyway. Here's another small job - making a blockout plate for the blank space behind reverse/next to 2nd. I found that going down 3rd to 2nd was a difficult change as the gate isn't super easy to find. Hopefully this will take some thinking out of it. Next focus is getting ready for cert. Aiming for Sep-Oct ish hopefully. On road by xmas would be amazing. Few jobs to do, but nothing major; Authority card inspection Windscreen washer to work (need to run line from boot up to front) Number plate lights Inner guard liners front tubs Paint and underseal rear tub mods inside & out I'm learning more and more that this part of the build/commissioning everything you've built over the years is an incredible humbling process. Can only keep moving forward.

Check the compression before you go any further. Could also be bent push rod.

Yeah chuck a new cap on, get aligned correctly and it should run. I'd replace the newly toleranced rotor too. But the root cause is the bearing the rotor runs on being worn out. They are all sloppy at this point and I haven't seen if they can be refurbed. So you may find that with the new cap, 1 still makes contact. old 4k Dizzy's suck.

Cool car, and cool spec. Looking forward to seeing it come back to life and be enjoyed!

This is pretty cool. Small feature in latest NZPC rag. Don't think this was ever a goal, but nice way to round out the massive effort of this build. Also well done to Mr @Snoozin for converting my illogical, touring car fanboy/technical jumble into a decent story! In other news, I've been super busy with work lately and building a carport, so haven't pushed much on this but had a few things tickling away in the background to get on top of my brake issues. Project 'keep my rusty 80's toyota out of Waikato rain' underway. Should enable up to 3 cars and/boat to be added in the future, and car trailer can be pushed through the gap for backyard storage on gravel base. @Geophy did a cracker job with the steel posts. Next job is to get the beams and purlins in place, ready for roofing materials (colour matched to garage/garden shed) to arrive next week. Going to look good once done! In 101-related news, I pulled the calipers apart, since they haven't been rebuilt in 15yrs. Nothing too bad, but seals were well past due date, and after a tidy up, found some marks on a few pistons (maybe from removal even). So ordered some new pistons (that annoyingly are the wrong height so @Geophy is now whipping a few mm off for me. I also took it a little further by making a centre bolt/crush spacer to hold the caliper together a bit better. Theory is they can flex through the middle join, so this will help it stay a bit stronger. (BTW ignore threaded rod - dw I've ordered special bolt with nord-lok washers to hold it together + a few spares for toolbox!) So I found this issue again with leaking master (unverified). This is the cylinder I replaced recently so weird that it's failed again. Cardwellsis good with option of warranty, but keen to get to the bottom of it before replacing with something else. So I've got a new brake pressure gauge I'll use to verify the pressure, balance bar settings, and check where this leak is coming from before moving on and replacing. It's a 3-4hr PITA job to replace a master (I'll need to do 2x!) so if I can find its coming from elsewhere, it will save me a massive amount of fuckery. Going through a basic list of car prep stuff like re-greasing the struts with the correct Moly grease EP 3%, fabricating a behind-reverse blockout plate, and tidying it up since last trackday. Not 100% sure of next event - probably one of the various a drive/ride dangerously days and then start the cert process! As always, family areis super supportive. Reid, the youngest, loves everything to do with cars and is a boy at heart - which is encouraging Finley too. Keen to get them along to more events so they grow up with no other choice than make their life a financial train-wreck in the pursuit of a ridiculous hobby... jks - well kinda.

This is rad. Super cheap and easy to piece together. Considering how cheap/plentiful subaru parts bin stuff is, I think you're onto a winner. And modern brakes/lines/steering stuff so not making everything from scratch. Will be interesting to see how light you can make it, so it works with 3sge power levels. Not worrying about road legal at any stage? cut it up I like the idea of tracking the costs. I run a spreadsheet monthly, and it's scary the small things that add up. I find there are only a certain number of major things you can spend money on - many of which you've already picked up for cheap.

