Berty's Cosmo

[Berty]

Great work Berty,, the car is looking sharp also,, how is it running after all the woes caused by the heat wrap failing?

Frank

Thanks for that Frank - the car seems fine. No damage other than what I found during the service. It was not really driven after diagnosing the issue because I had to go overseas for work again.

One thing that I did notice though is that the car's exhaust is quieter with the heat wrap on, especially at idle.

I am also thinking about putting some of that reflective heat mat on the under-side of the bonnet. I have seen a few Cosmo's which have had the paint go dull due to excessive under-bonnet temps.

 

[frank20bcosmo]

I know what you mean heat is a killer,, I was thinking about vents or louvers in the hood,, but something that looks factory and not an after thought if you know what I mean
I am not brave enough to do it on the one hood I have, if I had a spare I would look in to it further, be nice to see some that have been done and to see if I like it first

 

[Antoine]

Fantastic update, Berty...Thanks for sharing all these details with us...Great info to keep in mind.

Nice work on the wrapping! (thumb)

I know what you mean heat is a killer,, I was thinking about vents or louvers in the hood,, but something that looks factory and not an after thought if you know what I mean
I am not brave enough to do it on the one hood I have, if I had a spare I would look in to it further, be nice to see some that have been done and to see if I like it first

I hear ya...My favorite venting solution to date is still the one I saw at the Cosmo meet in Yokohama...

 

[frank20bcosmo]

Hi Antoine,, yeah looks really neat and a very professional job,, would be interesting to know if it actually works for him,, I suppose any opening would help
a nice 69 shelby set up would look cool,, vents for cold air in at the front and vents at the windshield to let the hot air out,, be good to see somebody do a drawing of that set up on a Cosmo hood to see how it would look (boom01)

 

[Berty]

Update time.

My new manual gearbox conversion parts have finally made it to Aus and I just recently picked them up to check them out. The clutch is a HKS GD Pro twin plate and it looks like the previous owner had installed a sprung center which should help a lot with driveability. I just need to wait now until the current gearbox dies under the pressure of the current turbo setup.

Speaking of turbos, this bad-boy arrived the other day...

Genuine Garrett T04Z which will go on once I get back from working OS.

I have also been considering selling my RE-Amemiya bodykit. I decided to spray it black and test fit it again to see if I would part with it...

I reckon that I will keep it! (lol2)

I also decided to buy some custom plates for my car - THR571 (aka "thirsty")

 

[db2boy]

Looking awesome Berty and great work. Love the RE:A kit, I would love one as would another Cosmo owner in the UK. You'd never have issues selling it!

Rgds

Ant

 

[cosmojc]

That car with the bonnet vents is VERY well done! I think that is the one with the really professionally looking sunroof install as well?? It would have to help as there is a way for the heat to get away.

The other option that one of the guys over here went for is to replace his water pump with an electric one delivering much much higher volumes of water flow and he has it on a timer that runs for five minutes after he switches off, obviously also running the fan to blow the heat spike out of the engine bay. Seems to work well

Kramer

 

[frank20bcosmo]

Berty, the kit looks great on your car,, definately worth fitting mate,, also I wanted to ask you would ceramic coating work on the exhaust manifold?
I had this done on a V8 I had and the American car tuners swear by it as an option to keep exhaust temps lower,, what's your thoughts on this?

 

[Berty]

Berty, the kit looks great on your car,, definately worth fitting mate,, also I wanted to ask you would ceramic coating work on the exhaust manifold?
I had this done on a V8 I had and the American car tuners swear by it as an option to keep exhaust temps lower,, what's your thoughts on this?

As with everything on the interwebs I have read mixed reviews about ceramic coating. Some people say that it will flake after a while some say that it doesn't. I reckon that on NA applications it might be fine, however on turbo rotaries it is getting to its limits. The reason I didn't do it is simply because it cost so much and no one would guarantee that it would last.

