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
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.
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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
More cars seem to be getting Bridgeported nowadays.
They don't brap though as the side ported rx8 engine doesn't have the overlap that the 13b rx7 engine has. Idle is different, and 'near brap'.
Not sure I could comment on the difference tbh as mine has different final drive, flywheel, and I also changed the tyre profiles at the same time, but it does go better than before.
Thanks for all comments
Matt
They don't brap though as the side ported rx8 engine doesn't have the overlap that the 13b rx7 engine has. Idle is different, and 'near brap'.
Not sure I could comment on the difference tbh as mine has different final drive, flywheel, and I also changed the tyre profiles at the same time, but it does go better than before.
Thanks for all comments
Matt
Update time.
Well the last time I updated this post it was a few weeks before our trip to Europe.
My RX7 was in at WGT having a few issues sorted out, and my RX8 needed some tweaks to the lower end of the mapping. The logical thing to do was to drive down in the RX8 and swap into the RX7 for the drive back and pick up the RX8 whenever it was finished.
I finished work early on a Thursday and started to drive down to WGT, however on the motorway smoke started to come from the dashboard air vents.
Pull over, engine off and inspect with no obvious issues found. Bit more driving and the smokes back, pull over, engine on this time, no obvious issues.
Then a series of tests were performed on the road to figure out what this smoke was, turns out that it wasn’t smoke, it was related to the air conditioning system, suspected to be R134A leaking as air conditioning performance was reducing despite the new condenser the car had when the engine was installed.
This presented an issue, every time we have been to Europe about this sort of time of year it’s been really warm and the a/c has been a life saver. However, aside from some catastrophic leak in the engine bay, the only place the a/c and the heater blower system merge is the evaporator, and that requires the dash off, big job.
It stood to reason that I probably had a hairline crack or pinhole in the evaporator, or a leaking O-ring somewhere. No obvious leaks, and it holds pressure with the engine off, with the engine on (and the a/c compressor compressing) there is a small enough leak to get visible vapour, but it’s not big enough to rapidly drain the system of refrigerant.
The question was, did I have enough time to get the car back from WGT (mapping fixed or not), remove the dashboard, replace the evaporator, refit the dashboard, and get the A/C charged before we leave? I also had another (immobilised) car up for sale that at some point I would need to move, and the dashboard less RX8 would be blocking it in. The Noble needed an MOT, and my trusty diesel Signum did too. In fact the only car that didn’t need some spanner time would be the RX7 which became my daily driver for the short term.
My wife and daughter would not cope well with the heat in Europe, so I decided to try and go for it anyway.
Allan gave me a lift down to WGT the following weekend to collect the car in his lovely Jaguar XJR supercharged V8, not a bad way to get around. The RX8 map hadn’t been tweaked so will have to go back at some point for that, bugger, it’s a 3 hour round trip to collect/drop off.
Once the car was back I performed a number of other tests which made me question whether it was R134A leaking. For a start it sometimes took about 15 mins of driving with the air con on to show itself, which I didn’t think would happen with a crack/hole, it should leak straight away. The ‘smoke’ also cycled, even with the a/c selected fully on (i.e compressor running all the time) it came and went on a rhythmic cycle.
Rather than replace a part, including removing the dashboard when it may be perfectly fine, I opted to have the a/c system drained down and vacuum checked to confirm there is an issue. Got to the garage and a quick look over with a UV torch pointed to a leaking O-ring on the condenser, easy fix, and a pin hole from a stone, not so easily fixed. Time now not being on my side, I left it with them for them to replace the condenser and leak check the a/c system, which appeared to solve the problem, although I have no idea how you get the symptom of misting from the air vents from a slowly degasing a/c condenser. On the plus side though, the dash didn’t need to come off.
I then turned my attention to getting the car ready for the holiday, sohn tank topped up, fuel tank topped up, pre-mix bottles filled, in car DVD for my daughter fitted, tools and things in the boot fitted etc.
One of the last things I did was booked the car in for tracking and alignment again, this time returning it to stock settings, as to not wear the inside edges of the tyres with its normal, more camber track focused setup. I also checked and topped up the tyre pressures so we were all set to go.
The time came and I loaded up the car, the folding buggy and travel cot wouldn’t easily fit in the RX8 with all the other stuff so Allan took that in his Jaguar, everything else fitted in the RX8, and the back seat was left moderately clear also which was good. Daughter was setup in the rear, in her rear facing car seat with a dvd player on the rear headrest, nice and cosy with Peppa Pig in da house.
Over to Preston to rendezvous with the team for breakfast at Huntley’s near Samlesbury, all present and correct, cup of tea, sausage sandwich and we were on our way over to Harrogate. Cars are the Kraken RX8, the Hadouken RX8 (now camo-less), a Jaguar XJR, a Mercedes C50 AMG and a VW Golf Mk4 R32.
At Harrogate it was lunch at the Yorkshire meatball company and then a wander round the lovely town, then onto the M1/M62 to Hull. Managed some entertaining pops, bangs and flames out of the Kraken on the way down, one of them under a motorway bridge which was exceptionally loud, love it.
Checked in for the ferry and joined a typically English queue, it took forever to finally get on the ship but eventually we were called to board. This was my first real concern of the trip, on the 2015 Europe trip the Kraken grounded out badly in Rotterdam and is was difficult to get on the ferry, so I was concerned this would happen this time. Thankfully the ferry we were using on the Hull/Zeebrugge route was a rear loading ferry, which the Kraken managed to make it up the ramps onto the lower car deck without any issues, phew!
Many nautical references, food, beer and wine consumed that evening as we sailed across to the continent. My daughter did really well, staying up much later than her usual bed time without getting too cranky, I took her to the cabin for sleep around 10pm.