@Truenotch Yeah I wonder if they have been leaking a bit of pressure. It was only the one nipple on the bottom that was. I’m pretty sure wheel cleaner attacked the residual fluid. I hadn’t noticed any fluid loss, but it wouldn’t take much for the pressure to drop. So got some nips on the way. Getting pistons checked out tomorrow.

After realising I've never rebuilt these calipers in the last 15yrs of ownership, I've decided to pull them apart. Looks like one of the bleed nipples was leaking a bit, and there's also some scouring on the pistons, so hopefully they are savable. Will give everything a good clean and get it back together with fresh seals. Hopefully this will sort out the basic issues, and I'll work on some firewall bracing to remove some more flex from the cylinder mounting. While I've been thining about brakes, I've realised another oversight of larger wheels is the reduction in braking torque. So while this brake setup always worked well with 15" wheels and tyres - it now acting through a bigger torque arm, so braking force needs to be higher for same deceleration. So it might require a different master, or even go to a bigger disc and caliper setup. Also, surprisingly, the master cylinder leak into the cabin occured again - even with the new master cylinder. Need to figure out why this is - and good chance to upgrade to a Tilton master. I managed to do some hunting around, and found a few boxes for race gear. This fits all my oils, CV boots & grease, a rear bearing and spare brake hoses and general electrical/fittings. I carry 1x small makita tool box for power tools as well. But this all fits into the boot of my car and has more than what I need to get through a day of troubleshooting so pretty happy.

This is great confirmation that it sounds bloody good IRL, and the air-dyno results aren't the most accurate noise (I think we kinda knew this right?) Good work, sir. Please continue.

Finally got around the putting together a video of the day. Bunch of random clips/highlights but gives a good idea of how it goes.

Here's a quick look at the log. The first spike of RPM limit 2 (oil pressure) is turn 1 - when I'm off throttle, but RPM's still high. The second one is me picking up the throttle and crossing the 7000rpm threshold I've set with a min of 45psi (I think - can't remember exactly). Between the two cut events, the oil pressure stays low (wrong end of sump), but it isn't active because the 5000rpm threshold is a bit lower. So interesting findings, not surprising though. I knew oil surge would be a problem eventually. I also don't think I've got the limits set too tight ~45psi oil pressure at 7000rpm is not very much at all... especially considering the oil isn't really hot - it didn't go above 80deg all session. When not surging, pressure is up around 70psi at the same RPMs.

I was pretty happy with them from cold, just don’t feel like I could lock a front wheel if I wanted too. Which the master cylinder fitting leak would explain. But just needing a bit more confidence from the fronts. Running shitty RDA rotors cause they’re the only thing available to suit the MRP wildwood kit I’ve got… I’d love to upgrade, but until I solve the actual problem with my system upgrading rotors would just mask the underlying issues. We ran this exact setup on dad’s ae82 for years with no brake cooling and every brand of rotor and that thing brakes amazingly. @mjrstar I was happy that the tears weren’t bitey when they locked, they just skipped along and I could modulate out of the lock and do a little more trial braking if needed. They only caught me out on the last session which was super wet, downhill and bumpy entry to last corner after passing an escort… so the outcome was predictable But agree with everything you said about what characteristics you DONT want on a tarmac sprint! I’m feeling ok about the cold performance for now - it’s just a matter of getting the hot performance up a bit. @Truenotch yeah overfilled by 500ml or so. Didn’t seem to harm it, didn’t breath too much either so it’s not picking it up and splashing it around too much. I need to look at the logs properly to figure out what’s going on. Should get a chance on the weekend.

It wasn't too bad from cold, but realised afterwards the fitting on the outlet of the master cylinder wasn't all the way tight. Not enough to noticeably leak when in pits, but it would be bleeding off some of the brake pressure to the fronts. So I think the fronts never saw enough pressure to get properly warm, and the rears (Wilwood compound) were overheating. Considering whether I'd run the W3 for hillclimbs though. Grip levels are slightly different and runs are so short you need confidence right away. But I haven't got the Winmax's properly heated up to the point where they are amazing yet - so I'll get some temp paint next time to confirm if we're getting into the right heat range, and double check all my fittings!