[DEFUNCT] The College-Budget P5

AWR Trailing Arms

AWR Trailing arms have been installed!

x6CE6HP.jpg


Image taken before tightening up the brake line mount.

It was an incredibly easy installation. Such a relief, especially after jury-rigging the swaybar, ripping out the VTCS and installing that, putting in the new starter...

It really is *just* taking out two bolts, taking out the trailing arm itself, sliding the new one in, and done. Since I upgraded to AWR trailing arms, I laced the sides of the bushings with white lithium grease, just in case. Probably won't need them, but I'd rather be safe.

But man am I glad I replaced my trailing arms...get a load of this!

MJmgqp7.jpg


Rusty and crumbling bushings. I'm surprised the car stayed on the road as well as it did lol. There was barely any bushing left in those holes, so there was tremendous play. Hell, as pictures, I could grab the fragments and pull them out. To be fair, all my racing events may have done them in. A 17 year-old car part is bound to go bad sometimes, though.
Driving Impressions​

Well, what can I say? I went from a practically broken part to a major upgrade. When navigating my favorite twisty road, I believed my car no longer had what I called "a ropy ass". The rear did not "oscillate" to find an equilibrium while turning. It felt like the rear didn't roll as much, and was more eager to move in the direction I steered. It no doubt stiffened the rear nicely. We'll see how it plays tomorrow at the track.
And of course, I did my semi-monthly bushing regreasing on my swaybar. It's a tedious and annoying job, but hey it keeps the creaks away.
However, it seems like I noticed a new(?) noise with these trailing arms. As usual, I never noticed it before, so for all I know, it was always there.

Whenever I navigate a long, sweeping turn, I hear a bit of a clunk in the rear. It's probably the sway bar, but could it be these trailing arms? I guess time will tell.
 
You may have posted this, but where did you get the trailing arms? I might look at picking up a pair
 
Finally a job that was straight forward! No hidden issues this time :)


Trailing arms look great, sounds like they made a heck of a difference too
 
Gabe710 said:
You may have posted this, but where did you get the trailing arms? I might look at picking up a pair
Click to expand...
I got them off of the CR3 website, back when I thought the relocation brackets were in stock. You can slso buy tgem directly from AWR. When you install them, you'll be quite pleased with the stability and rigidity added in the rear!
LankyKiwi said:
Finally a job that was straight forward! No hidden issues this time :)


Trailing arms look great, sounds like they made a heck of a difference too
Click to expand...
Yeah, thank God, am I right? Nice and easy, and nothing broke in the process.

So far on the track, they've surprised me. It's a little difficult to pull off properly, but I can now kick out the rear when I want to! The swaybar and RSTB helped a lot, but these trailing arms put the finishing touches on top. The turn-in of this car has vastly improved over stock.

Now, I'm thinking about the lateral links to finish off the rear suspension. But if I'm going to do those, I think I'll bite the bullet and replace my rear subframe with a new one. My jury-rigged swaybar setup tests my patiencd, lol.
 
Riot_Polizei said:
.., I think I'll bite the bullet and replace my rear subframe with a new one. My jury-rigged swaybar setup tests my patiencd, lol.
Click to expand...

I've got rear subframe I'll sell ya for real cheap !!



I'm sure it will polish up real nice !!

It's super lightweight too because there's no metal left !!
It all turned into rust and fell off.

Lol.
 
You know what? You make a really good point.

Only problem is that in order to install the lateral links, I need to drop the subframe a little, which means risking breaking weld nuts I can't fix.

Now I'm paranoid!
 
Really slow, really careful and do it by hand maybe using a torque wrench.

It says it's tightened to 27-46 ft/lbs so I'm sure you can crank it to at least 100 before breaking anything.

Horseflesh broke the heads off his bolts not the welds.
That's actually better because you can drill out the stud or even have enough to grab on to.



You could also apply some heat and try your impact driver.
 
Inactivity Status Report

Hello!

It's been quite some time since I've updated my build page. Well, to be honest, there really hasn't been much to speak about. I really had to focus hard on these last few weeks of class, and I had to go through some finals. It was tough, but the downtime afterwards is the best! Anyhow, I finally got a picture from the last event:

B7kV3l1.jpg

The closest I got to two-wheeling last race--I jumped the curb for a fast and dangerous line, and the softer stock suspension kept things mostly civil.