Morning comes and it’s off the ship and down onto the roads heading towards Bruges, quick fuel stop and then headed to the central car park in the Bruges centre. We have used this car park in previous years without issue, but we got there a little later in the day than normal to find it full, dammit. Quick drive around to the other car parks but there is a market on in Bruges square and most routes to the car parks seem to go through it, we are navigating on sat nav only without local knowledge of the layout when the market is on, nightmare. The group scatters and finds parking wherever we can, the Merc and the Kraken ending up on street parking, next to machines that only take coin cash, of which we have very little of. We had to return to them later on to put more money on, but decided to get them in the original centre car park as it wasn’t as busy as before, great idea, but the underside of the Kraken scraped on one of the ramps into the underground car park, this upset me greatly.
Regroup in the centre square near the Belfrei for lunch, then it starts raining, we were planning on cycling around the city but not in that weather, onto the beer museum to kill some time. For me, it was a dull ‘lazy ‘museum, they hand you an iPad and headphones and push you into a room with some barcodes to scan, we cut through the majority of it and waited in the bar whilst the rest finished in the exhibit room.
After some shopping it was then load up and hit the road, heading for our hotel stop which is near the Charleroi airport. Meal, beers and general socialising that night, very good.
Next morning it was up and breakfast in the hotel, and then onto the roads south, we stopped on the way at a lovely bar just on the outskirts of Belgium for a ‘decant’ and hydrate before heading into France. Lovely weather made for a pleasant drive down to the WW1 monument in Verdun, completed the tour there and then headed up to the memorial with the grave fields, sobering to visit but a lovely tribute.
After lunch it was then onto our hotel stop in Meisenthal France, traveling through b
hé, for a funny sign photo as per usual.
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Hotel was lovely, except it was a Sunday and the bar and restaurant was closed, so we walked the 2 miles into town to visit the only open bar/restaurant. Good night had by all, the group split at one point, half going back for drinks on the veranda, the other half stopping in the bar for more socialising with the locals. Some funny stories made that night. We saw a group of vintage tractors having a bit of a cruise together down the street, maybe they had been to a tractor meet, strange stuff happens in France.
Breakfast, checkout, then over to Stuttgart, Germany. On the way the Kraken, the most fuel inefficient of the group had a fuel emergency and had to pitch off the Autobahn for a fill up. The rest of the group that remained on the Autobahn hit traffic and the other RX8 then needed fuel and a long convoluted trip to a petrol station then started from the next junction, with the Kraken over taking them on the timeline. Team Kraken arrived at Stuttgart’s Wilhelma zoo 90 minutes before everyone else.
Zoo was good, weather again lovely, sunny and hot. Excellent afternoon and saw some good attractions and interesting animals. The Wilhelma zoo is famous for its ape exhibit which was pretty good.
Following the zoo it was across town in terrible traffic to our hotel in downtown Stuttgart, at one point a 70kph road suddenly went 50kph in a bend and then back up to 70kph immediately after it, I didn’t see this transition whilst trying to also navigate and got flashed by a speed camera, dammit. Hotel parking then became an issue yet again and took a good half an hour to resolve, note to self, much more Euro-coinage is required when traveling and its worth paying extra for hotels with dedicated parking. Walk round to a local restaurant for meals and drinks for the evening, very good once again.
Next day, an easy run to the Speyer technic museum, this place I would definitely recommend. In the 2015 trip we went to the sister museum in Sinsheim and it didn’t disappoint, neither did the Speyer one. Saw a Russian Buran space shuttle, had a group selfie on the wing of a 747 150ft up in the air, stood on the fire plate of a huge steam train, went below decks in a submarine and stood on the cargo door of an Antonov.
Then of course, there were the jumping boat kid’s ride which we commandeered for 20 minutes, awesome.
From Speyer, it was up to everyone’s favourite place, the Nurburgring for a 4 night stay in the self-catering accommodation in the Lindner Drees ferienpark which we have stayed at before and know them to be excellent. We generally travel in big groups, and here you can hire two three-bedroom semi-detached houses which have internal doors to open them up to be big single houses, south facing patios and balconies and excellent services. Of course we went via Worms for another comedy sign photo. However, this is the part that didn’t go smoothly.
After a quick refreshment stop at services in Mosel, the group set off, Kraken leading, and after a while it was clear no one was behind us. Phone call later and the Jaguar had a serious problem and limped off the motorway. As we had an 11 month old with us, the group decided that we should press on to the chalets and set them up with the basics for the night and breakfast the following day. A few hours later the other three cars turned up, the Jaguar being still at the roadside.
The rear left wheel bearing had catastrophically failed, European breakdown cover which was in place had been called, but numerous admin errors and miscommunications caused huge delays and issues. Eventually the car was recovered to a UK prestige vehicle ‘specialist’, and the Kraken collected the occupants from Koblenz train station and shuttled them up to the chalets around midnight, knackered.
The next three days were easy going for the most part, we visited Adenau town, some of the Nordschleife spectator points whilst the Porsche driving training academy was on, did some go-kart driving at the GP complex, visited Nurberg castle, the Eiffleburg radio telescope, and generally chilled out, well, most of us did.
Allan and his Mrs had to deal with the dead Jaguar, and the European recovery provider. They were just the first stage in a long line of different language speaking departments and companies that need to get things actioned in order for things to happen, and it should have been out of Allan’s hands, but things did not go that way and he spent nearly an hour each day on the phone to the various companies. Some days he would get conflicting information, some days lies, some days nothing at all, incredibly stressful.
We got some laps in of the Nurburgring GP circuit, and it’s an excellent track to visit and I’d like to go back at some point for a proper full day track day. It was wet, and already being one car down we took it easy, but still enjoyed ourselves, but it was clear that something wasn’t right with the Kraken’s alignment/suspension. On power it would pull to left, on deceleration it would pull to the right, so on hard gear changes the front of the car would dramatically lurch right as you went through the gears, which was pretty unnerving.
Oil pressure, water temperature and oil temperature were all well under control, but gearbox oil temps were well into the 105 degrees after just a few laps on the GP circuit (90 degrees when cruising on the motorway!), a cooler of some description is definitely a consideration for the future. For information, it has Redline MT90 in it, 2 litres of it (1.75 litres is the standard level), and this is the second gearbox which has had high oil temp issues, I’ve mentioned before that I think the RX8 has an undocumented issue with gearbox oil temperatures, possibly due to the engines high rpm’s.
