"There's no thrill in easy sailing when the skies are clear and blue, there's no joy in merely doing things which any one can do. But there is some satisfaction that is mighty sweet to take, when you reach a destination that you never thought you'd make"
Well the time has come, the temperatures are rising, sun is staying out longer and the roads have cleared, time for new shoes. Since I wasn’t going to repair and reuse the stock wheels which all turned out to be damaged in the end, I started a quest to find the right wheel to fit the car. Admittedly there are a lot of options, too many options but luckily a good portion of them aren’t even worth looking at and to thin them out further I settled on 17″ wheel sizes apposed to the stock 18″ size. I made this decision squarely on the fact that with a smaller wheel I’ll have a bit more sidewall to help take up the abuse of New England roads. From here I looked at brands and found many were just too heavy for my interest which brought me down to only a few manufacturers, from which I eventually settled on OZ. I’ve always liked the look of OZ wheels and ran OZ Crono’s in white and I loved them, but this time I wanted something a little different, a little more exotic looking so I was immediately attracted to the Ultraleggera and Alleggerita HLT design. Both look amazing but price ended up being the determining factor and I went with the slightly less expensive Ultraleggeras in black. Next I had to pick some rubber, I probably spent more time looking at tires then I did looking at wheels just because there are so many factors. I settled on the BFGoodrich g-Force T/A KDW 2 based on it’s reviews and ratings. This tire seems to have the best treadwear for it’s class without a severe drop in handling performance. So I committed and placed the order, 4 OZ Racing Ultraleggeras (17×8, 5×114 pattern, 48mm offset, 17.6lbs) and I wrapped them in the KDW 2′s (245/45ZR17, 25lbs, 8.5″ tread). As usual, Tire Rack got the tires to me in a very timely manor and so I slapped them on the car.
Now when I went to put them on the car I decided, since I’ve got everything to get the swaybars on now I’d go ahead and hook them up too and that is where the fun began. Due to the size of the new front swaybar I need to drill out the wholes in the swaybar and on the control arms to fit the reinforced endlinks, which thankfully Racing Beat includes a drill bit with the endlinks to achieve just this task. This sounds simple enough right? Well so it seemed right up till the drill bit stuck into the swaybar and the trigger on the drill stuck on and I thought the damn thing was going to kill me. Luckily it decided it’s own cord tasted better then my flesh. In the end I had to repair three (3) breaks in the cord but I got it all done and in and after a nice test drive it proved to be well worth the effort.
So far everything feels amazing, and I do apologize that I only have a shot of the car with wheels, no install shots from the sway bar (but really it’s just a sway bar).
After reading a little article about IBM thinking about reviving OS/2, possibly on top of a Linux core I began to think about the state of operating systems (OSes) today and well I think it’s kinda sad. We have Microsoft who is still running with the same mold they forged with Windows 95 (a spin off of the partnership with IBM that birthed OS/2) and tho Windows has evolved over the years and doesn’t need to reboot every time the display resolution is changed or network setting are altered it is still a monolithic OS with applications that rely upon a less secure model of computing. Then we have UNIX and Linux variants, they too are based on a monolithic model but have a little more freedom from that with how they handle modules and allow for the majority of the OS to be restarted without bouncing the machine itself. The *NIX’s also have a more secure userspace in which applications run allowing for a greater level of security against exploits but it’s still a monolithic core.
Then we have a few smaller projects that focus on the OS itself being a type of server-client system like MINIX and HURD. Here we see a truly different model for how an OS should run, the idea that a kernel should be nothing more then what is absolutely needed to boot a machine, everything else is a separate module/API/daemon that then runs outside the kernel. With this model you never have to worry about a reboot unless it was a kernel change, everything else could be restarted without down time. But the complexity goes up and that’s what many don’t like. It also requires more of a team effort amongst developers at least from my point of view because each part of the OS becomes it’s own entity. This can both help and hinder security since there is more talk going on between the parts of the OS leaving space for injection of malicious code. A well implemented OS of this type would fly, absolutely fly on modern hardware due to how it would be stored in memory, but that also means a very intelligent and streamlined memory manager would be needed in the base kernel. Imagine only needing a kernel footprint in memory of like 5MB or so everything else is a module of the OS and can be swapped out as needed to keep physical memory available for applications. In many servers this may be a moot point because often they only have a few simple tasks but in a desktop this would be a head turner. I mean you could have Netbooks with a gig of ram that would fly simply because memory would always be available for a running app and not filled with the monolithic OS kernel. I could also see this fitting well with modern virtualized deployments since it would allow a greater density due to better resource allocation. Hell this kinda modularized OS would be a perfect fit for a hypervizor since it could bring the footprint down to near nothing and lower the over head for running guests.
Hmmm, good food for thought here and maybe I’m a little off in my view of this but it does seem like the way things should be moving.
So for the last few months I’ve been running around like crazy trying to figure out why the car has had an issue starting. At first I was even fearing the worst and thought I may need to rebuild the engine, esp after getting a bad tank of gas that left the car blowing some smoke on startup. Well as the temps got warmer as we went into spring I started noticing the issue going away which perplexed me even further, that is till we had weather in the 80′s and 90′s and I noticed a sudden loss of power in the car. Hmm, this is most curious and it didn’t hit me at first because I was still thinking I had a bad coolant seal or something. Then while doing some data logging with the car I noticed on hot days I would lean out as I approached 27lbs/min of air flow when on a cool day I could hit almost 33lbs/min without an issue. This set off a little light in my head and I was like bingo my fuel pump is dying. LOL I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before but in any case this means I’ve got a healthy engine and a new fuel pump on order. Now with that handled and everything else in tip-top shape it’s time to start working on a tune for the car.
