Mazda RX8 Track Car, "The Kraken"
Discussion
Hello everyone,
I’ve got a 231ps 2004 Mazda Rx8 Series One in Velocity Red, and a Noble M12, but I’ll come to that later. (Edit its got its own thread HERE)
I used to be into track days back in the day but over time I had lost interest in it and stuck to road cars (with a touch of off-road thrown in there). I took my Noble to a sort-of owners club meeting at Silverstone where half of them were also out on track. Managed to get a couple of laps in a couple of the track Nobles and when we came back into the pits I was back on the hook.
However, my Noble is my pride and joy and I knew that if I took it on the track I would just potter it around for fear of damaging it, so I started to look for a dedicated track car.
I went through the usual motions of choosing a car, I wanted rear wheel drive, decent power and a limited slip diff as a minimum and eventually I got it down to a few options, the RX8 made the most sense but I was cautious due to all the pub talk we so often here about reliability and oil consumption and such like.
Still, I did my research and decided it was the car for me; I’m very handy with the tools so no fears about working on my own car and I’m technically minded so was not concerned about the unfamiliar rotary engine. I set out to find one and got OE04 BNK from a chap in London. It was in pretty good condition, the brakes had just been replaced, it had a Sebring rear silencer and had just had a Rotary Motion engine rebuild, which I believed would give me insurance for the next 60k miles or so. 3am on a Sunday morning me and a friend of mine set off to London to pick it up, and we drove it back without issue, except it used a lot of oil, which I thought was normal.
I then drove it round as a road car for a few months just to get used to it and see if there was anything I wanted to change. I decided that I would fit some 255 width Potenza rear tyres that I got cheap from a friend part worn, change the diff and gearbox oil (with Fuchs stuff, more on that later) replace the brake pads with EBC Yellowstuffs in the front, and gut the standard cat. I did both of these a couple of days before its first track outing at Anglesey in Wales (October 2013).
Worth mentioning at this point my partner in crime Allan, he shares the car with me on most track adventures and assists with its repairs and modifications.
Excellent performance on track, the car was much better than I had hoped and things were all shiny in my world. Allan enjoyed driving the car too, he had never driven a RWD car in anger before and was apprehensive but by the end of the day he was much more compliant with the car.
But, and there is always a ‘but’, since the decat had been fitted the car was putting out a lot of blue smoke. Something was clearly wrong so on return to base following Anglesey the engine was pulled for investigation. The gearbox had also developed a 3rd to 4th gear crunch at high speed changes, and the release bearing was making a racket.
A bit of to’ing and fro’ing later and Rotary Motion agreed to rebuild the engine and reinstall it into the car with a new warranty and clutch, which was good. However it had harmed my perception of the RX8, after all I had done one trackday in it, it had cost a lot to buy and run in terms of logistics’ getting the engine sorted out, and a lot in labour too. At that point I was considering selling it off with the fresh engine and getting something like a BMW M3 or 200SX.
To get my mojo back it was booked into Oulton Park, which is my local track. I didn’t want to go too far with it if it was going to go bang again.
At this point two of my other friends bought RX8’s to join my little track day adventures, one race car rule was developed that no two cars can be the same colour, and they all got a proper name.
The Red One is the ‘Kraken’, the Blue One is the ‘Sonic KaBOOM’ and the Black one is the ‘Hadouken’ (1).
The Kraken and the Hadouken went to Oulton Park on a very wet February (2014) morning, and it was a little tense pushing the car round at high speeds in the rain, for fear of sliding and locking up at every corner. But surprisingly the car did very well in the wet, so much so I would say I almost prefer it, much more fun had and I learned a lot more in a much shorter space of time.
Oulton however did highlight that I need to improve my pedal control, my friend John with the Hadouken can heel and toe and I couldn’t, Oulton has a sweeping right hander coming into a chicane. The instructor told me to hold off braking on the bend and wait until the straight (because it’s wet) and then brake hard for the chicane. John could do this relatively well with heel and toe but I couldn’t and the rear end locked up as I went down the gears with engine braking. I couldn’t get my feet in the right position without stressing my ankle.
Post Oulton Park the standard rear brake pads were howling so they were replaced with EBC Redstuffs, two trackdays and a few thousand miles had killed off the standard pads. Lots of people slate EBC but I have to say they have been excellent for me on all my performance cars and on the RX8 they seem to be holding up very well, the fluid was also replaced at this point with DOT 5.1 stuff. I also took this opportunity to fit D585 coil packs, 8.5mm magnecor leads and new spark plugs to get rid of any potential ignition system issues.
Smaller upgrades were running on in the back ground. I fitted a larger ‘rally’ pedal to the accelerator pedal (ignore the gold colour, it was free because of it) to allow me to heel and toe comfortably which worked a treat. I decided to fit Tein-S springs so cut out the old ones in a ‘fast n loud’ style and installed them and then had the tracking redone to stock settings. Replaced the air filter and frequently serviced the engine, filled the engine mounts with urethane compound, fitted a fire extinguisher, fitted a cg lock, a none slip seat liner and I started premixing.
I also fitted a Toyosports catch can to the breather system, putting it on the side of the fuse box, behind the air filter box rather than in the usual place up near the master cylinder, I intended to fit a SOHN at some point and that’s where the tank would go.
Next stop the Kraken and the Sonic Boom this time went to Blyton Park (March 2014), an excellent track for learning. There is nothing to hit and it’s nice and flat, because of this you can give it 110% and really learn the limits of the car. Heel and toeing had come on nicely and made for much more controlled decelerations, the car held its own performance wise as well with some of the other metal on the track. Allan managed to get his apex’s right as you can see in the photos.
After this I had the option to replace the car with something a bit more specialised, or to persevere with the RX8, I had just passed my B+E license so the option to go to something smaller and lighter and a trailer was appealing to me. In the end I decided that the rotary was too much fun and the RX8 was a great chassis and decided to stick with it, it did however need some upgrades.
I replaced the entire front end with Urethane Bushes, I choose the Energy ones from Mazda Rotary Parts. What a horrendous job this was, the lower arm bolts had corroded into the inner sleeves of the bushes, so had to be cut out. Anyone who has done this knows that the rear bush bolt has almost no access, I snapped tools and drills everywhere and ultimately it took 2 full days to remove the four bolts holding the lower arms to the car.
Then getting the bushes out the arms was the usual pain in the backside, and very messy, but soon enough the new bushes were in and the arms back on the car, new anti-roll bar drop links fitted, new inner and outer tie rod ends, and its suspension was aligned again. It drove so much better.
The Kraken and the Sonic Boom headed to Bedford South-East-North (SEN) circuit next (Sept 2014), this was a massive circuit with some real challenging corners and a lot of higher speed sections. I was convinced I would torch the brakes on this outing but to my surprise they held up very well, despite bluing the discs. The gearbox 3rd-4th crunch now was starting to become an issue, research shows that it’s the Fuchs oil likely to cause this.
We were both progressing with the car well, noticing when the tyres were going off, when they were too hot and over pressure, and also found that the traction control was starting to hold us back and ran with it off a lot.
Unfortunately, the Sonic Booms clutch exploded in the afternoon and required recovering back to base for repairs. A failure wasn’t unexpected, but nevertheless its rubbish when it happens at a track day.
Back at base the Sonics clutch was replaced with a stock Exedy one from MRP, and the Kraken had some more upgrades. I’m paranoid about fluids, levels, temperatures, surging etc so I decided to replace the sump with an improved one, choosing a Greddy one for the RX8. Theory being that with a bigger capacity, and some baffling oil surge would be prevented and temperatures would be regulated.