The car's been running fine and dandy. That starter spins the flywheel without any issues. The rear trailing arms are doing their job well, and there are no new clunks or noises to be concerned about. For once, I've found a period of normal operation with my car, and I'm quite content :^)
Mods?
I've settled that this summer, I want to drop in the Hydra Motorsports lightweight crank pulley and the Cusco front tie bar. On top of this, I want to run to the junkyard, grab an intermittent wiper switch, re-wrap my header, and pick up spare valve cover. I'm going to spray paint the valve cover a mostly-matching yellow color, and maybe try to paint the letters black. I want to dress up the engine bay a bit! Finally, I'm looking at an oil pressure gauge and perhaps a volt meter. I need to better monitor my car as I push it hard, but I'm not sure how to go about getting these gauges in. This is a very unfamiliar territory, so I'm not going to make any moves with that until I know 100% what I'm getting into.

I also want to get a little more serious about racing. I probably won't drop this kind of money this summer, but I am going back and forth between another set of wheels + tires and coilovers.

I'll benefit much more from the wheels + tires, granted I get something that weighs less than our already pretty good Enkei-manufactured wheels. Throw some RE-71Rs (or something that lasts a little longer...) on the car, and I'm sure I'll break out of my middle of the pack position. However, this option will be far more expensive than coilovers, which I can get for just over 1000 bucks (yellowspeeds) when I include tax and shipping. If I get those coilovers, I'll not have to screw around the pedals as much while racing, as the car won't dip and bob so much. So hard to choose...

As I said, I'm most likely not going to get either of the above this summer, so the budget is going to look like this:

HM LW Crank Pulley.................$139.95 (Hydra Motorsports)
Cusco V1 Tie Bar.....................$130.00 (from CR3 Motorsports)
Gates Water pump + Alt Belt....$11.77 (Rockauto)
Dayco AC + PS Belt.................$11.57 (Rockauto)
Valve Cover............................$14.99 (Junkyard)
Wiper Switch..........................$19.99 (Junkyard; nasty price...)
_________________________________________________________
Total.....................................$328.31 (Raw total; tax/shipping unaccounted)
...........................................$350.00 (Don't know how much header wrap is...)

I'll be able to get crackin' as soon as I return this POS faulty graphics card I bought. If any of you guys build computers for gaming or video editing, I highly recommend staying away from Nvidia's new RTX 20 series. I bought a Gigabyte card that was dead on arrival, and it seems like all of these cards have some stupid problem with them.
Well guys, that's about it for now. Tomorrow, I have a race, and will continue to learn how to drive this thing well. Hopefully, I'll have some more frequent and interesting updates to show you!

PS: It didn't cross my mind to take a full picture, but here's an angled picture of my car post hand washing today:

8e1xGyW.jpg

I don't think I'll ever go to an automated car wash ever again! It was a lot of fun to do it by hand, and the results blew me away.
 
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Make sure you get an electronic oil pressure gauge instead of a manual one. Difference is the manual one runs an actual oil line to your gauge. Positive there*s rules against it at most racing events. Electronic one has a sending unit that goes on the block then hooks up to your gauge via a wire.
 
Let me know how the crank pulley install goes! I was really tempted to hop on that when they had the group buy going on, but I was hesitant on sacrificing some reliability if there is even a risk in losing reliability.
If I had another car, I would've definitely hopped on that as well as a turbo set up haha.

I've considered the oil pressure gauge as well! It's unfamiliar territory for me too and looks like quite a bit of work, so I'm straying away from it for the time being.

For header wrap I picked this up while I wait for a friend to send me the headers he's selling me: https://www.amazon.com/dp/ (commissions earned)
Reviews looked pretty solid, and not too bad a price either!

Good information about the graphics card.. I'm sitting on a budget card atm, GTX 1050 ti for the last two years and I'm yearning for an upgrade sometime this summer!
Can't wait to see more progress and updates this summer now that the semester is finished :D
 
" Finally, I'm looking at an oil pressure gauge and perhaps a volt meter. I need to better monitor my car as I push it hard, but I'm not sure how to go about getting these gauges in. This is a very unfamiliar territory, so I'm not going to make any moves with that until I know 100% what I'm getting into. "


323 said:
Make sure you get an electronic oil pressure gauge instead of a manual one. Difference is the manual one runs an actual oil line to your gauge. Positive there*s rules against it at most racing events. Electronic one has a sending unit that goes on the block then hooks up to your gauge via a wire.
Click to expand...

What he said ^^^

You simply unscrew this thing and screw in the new sender unit, feed a wire to your dash gauge and maybe B+ and you're good to go.

(note how the pressure switch is rated 3-9 PSI)





I remember reading a post about a guy that sucked air into his sump doing a long hard corner and wrecked his engine.

Apparently there's an after-market oil pan with baffles that prevent this.
 
LankyKiwi said:
Looking good! Plans sound good too, nothing like having a solid plan. Sticking to it is another thing entirely...

There's a Mighty Car Mods video that might be useful in your choice between tires and coilovers;

https://youtu.be/ca3KmMZ577o
Click to expand...