We also did a Nordschleife lap, again in the rain, but after a spillage of someone else’s cars fluids on the track caused ‘Armco face’ for both the Kraken and the Merc (and at least 4 other cars) we backed right out and simply drove round the track at pace, but not ‘on it’. Nice photos captured though none the less. The track was closed by the time we came back in to clean up the surface, we didn’t get back out on it after that.
No trip to the ring is complete without a visit to the Pistonklause for steak, you can leave your messages on the wall, we had one in 2012, which we extended when we returned in 2015, and we extended again with our 2016 visit. Quite a time piece for me, as it had markings of my stag do, the wet the baby’s head trip, and then I was there again, with my daughter.
At the end of our holiday it was time to pack up the chalets and head back, the Jaguar’s status was still unknown at this point, and hire car considerations were as frustrating to organise as the Jags repair was, ultimately we ended up shoe horning Allan and his Mrs, and there stuff, amongst the 4 other cars.
Relaxed drive back to Zeebrugge with a few rest stops here and there, onto the ferry with more concern than before, the car now had more weight in it, and we were being called onto the upper car deck, with an even steeper ramp, but it got up no problem thankfully.
More food and beers that night as we waved goodbye to the continent, on the rear sundeck we met up with a biker chap called Bob who was shuttling his bike back from a Euro road trip after his Mrs had a heart attack and was flown back, top chap and nice to talk to, his Mrs appeared to be recovering well.
Typical English lengthy depart as per normal, with stereotypical French/Belgian queue cutters, McD’s in Hull before heading home to unpack and start depression, gutted.
The Kraken did well, it completed nearly 1200 miles, with wife and 11 month old, and luggage, tools and entertainment, with the only causality being the fuel consumption and the exhaust baffles. It some point my excessive enjoyment of its flames, pops and bangs had caused some baffles to be shaken loose inside the rear box, whoops.
The foot well on the driver’s side, near the clutch foot rest gets hot on long drives with the racing beat manifold, so another consideration for the future would be to heat shield that area (manifold is already wrapped).
Roll on the next trip one.
Once back, the Kraken had its tracking readjusted, this time to 1 degree negative camber at the front and 2 degrees at the rear, which is the minimum it can have with the OEM camber bolts and its current ride height. Ideally I want 1 degree negative all round, so I’ll get some adjustable lateral links and toe arms when they come in stock.
This did not cure its weird handling trait that it picked up, to recap it would drive perfectly fine on normal driving, but hard acceleration it would pull left and hard declaration it would pull right.
The entire suspension and power train was then inspected with deep scrutiny to find a bush, ball joint, wheel bearing, diff mount, subframe mount, or something that was causing this issue, no results found. One thing did play on my mind though, for this trip it had Bridgestone Potenza’s on, RE040’s on the FL, FR, and RL and RE050 on the RR all with similar tread depths and pressures.
I was changing these tyres anyway to some wet weather tyres (Uniroyal Rainsport 3’s) as more track days for our group are being planned in the cooler wetter months so changed them earlier than planned and boom, the problem went away. I have no idea how a slightly different tyre on an axle could cause those symptoms, must be some small variation in sidewall strength or something, very odd, but glad it’s cured.
Following the stone in the air con condenser incident, Lockwood black grills where purchased and fitted. Euro plates where purchased and fitted at the same time, so that ‘GB’ stickers are not needed when it’s on the continent.
And to finish off a shield was made for the engine to keep the water out of the vents when parked, not that I think it requires one. I thought up all sorts of elaborate methods of making an easily removable shield when I had a brain wave. A big sheet of rubber was cut and fitted; it rests on top of the battery box, the air box and the engine cover, and is easily removed when on track, simple.
Rear brake pads were low again, so another set of EBC Red Stuffs were fitted.
The next track day was at Blyton Park in September, this time both the Noble and the Kraken in attendance. I wanted to put the Noble on at least one track day to see its capabilities, and give me some more confidence in pushing it on the road.
It was absolutely howling it down with rain in the morning of the day, standing water and large flooded apexes all over the place. The Noble was on road-spec Michelin Pilot Super Sports and the Kraken was on its Yokohama Neova semi slicks, weather reports up until the day pointed to dry weather hence the selection of the dry tyres.
I was actually driving the Noble all day that day with Allan having the Kraken all day.
The Noble did well, the tyres being very good, much better than expected in putting down the power in those damp conditions. It was my first introduction into the benefits of aero, the faster you went, the more planted it felt. The Kraken also did a lot better than expected, the semi slicks providing quite a lot of grip in the flooded conditions. However spins that day were rife from all the track day attendees, a lot of cars struggling with grip.
Thankfully in the afternoon it stopped raining and dried up a bit allowed more pace to be wound on. The Noble popped a boost pipe off just before the end of the day, so I fixed that and then didn’t bother going out for the last half an hour. The Mazda did well all day with no issues or breakdowns.
Highlighted again though was the gearbox oil temp issue, engine oil didn’t go over the 85 degrees, coolant again steady at 85-90 degrees, gearbox oil temps up to the 115-120 degrees.
Next steps for the Kraken are-
Racing Beat Single Exit exhaust & Racing Beat dual silenced decat & decibel bung for low db days if required.
Gearbox oil cooler and pump in the space previously occupied by the dual exit exhaust
5.375 rear diff and polyurethane diff mounts
Adjustable rear toe control and lateral arms so adjustability lower than 2 degrees negative
Mitsubishi Evo 6 Recaro bucket seats on Corbeau/Recaro hybrid seat rails
4 point harnesses and custom mounting hardware on C-pillars
Replace the fittings for the sight glass on the SOHN tank due to perish/leaking
…and the return of the awesomeness gauge.
Thanks
Matt
Well the last time I updated this post it was a few weeks before our trip to Europe.
My RX7 was in at WGT having a few issues sorted out, and my RX8 needed some tweaks to the lower end of the mapping. The logical thing to do was to drive down in the RX8 and swap into the RX7 for the drive back and pick up the RX8 whenever it was finished.
I finished work early on a Thursday and started to drive down to WGT, however on the motorway smoke started to come from the dashboard air vents.