To go with it, a SPA dual oil pressure and oil temperature gauge was installed to the car, along with a LMA oil pressure switch t-piece & extender to permit the standard ‘gauge’ to be used. I cannot cope with looking at a ‘gauge’ with no oil pressure, even if I know it’s not accurate.
I got a dual gauge pod from America and set about trying to find a decent gauge to go in the second spot. Allan had the idea that we should make an ‘Awesomeness’ gauge to register how awesome we were at any particular time. Excellent idea, so that was made and installed.
I also took this opportunity to go to a SOHN adaptor and stainless steel tank, keeping the lower level warning light on both the sump and the tank. I switched to synthetic oil in the sump, and synthetic two stroke oil in the SOHN tank.
The catch can was proving difficult to drain so I drilled and taped a hole in the top of it to allow it to be extracted via syringe or similar. I also machine polished the headlights to remove the plastic haze, worked great at the time but quickly returned.
For the first time all three cars ended up on track together, and headed to Oulton Parks drift/rally circuit this time (October 2014) for a day of learning car control. As I have said before Allan had not driven a RWD car before this and wanted a bit of understanding into how the tail behaves when it kicks out. All three cars handled the day very well and had great fun, excellent.
The Sonic was struck with another fault however, puncture in the rear wheel. Thankfully a spare was available and crisis averted.
Small jobs completed then, I tapped out the corrosion from the tow hook threads, added power connection points under the bonnet and in the boot for conditioning battery charger connections (front if it’s in the garage, rear if it’s on the drive). I had the air conditioning re-gassed and a Connects2 USB adaptor fitted, after all it’s a nice car for use on the road too and it drives to/from tracks at the moment.
Cadwell park (November 2014), all three RX8’s made it there again and spent the day going round the track in splendid fashion. I had an off up near the back end of the circuit thankfully just running down the grass. Allan had a spectacular spin after the hair pin and picked up a piece of Cadwell Park on the wiper. It can be seen in the photos, it drove all the way back home with that on the wipers, and re-planted in his garden and is still growing today.
And here’s where it all goes a bit crazy. By now we had done quite a lot of trackdays and the trend was looking to continue, so I had another decision to make about getting again something more focused on the track. After much deliberation I decided to stick with it, and opened up a bucket of money to pour into it.
I fitted Koni sport yellow adjustable dampers, racing beat anti roll bars, new front wheel bearings and ABS sensors, new rear wheel bearings, new drop links, fitted urethane bushes into the rear end, R3 short ratio rear diff, Japspeed rear toe control arms, HEL brake lines, HEL clutch line, ATE super blue fluid, replacement low mileage gearbox, Redline MT-90 oil, new ball joint boots, new gearstick gaiter and finally a Toyosports un-resonated decat pipe. Then I had the suspension aligned AGAIN.
There was quite a bit of car to dispose of once finished!
This was a step change in how the car performed. I took it back to Blyton park (March 2015) to see how it handled compared with the year before hand and it was a night and day improvement. Much better to drive, noticeably quicker, sounded amazing and much more confidence inspiring, no fire though, boo.
The Sonic Boom joined us there, but again plagued by a problem, this time a big one and the engines rear bearing failed and the car was recovered home again.
I decided to add some stripes to it to make it a bit different from all the other velocity reds that seem to frequent track days, but generally speaking I didn’t change anything much after Blyton except for the normal servicing. I did fit some Nankang NS2R Semi slicks to a spare set of wheels I had picked up.
Some musical cars then followed.
The Sonic was terminally dead, it was decided that the best thing to do was to replace it with another. Enter Sonic Boom 2, another winning blue car but this time one with no sunroof and a rotary motion rebuild.
The Hadouken was quite high mileage at this point and needing some work. It was replaced with a grey PZ which was much much younger, the Hadouken name transferred to this car.
The old Hadouken went to another friend who wanted to join the series but didn’t want to invest too much into it. The failed engine winning blue car also went to him for parts.
So now there is-
Red Kraken
Blue Sonic KaBoom (2)
Black LeShat
Grey Hadouken
…and the blown engine blue car for spares.
Allan had never done any drag racing, so off to Santa Pod for some clutch dumping (May 2015). It was a nightmare, the weekend before the FIA main event so it was busy with dragsters preparing for the event. Good to watch but at 20 mins for each one to get set up and run it made for a very long day. 09:30-16:30 we only got 5 runs in.
In any case, best run of the day was 15.15seconds, quite respectable I feel for a RX8 which isn’t exactly well suited to drag racing.
For the Kraken, Racing Beat Revi and duct fitted, front brake pads replaced again with EBC Yellowstuffs, front discs replaced with new OEM, rear brake pads replaced with EBC Redstuffs and rear discs replaced with new OEM. The header tank and radiator cap replaced with OEM new, 20mm Eibach wheel spacers fitted, the catch can was resealed (the Toyosports cans are rubbish. Bin the seals and replace with liquid gasket) and a permanent drain and drain tap installed to the wheel arch.
Front bumper was meshed to protect the various coolers, camera mount glass fibred to stiffen it up, the wheel arches were opened up for better oil cooler air flow.
As mentioned I’m paranoid about fluids, so the fuel pump was also replaced as a matter of course with the uprated Walbro item.
Unfortunately the Urethane bushes in the front arms, rear position had failed quite soon. They are a ‘dumbbell’ type shape, but the alloy arm had climbed over the wider section of the dumbbell and caused a heavy knocking noise.
They were removed, pressed out and replaced with OEM Mazda rear bushes, and then the suspension aligned AGAIN!
Next stop, the Hadouken and the Kraken are heading to SPA in Belgium and the Nurburgring in July 2015, and Croft in August 2015. I also have another big upgrade in the works to be implemented around winter 2015 I think.
Thanks
Matt
I’ve got a 231ps 2004 Mazda Rx8 Series One in Velocity Red, and a Noble M12, but I’ll come to that later. (Edit its got its own thread HERE)
I used to be into track days back in the day but over time I had lost interest in it and stuck to road cars (with a touch of off-road thrown in there). I took my Noble to a sort-of owners club meeting at Silverstone where half of them were also out on track. Managed to get a couple of laps in a couple of the track Nobles and when we came back into the pits I was back on the hook.
However, my Noble is my pride and joy and I knew that if I took it on the track I would just potter it around for fear of damaging it, so I started to look for a dedicated track car.
I went through the usual motions of choosing a car, I wanted rear wheel drive, decent power and a limited slip diff as a minimum and eventually I got it down to a few options, the RX8 made the most sense but I was cautious due to all the pub talk we so often here about reliability and oil consumption and such like.
Still, I did my research and decided it was the car for me; I’m very handy with the tools so no fears about working on my own car and I’m technically minded so was not concerned about the unfamiliar rotary engine. I set out to find one and got OE04 BNK from a chap in London. It was in pretty good condition, the brakes had just been replaced, it had a Sebring rear silencer and had just had a Rotary Motion engine rebuild, which I believed would give me insurance for the next 60k miles or so. 3am on a Sunday morning me and a friend of mine set off to London to pick it up, and we drove it back without issue, except it used a lot of oil, which I thought was normal.