I also don'y buy all of the crap about heat wrap destroying manifolds. If I had my time again I would go with really thick stainless + heat wrap. Mild steel is great because of its ability to expand and not crack, but rust is always going to be a problem.

 

[Berty]

Hooray for time off work!

I've got a few new parts and a few bits of maintenance to perform.

Number one on the list is fixed my intercooler piping. With the factory turbo's I never had any issues, but now with the big single, I keep on popping the intercooler piping no matter how tight it is. The culprit it would seem are two pieces of pipe which are a bit too short.

Here you can see the new vs the old pipe. For some reason the old pipe was very badly bent and distorted when I pulled it out. I think that it might be from a combination of heat and the intercooler moving during acceleration & braking. For those of you who followed Grant's intercooler upgrade & install instructions (here) you can use 18cm pipes and it will still fit in fine.

On a different note, I have ordered a KEAS manual valve body for the Cosmo. I got cold feet with the manual conversion because I am lazy and I don't the car off the road for ages again. The valve body that I have ordered has got manually selected 4th gear which means that the factory shifter will no longer work.

Here is my solution...

Yep, good old fashioned, yankee muscle shifter.

It's a B&M Pro-Ratchet shifter. Here you can see one installed in a local Cosmo, albeit running a two-speed power glide...

I grew up around a bunch of muscle cars. My cousin had an SLR5000 Torana, Monaro, GTHO etc etc. This is where my tastes differ a little to JDM style. I really dig the big stally , transbraked automatic muscle car thing. Because the Cosmo reminds me of these two door, 70's muscle cars I really wanted to do something a little different.

Here I have pulled apart a spare Cosmo shifter which I had laying around. Time to make a bracket for the shifter!

More updates to come!

 

[db2boy]

Now this is very interesting, I'll be following this with great interest...

Ant

 

[rodneooo]

Nice work! are gettign the box built or just changing the valve body?

 

[Berty]

Nice work! are getting the box built or just changing the valve body?

Just the valve body & shifter for now. After having the car off the road for so long doing the turbo conversion, I want to be able to drive it as much as possible before the gearbox comes out.

Here are the fruits of my second day off work!

I have been wanting to try different thermostats for a while as well as fix up some stuff that I did during the turbo upgrade which I wasn't happy about. I bought two Tridon high-flow thermostats. These are for an FD RX7

The Cosmo uses two thermostats. One which is 97 degrees and the other which is 82 (I think). The 82 degree thermostat is controlled via the solenoid rack. That is why there is a VAC line running to the thermostat housing. The idea is that the 82 degree thermostat remains closed most of the time. The diaphragm in the top of the thermostat housing keeps it shut via positive pressure. This means that most of the time, you will be running around on your 97 degree thermostat. I've been told that this was mainly for emissions.

Here you can see the exposed thermostat housings. The torque that you need to undo the four bolts is pretty huge so don't be afraid if you need to employ a breaker bar.

The rear one should be the 82 degree thermostat.

Note that you WILL need to reuse the black rubber seal which is used on the factory thermostats. These can easily be removed if you heat the rubber up in hot water. Be very careful not to break or crack these seals.

Below you can see I have put the rubber seals onto the outside of the new thermostats...

...And in...

I polished up a new thermostat housing. The reason why I needed to buy a new / secondhand one is because when I installed the fuel system, I thought that I had to grind down part of it to get enough clearance for my AN8 fuel fittings... Turns out I didn't need to and I just made a mess instead. I also lost the use of the metal space which holds the throttle cable up. This meant that my throttle cable just chilled out on top of the turbo beanie - not ideal or chilly at all.

I still had some clearance issue which required taking a chunk out of the throttle cable support piece. Die grinders are AWESOME, but boy do they make a mess.

And here is the final product.

So how did the new thermostats go?

Well not as great as what I had hoped. I got a maximum temp today of 91 degree in stop-start city traffic with 34 degrees ambient temp. Average was about 87 degrees. I was hoping to be able to keep it around 80-85. Keep in mind this is an improvement though.