Pull over, engine off and inspect with no obvious issues found. Bit more driving and the smokes back, pull over, engine on this time, no obvious issues.
Then a series of tests were performed on the road to figure out what this smoke was, turns out that it wasn’t smoke, it was related to the air conditioning system, suspected to be R134A leaking as air conditioning performance was reducing despite the new condenser the car had when the engine was installed.
This presented an issue, every time we have been to Europe about this sort of time of year it’s been really warm and the a/c has been a life saver. However, aside from some catastrophic leak in the engine bay, the only place the a/c and the heater blower system merge is the evaporator, and that requires the dash off, big job.
It stood to reason that I probably had a hairline crack or pinhole in the evaporator, or a leaking O-ring somewhere. No obvious leaks, and it holds pressure with the engine off, with the engine on (and the a/c compressor compressing) there is a small enough leak to get visible vapour, but it’s not big enough to rapidly drain the system of refrigerant.
The question was, did I have enough time to get the car back from WGT (mapping fixed or not), remove the dashboard, replace the evaporator, refit the dashboard, and get the A/C charged before we leave? I also had another (immobilised) car up for sale that at some point I would need to move, and the dashboard less RX8 would be blocking it in. The Noble needed an MOT, and my trusty diesel Signum did too. In fact the only car that didn’t need some spanner time would be the RX7 which became my daily driver for the short term.
My wife and daughter would not cope well with the heat in Europe, so I decided to try and go for it anyway.
Allan gave me a lift down to WGT the following weekend to collect the car in his lovely Jaguar XJR supercharged V8, not a bad way to get around. The RX8 map hadn’t been tweaked so will have to go back at some point for that, bugger, it’s a 3 hour round trip to collect/drop off.
Once the car was back I performed a number of other tests which made me question whether it was R134A leaking. For a start it sometimes took about 15 mins of driving with the air con on to show itself, which I didn’t think would happen with a crack/hole, it should leak straight away. The ‘smoke’ also cycled, even with the a/c selected fully on (i.e compressor running all the time) it came and went on a rhythmic cycle.
Rather than replace a part, including removing the dashboard when it may be perfectly fine, I opted to have the a/c system drained down and vacuum checked to confirm there is an issue. Got to the garage and a quick look over with a UV torch pointed to a leaking O-ring on the condenser, easy fix, and a pin hole from a stone, not so easily fixed. Time now not being on my side, I left it with them for them to replace the condenser and leak check the a/c system, which appeared to solve the problem, although I have no idea how you get the symptom of misting from the air vents from a slowly degasing a/c condenser. On the plus side though, the dash didn’t need to come off.
I then turned my attention to getting the car ready for the holiday, sohn tank topped up, fuel tank topped up, pre-mix bottles filled, in car DVD for my daughter fitted, tools and things in the boot fitted etc.
One of the last things I did was booked the car in for tracking and alignment again, this time returning it to stock settings, as to not wear the inside edges of the tyres with its normal, more camber track focused setup. I also checked and topped up the tyre pressures so we were all set to go.
The time came and I loaded up the car, the folding buggy and travel cot wouldn’t easily fit in the RX8 with all the other stuff so Allan took that in his Jaguar, everything else fitted in the RX8, and the back seat was left moderately clear also which was good. Daughter was setup in the rear, in her rear facing car seat with a dvd player on the rear headrest, nice and cosy with Peppa Pig in da house.
Over to Preston to rendezvous with the team for breakfast at Huntley’s near Samlesbury, all present and correct, cup of tea, sausage sandwich and we were on our way over to Harrogate. Cars are the Kraken RX8, the Hadouken RX8 (now camo-less), a Jaguar XJR, a Mercedes C50 AMG and a VW Golf Mk4 R32.
At Harrogate it was lunch at the Yorkshire meatball company and then a wander round the lovely town, then onto the M1/M62 to Hull. Managed some entertaining pops, bangs and flames out of the Kraken on the way down, one of them under a motorway bridge which was exceptionally loud, love it.
Checked in for the ferry and joined a typically English queue, it took forever to finally get on the ship but eventually we were called to board. This was my first real concern of the trip, on the 2015 Europe trip the Kraken grounded out badly in Rotterdam and is was difficult to get on the ferry, so I was concerned this would happen this time. Thankfully the ferry we were using on the Hull/Zeebrugge route was a rear loading ferry, which the Kraken managed to make it up the ramps onto the lower car deck without any issues, phew!
Many nautical references, food, beer and wine consumed that evening as we sailed across to the continent. My daughter did really well, staying up much later than her usual bed time without getting too cranky, I took her to the cabin for sleep around 10pm.
Morning comes and it’s off the ship and down onto the roads heading towards Bruges, quick fuel stop and then headed to the central car park in the Bruges centre. We have used this car park in previous years without issue, but we got there a little later in the day than normal to find it full, dammit. Quick drive around to the other car parks but there is a market on in Bruges square and most routes to the car parks seem to go through it, we are navigating on sat nav only without local knowledge of the layout when the market is on, nightmare. The group scatters and finds parking wherever we can, the Merc and the Kraken ending up on street parking, next to machines that only take coin cash, of which we have very little of. We had to return to them later on to put more money on, but decided to get them in the original centre car park as it wasn’t as busy as before, great idea, but the underside of the Kraken scraped on one of the ramps into the underground car park, this upset me greatly.
Regroup in the centre square near the Belfrei for lunch, then it starts raining, we were planning on cycling around the city but not in that weather, onto the beer museum to kill some time. For me, it was a dull ‘lazy ‘museum, they hand you an iPad and headphones and push you into a room with some barcodes to scan, we cut through the majority of it and waited in the bar whilst the rest finished in the exhibit room.
After some shopping it was then load up and hit the road, heading for our hotel stop which is near the Charleroi airport. Meal, beers and general socialising that night, very good.
Next morning it was up and breakfast in the hotel, and then onto the roads south, we stopped on the way at a lovely bar just on the outskirts of Belgium for a ‘decant’ and hydrate before heading into France. Lovely weather made for a pleasant drive down to the WW1 monument in Verdun, completed the tour there and then headed up to the memorial with the grave fields, sobering to visit but a lovely tribute.