I then drove it round as a road car for a few months just to get used to it and see if there was anything I wanted to change. I decided that I would fit some 255 width Potenza rear tyres that I got cheap from a friend part worn, change the diff and gearbox oil (with Fuchs stuff, more on that later) replace the brake pads with EBC Yellowstuffs in the front, and gut the standard cat. I did both of these a couple of days before its first track outing at Anglesey in Wales (October 2013).
Worth mentioning at this point my partner in crime Allan, he shares the car with me on most track adventures and assists with its repairs and modifications.
Excellent performance on track, the car was much better than I had hoped and things were all shiny in my world. Allan enjoyed driving the car too, he had never driven a RWD car in anger before and was apprehensive but by the end of the day he was much more compliant with the car.
But, and there is always a ‘but’, since the decat had been fitted the car was putting out a lot of blue smoke. Something was clearly wrong so on return to base following Anglesey the engine was pulled for investigation. The gearbox had also developed a 3rd to 4th gear crunch at high speed changes, and the release bearing was making a racket.
A bit of to’ing and fro’ing later and Rotary Motion agreed to rebuild the engine and reinstall it into the car with a new warranty and clutch, which was good. However it had harmed my perception of the RX8, after all I had done one trackday in it, it had cost a lot to buy and run in terms of logistics’ getting the engine sorted out, and a lot in labour too. At that point I was considering selling it off with the fresh engine and getting something like a BMW M3 or 200SX.
To get my mojo back it was booked into Oulton Park, which is my local track. I didn’t want to go too far with it if it was going to go bang again.
At this point two of my other friends bought RX8’s to join my little track day adventures, one race car rule was developed that no two cars can be the same colour, and they all got a proper name.
The Red One is the ‘Kraken’, the Blue One is the ‘Sonic KaBOOM’ and the Black one is the ‘Hadouken’ (1).
The Kraken and the Hadouken went to Oulton Park on a very wet February (2014) morning, and it was a little tense pushing the car round at high speeds in the rain, for fear of sliding and locking up at every corner. But surprisingly the car did very well in the wet, so much so I would say I almost prefer it, much more fun had and I learned a lot more in a much shorter space of time.
Oulton however did highlight that I need to improve my pedal control, my friend John with the Hadouken can heel and toe and I couldn’t, Oulton has a sweeping right hander coming into a chicane. The instructor told me to hold off braking on the bend and wait until the straight (because it’s wet) and then brake hard for the chicane. John could do this relatively well with heel and toe but I couldn’t and the rear end locked up as I went down the gears with engine braking. I couldn’t get my feet in the right position without stressing my ankle.
Post Oulton Park the standard rear brake pads were howling so they were replaced with EBC Redstuffs, two trackdays and a few thousand miles had killed off the standard pads. Lots of people slate EBC but I have to say they have been excellent for me on all my performance cars and on the RX8 they seem to be holding up very well, the fluid was also replaced at this point with DOT 5.1 stuff. I also took this opportunity to fit D585 coil packs, 8.5mm magnecor leads and new spark plugs to get rid of any potential ignition system issues.
Smaller upgrades were running on in the back ground. I fitted a larger ‘rally’ pedal to the accelerator pedal (ignore the gold colour, it was free because of it) to allow me to heel and toe comfortably which worked a treat. I decided to fit Tein-S springs so cut out the old ones in a ‘fast n loud’ style and installed them and then had the tracking redone to stock settings. Replaced the air filter and frequently serviced the engine, filled the engine mounts with urethane compound, fitted a fire extinguisher, fitted a cg lock, a none slip seat liner and I started premixing.
I also fitted a Toyosports catch can to the breather system, putting it on the side of the fuse box, behind the air filter box rather than in the usual place up near the master cylinder, I intended to fit a SOHN at some point and that’s where the tank would go.
Next stop the Kraken and the Sonic Boom this time went to Blyton Park (March 2014), an excellent track for learning. There is nothing to hit and it’s nice and flat, because of this you can give it 110% and really learn the limits of the car. Heel and toeing had come on nicely and made for much more controlled decelerations, the car held its own performance wise as well with some of the other metal on the track. Allan managed to get his apex’s right as you can see in the photos.
After this I had the option to replace the car with something a bit more specialised, or to persevere with the RX8, I had just passed my B+E license so the option to go to something smaller and lighter and a trailer was appealing to me. In the end I decided that the rotary was too much fun and the RX8 was a great chassis and decided to stick with it, it did however need some upgrades.
I replaced the entire front end with Urethane Bushes, I choose the Energy ones from Mazda Rotary Parts. What a horrendous job this was, the lower arm bolts had corroded into the inner sleeves of the bushes, so had to be cut out. Anyone who has done this knows that the rear bush bolt has almost no access, I snapped tools and drills everywhere and ultimately it took 2 full days to remove the four bolts holding the lower arms to the car.
Then getting the bushes out the arms was the usual pain in the backside, and very messy, but soon enough the new bushes were in and the arms back on the car, new anti-roll bar drop links fitted, new inner and outer tie rod ends, and its suspension was aligned again. It drove so much better.
The Kraken and the Sonic Boom headed to Bedford South-East-North (SEN) circuit next (Sept 2014), this was a massive circuit with some real challenging corners and a lot of higher speed sections. I was convinced I would torch the brakes on this outing but to my surprise they held up very well, despite bluing the discs. The gearbox 3rd-4th crunch now was starting to become an issue, research shows that it’s the Fuchs oil likely to cause this.
We were both progressing with the car well, noticing when the tyres were going off, when they were too hot and over pressure, and also found that the traction control was starting to hold us back and ran with it off a lot.
Unfortunately, the Sonic Booms clutch exploded in the afternoon and required recovering back to base for repairs. A failure wasn’t unexpected, but nevertheless its rubbish when it happens at a track day.
Back at base the Sonics clutch was replaced with a stock Exedy one from MRP, and the Kraken had some more upgrades. I’m paranoid about fluids, levels, temperatures, surging etc so I decided to replace the sump with an improved one, choosing a Greddy one for the RX8. Theory being that with a bigger capacity, and some baffling oil surge would be prevented and temperatures would be regulated.
To go with it, a SPA dual oil pressure and oil temperature gauge was installed to the car, along with a LMA oil pressure switch t-piece & extender to permit the standard ‘gauge’ to be used. I cannot cope with looking at a ‘gauge’ with no oil pressure, even if I know it’s not accurate.
I got a dual gauge pod from America and set about trying to find a decent gauge to go in the second spot. Allan had the idea that we should make an ‘Awesomeness’ gauge to register how awesome we were at any particular time. Excellent idea, so that was made and installed.
I also took this opportunity to go to a SOHN adaptor and stainless steel tank, keeping the lower level warning light on both the sump and the tank. I switched to synthetic oil in the sump, and synthetic two stroke oil in the SOHN tank.
The catch can was proving difficult to drain so I drilled and taped a hole in the top of it to allow it to be extracted via syringe or similar. I also machine polished the headlights to remove the plastic haze, worked great at the time but quickly returned.
For the first time all three cars ended up on track together, and headed to Oulton Parks drift/rally circuit this time (October 2014) for a day of learning car control. As I have said before Allan had not driven a RWD car before this and wanted a bit of understanding into how the tail behaves when it kicks out. All three cars handled the day very well and had great fun, excellent.
The Sonic was struck with another fault however, puncture in the rear wheel. Thankfully a spare was available and crisis averted.
Small jobs completed then, I tapped out the corrosion from the tow hook threads, added power connection points under the bonnet and in the boot for conditioning battery charger connections (front if it’s in the garage, rear if it’s on the drive). I had the air conditioning re-gassed and a Connects2 USB adaptor fitted, after all it’s a nice car for use on the road too and it drives to/from tracks at the moment.