I love MCM! Been following them since the Blue Turd videos. That video was really good, and demonstrates the whole limit-finding nature of perfecting your car. Honestly, I believe I can deal with the car's constantly shifting weight, dipping and bobbing to an extent. So, I know that I'll go for tires first, but it's going to get crazy. Really sticky/good tires on stock suspension = craploads of body roll, so I'll have to prepare myself lol.

323 said:
Make sure you get an electronic oil pressure gauge instead of a manual one. Difference is the manual one runs an actual oil line to your gauge. Positive there*s rules against it at most racing events. Electronic one has a sending unit that goes on the block then hooks up to your gauge via a wire.
Click to expand...

Oh god, yeah. I recall looking up this stuff a year ago when I was playing around with the idea then, and didn't like the worst case scenario of hot oil blasting through the gauge and all around the cabin. I'll be looking at various gauges and asking my pals for input as well.

grffn said:
Let me know how the crank pulley install goes! I was really tempted to hop on that when they had the group buy going on, but I was hesitant on sacrificing some reliability if there is even a risk in losing reliability.
If I had another car, I would've definitely hopped on that as well as a turbo set up haha.

I've considered the oil pressure gauge as well! It's unfamiliar territory for me too and looks like quite a bit of work, so I'm straying away from it for the time being.

For header wrap I picked this up while I wait for a friend to send me the headers he's selling me: https://www.amazon.com/dp/ (commissions earned)
Reviews looked pretty solid, and not too bad a price either!

Good information about the graphics card.. I'm sitting on a budget card atm, GTX 1050 ti for the last two years and I'm yearning for an upgrade sometime this summer!
Can't wait to see more progress and updates this summer now that the semester is finished :D
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, there's innately a longevity risk when you screw with the crankshaft pulley. Unfortunately for us, our engines aren't internally balanced like those lucky Mazda2 bastards, so replacing the crankshaft pulley is going to reduce the system's harmonic balancing capability. However, they say that the smaller the engine, the less it matters. Whatever you do though, don't do this to a turbo application! That's asking for an oil pump failure.

I'm a little intimidated by this possibility of installing the gauges too, but it looks like you only have three wires to deal with. You have one hooked into the oil pressure sending unit, one spliced into the ignition wire (off the radio, I believe), and one to common ground. I feel obligated to go an extra step and wire in a fuse somewhere, however.

Thanks for that header wrap link! If the local parts store's header wrap is too expensive, I might go with that link.

And yeah...Nvidia really dropped the ball on these damn RTX cards. We're talking a 40-60% failure rate between the first three iterations of the card. New ones "should" be good, but I'm sure as hell not unsheathing my wallet twice lmao. Here's hoping the following updates are worthwhile!

pcb said:
You simply unscrew this thing and screw in the new sender unit, feed a wire to your dash gauge and maybe B+ and you're good to go.

(note how the pressure switch is rated 3-9 PSI)

I remember reading a post about a guy that sucked air into his sump doing a long hard corner and wrecked his engine.

Apparently there's an after-market oil pan with baffles that prevent this.
Click to expand...

323 said:
Just do not ever take a really fast and sharp left turn.
Click to expand...

Nice, so looks like I had the location down already! I'm going to chase that wire back towards the firewall to see what I'll be dealing with. I'll see about getting it at least set up during the next oil change. However, I've been told that I need to T that connection off, since unplugging the oil warning light unit keeps it lit eternally.

Man...such stories about destroying an engine under hard cornering's got me shook. That's all I do on track day! I take hard sharp turns everywhere. I guess sloshing the oil towards the right side is worse than the left side?

Only a few, maybe two or three times, have I ever seen the oil light briefly turn on and off while cornering. The first time I saw that, I did a panicked oil-change to inspect the oil for brass shavings. I didn't see any, so looks like the crankshaft was fine.

Jesus Christ, I think I'll instead drop in that AWR oil pan. I may not be able to fit a tie bar, if I recall from various forum posts correctly, but at least I won't kill my car.

EDIT: Continued to read about the AWR oil pan. Looks like a big friggin headache...
 
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Riot_Polizei said:
... However, I've been told that I need to T that connection off, since unplugging the oil warning light unit keeps it lit eternally...
Click to expand...

Our oil pressure "sender unit" is just an on/off switch.

If unplugging the wire turns the light on, then you just ground that wire to permanently disable it.

The output wire of your new sender unit will probably be a variable voltage depending on the amount of oil pressure.

I don't think you want to T-off to that wire.
 
If it were me I'd want an oil pressure gauge that shows the pressure but also has an low pressure alarm as well.

You would set the alarm for 3-9 PSI for city driving then set it to whatever for race day.

The alarm should go off at idle on race day but shut off when your RPMs climb then go off again when you start sucking bubbles.

You don't want to be staring at your gauge reading when you're driving.
 
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