After lunch it was then onto our hotel stop in Meisenthal France, traveling through b
hé, for a funny sign photo as per usual.Hotel was lovely, except it was a Sunday and the bar and restaurant was closed, so we walked the 2 miles into town to visit the only open bar/restaurant. Good night had by all, the group split at one point, half going back for drinks on the veranda, the other half stopping in the bar for more socialising with the locals. Some funny stories made that night. We saw a group of vintage tractors having a bit of a cruise together down the street, maybe they had been to a tractor meet, strange stuff happens in France.
Breakfast, checkout, then over to Stuttgart, Germany. On the way the Kraken, the most fuel inefficient of the group had a fuel emergency and had to pitch off the Autobahn for a fill up. The rest of the group that remained on the Autobahn hit traffic and the other RX8 then needed fuel and a long convoluted trip to a petrol station then started from the next junction, with the Kraken over taking them on the timeline. Team Kraken arrived at Stuttgart’s Wilhelma zoo 90 minutes before everyone else.
Zoo was good, weather again lovely, sunny and hot. Excellent afternoon and saw some good attractions and interesting animals. The Wilhelma zoo is famous for its ape exhibit which was pretty good.
Following the zoo it was across town in terrible traffic to our hotel in downtown Stuttgart, at one point a 70kph road suddenly went 50kph in a bend and then back up to 70kph immediately after it, I didn’t see this transition whilst trying to also navigate and got flashed by a speed camera, dammit. Hotel parking then became an issue yet again and took a good half an hour to resolve, note to self, much more Euro-coinage is required when traveling and its worth paying extra for hotels with dedicated parking. Walk round to a local restaurant for meals and drinks for the evening, very good once again.
Next day, an easy run to the Speyer technic museum, this place I would definitely recommend. In the 2015 trip we went to the sister museum in Sinsheim and it didn’t disappoint, neither did the Speyer one. Saw a Russian Buran space shuttle, had a group selfie on the wing of a 747 150ft up in the air, stood on the fire plate of a huge steam train, went below decks in a submarine and stood on the cargo door of an Antonov.
Then of course, there were the jumping boat kid’s ride which we commandeered for 20 minutes, awesome.
From Speyer, it was up to everyone’s favourite place, the Nurburgring for a 4 night stay in the self-catering accommodation in the Lindner Drees ferienpark which we have stayed at before and know them to be excellent. We generally travel in big groups, and here you can hire two three-bedroom semi-detached houses which have internal doors to open them up to be big single houses, south facing patios and balconies and excellent services. Of course we went via Worms for another comedy sign photo. However, this is the part that didn’t go smoothly.
After a quick refreshment stop at services in Mosel, the group set off, Kraken leading, and after a while it was clear no one was behind us. Phone call later and the Jaguar had a serious problem and limped off the motorway. As we had an 11 month old with us, the group decided that we should press on to the chalets and set them up with the basics for the night and breakfast the following day. A few hours later the other three cars turned up, the Jaguar being still at the roadside.
The rear left wheel bearing had catastrophically failed, European breakdown cover which was in place had been called, but numerous admin errors and miscommunications caused huge delays and issues. Eventually the car was recovered to a UK prestige vehicle ‘specialist’, and the Kraken collected the occupants from Koblenz train station and shuttled them up to the chalets around midnight, knackered.
The next three days were easy going for the most part, we visited Adenau town, some of the Nordschleife spectator points whilst the Porsche driving training academy was on, did some go-kart driving at the GP complex, visited Nurberg castle, the Eiffleburg radio telescope, and generally chilled out, well, most of us did.
Allan and his Mrs had to deal with the dead Jaguar, and the European recovery provider. They were just the first stage in a long line of different language speaking departments and companies that need to get things actioned in order for things to happen, and it should have been out of Allan’s hands, but things did not go that way and he spent nearly an hour each day on the phone to the various companies. Some days he would get conflicting information, some days lies, some days nothing at all, incredibly stressful.
We got some laps in of the Nurburgring GP circuit, and it’s an excellent track to visit and I’d like to go back at some point for a proper full day track day. It was wet, and already being one car down we took it easy, but still enjoyed ourselves, but it was clear that something wasn’t right with the Kraken’s alignment/suspension. On power it would pull to left, on deceleration it would pull to the right, so on hard gear changes the front of the car would dramatically lurch right as you went through the gears, which was pretty unnerving.
Oil pressure, water temperature and oil temperature were all well under control, but gearbox oil temps were well into the 105 degrees after just a few laps on the GP circuit (90 degrees when cruising on the motorway!), a cooler of some description is definitely a consideration for the future. For information, it has Redline MT90 in it, 2 litres of it (1.75 litres is the standard level), and this is the second gearbox which has had high oil temp issues, I’ve mentioned before that I think the RX8 has an undocumented issue with gearbox oil temperatures, possibly due to the engines high rpm’s.
We also did a Nordschleife lap, again in the rain, but after a spillage of someone else’s cars fluids on the track caused ‘Armco face’ for both the Kraken and the Merc (and at least 4 other cars) we backed right out and simply drove round the track at pace, but not ‘on it’. Nice photos captured though none the less. The track was closed by the time we came back in to clean up the surface, we didn’t get back out on it after that.
No trip to the ring is complete without a visit to the Pistonklause for steak, you can leave your messages on the wall, we had one in 2012, which we extended when we returned in 2015, and we extended again with our 2016 visit. Quite a time piece for me, as it had markings of my stag do, the wet the baby’s head trip, and then I was there again, with my daughter.
At the end of our holiday it was time to pack up the chalets and head back, the Jaguar’s status was still unknown at this point, and hire car considerations were as frustrating to organise as the Jags repair was, ultimately we ended up shoe horning Allan and his Mrs, and there stuff, amongst the 4 other cars.
Relaxed drive back to Zeebrugge with a few rest stops here and there, onto the ferry with more concern than before, the car now had more weight in it, and we were being called onto the upper car deck, with an even steeper ramp, but it got up no problem thankfully.