Cadwell park (November 2014), all three RX8’s made it there again and spent the day going round the track in splendid fashion. I had an off up near the back end of the circuit thankfully just running down the grass. Allan had a spectacular spin after the hair pin and picked up a piece of Cadwell Park on the wiper. It can be seen in the photos, it drove all the way back home with that on the wipers, and re-planted in his garden and is still growing today.
And here’s where it all goes a bit crazy. By now we had done quite a lot of trackdays and the trend was looking to continue, so I had another decision to make about getting again something more focused on the track. After much deliberation I decided to stick with it, and opened up a bucket of money to pour into it.
I fitted Koni sport yellow adjustable dampers, racing beat anti roll bars, new front wheel bearings and ABS sensors, new rear wheel bearings, new drop links, fitted urethane bushes into the rear end, R3 short ratio rear diff, Japspeed rear toe control arms, HEL brake lines, HEL clutch line, ATE super blue fluid, replacement low mileage gearbox, Redline MT-90 oil, new ball joint boots, new gearstick gaiter and finally a Toyosports un-resonated decat pipe. Then I had the suspension aligned AGAIN.
There was quite a bit of car to dispose of once finished!
This was a step change in how the car performed. I took it back to Blyton park (March 2015) to see how it handled compared with the year before hand and it was a night and day improvement. Much better to drive, noticeably quicker, sounded amazing and much more confidence inspiring, no fire though, boo.
The Sonic Boom joined us there, but again plagued by a problem, this time a big one and the engines rear bearing failed and the car was recovered home again.
I decided to add some stripes to it to make it a bit different from all the other velocity reds that seem to frequent track days, but generally speaking I didn’t change anything much after Blyton except for the normal servicing. I did fit some Nankang NS2R Semi slicks to a spare set of wheels I had picked up.
Some musical cars then followed.
The Sonic was terminally dead, it was decided that the best thing to do was to replace it with another. Enter Sonic Boom 2, another winning blue car but this time one with no sunroof and a rotary motion rebuild.
The Hadouken was quite high mileage at this point and needing some work. It was replaced with a grey PZ which was much much younger, the Hadouken name transferred to this car.
The old Hadouken went to another friend who wanted to join the series but didn’t want to invest too much into it. The failed engine winning blue car also went to him for parts.
So now there is-
Red Kraken
Blue Sonic KaBoom (2)
Black LeShat
Grey Hadouken
…and the blown engine blue car for spares.
Allan had never done any drag racing, so off to Santa Pod for some clutch dumping (May 2015). It was a nightmare, the weekend before the FIA main event so it was busy with dragsters preparing for the event. Good to watch but at 20 mins for each one to get set up and run it made for a very long day. 09:30-16:30 we only got 5 runs in.
In any case, best run of the day was 15.15seconds, quite respectable I feel for a RX8 which isn’t exactly well suited to drag racing.
For the Kraken, Racing Beat Revi and duct fitted, front brake pads replaced again with EBC Yellowstuffs, front discs replaced with new OEM, rear brake pads replaced with EBC Redstuffs and rear discs replaced with new OEM. The header tank and radiator cap replaced with OEM new, 20mm Eibach wheel spacers fitted, the catch can was resealed (the Toyosports cans are rubbish. Bin the seals and replace with liquid gasket) and a permanent drain and drain tap installed to the wheel arch.
Front bumper was meshed to protect the various coolers, camera mount glass fibred to stiffen it up, the wheel arches were opened up for better oil cooler air flow.
As mentioned I’m paranoid about fluids, so the fuel pump was also replaced as a matter of course with the uprated Walbro item.
Unfortunately the Urethane bushes in the front arms, rear position had failed quite soon. They are a ‘dumbbell’ type shape, but the alloy arm had climbed over the wider section of the dumbbell and caused a heavy knocking noise.
They were removed, pressed out and replaced with OEM Mazda rear bushes, and then the suspension aligned AGAIN!
Next stop, the Hadouken and the Kraken are heading to SPA in Belgium and the Nurburgring in July 2015, and Croft in August 2015. I also have another big upgrade in the works to be implemented around winter 2015 I think.
Thanks
Matt
Edited by StreetDragster on Friday 25th May 08:37
Bit of an update, three of the cars went to Croft on the 28th of August.
Weather was good, dry and warm. All cars passed the noise tests which is always a tense moment and then out onto the track.
The Kraken performed well all day, oil temperature gets up there but other than that it did well, the Nankang NS-2R tyres doing really well.
Croft is a difficult track to get the lines right, some tuition in the afternoon had me and Allan drastically improving our driving, well recommended.
The Hadouken ( John's car)did well too, spits some nice fireballs out even with the silenced race pipe installed rather than the race pipe that was in at SPA.
It did have a shunt with a Clio though, completely the Clios fault for overtaking very close to a corner, then cutting across his line.
Damage not too bad for the RX8, turns out the chap was testing a customer’s car, wouldn't like to be him.
The Sonic2 (Rick's car, not on the OC) did ok for its small amount of time on track, rubbish cold tyres and much loud pedal resulted in a few offs. One of which being into the tyre wall, ending the day for the car, and it now needs repair.
Thankfully, the damage is mostly cosmetic, and we have a spare winning blue car for parts, it'll live to fight another day.
Now the season is over for the Kraken, it’s time for some upgrades over winter. I don't trust the Rotary Motion engine that is in it, so it’s coming out and a freshly rebuilt WGT one is going in, along with a tubular manifold and a lightweight flywheel.
Much bigger engine oil cooler, and a gearbox oil pump and cooler, and a few other choice changes. I'm going to change the passenger rear door as well to one which wasn't painted by Stevie Wonder.
Matt
Weather was good, dry and warm. All cars passed the noise tests which is always a tense moment and then out onto the track.
The Kraken performed well all day, oil temperature gets up there but other than that it did well, the Nankang NS-2R tyres doing really well.
Croft is a difficult track to get the lines right, some tuition in the afternoon had me and Allan drastically improving our driving, well recommended.
The Hadouken ( John's car)did well too, spits some nice fireballs out even with the silenced race pipe installed rather than the race pipe that was in at SPA.
It did have a shunt with a Clio though, completely the Clios fault for overtaking very close to a corner, then cutting across his line.
Damage not too bad for the RX8, turns out the chap was testing a customer’s car, wouldn't like to be him.
The Sonic2 (Rick's car, not on the OC) did ok for its small amount of time on track, rubbish cold tyres and much loud pedal resulted in a few offs. One of which being into the tyre wall, ending the day for the car, and it now needs repair.
Thankfully, the damage is mostly cosmetic, and we have a spare winning blue car for parts, it'll live to fight another day.
Now the season is over for the Kraken, it’s time for some upgrades over winter. I don't trust the Rotary Motion engine that is in it, so it’s coming out and a freshly rebuilt WGT one is going in, along with a tubular manifold and a lightweight flywheel.
Much bigger engine oil cooler, and a gearbox oil pump and cooler, and a few other choice changes. I'm going to change the passenger rear door as well to one which wasn't painted by Stevie Wonder.
Matt
Edited by StreetDragster on Friday 25th May 08:38
They have done a really good job too of making it easy to cavity wax, lots of grommets and access points. Almost like they were going to do it in the factory but then changed their minds.
