BLOZ UP

[BLOZ UP]

Worked on wiring. Man, there're a lot of LEDs to hook up.

 

Got an RV type connector for my auxiliary battery connection:

 

Installed. Also note voltage gauge that took 3 weeks to arrive from China. I had just added it to my Amazon cart without noticing it wasn't prime. Oops.

 

I drilled out the LH fender a bit more but both drill batteries died again before I could finish. I still have to drill out 5 more holes after the fenders. Ugh. Need a corded drill. Regardless, I wired up the RH side tail light and one fender LED and tested it out. The tail lights are pretty dim and hard to see (too low). Well, perhaps the other LED bulbs weren't such a bad idea if they help out...

 

I think I'm going to order slicks since autocross season is coming soon and I will need to have the wheels & tires here to know what to build for them.

[BLOZ UP]

Oh, I think I mentioned it earlier but I sent my Speedhut Speedometer back to Speedhut after making arrangements for them to add a 0-5v signal output line to it. The catch is they could only do it to a single gauge, not the dual one I had. However, they said they could convert it and give me a credit for a separate gauge.

 

So I got it back:

 

And I ordered a 2-1/16" fuel gauge. I also picked up a 2-16" oil temperature and water temperature gauge since I needed the water temp and I knew I have an extra bung for the oil temperature sensor on my remote oil filter block. I think they should all fit where the radio was.

[BLOZ UP]

Welp, placed an order for some Enkei Apache IIs wrapped in Hankook Z214s (C71 soft compound).

 

 

They aren't exactly "race" wheels but I plan on possibly replacing my current XXRs with them. Although now my car will drop by about 1.3" (!), if my calculations are correct (225/55/R16 to 205/50/R15).

[BLOZ UP]

So, weather turned out nice this past Sunday despite getting 5 inches of snow a day ago.

 

I finished drilling out the remainder of the LED holes (I decided to skip 2 amber and 2 red LEDs for now). I installed the fender amber LEDs and just 2 rear ones. Spent a lot of time wiring all this crap up. Done!

 

 

But it looks like the sides of the tail lights don't have any bulbs. So I took it and the incandescent version apart. Hm, how cheap:

 

Welp, maybe that'll be a future upgrade.

 

So with these LEDs, it was a lot of work for little payoff. But I suppose most of the work was just routing the wiring I'd have to do anyway for the tail lights. Here it is with the left turn signal on.

 

 

In the day, the tail lights are barely visible--and probably not visible at all from the height of your average car. So the LEDs definitely make it more noticeable, so you can't complain about that.

 

Next up is some kind of flooring and/or a switch panel and the utility items.

[BLOZ UP]

One of the four wheels arrived, yay.

 

\

 

So, the stretch is about what I expected. Which is not much:

 

 

Also, my 2-1/16" gauges arrived:

 

 

Now if I can find my old 3 gauge bezel I can mount them in place of the radio easily.

 

Here's the wheel on the trailer. Not sure I can fit 4 of them within the frame.

 

 

Lots to do before the April events.

[BLOZ UP]

Me testing out my new trailer.

 

[BLOZ UP]

I took video instead of photos, and it will be a while before I can edit it all together.

 

Got a used Sparco Torino (R505, IIRC) seat and G-Force 3" 5 point harness (will likely not attach the 5th). The seats dirty and black/grey instead of all black but it was a pretty good deal. It's going to be a tight fit. The 280Z seat swap (and other) threads were right. That damned cat hump makes things harder.

 

But I'm going to try and avoid hammering it out. I should be able to fit the seat with some adjustments to the rails. The stock seat rails are about 3/4" closer together than the Sparco holes. They are also much short (2-3" or so). So, I'll need some type of adapter. Planted sells one to the tune of $140, but it shouldn't be hard to fabricate something to do the same for a lot less money.

 

With the rails bolted to the seat, but not the car, I measured the Sparco against the stock seat. My main concern is vertical space, so I measured the distance between the roof (the sunroof frame, actually, since mine has one installed and it's what my helmit hits). The Sparco leaves 33" at the butt (rear, lowest point) of the seat, 31" at the front. The stock seat is 33" and 35", respectively. Now, I'd like to be lower than the stock seat when all is said and done, but at stock height is my limit.

 

The problem is that the seat needs to be raised to fit correctly. It is very close to fitting as is, save for the side bolster which hits the door. So it needs to move about 1" to the center of the car. To do this, the hump needs to be overcome. I plan on adding washers/spacers to move the seat up. The hump merges into the transmission tunnel the higher you go, so this should leave me some room to move the seat over.