More food and beers that night as we waved goodbye to the continent, on the rear sundeck we met up with a biker chap called Bob who was shuttling his bike back from a Euro road trip after his Mrs had a heart attack and was flown back, top chap and nice to talk to, his Mrs appeared to be recovering well.
Typical English lengthy depart as per normal, with stereotypical French/Belgian queue cutters, McD’s in Hull before heading home to unpack and start depression, gutted.
The Kraken did well, it completed nearly 1200 miles, with wife and 11 month old, and luggage, tools and entertainment, with the only causality being the fuel consumption and the exhaust baffles. It some point my excessive enjoyment of its flames, pops and bangs had caused some baffles to be shaken loose inside the rear box, whoops.
The foot well on the driver’s side, near the clutch foot rest gets hot on long drives with the racing beat manifold, so another consideration for the future would be to heat shield that area (manifold is already wrapped).
Roll on the next trip one.
Once back, the Kraken had its tracking readjusted, this time to 1 degree negative camber at the front and 2 degrees at the rear, which is the minimum it can have with the OEM camber bolts and its current ride height. Ideally I want 1 degree negative all round, so I’ll get some adjustable lateral links and toe arms when they come in stock.
This did not cure its weird handling trait that it picked up, to recap it would drive perfectly fine on normal driving, but hard acceleration it would pull left and hard declaration it would pull right.
The entire suspension and power train was then inspected with deep scrutiny to find a bush, ball joint, wheel bearing, diff mount, subframe mount, or something that was causing this issue, no results found. One thing did play on my mind though, for this trip it had Bridgestone Potenza’s on, RE040’s on the FL, FR, and RL and RE050 on the RR all with similar tread depths and pressures.
I was changing these tyres anyway to some wet weather tyres (Uniroyal Rainsport 3’s) as more track days for our group are being planned in the cooler wetter months so changed them earlier than planned and boom, the problem went away. I have no idea how a slightly different tyre on an axle could cause those symptoms, must be some small variation in sidewall strength or something, very odd, but glad it’s cured.
Following the stone in the air con condenser incident, Lockwood black grills where purchased and fitted. Euro plates where purchased and fitted at the same time, so that ‘GB’ stickers are not needed when it’s on the continent.
And to finish off a shield was made for the engine to keep the water out of the vents when parked, not that I think it requires one. I thought up all sorts of elaborate methods of making an easily removable shield when I had a brain wave. A big sheet of rubber was cut and fitted; it rests on top of the battery box, the air box and the engine cover, and is easily removed when on track, simple.
Rear brake pads were low again, so another set of EBC Red Stuffs were fitted.
The next track day was at Blyton Park in September, this time both the Noble and the Kraken in attendance. I wanted to put the Noble on at least one track day to see its capabilities, and give me some more confidence in pushing it on the road.
It was absolutely howling it down with rain in the morning of the day, standing water and large flooded apexes all over the place. The Noble was on road-spec Michelin Pilot Super Sports and the Kraken was on its Yokohama Neova semi slicks, weather reports up until the day pointed to dry weather hence the selection of the dry tyres.
I was actually driving the Noble all day that day with Allan having the Kraken all day.
The Noble did well, the tyres being very good, much better than expected in putting down the power in those damp conditions. It was my first introduction into the benefits of aero, the faster you went, the more planted it felt. The Kraken also did a lot better than expected, the semi slicks providing quite a lot of grip in the flooded conditions. However spins that day were rife from all the track day attendees, a lot of cars struggling with grip.
Thankfully in the afternoon it stopped raining and dried up a bit allowed more pace to be wound on. The Noble popped a boost pipe off just before the end of the day, so I fixed that and then didn’t bother going out for the last half an hour. The Mazda did well all day with no issues or breakdowns.
Highlighted again though was the gearbox oil temp issue, engine oil didn’t go over the 85 degrees, coolant again steady at 85-90 degrees, gearbox oil temps up to the 115-120 degrees.
Next steps for the Kraken are-
Racing Beat Single Exit exhaust & Racing Beat dual silenced decat & decibel bung for low db days if required.
Gearbox oil cooler and pump in the space previously occupied by the dual exit exhaust
5.375 rear diff and polyurethane diff mounts
Adjustable rear toe control and lateral arms so adjustability lower than 2 degrees negative
Mitsubishi Evo 6 Recaro bucket seats on Corbeau/Recaro hybrid seat rails
4 point harnesses and custom mounting hardware on C-pillars
Replace the fittings for the sight glass on the SOHN tank due to perish/leaking
…and the return of the awesomeness gauge.
Thanks
Matt
Edited by StreetDragster on Friday 25th May 08:40
Update time
Sorry about this, this is a big update spanning many months
A long drive down to Snetterton for a day on the 200 circuit occurred in October. Good day, challenging track and pretty decent weather.
The Kraken had no issues and got loads of laps in all day. The only minor point was gearbox oil again; alarm set at 120 degrees meant we sometimes had to come in earlier than we wanted to.
The Hadouken lunched its brake pads, and effectively only went out on track in the morning, emergency trip out to the not-so-local Euro car parts for onsite replacements of the pads was required.
The KaBoom2 had its share of problems, all related to electricity. No signs of anything wrong with the battery but come the morning of the track day it wouldn’t start. Got it off the back of the truck it arrived on and attempted numerous jump starts but the jump leads were not up to the task. In the end a bump start got it going and it was fine all day.
However the truck it came on then had battery issues itself and wouldn’t start, he spent most of the afternoon looking at that and trying to get it running properly. In the end, the Mazda bump started the truck, then the truck was kept running whilst a three person team was required to keep the truck running and revved up, the winch going, and to steer the Boom onto the back. Once loaded, the owner decided it would be a good idea to quit whilst he was ahead and set off on the 5hr return drive at around 3pm.
Once home the Kraken got a light check over with not much found that needed attention but one thing that didn’t work properly was the cars heater; the vents only blow luke warm at the best of times and previous attempts of flushing yielded little blockages. Decided to use an unsafe pressure of air to try and clear it, which worked perfectly.