No after market panel suppliers and it's about £300 a sill, and £100 per inner arch. Fingers crossed you can plate yours like we are going to try with mine.
Thanks for all your kind comments everyone
Matt
No after market panel suppliers and it's about £300 a sill, and £100 per inner arch. Fingers crossed you can plate yours like we are going to try with mine.
Thanks for all your kind comments everyone
Matt
That's an excellent story, and real commitment to the cause of car ownership. Well done. If I were going back to a manual car, the RX8 would be close to the top of my list.
However, it did seem faintly ironic to laud the Mazda in spite of its "bad press", only to relay the experience of the inevitable (and well-documented) engine failure shortly afterwards...
However, it did seem faintly ironic to laud the Mazda in spite of its "bad press", only to relay the experience of the inevitable (and well-documented) engine failure shortly afterwards...
StreetDragster said:
Yer I can see how that would seem ironic.
Without going into to much detail as I have agreed with the seller, the engine failure was not sure to wear. It was due to an error in workmanship, and prematurely failed.
Matt
Sure, I totally get that. Although rust and having already needed a rebuild is probably not a fantastic basis for debunking the myths...Without going into to much detail as I have agreed with the seller, the engine failure was not sure to wear. It was due to an error in workmanship, and prematurely failed.
Matt
Time for an update.
Over winter 2015 the plan was to repair the small holes in the rear of the sills, alter the engine oil coolers to give them more air, and fit a gearbox cooling system and a few other mods here and there.
Unfortunately, the sill repair turned out to be a much larger job. Allan started the job sometime in October and once the smaller sections of rust had been assessed it was clear that a much bigger repair would be required.
He started by carefully removing the paint and stone chip protection on the passenger side sill with a flap wheel which revealed the small hole in the sill has spread significantly under the paint. The design of the RX8 sills suggests that Mazda had thought about rust protecting the inside of the sills with wax, as they fitted many plugs and access points, but then didn’t apply any protection in the factory.
The design of the sills isn’t great either, the sill where it meets the rear wheel arch looks purpose designed to be a trap for dirt, which retains moisture and causes corrosion.
Anyway, regardless of the causes, the Kraken needed some tickling with the angle grinder, Allan cut out all the duff metal and removed any bits of surface rust with a flap wheel to leave only good metal. Once this was completed any corroded sections were treated with rust converter to return them to being proper metal and arrest any further corrosion.
Reassembly then took place; Mazda RX8 body panels are not available on the pattern part market so it all had to be dealer parts. At around £1200 quoted for the two outer sills, and four arch panels we decided to only replace what we couldn’t fabricate. After all, it is a track car; it had to be structural first and pretty second.
Only two arch panels were ordered, and they needed to come from Japan, taking 3 weeks at a cost of some ~£180. In the meantime Allan fabricated all the metal panels needed to piece the floor and the sill back together. The expensive panels turned up, he cut off the bottom 7” which was the only bit we needed upsettingly and welded it in. Following that some primer and POR15 paint, top coat and waxing will be done later.
Then he moved onto the other side and repeated the process, and repaired the chassis damage from the Rotterdam incident. A few other tweaks were performed, like blocking off the intake resonator, opening up the mesh blanks in the grill, opening up the oil cooler exhausts in the wheel arch liners, removing mesh from in front of the oil coolers, and polishing the headlights.
The car was presented for MOT just 3 days before we had to leave for the next track day, Donington GP. Like I say, it was a much bigger job than we had planned for and it caught us out. 10 points to Allan for putting the work in, he spent hours and hours working on the repairs in cold conditions and dark nights.
Anyway, MOT passed with no advisories and it was off to Donington GP for a fresh early March track day. This day was actually organised by circuit days in co-operation with the RX8 owners club, so there was a large contingent of RX8’s in attendance, some RX7’s, and then normal track weapons that had joined the day ‘normally’. The cool aero’ed up Golf from Pistonhead’s that spends a lot of time at the Ring was there, unfortunately I didn’t get chance to talk to the owner.
Very little prep had been done for this day due to the over run of the welding, so the car was still on its semi slick tyres, and no checks had been performed on the car prior to setting off. Thankfully everything seemed to be ok on the drive down with all systems nominal, quite a relief.
Overnight in Derby was a good laugh, then off to the track in the morning, just making sign on and briefing due to the hotel being late to serve a not-great cooked breakfast, Continental only in future.
The weather was really good for early March, sunny, low wind and 12-15 degrees. The car performed really well on the day and our driving is coming on really well I feel. I went out with one of the RX8OC’s seasoned track veterans who showed me the right lines I should be taking through the corners. It was really interesting as I would never have come to the correct line through Craner curves without guidance; it seems a bit counter intuitive but worked wonders. It also highlighted the benefit of non OEM seats even without harnesses as I knew more about what his car was doing from the passenger seat than I knew about my own car from the driver’s seat.
The Hadouken and the KaBoom 2, now fully rebuilt except for the rear quarter panel, also had a great day. KaBoom 2 being on proper rubber this time, which once up to heat kept him on the black stuff all day with only a minor hiccup when the catch can filled and it ingested some oil. Hadouken also performed very well all day, the only issues being noise, he tripped the 98db drive by meter once, black flagged, fitted his drooped track day tailpipes but tripped it again at the end of the day, further work required there so it doesn’t become an issue in the future.
On the drive home it was clear that the front wheel bearings were shot, they had been replaced previously with pattern parts that appeared to be good quality, granted they are under extra load, but they haven’t lasted, gutted.
The next track day was Anglesey Coastal in April, in prep for this there was some further maintenance. Allan finished off injecting the sills and underbody with cavity wax to prevent any further corrosion issues; everything was also protected with grey POR15. There is a red top coat to be applied at some point but as usual, time was not on our side.
The front end was lifted and checked over, the brakes were removed and stripped down. Found that the yellow stuffs are wearing well on the driver’s side, but had worn more on the passenger side. A quick investigation showed that the passenger caliper piston was dragging the brake, the sliders where in good condition and free to move.
Shame, however not the end of the world, after the next track day the calipers will be refurbished. The wheel bearings where replaced both sides with OEM Mazda items and the brake fluid from the front lines was replaced and bled up. The catch can was also drained and found to contain only a small amount of oil/water residue, good news and its clearly doing its job also. The tyres were also swapped front/rear to ensure they wear down evenly.
On the way to the next track day at Anglesey we pulled into Demon Tweeks for a browse, I trial fitted a lot of the fixed bucket seats to see which I prefer, Cobra being the favourite, and bought a SPA dual oil temp/water temp gauge for the gearbox oil and engine coolant. Anglesey track was then tackled, and it was an adventure. The day started out very wet and greasy, the slightest touch of a track boundary resulted in opposite lock and a traction control lamp. Thankfully the wind dried the track out pretty quickly and we were up to pace by lunch.
No issues with the car at all, it did great all day. My issues were when I took up the offer of my friend to take his Civic type-R out for a couple of laps. It all went wrong on the second lap, I induced lift off over steer which I corrected for, but mistakenly took my foot off the throttle mid correction and it snap spun the other way when grip returned. Flew off the track into the mud in a big spin, thankfully no twisted metal or blood and the car just needed the mud jet washing out. My mate was really good about it actually, thankfully.
Thats him, removing some of the mud i had collected in the alloys whilst going sideways through the grass!