[BLOZ UP]

Besides finishing the trailer bumper mount, I made a major adjustment to the fan temperature threshold. In the back of my mind when setting up my red Z31 with megasquirt (the same VG30 I later used in this car), was that since I was using the cylinder head temperature sensor instead of the coolant temperature sensor, the tune would be off. I'd need to account for the CHT being higher (probably a fixed offset) from the coolant temperature.

 

It took me, let's see now, 6 years or so to get to this. I decided to turn the car on the other day and while it was warming up I would take measurements of the coolant (via the silicone hose attached to the upper intake, which is the outlet) and the CHTS reading.

 

The result is this graph:

 

 

The car had been running for a couple minutes at the beginning and the thermostat isn't quite open for the first few minutes. However, once it is open and flowing the temperature difference is more-or-less constant, as I had hoped. The average is 15 degrees all inclusive, and almost exactly 10 when open. Now this isn't exactly scientific (all the aluminum in the engine bay throwing off my IR thermometer, etc.), but it gives me a good indicator that my fan threshold (at 85 degrees Celsius) is way, way too low.

 

You can see the fans kick in at x = 15 mins. The coolant is no where near the 100 °C operating range of this engine! And I ran this car all last summer like this, even in an autocross....

 

Sigh. Oh well, it explains why it accepted a whole lot of timing, why the fans struggle to get the temperature down, why my fuel consumption is through the roof, etc. Speaking of which, just at idle my injector pulsewidths went from ~2.2 to ~1.7 ms. That's about 30% fuel savings, and that's just at idle. My timing also needed adjustment. The changes even tweaked the exhaust note for the better.

 

After disabling the fans and keeping an eye on the coolant temperatures, I settled on a CHTS fan threshold of 108 °C, which is just about 100 °C coolant temperature. The fans can cool the car off in about 30 seconds now, greatly reducing their duty cycle.

Edited March 1, 2015 by BLOZ UP

[BLOZ UP]

Welp, I signed up for a MSNE autocross but couldn't make it. Stayed up late wiring up the trailer harness, getting the wheels and tires on the trailer, only to give up after remembering there were a bunch of things I needed to fix before I really felt comfortable driving somewhere, much less racing.

 

So, today I fixed a bunch of those things:

• Fixed trailer wiring
• Fixed bright indicator
• Weatherpak'd speedo analog out for megasquirt, and brights indicator, and put back in car
• Attempted to add oil temperature sensor
• Put stock driver seat back in

 

The trailer wiring is interesting. I got the tails and the left turn signal mixed, so the entire trailer lights were flickering when you turned them on. Fixed that, but then I'm running into issues that I'm almost certain are caused by the voltage leak from the tail lights into the turn signals in the Z. I haven't figured it out yet, but I have learned a new facet of the problem. The problem is that whenever my tail lights are on, the turn signals (at least the rear ones) come on very dim. Even the LEDs in my speedometer are dim. Today I noticed that it also happens if I press the brakes. So current is leaking to the signals, somehow. It doesn't happen in reverse--the brakes/tails don't light up at all when the signals or hazards are on.

 

So, if the trailer is hooked up, this results in the signals not operating well at all. They are barely noticeable. With the tail lights off, though, it works fine.

 

Otherwise, I cut some 2x4s for the trailer floor, and placed them on the forward part of the trailer. The slicks only fit standing up, and have to be strapped in. However, I really don't like it and would rather fabricate some way of holding them in, so I'm not just relying on straps.

 

I got a short drive in and used autotune, but I couldn't tune much because the car wasn't really warmed up. It was about 10 degrees out, and the car wouldn't get much hotter than 70, which makes sense since that's right about the thermostat's fully open temperature. Regardless, the table was leaned out quite a bit, and the car drives really well. It's pretty quick, too. 1st gear is useless, and I don't have traction above 3000 RPM in 2nd. I'm not sure about 3rd gear, I've been going easy in it to avoid going sideways at speed.

 

Here's the temperature sensor for the oil. It's too long though, I can't even get the threads in. I might jury rig some fittings, ugh.

 

 

 

Here's my RV power connection, connected directly to the battery. There's a 50A inline fuse on the +12v line. I'm curious to see, if the trailer is hooked up with it's own battery, if it can handle the starter current. Probably not. Not pictured is my ghetto trailer light adapter hookup. I rigged some spade connectors into the tail light plugs rather than hack up the stock harness. It will just dangle out the hatch as there's no more room in the drain plug at the rear of the spare wheel tub.

 

In order to fix the bright indicator, I had to pull out the tach. Ugh, there's a lot of crap wiring in here.

