D Prepared Miata Build
- Thread starter aMaff
- Start date
problem solved, tires actually mounted easier than i thought they would, though the dismount might end up taking a little skill.
SO MUCH RUBBER!
The good news is: the car LOOKS awesome on them, even if the dirt-track wheels have some massive freaking lips on them. Herra Frush y0!
My co-driver and I didn't actually get to drive it yesterday due to the weather (specifically, being unprepared for the weather... a mistake that won't happen again). 2 other buddies of mine drove it in the 1st heat, and my co-driver and I both got ride alongs, and the car, just from the passenger seat, FEELS so much more responsive from the front end, with a lot more overall grip. And this is with honestly shot to s*** old tires that we want to use to test for a couple of events before we put the good ones on.
(sad2)
The good news is: the car LOOKS awesome on them, even if the dirt-track wheels have some massive freaking lips on them. Herra Frush y0!
My co-driver and I didn't actually get to drive it yesterday due to the weather (specifically, being unprepared for the weather... a mistake that won't happen again). 2 other buddies of mine drove it in the 1st heat, and my co-driver and I both got ride alongs, and the car, just from the passenger seat, FEELS so much more responsive from the front end, with a lot more overall grip. And this is with honestly shot to s*** old tires that we want to use to test for a couple of events before we put the good ones on.
(sad2)
Further thoughts: next year once some budget opens up, I'm going to have a set of wheels made. The overall track width is the same as it was with the Goodyears, but the straight-wall tires don't flex nearly as much as the cantilevered ones do, and I can add about an inch per side of backspace because of that, which will narrow the track 2". So, that's the plan going ahead.
Holy Avons, Batman! Wow... just... just wow. These tires are batshit crazy, and it's not like the GoodYears sucked or anything... it's just that by comparison? They suck. These things are like having tires wired directly to your brain. There's grip everywhere, all the time. And the kicker is that these are for all intents and purposes throw-away take-offs. They're pretty much fast down to the chords. I've got 2 events, maybe 3 left on them before they're completely toast and I can swap on the newer set.
My first 2 runs were complete throwaways, just trying to figure out WTF just happened. Talk about a complete brain recalibration to go to these tires. It's like having a fast-forward button in the corners. The biggest difference I think though was how fast we were able to take transitions. There's a set of offsets between the "turnaround" at the start and the big right hand sweeper into the chicago box that ran flat out. That would have not been possible with the GYs on my car. I hit the rev-limiter on my 2nd run there and botched the entry because I just couldn't think far enough ahead. My last 2 runs, I won't say i was thinking ahead as much as I was able to at least keep up with the car. I'm seriously looking forward to doing some development work on these.
My first 2 runs were complete throwaways, just trying to figure out WTF just happened. Talk about a complete brain recalibration to go to these tires. It's like having a fast-forward button in the corners. The biggest difference I think though was how fast we were able to take transitions. There's a set of offsets between the "turnaround" at the start and the big right hand sweeper into the chicago box that ran flat out. That would have not been possible with the GYs on my car. I hit the rev-limiter on my 2nd run there and botched the entry because I just couldn't think far enough ahead. My last 2 runs, I won't say i was thinking ahead as much as I was able to at least keep up with the car. I'm seriously looking forward to doing some development work on these.
Looking at previous results, comparing to our nearest local benchmark (an E Prepared Civic with a national championship driver), we were consistently ~4 seconds behind them at events.
We were 2 seconds behind them today. So, yeah... that's a HUGE pickup.
How hard these can transition is pretty crazy. It's almost as if the harder you make transitions, the harder they want to hang on. Imagine doing what we did and came straight from 195 toyos, yikes!
Are you still on a 1.6 4:30 rear diff? If so, get used to that rev limiter (drive). Today and last weekend we were on fairly small asphalt lots and we ran out of second pretty fast even with a 7500 rpm rev limit. We thought we could upshift/downshift well enough but it became clear pretty fast that we suck at it lol. 3.90 with a Torsen going in this weekend.
Seriously, they're like flypaper. The transitional response is just silly.
We're on a 4.30 1.8 Diff. My 1.6 VLSD stopped L-ing the S after 1 single event on slicks (boom07). We run pretty fast courses that typically can be done with a shift to 3rd without much trouble. I like the gearing bump from the 4.3 right now. I'm still on an ST build motor + Megasquirt. It really bogs as soon as you do anything to get the gears longer. It's good enough, enough of the time, that I'm going to keep this rear end until I build a motor with some more twist. Then yes, a 3.9 or maybe 3.6 will be on the table.
That too. But even then we'll want to go to at least a 3.9, I think.
Just to be a little more comfortable in 2nd gear vs 3rd?
Yeah, same here on the gearing bump and the motor. I ran some numbers and switching from a 4.3 to a 3.9 will be a loss of about 10% of torque at the wheel. But, it should still accelerate a tad faster than what it did with STS size tires, not counting the 300lb weight loss, so I'm trying to stay on the optimistic side. We'll be at our large site here in a couple weeks so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Took about an hour to pull a 2 lb mat of insulation sandwiched between the pedal boxes & firewall. Had to pull the steering column, clutch pedal box & the brake / throttle box... that was fun. Would have been worse if there was a dashboard, but still. The time & effort per lb lost is starting to ramp up pretty quickly lol
And a couple of fun ones from when we were checking wheel fitment (god I can't wait to have a set of wheels made...)
And a couple of fun ones from when we were checking wheel fitment (god I can't wait to have a set of wheels made...)
I re-centered the steering. It was off by 60 degrees +1 spline. Damn it. I thought I'd gotten away with just being able to put the steering wheel 1 flat to the left (the quick release is a hex, turning the wheel by 1 flat = 60 degrees). It was off just enough with the wheels straight to bother me, even though I KNOW I'd never notice it on course, but I'm retarded so I took the whole hub apart and re-assembled it.