Drove the car home and ordered some more parts ready for the next stage, engine out and a bridgeported WGT engine to go in. The engine’s built spec is R3 housings with S1 irons, bridgeported primaries and tertiary intakes (I think those are the correct descriptions), ultra lightweight steel flywheel, racing beat oil pressure pill and thermal bypass, ported oil pump and improved cooling flow around the exhaust ports.
Allan came round one day and between us we got the engine out, actually Allan did most of the work as I got called off to deal with the sale of my 911 (chap took 3.5 hours going over it). Once the engine was out there was a few things to address, the front brake calipers were sent off for refurbishment, the front pads were thin again so needed replacement, and the a/c condenser was leaking and needed replacement and there were a few wires and pipes that didn’t look in the best condition.
The two engines were sat down next to each other side by side, the Rotary Motion one stripped down and the WGT one built up. I replaced the full SSV and actuator with a brand new OEM item, new OEM Exedy clutch kit, I fitted some Essex Rotary under drive pulleys and new belts, installed a new OEM water pump and generally cleaned up and decoked everything I could. In the chassis the air pump was deleted from the engine bay, the steering knuckle was cleaned and lubricated, wiring was tidied up, and new wiring was run to the gearbox for the gearbox oil temp sender and the clutch line was bled whilst there was easy access.
The engine was then installed onto the gearbox in the car. Which took 5 hours, the damn clutch just wouldn’t go on the gearbox shaft, despite aligning it, realigning it, checking it on the input shaft without the engine, etc. The tubular racing beat manifold was then fitted before turning to the engine mounts, the passenger one was found to be torn badly. I borrowed one from the Sonic Boom 1’s as a temporary measure whilst some Hardracing ‘street’ ones where delivered from Apex performance.
The sump was swapped over to the Greedy one once the engine was on its mounts, it’s a lot easier to fit over the cross member when installing the engine with the OEM sump on. An Essex Rotary sump baffle plate was also fitted at the same time, hopefully assisting on keeping oil surge under control.
The Oil Metering Pump had to be replaced, it unfortunately got a bashing in the violence involved in the 5 hour engine installation drama. Thankfully a £40 eBay seller (I think it was Nutty Chappie) came to the rescue, the new OEM copper washers from Mazda were almost the same money.
The radiator was replaced with a Mishimoto one from Essex Rotary as all the air conditioning condenser mounting bolts sheared off the old one, the condenser was replaced with a new one, a water temperature gauge adaptor was put into the lower radiator hose for the new SPA gauge and the engine was generally plumbed and wired back up. Hopefully this should assist with keeping things frosty on the track, all was going well.
However, the brake calipers had gotten lost in the post on the way to refurbishment, on the critical path now for running in, mapping slot and a Mallory Park track day I decided to buy two brand new calipers outright and fitted those, and bled all four brake lines and clutch line again. Whilst in maintenance the gearbox oil was replaced (again with Redline MT-90, 2 litres this time instead of the normal 1.75), the Axial Flow short shifter fitted, and a gearbox drain plug adaptor (M18x1.5) fitted to take the 1/8th NPT sender for the SPA temp gauge.
A few teething issues once the engine was running, the spark plugs (new) were dodgy I think, fitting the old ones cured a troublesome miss fire light and difficulty starting. The electric power steering decided to become sporadic, traced to a dodgy cable connector (the white one on the side of the battery box) but other than those two the car seems to be behaving itself.
At the time I was working in Hull, 130 miles away. So for three days I drove over and back every day rather than stopping the night locally. That was a very tiring week, but ultimately ~900 miles of running in was completed in just three days of use. The remaining 100 miles were completed in slow time leading up to the mapping slot booked for the 17th of May.
In-between running in and mapping a few other little jobs were dealt with, the Cusco carbon strut brace (bought for the brake master cylinder support, reducing bulkhead flex and a firmer brake pedal) was fitted which required the SOHN tank relocating, new foam was installed around the radiator, the rear arches further trimmed to give more clearance with the 20mm spacers and the stock sized Potenza tyres which were currently fitted. The hard race ‘street’ engine mounts were installed when they arrived. The SPA gearbox oil temp/water temperature gauge was installed into the gauge pod. It will be interesting to see what temps the gearbox oil gets up to, as I think the RX8 has a poorly documented problem with gearbox oil temps.
Then one day I had a bit of time on my hands so I decided to ruin the look of the car in the name of function over form, and I fitted the Singular motorsport louvered bonnet vents. Originally I planned on painting these things body coloured and mounting them from the underneath with adhesive to try and blend them in as much as possible. Once they had arrived I realised there was no hiding these monsters, and put them on from the top instead with black rivets. Due to this top mounting I had to cut the holes bigger than the provided template as can be seen from the pictures. I also put some rubber boots over the a/c, coolant expansion tank, and power steering electrical connectors to prevent issues from rain water.
Now that it is done, I have a kind of love it/hate it feeling about the cars looks, I don’t like the vents look as I think the lines of the OEM RX8 is lovely and doesn’t need to be messed with, but then I love that it has a very distinct “functional” look now.
In other news, after an hours 80mph cruise on the motorway, oil temps (recorded at the lowest point in the Greddy sump) were around 68 degrees centigrade, water temps (recorded in the coolant hose after the radiator, before the water pump) approximately 76 degrees centigrade and gearbox oil temperature (recorded from the drain plug) were in the 90’s. Confirming that I think the RX8 has a gearbox oil temp issue, and hence the reason it gets quite notchy quickly on track.
Dropped the car in with WGT for remapping, hoping this will be completed before Mallory park on the 10th of June 2016. Unfortunately a few problems raised their heads.
The Variable Dynamic Inlet (VDI) was not functioning, and more worryingly the fault light for it has previously been mapped out by someone. Pip at WGT did a load of tests and confirmed that manually moving the flap caused the ECU values to change, so all working fine. Strange setup, but in the end he replaced the solenoid for the VDI as a matter of course and got it working again.
There were also problems with the coil packs, increasing the charge time on them wasn’t having the desired effect on the mapping. Not sure on what was done to solve this issue but it was a decent delay in the program.
All in all we missed Mallory Park and went along just to spectate; the other two RX8’s in our group attended and had a great day. Met up with a pair of other RX8’s from the owners club and a good day was had by all despite the lack of car for us.
Post mapping, a few small jobs were completed. The headlights have been swapped to a pair from a later car, simply because the early headlights on the car had gone cloudy from the sun. Polishing lasted a few weeks before the clouding returned, which was always a problem come MOT time, so the replacement lights have solved that.
Track stickers were added to the stripes, now that the car is clearly track focused with the bonnet vents it seemed appropriate to added more vinyl. I like the look of this, and the more tracks we do to extend the sticker line the better.
The next use for the Kraken is ‘family’ holiday. Me, my wife and 10 month old are heading into Europe with 8 of our friends, we have the RX8, there is the camo RX8, a Jaguar XJR, a Golf R32 and a Mercedes SL50 AMG. Planned stops include Bruges, Verdun, Stuttgart, the Speyer technical Museum and obviously the Nurburgring. It’s going to be a challenge on all counts, I’ve not done a driving holiday with the Mrs before, I haven’t travelled any sort of distance with my daughter, and the RX8, in track spec, is probably not the most ideal vehicle for this either.
In preparation for this trip I’m going to have the cars tracking set back to OEM setting, or maybe OEM with 1 degree of camber instead of the current 2 degrees. I’m going to confirm the A/C works, and generally check everything else is working as it should.
Post road trip we have Blyton Park booked in September, Snetterton 200 booked in October, and Silverstone GP for November. Looking forward to them, only prep planned for those is a purchase of another set of wheels and fitment of Uniroyal Rainsports onto them.