1) After attempting normal, hose pressure flushing and back flushing directly at the heater matrix, for greater water velocity, I setup a full 30m of hose between the tap and the heater matrix.
2) I filled the entire hose reel and matrix with water. And then disconnected the pipe from the water supply and attached a blow gun to the end of the hose
3) Charged the air compressor to nearly 80psi
4) Used the air to force the water through the matrix
At first, I was using short, sharp bursts of air pressure to get things moving, but by the 6th of 7th flush it was full pressure from the off.
The speed of the water out into the bucket was incredible.
LOADS of rubbish started to come out in each bucket’s worth of purging.
Seemingly instant gasket, flakes of lime scale, some rusty flakes of steel, black paint, red paint, and silver paint, some sort of paper adhesive label, and a couple of 50mm long, 2mm wide slithers of gasket material.
Reassembled the car, started it and leak checked, nothing leaking in the engine bay or the passenger compartment, topped up the coolant and went for a drive.
HEAT!! Lovely, strong, warm, amazing, wonderful HEAT!!
I’m not concerned about the debris, this car has had two engines, two radiators, two water pumps, two thermostats and god knows how many other changes before my ownership, I guess the heater matrix is the most restrictive part of the coolant system and therefore is the one easily clogged.
Nothing else was found other than brake pads, so given that it was a late November track day the wet weather Uniroyal Rainsport 3 tyres were fitted in preparation for Silverstone, and both the front and rear brake pads where replaced. As the rears had now only lasted Snetterton and Blyton I went to higher duty yellowstuffs in both the front and rears this time.
The Hadouken however had some issues. A week or two before the Silverstone event in normal driving the clutch pedal dropped to the floor and gears could not be selected, hydraulics suspected.
John ordered a replacement clutch master and slave cylinder and stripped the car down to install them, at the same time he was replacing a leaking oil filter housing and a few other bits and bobs in the top half of the engine bay.
Replacement clutch master cylinder arrived and it was wrong, leading to a return and a replacement from another supplier being sent out, eating into the timeline.
Many late, cold and dark nights later the car was reassembled and the clutch bled. Spin round the block and it appeared to be fine. However the next morning, no gear selections and clutch to the floor again, this is the Friday before the Sunday Silverstone track day.
8pm Friday I go round with a friend to help John bleed up the clutch again, convinced that a slug of air is causing the problem, sure enough loads of air comes out and the pedal feel and travel is perfect, happy days.
It still won’t go into gear though, and it starts to make some horrendous noises.
PANIC STATIONS.
Couple of options; a last minute garage repair; a last minute DIY repair; or a forfeit of the track day.
Option A was explored and our friendly helpful garage Autocare in Longridge stepped up to the task. We just had to get it there, some 40 miles via country lanes at night. Oh and some parts.
Thankfully I had a number of parts in stock, a half worn clutch on the shelf, a gearbox ready for my oil cooler installation (the noise was that bad we thought the input shaft may be damaged) and some other bits and bobs. It was off to my house to collect my friends trusty diesel Rover 45, towing equipment, the parts, and then back to the Hadouken.
Then the real fun started, the Rover’s tow hook for the rigid towing bar we have was directly behind the fixed tow ball on the rover, so we couldn’t use that and had to revert to a rope. Rope on the Rover and Mazda, Mazda engine running for a/c, power brakes, power steering, wipers, lights etc. After all, it was raining and about 10pm at this point.
Off we go.
Then about 10 mins in, something dragging in the bell housing stalls the engine and it won’t restart, losing all the services. John then had to brake for the car in front without power brakes or steering. Turn the ignition on and off to conserve power in between windscreen wipes, and run without windscreen demisting. Nightmare.
Still we made it.
Next day, they had the box off by 8am, the destroyed release bearing found and replaced and the box back on and ready for pickup by 12pm, excellent service.
John joined us at Allan’s house and we all convoyed down to the Silverstone hotel together with no issues. Meal with the RX8OC which was good and then I got my head down for the night.
Silverstone then didn’t go so well. I had vomited before the kettle clicked off in the morning in the hotel, survived the sighting laps but then still felt awful and importantly, couldn’t concentrate. I handed the keys over to Allan as a race track is no place to have low concentration even if you did pay £200 to be there, climbed into the trusty Rover with the engine idling and the heater on and slept virtually all day, gutted.
Allan had the car all day and was determined to use it, however the day appeared to be oversubscribed, the track was wet and slippy, closed sessions were every other moment and the pit lane entry was heavily biased towards the front garages, not a great day at all.
He did get some track time in though and a session with an instructor in the morning dramatically improved his afternoon. Towards the end of the day he was not being overtaken by anything and passed lots of cars, very good progress.
Set off back and I was still in a bad way, gutted.
At this point it’s worth a bit of a fleet update.
I have leased a Golf R Estate (with DSG) to fulfil the daily driver roles and the Kraken was then free to go into maintenance for winter. I also had some house projects to work on which also needed some space, so the Noble went off to a friend’s garage for the winter.
Into the winter upgrade program, the Sohn tank was drained, the sight glass fittings removed (push fits with clear interconnecting pipe), and the unions blanked off. It’s just not reliable enough, so I fitted a M4 threaded bar into the cap as a dip stick instead. The dip stick, and the low level warning light should give ample monitoring on the levels, albeit not as quickly as a glance at a sight glass, but it should be more oil tight and trustworthy.
At the front end, small changes really, the fog lamps were removed and replaced with ducts, intended to cool the drivers foot well to stop the manifold BBQ’ing the footwell (and subsequently my foot, more on that later), however once done I really wasn’t happy with the pipe route of the air duct around the steering rack, I removed the pipework and blocked off the ducts at the bumper, they are there if I need them I guess.
The clutch master and slave cylinder were replaced to hopefully prevent premature failure, the steering rack knuckle was lubricated, and the engine oil and filter changed. Whilst I had the bleeding tools out I flushed the brake fluid to all corners as well.