So I had it in last week and got the new exhaust built for the car over at Lou’s Custom Exhaust here in Manchester and I am quite pleased. The car has a beautiful purr now. In the low RPM’s and when just taking it easy she puts out a deep tone, with nice grumbles and pops when you let off the throttle. As you get on it though it starts to sound like a F1 car. It does get louder when your on it, but not as much as my RX-7 did when I had the big straight pipes on her. Overall I can’t complain one bit about the work done, they worked very closely with me to get everything the way I wanted it. I did supply them with photos of other headers as well as design documents I produced detailing pipe lengths and sizes and so on. The collection of the three 2″ pipes that make up the header is beautiful and collects into the 3″ mid-pipe in a gradual way. The mid-pipe goes straight back under the diff to the axle back with an inline resonator to help with tone and overall sound. The axle back is a dual 2.5″ setup with chambered mufflers that then go to 3″ outer diameter, 2.5″ inner diameter tips. The split to the dual 2.5″ pipes from the 3″ is also nice, they did a great job breaking it out to help reduce restriction in the flow. It may seem weird to use different diameters like this but I tried to maintain a certain pipe volume so I could keep a more even velocity through the system as well as the thermal dynamics of the pipes. In fact I’ve been able to keep the pipe temperatures quite linear, noticeable by the discoloring in the tips from the heat. The temps at the collection point in the header are also staying below 1800*F, slightly cooler then stock.
The combined performance of the intake and the exhaust has changed my air flow through the engine from 25lbs/min to 30lbs/min as measured by the MAF (mass airflow sensor). Small gains can be felt below 4000RPMs, with a nice pull as low as 1800RPMs. The biggest change is above 4500RPMs, as the car pulls much stronger then it did prior and continues to pull for an additional 200-300RPMs over stock, bringing the usable power band up to 8700-8800RPMs.
Anyway, I’ll finish the post off with some pictures I took of the exhaust, both under the car while they were just finishing up and after I picked the girl up.
So I consider myself a spirited driver and after several years, and now having burnt through 2 sets of coils I finally grew tired of the Mazda OEM coils. I have to say the fluctuating gas millage and performance got quite annoying. This lead me to the BHR Ignition kit, which I ordered and anxiously waited for (maybe even a little annoyingly impatient, but that’d be up to Charles lol). Anyway, I got the kit in (after a couple small weather delay’s) I put it in immediately. The install with the AEM intake was rather smooth, I just had to remove the strut tower brace. I will admit it is a tight fit as it pops onto the 4 studs.
First I will say for me the improvement was more then immediately noticeable since my old Mazda coils were in the icy grip of death lol. It was a wonderful feeling have the car fire right up with out a single miss-fire. On top of that, I was able to notice an immediate jump in my gas millage. On fresh OEM coils and plugs I could get about 20.5mpg. As those coils were dying it dropped as low as 14-15mpg. Now with the coils on (and before I could swap out my plugs with almost 30k on them with the fresh spare set I keep in the garage) I was able to once more see 20mpg. On top of that, yesterday I went out with some buddies on a drive up through the White Mountains here in NH. Through out the trip the throttle response was absolutely wonderful and she felt good all the way through the RPM range (mind you I have 149k miles on the engine). We headed out from Littleton, freshly fueled up at around 1pm and drove the mountain roads aggressively till about 5:15pm, during this time I barely burned through a 1/3rd of a tank. I’m changing the spark plugs today, so will see how a fresh set of plugs feels in the car but it’s hard to imagine it could get even better.
All things said, the guys at BHR seem to be on top of their game and I’m curious to see what else they put together to offer the community. Kinda wish they were around for the RX-7 community haha, would like to see what they could do for my old 83 :p
Next up for my baby is a full custom exhaust and some retuning, which may include some more indepth tweaks (almost forgot how much I hated my Assembly classes in college) but more on that later.
Oh, and for those interested about the history of the car, here is a little brief.
Acutally use the same process for the 8 that I use with my 7 that has 232k on the original engine, figured it worked well for the lil 12A in my 7. I use 5w-30 in the winter, 10w-30 in the summer and check my oil regularly and I only run Castrol GTX. I have also been running Slick 50 in the engine for a long time, I add 1 bottle every 50k miles or so. For warm up, I give the car about 90s to get oil up to pressure and flowing, then keep the RPM’s low (below 3k normally) till temps are above ~110*F, then below 4.5k till completely warm. For the first 125k miles I ran 89 octane fuel, when the coils began acting up I switched to 91. When the car had 55k on the motor (running 89 octane) I was at a show and got a free dyno run (friends parents were there with their dyno-pack dynometer) and she showed a solid 184hp uncorrected on the dyno. I installed the AEM intake around 144k, before that I was running a K&N drop in.
The only issue I’ve run into was my SSV valve had stuck closed for a time. I corrected this by removing the UIM and using a long screwdriver, hammer and B-12 Chemtool. The valve freed and the engine blew a little smoke but that was about 30k miles ago and I’ve yet to have it even feel hesitant since. I also suffered a failure of the Secondary Air system, which I have left removed with the vacuum line plugged (borrowed a friends airpump to pass inspection), along those lines for more then 30k miles I haven’t run a CAT on the car and it hasn’t thrown a code.
I am currently running the N3Z2EU00013H60 calibration on the ECU, only issue that has been noticed is a rich mixture between shifts (11.2afr) resulting in little backfires or puffs of black smoke. Timing is -5 to 44 depending on load and throttle position. My idle sits right at 800rpms on average with a near stoich AFR.
I really haven’t had to do anything special to keep her running nice, I don’t launch at stop lights and tho I do at times redline her about once a week, normally I see no reason to go above 8k RPMs, just no power up there, esp in the higher gears. I also keep the RPMs about 2.5k while driving.
There, I think I covered all the bases.