 

[rodneooo]

Ok thats fair enough, but i hope u dont expect it to last very long. clutch packs will wear very quick with your amount of power, esp in a pre worn 20 year old box.
Those temps are pretty good considering u have a massive heat sink strapped to the block. Do u have a upgraded rad? do u get any after boil?

 

[db2boy]

What are these guys doing to claim up to 800PS on re-build:- http://page8.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/h168788848

Ant

 

[Berty]

Ok thats fair enough, but i hope u dont expect it to last very long. clutch packs will wear very quick with your amount of power, esp in a pre worn 20 year old box.
Those temps are pretty good considering u have a massive heat sink strapped to the block. Do u have a upgraded rad? do u get any after boil?

Yeah I have an aftermarket radiator. I don't get any after boil, even after very hard hill runs.

What are these guys doing to claim up to 800PS on re-build:- http://page8.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/h168788848

Ant

Maybe 800PS at the fly?

It can be done on a Jatco using kevlar bands, billet gears, stronger input shafts etc. Apparently most of the wear / damage comes from sloppy gear changes hence why a manual valve body will increase the amount of power the box can handle.

 

[Berty]

Day three of fixing stuff.

When I bought my radiator the fabricator got the bung size wrong for the coolant level sensor. This meant that I had been getting around with my coolant warning light on for about 2 years. Here's the problem...

There was a bung in the top of the radiator but I wanted to try and get an M16 to M12 thread reducer. Although we have lots of hardware and automotive places in Aus, most of them are more interested in selling seat covers & bullet hole stickers as opposed to anything useful. This meant that although these adapter existed, my chances of getting them locally were slim to nil.

So, I had to make the sensor screw into the bung

I got myself a cheap drill press and made some timber locating supports.

]

I had 2mm to play with either side but I managed to eye-ball it into place.

I did all of this while my assistant was asleep. Not very helpful Rusty!

And the final product!

 

[Berty]

I managed to get some more time today to work on the Cosmo. Today I decided to do some work fitting the B&M Pro Ratchet. The plan is to try and get the install to look something like this once done...

Luckily I had a spare automatic shifter which I could use as the basis for my own mounting bracket. Here is is already partly disassembled...

In the pic above I had already taken to it with a diegrinder and angle gringle in order to take off anything that I didn't need. Basically I just wanted a bare panel to which I could mount the the shifter.

Here you can see the what the factory shifter bracket looks like after removing all of the extra junk that I didn't need...

I then screwed the new base plate into the factory location and put the flat sheet metal on top so I could get the alignment right.

What I did to get the alignment between the two plates right was to apply super-glue between the base plate and the new flat top plate, then put the factory trim around it to get the alignment spot on. Once I had it right, I left the two pieces to dry. At this point, the ratchet shifter cam off the plat and the brackets went under the drill press to be permanently attached to each other.

At this point, I marked out pieces that needed to be trimmed of the flat plate in order to get a better fit around cables etc, as well as give me access to get to the four main attaching bolts which fix the shifter to the car body.

I haven't taken any pics yet, however the mounting bracket went under the knife a few more times before I could install it in the car. Extra attaching bolts where drilled to fix the two plates to each other. I used the angle grinder to further trim the flat plate and get a better fit for the shifter. Videos to come!

 

[Berty]

Here is a test of the ratchet mechanism - although it is in the car, it isn't hooked up yet.

I found out that I had the alignment wrong so I had to go back and modify some of the mounting points. Here you can see it with the surround

Total time to align it and make the bracket was about 4 hours

 

[cosmojc]

So what triggers the solonoid to open the 84 degree thermostat? I still dont understand what the point to the one lower is?

I was told that the higher temp on a Cosmo was beneficial to long term engine wear characteristics, although I dont doubt that it could well have been about emissions.

Also, I dont have a parts book nearby, but Im pretty sure that the Mazda genuine parts are the exact same number! I'ver never seen anything berfore this that has diferenetiated them, by heat range. What was your source on this?

Kramer