In other news I have always wanted an FD RX7, so now that I have sold my Porsche 911 I treated myself to one. It’s a genuine 1999 FD3S Rx7 Type-R that is in practically standard trim. I’ve altered it with RX8 wheels instead of the stock 16” ones, and I’m going to drop it a little on Tein springs but other than that I want it to be near stock. It’s had about a month of work so far, changing filters and oils, undersealing and cavity waxing, replacing the brakes and some wear items and now it’s a damn fine car.
[/img]
Thanks it for now
Matt
Over winter 2015 the plan was to repair the small holes in the rear of the sills, alter the engine oil coolers to give them more air, and fit a gearbox cooling system and a few other mods here and there.
Unfortunately, the sill repair turned out to be a much larger job. Allan started the job sometime in October and once the smaller sections of rust had been assessed it was clear that a much bigger repair would be required.
He started by carefully removing the paint and stone chip protection on the passenger side sill with a flap wheel which revealed the small hole in the sill has spread significantly under the paint. The design of the RX8 sills suggests that Mazda had thought about rust protecting the inside of the sills with wax, as they fitted many plugs and access points, but then didn’t apply any protection in the factory.
The design of the sills isn’t great either, the sill where it meets the rear wheel arch looks purpose designed to be a trap for dirt, which retains moisture and causes corrosion.
Anyway, regardless of the causes, the Kraken needed some tickling with the angle grinder, Allan cut out all the duff metal and removed any bits of surface rust with a flap wheel to leave only good metal. Once this was completed any corroded sections were treated with rust converter to return them to being proper metal and arrest any further corrosion.
Reassembly then took place; Mazda RX8 body panels are not available on the pattern part market so it all had to be dealer parts. At around £1200 quoted for the two outer sills, and four arch panels we decided to only replace what we couldn’t fabricate. After all, it is a track car; it had to be structural first and pretty second.
Only two arch panels were ordered, and they needed to come from Japan, taking 3 weeks at a cost of some ~£180. In the meantime Allan fabricated all the metal panels needed to piece the floor and the sill back together. The expensive panels turned up, he cut off the bottom 7” which was the only bit we needed upsettingly and welded it in. Following that some primer and POR15 paint, top coat and waxing will be done later.
Then he moved onto the other side and repeated the process, and repaired the chassis damage from the Rotterdam incident. A few other tweaks were performed, like blocking off the intake resonator, opening up the mesh blanks in the grill, opening up the oil cooler exhausts in the wheel arch liners, removing mesh from in front of the oil coolers, and polishing the headlights.
The car was presented for MOT just 3 days before we had to leave for the next track day, Donington GP. Like I say, it was a much bigger job than we had planned for and it caught us out. 10 points to Allan for putting the work in, he spent hours and hours working on the repairs in cold conditions and dark nights.
Anyway, MOT passed with no advisories and it was off to Donington GP for a fresh early March track day. This day was actually organised by circuit days in co-operation with the RX8 owners club, so there was a large contingent of RX8’s in attendance, some RX7’s, and then normal track weapons that had joined the day ‘normally’. The cool aero’ed up Golf from Pistonhead’s that spends a lot of time at the Ring was there, unfortunately I didn’t get chance to talk to the owner.
Very little prep had been done for this day due to the over run of the welding, so the car was still on its semi slick tyres, and no checks had been performed on the car prior to setting off. Thankfully everything seemed to be ok on the drive down with all systems nominal, quite a relief.
Overnight in Derby was a good laugh, then off to the track in the morning, just making sign on and briefing due to the hotel being late to serve a not-great cooked breakfast, Continental only in future.
The weather was really good for early March, sunny, low wind and 12-15 degrees. The car performed really well on the day and our driving is coming on really well I feel. I went out with one of the RX8OC’s seasoned track veterans who showed me the right lines I should be taking through the corners. It was really interesting as I would never have come to the correct line through Craner curves without guidance; it seems a bit counter intuitive but worked wonders. It also highlighted the benefit of non OEM seats even without harnesses as I knew more about what his car was doing from the passenger seat than I knew about my own car from the driver’s seat.
The Hadouken and the KaBoom 2, now fully rebuilt except for the rear quarter panel, also had a great day. KaBoom 2 being on proper rubber this time, which once up to heat kept him on the black stuff all day with only a minor hiccup when the catch can filled and it ingested some oil. Hadouken also performed very well all day, the only issues being noise, he tripped the 98db drive by meter once, black flagged, fitted his drooped track day tailpipes but tripped it again at the end of the day, further work required there so it doesn’t become an issue in the future.
On the drive home it was clear that the front wheel bearings were shot, they had been replaced previously with pattern parts that appeared to be good quality, granted they are under extra load, but they haven’t lasted, gutted.
The next track day was Anglesey Coastal in April, in prep for this there was some further maintenance. Allan finished off injecting the sills and underbody with cavity wax to prevent any further corrosion issues; everything was also protected with grey POR15. There is a red top coat to be applied at some point but as usual, time was not on our side.
The front end was lifted and checked over, the brakes were removed and stripped down. Found that the yellow stuffs are wearing well on the driver’s side, but had worn more on the passenger side. A quick investigation showed that the passenger caliper piston was dragging the brake, the sliders where in good condition and free to move.
Shame, however not the end of the world, after the next track day the calipers will be refurbished. The wheel bearings where replaced both sides with OEM Mazda items and the brake fluid from the front lines was replaced and bled up. The catch can was also drained and found to contain only a small amount of oil/water residue, good news and its clearly doing its job also. The tyres were also swapped front/rear to ensure they wear down evenly.
On the way to the next track day at Anglesey we pulled into Demon Tweeks for a browse, I trial fitted a lot of the fixed bucket seats to see which I prefer, Cobra being the favourite, and bought a SPA dual oil temp/water temp gauge for the gearbox oil and engine coolant. Anglesey track was then tackled, and it was an adventure. The day started out very wet and greasy, the slightest touch of a track boundary resulted in opposite lock and a traction control lamp. Thankfully the wind dried the track out pretty quickly and we were up to pace by lunch.
No issues with the car at all, it did great all day. My issues were when I took up the offer of my friend to take his Civic type-R out for a couple of laps. It all went wrong on the second lap, I induced lift off over steer which I corrected for, but mistakenly took my foot off the throttle mid correction and it snap spun the other way when grip returned. Flew off the track into the mud in a big spin, thankfully no twisted metal or blood and the car just needed the mud jet washing out. My mate was really good about it actually, thankfully.
Thats him, removing some of the mud i had collected in the alloys whilst going sideways through the grass!
Drove the car home and ordered some more parts ready for the next stage, engine out and a bridgeported WGT engine to go in. The engine’s built spec is R3 housings with S1 irons, bridgeported primaries and tertiary intakes (I think those are the correct descriptions), ultra lightweight steel flywheel, racing beat oil pressure pill and thermal bypass, ported oil pump and improved cooling flow around the exhaust ports.
Allan came round one day and between us we got the engine out, actually Allan did most of the work as I got called off to deal with the sale of my 911 (chap took 3.5 hours going over it). Once the engine was out there was a few things to address, the front brake calipers were sent off for refurbishment, the front pads were thin again so needed replacement, and the a/c condenser was leaking and needed replacement and there were a few wires and pipes that didn’t look in the best condition.