 

So I wired this up totally wrong the first time. Not sure how I managed to not look at the FSM, it's pretty simple. If I haven't explained before, the relay is needed because the brights indicator on my Speedhut gauge is grounded through the gauge. The stock one receives +12v whenever the headlights are on (R wire, pin 30 and 85), and then grounded (through RW, pin 86 on the relay) when the brights are on. So, this relay switches the +12v of the indicator (BW wire to gauge, pin 87 on relay) on whenever it is grounded.

[BLOZ UP]

Drove the Z to work and back, and tuned it. I've been tweaking the cold starts and they are getting better--although it occasionally kicks back, despite having really low timing during cranking. I'll have to double-check the timing with a light just to be sure. I've also reduced the accel enrich a lot, as that was a tad too rich to the point of misfiring occasionally on hard accelerator pedal changes.

 

The engine is responding very nice. Might take it to the dyno soon. However, my suspension seems a lot "looser" and shaky than I remember, so I'm going to have to go over all the ball joints and whatnot. Also, my fuel pump is making really, really bad noises occasionally. Hrmph. Time for that fuel lab pump and a new filter I think.

 

I ordered a Sparco seat mount, slider, and hardware. I was going to try and fabricate something with the stock slider, but this just makes things a lot easier... and probably safer.

 

I will need a harness bar, or at least a nice harness attachment mount (the rear strut tower/seat belt point doesn't seem bad). That I can make. I have some 1/8" steel left that'll do the trick.

[BLOZ UP]

Tried my new wheels and tires on one side.

 

 

Huge fender gap. Keep in mind the other 3 wheels are taller, and it hasn't settled 100%

 

Even though it's a slick, it looks less aggressive in 205R15 than my 225R16s.

 

Not gonna happen on the front with my RCAs. A wheel spacer might help, but I hate spacers.

 

Other news:

 

Inspected ball joints and tie rods. All seem okay. Tuned cold starts. Found my 3 gauge panel!

 

 

I got a real action camera. A Garmin Virb Elite. I like it a lot. I know about GoPro, but thought they were a bit pricey for what they offered. Also, no screen on the HERO3 Silver (or whatever) and below. Brief pros/cons:

 

Pros:

• Non-backlit display (saves power)
• Can use phone to change settings, start/stop recording (wireless)
• Simple record slider switch (easy to use with gloves on)
• Huge battery life
• Can link multiple cameras to one 'master' camera
• Supports external mic
• Has GPS, accelerometer sensors and stores data in non-proprietary format (GPX (XML)). This was a huge plus for me.
• Pretty good video editing software (can overlay GPS speed, g-force, etc. gauges and crap).
• Has GoPro adapter (so you can use GoPro mounts)

Cons:

• Doesn't come with tripod adapter nor suction cup mount (it has a couple adhesive ones).
• The price dropped $30 a couple days after I got it

Edited March 24, 2015 by BLOZ UP

[RebekahsZ]

Problems I have with my gopro: 1) I forget to turn it on. 2) I forget to turn it off, 3) the battery is always dead when I remember to turn it on (see #2). I'm going to try a remote speaker next time so you can hear the tail pipe (all you hear now is rocks hitting the inner fenders).

[BLOZ UP]

Problems I have with my gopro: 1) I forget to turn it on. 2) I forget to turn it off, 3) the battery is always dead when I remember to turn it on (see #2). I'm going to try a remote speaker next time so you can hear the tail pipe (all you hear now is rocks hitting the inner fenders).

 

I just remembered the Virb also supports and external mic. For my first AutoX of 2013 I put a 'mic' (aka a cheap camera in video mode) on the rear bumper to get the exhaust sound. It turned out well. I mixed it in with the interior camera. Very little wind noise back there.

 

[BLOZ UP]

Man I was a terrible driver at that event. Also my camera placement sucks. I was experimenting!

[rags]

Is that MetLife Stadium parking lot?

[BLOZ UP]

Yup. I've run mainly SCCA events there. Should run some MSNE/PCA events there too. Would also like to do the NY Region SCCA out at Nassau Stadium, and Philly at Warminster Park. Next autox I plan to be at is in Philly on the 12th.

[BLOZ UP]

It was a good weekend. Welded up and "painted" a tire rack for the trailer.

 

 

Here's the idea. Note that I've drilled spots for my left over clearance lights, as mocked up below:

 

 

Since the tail lights themselves are kind of crappy, low, and hard to see from off angle, the higher up clearance lights should help night visibility from the rear and sides.

 

I got real lazy and barely cleaned up the metal at all before welding and painting:

 

Here it is complete (minus wiring):

 

 

Tested it out by driving to the first Z meeting of the year:

 

 

Good turnout for the first meeting:

 

 

The trailer tongue weight appears to bit a bit too low with wheels in the back and a battery up next to the tongue. That's good though, as I haven't finished adding everything to the front. Still need to find/make a tool box (or two), control panel and fill it with crap. Also need to weld the trailer jack on somewhere, as it doesn't really work where it is.

 

First drive was a success. Bumpy NJ roads gave it a great shakedown. Hit one set of bumps that sent the trailer flying in the air. I could see the black fenders in my rear view mirror, when I can normally just see the tops of the tires. Fun times...

 

I also started the car with the trailer's battery hooked up, and the fuse didn't blow so I guess it's not helping out that much.

[BLOZ UP]

Did a few things this weekend. Installed Sparco Torino driver seat (pictured). Worked on the trailer (not pictured), and started working on a 280Z office chair for my welding table (not pictured).

 

So I impulse bought this Torino 2, used, from the local race shop. I knew it had been installed in a S30 before but forgot it was a pre-cat hump 240Z. Steadfast to avoid additional buyers remorse, I insisted on making it work. So I ordered a planted seat bracket and Sparco rails to avoid having to chop up my stock rails.

 

First, the Sparco rails are stamped "Made in China" which isn't necessarily bad since they seem to be 'OK' quality, but they were a bit pricey. Second, the instructions are next to worthless. It can be summed up as follows: "One side allows 320mm bolt spacing, flip it around for 270mm. Make sure the tabs face inward and forward for the slide adjustment bar":

 

 

 

The instructions show putting the washer/tabs between the rails and the seat. This felt and looked wrong so I placed them were they seemed better suited, in the rail itself. It would also raise the seat 1/8" or so.

 

 

 

 

Now, the planted seat bracket. It's well built, but does not fit my seat directly (if you skip the sliders). You would have to drill a couple extra holes. It seemed to fit the car well, though. More on that later.

 

 

 

All the bolts installed. Note that the rear two are right over where the frame-to-chassis bolts will go. Ugh.

 

 

 

And viola, it's installed securely:

 

 

 

One problem, as others found before me, is the door doesn't shut. You can slam it, but I don't want to damage my door panels. I may bend, shave, or cut so that the the shoulder pad moves inward.

 

 

Another problem is the right side of the seat bracket doesn't seem to tighten all the way down easily. I believe the cat hump is interfering with either the planted seat bracket, or the seat itself. I may cut/grind down the bracket and find out.

 

It's large. I'm trying to like it because I spent money on it, but it's hard. It's comfy, no doubt, and way more secure than the stock seats. but we'll see. If I can't fix the shoulder bolster, I'm might move on to something that will fit.

 

Next up is installing the harness belts.

 

In other news, I modified and painted the battery bracket for the trailer. I also installed the 4 remaining LEDs for the top of the tire holder thing. 2 red, 2 amber for the rear and sides respectively. I reinforced one of the fenders (the fender metal is of poor metallurgy, and only held on with two bolts) and then attached a vintage ammo can to it. I will be installing some of the electronics in it (main switch, voltmeter, perhaps the power inverter).

[BLOZ UP]

Here are some pics of the trailer.

 

One of the utility lights. Ammo can power distribution center. I might need some kind of shield on the trailer since the left side and fender had soot from my tail pipe. It might cover the switch panel. Forgot about that when making it, should have put it on the other side. I'd flip it around but like to have the hinge in front and the typing facing out.

 

The utility lights are from Amazon. The ones from superbrightleds.com were a bit too pricey for me. I also shortened the battery hold down thing and painted it. Ideally the battery would be in a battery box, so I left as much length as I could to hopefully allow for that.

 

Main switch and voltage readout. Trailer runs accessories off it's own battery, so this is so I can keep tabs on how much power's left.

 

Lights both wired in and switches installed.

 

 

The lights are plenty bright.

 

 

 

The new marker LEDs should help visibility.

 

 

 

Edited April 7, 2015 by BLOZ UP

[BLOZ UP]

I think I'm pretty much ready for race season. Would like to get it dyno'd soon, since its rich in boost. But I might go to an autox or two first.

 

I've still got some minor things I've yet to install. Gauges, catch can, coolant overflow, urethane bushings, toe hooks, harness belts... and that's about it. I wanted to do suspension work, but I think I'll wait until the winter as the car will be down for a while for that.

 

I ordered a couple other things for this season. A Nardi wheel to finish off the interior (including some NRG mounts and detach), and a ATI Damper to replace my crappy eBay one--although the ATI Damper will be a close fit (about .25" closer to the rack).

 

Hopefully now I can focus on the racing season!