The two engines were sat down next to each other side by side, the Rotary Motion one stripped down and the WGT one built up. I replaced the full SSV and actuator with a brand new OEM item, new OEM Exedy clutch kit, I fitted some Essex Rotary under drive pulleys and new belts, installed a new OEM water pump and generally cleaned up and decoked everything I could. In the chassis the air pump was deleted from the engine bay, the steering knuckle was cleaned and lubricated, wiring was tidied up, and new wiring was run to the gearbox for the gearbox oil temp sender and the clutch line was bled whilst there was easy access.
The engine was then installed onto the gearbox in the car. Which took 5 hours, the damn clutch just wouldn’t go on the gearbox shaft, despite aligning it, realigning it, checking it on the input shaft without the engine, etc. The tubular racing beat manifold was then fitted before turning to the engine mounts, the passenger one was found to be torn badly. I borrowed one from the Sonic Boom 1’s as a temporary measure whilst some Hardracing ‘street’ ones where delivered from Apex performance.
The sump was swapped over to the Greedy one once the engine was on its mounts, it’s a lot easier to fit over the cross member when installing the engine with the OEM sump on. An Essex Rotary sump baffle plate was also fitted at the same time, hopefully assisting on keeping oil surge under control.
The Oil Metering Pump had to be replaced, it unfortunately got a bashing in the violence involved in the 5 hour engine installation drama. Thankfully a £40 eBay seller (I think it was Nutty Chappie) came to the rescue, the new OEM copper washers from Mazda were almost the same money.
The radiator was replaced with a Mishimoto one from Essex Rotary as all the air conditioning condenser mounting bolts sheared off the old one, the condenser was replaced with a new one, a water temperature gauge adaptor was put into the lower radiator hose for the new SPA gauge and the engine was generally plumbed and wired back up. Hopefully this should assist with keeping things frosty on the track, all was going well.
However, the brake calipers had gotten lost in the post on the way to refurbishment, on the critical path now for running in, mapping slot and a Mallory Park track day I decided to buy two brand new calipers outright and fitted those, and bled all four brake lines and clutch line again. Whilst in maintenance the gearbox oil was replaced (again with Redline MT-90, 2 litres this time instead of the normal 1.75), the Axial Flow short shifter fitted, and a gearbox drain plug adaptor (M18x1.5) fitted to take the 1/8th NPT sender for the SPA temp gauge.
A few teething issues once the engine was running, the spark plugs (new) were dodgy I think, fitting the old ones cured a troublesome miss fire light and difficulty starting. The electric power steering decided to become sporadic, traced to a dodgy cable connector (the white one on the side of the battery box) but other than those two the car seems to be behaving itself.
At the time I was working in Hull, 130 miles away. So for three days I drove over and back every day rather than stopping the night locally. That was a very tiring week, but ultimately ~900 miles of running in was completed in just three days of use. The remaining 100 miles were completed in slow time leading up to the mapping slot booked for the 17th of May.
In-between running in and mapping a few other little jobs were dealt with, the Cusco carbon strut brace (bought for the brake master cylinder support, reducing bulkhead flex and a firmer brake pedal) was fitted which required the SOHN tank relocating, new foam was installed around the radiator, the rear arches further trimmed to give more clearance with the 20mm spacers and the stock sized Potenza tyres which were currently fitted. The hard race ‘street’ engine mounts were installed when they arrived. The SPA gearbox oil temp/water temperature gauge was installed into the gauge pod. It will be interesting to see what temps the gearbox oil gets up to, as I think the RX8 has a poorly documented problem with gearbox oil temps.
Then one day I had a bit of time on my hands so I decided to ruin the look of the car in the name of function over form, and I fitted the Singular motorsport louvered bonnet vents. Originally I planned on painting these things body coloured and mounting them from the underneath with adhesive to try and blend them in as much as possible. Once they had arrived I realised there was no hiding these monsters, and put them on from the top instead with black rivets. Due to this top mounting I had to cut the holes bigger than the provided template as can be seen from the pictures. I also put some rubber boots over the a/c, coolant expansion tank, and power steering electrical connectors to prevent issues from rain water.
Now that it is done, I have a kind of love it/hate it feeling about the cars looks, I don’t like the vents look as I think the lines of the OEM RX8 is lovely and doesn’t need to be messed with, but then I love that it has a very distinct “functional” look now.
In other news, after an hours 80mph cruise on the motorway, oil temps (recorded at the lowest point in the Greddy sump) were around 68 degrees centigrade, water temps (recorded in the coolant hose after the radiator, before the water pump) approximately 76 degrees centigrade and gearbox oil temperature (recorded from the drain plug) were in the 90’s. Confirming that I think the RX8 has a gearbox oil temp issue, and hence the reason it gets quite notchy quickly on track.
Dropped the car in with WGT for remapping, hoping this will be completed before Mallory park on the 10th of June 2016. Unfortunately a few problems raised their heads.
The Variable Dynamic Inlet (VDI) was not functioning, and more worryingly the fault light for it has previously been mapped out by someone. Pip at WGT did a load of tests and confirmed that manually moving the flap caused the ECU values to change, so all working fine. Strange setup, but in the end he replaced the solenoid for the VDI as a matter of course and got it working again.
There were also problems with the coil packs, increasing the charge time on them wasn’t having the desired effect on the mapping. Not sure on what was done to solve this issue but it was a decent delay in the program.
All in all we missed Mallory Park and went along just to spectate; the other two RX8’s in our group attended and had a great day. Met up with a pair of other RX8’s from the owners club and a good day was had by all despite the lack of car for us.
Post mapping, a few small jobs were completed. The headlights have been swapped to a pair from a later car, simply because the early headlights on the car had gone cloudy from the sun. Polishing lasted a few weeks before the clouding returned, which was always a problem come MOT time, so the replacement lights have solved that.
Track stickers were added to the stripes, now that the car is clearly track focused with the bonnet vents it seemed appropriate to added more vinyl. I like the look of this, and the more tracks we do to extend the sticker line the better.
The next use for the Kraken is ‘family’ holiday. Me, my wife and 10 month old are heading into Europe with 8 of our friends, we have the RX8, there is the camo RX8, a Jaguar XJR, a Golf R32 and a Mercedes SL50 AMG. Planned stops include Bruges, Verdun, Stuttgart, the Speyer technical Museum and obviously the Nurburgring. It’s going to be a challenge on all counts, I’ve not done a driving holiday with the Mrs before, I haven’t travelled any sort of distance with my daughter, and the RX8, in track spec, is probably not the most ideal vehicle for this either.
In preparation for this trip I’m going to have the cars tracking set back to OEM setting, or maybe OEM with 1 degree of camber instead of the current 2 degrees. I’m going to confirm the A/C works, and generally check everything else is working as it should.
Post road trip we have Blyton Park booked in September, Snetterton 200 booked in October, and Silverstone GP for November. Looking forward to them, only prep planned for those is a purchase of another set of wheels and fitment of Uniroyal Rainsports onto them.
In other news I have always wanted an FD RX7, so now that I have sold my Porsche 911 I treated myself to one. It’s a genuine 1999 FD3S Rx7 Type-R that is in practically standard trim. I’ve altered it with RX8 wheels instead of the stock 16” ones, and I’m going to drop it a little on Tein springs but other than that I want it to be near stock. It’s had about a month of work so far, changing filters and oils, undersealing and cavity waxing, replacing the brakes and some wear items and now it’s a damn fine car.
[/img]Thanks it for now
Matt
Edited by StreetDragster on Friday 25th May 08:39
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