The exhaust manifold needed some work. Previously I had fitted a Racing Beat tubular manifold and wrapped it in DEI heat wrap, with the DEI silicone sealer over the top in a hope to increase longevity. Well as I have mentioned before this combination does a great job of heating the clutch footrest and BBQ’ing your foot, something needed to be done and I originally intended to duct in cooling air but that didn’t work as mentioned previously.
Next job was to sort it out properly, step one was get the manifold off, heat wrap removed (which just crumbled off, not impressed, I won’t be using heat wrap again) and send it off to Zircotec for their Performance Motorsport white ceramic coating.
Then onto the tunnel/footwell, grilled seam sealer scraped back and all cleaned up properly with petrol, self-adhesive Cool-It heat barrier applied first to prevent absorption, then over the top some Nimbus Z11 double barrier heat shielding material left over from the Noble, riveted to the structure to ensure no rattles. Hopefully the three changes should keep it all under control and mean I don’t need to drive in a flip flop on the left foot.
Moving back, this is where the more serious stuff started to occur. Firstly a gearbox oil cooling pump was installed, along with a cooling matrix. No room on the RX8 for most of this stuff, so the cooler matrix went to the back on the left hand side, and the pump went on the bulkhead in the rear passenger foot well. A keen design philosophy for most of my mods is to maintain the cars ability to carry 4 people if needed. We have had breakdowns on track days and occupants have had to travel back in other cars, if needed, I wanted this to still be an option as long as possible, albeit maybe in reduced comfort.
This gearbox oil cooler was a big job, much bigger than I expected to be honest. The SPA gauge I have can trigger a relay to kick the pump in via an external alarm output so that’s straight forward enough, and I also have an override switch to manually turn the pump on if I wish. The indicator for pump operation and the override switch were put into the centre dash hood near the awesomeness gauge.
Then to plumbing, -6JIC PTFE pipe fittings used everywhere to complete the circuit, difficult to get all the required angles and bend radii right but not impossible. I decided to mount the bulk of the plumbing on the power girder (which runs under the prop shaft) where possible (rather than the car body) so that I could control the pipe which would see the engine movement, and make that pipe long enough to absorb it. This meant that the power girder had to be removed, pipe clamps and filter mounted welded on, and the shield over the fuel tank relieved to give pipe clearance on the LHS of the girder.
Then the actual gearbox, I bought a spare gearbox and took the tail casing off to assess where I can put the pipe take offs, drain and fill ports, and the sender for the gearbox oil temp gauge. Not a lot of internal space to be honest, and all the casing webs and curves make for difficult positioning. As a side note, there is a clear route from the gear selector to the sump of the gearbox, so you can fill with oil from the cabin if you wish without any issues.
I decided to use the OEM drain and fill points (M18x1.5) as pipe take offs for the oil cooler, and then put the drain, fill and sensor ports in the tail case in raised bosses tig welded on. Reason for this is raised bosses don’t impinge on the internal workings of the gearbox, and there is a bulkhead between the fluid moving the in/out to the pump and the sensor, hopefully dampening any abrupt temperature changes when the pump kicks in and preventing the pump from cycling on/off as cool oil is returned immediately from the cooler when initially turned on. The triggering output from the gauge is a simple one which rises/falls at the same temperature.
All that done, it was gearbox off, tail casing swap onto the original gearbox, check the clutch condition, weld some harness anchors into the tunnel, and then refit the gearbox.
Moving to the rear, two more of the control arms (the rear lateral arms and the lower trailing arms, I have already done the toe control arms) on each side were replaced for adjustable Japspeed items (only 2 left OEM now) in a hope to get back to ~1 degree of negative camber all round with the lower ride height. Turns out the Japspeed arms are set at very near OEM length on their minimum setting, probably aimed at the drifting crew who want a lot more negative camber. I changed the lock nuts to half lock nuts to gain a degree or so of adjustment to shorter than OEM if required.
I’m not impressed with the lower trailing arms, which have the anti-roll bar mounts on. There is an intermediate turn buckle, with a metal bracket sandwiched between the nut and the body of the arm to lock it, which you attach your anti roll bar to. I couldn’t get enough torque on the nut to stop the bracket rotating when lifting one wheel with a jack, I have no confidence that it can handle a 1300kg car doing 100mph round a corner and I feel I effectively have no anti roll bar at the rear now. I will get the cars suspension aligned and then I think I will weld the bracket directly to the control arm’s large diameter body, although this will mean that if I end up needing to adjust that section of arm, it’ll have to be in 360 degree stages, should be fine as there is plenty of adjustment in the other section of arm and its attached by an eccentric bolt.
The rear diff was removed, and one which had been fully overhauled and rebuilt (by WGT) with 5.385 crown and pinion (stock 231 RX8 is 4.444, the RX8 R3 one fitted previously was 4.777, this is 5.385 and my friend John has a 5.800 one in the Hadouken) and Powerflex purple diff mounts were installed. Should make better use of the available torque/ revs and increase acceleration at the expense of top speed which I don’t need/use.
The none-resonated decat was replaced with a Racing Beat dual silenced 3” decat pipe, and the Racing Beat single tailpipe 3” race exhaust was attached to that replacing the Sebring exhaust. Should pass all sound tests on all tracks, be lighter, give room for my oil cooler matrix and still spit out nice flames. As a side note, a lot of bolts were found to be not up to torque on disassembly, the girder nuts, some gearbox to engine bolts, and two of the prop shaft heat shield bolts were missing altogether. If you run your RX8 as a track car I would recommend turning a torque wrench on these bolts every fourth track day or something to confirm vibrations haven’t loosened them off.
With the deletion of one tailpipe there was now room in the exhaust box bay, so I cut the dummy mesh on the lower left hand rear valance of the bumper, trimmed the rear metal work on the car and welded up bracketry to permit a 9 row, 235mm APS oil cooler to be fitted there. In the exhaust bay I relieved the exhaust box heat shield to permit air to flow into the matrix from under the car. The combination of the large increase in oil capacity (stock oil capacity for the gearbox is 1.75 litres) from the cooler and 6m of oil lines on the car and the wide oil cooler in the airflow should now keep gearbox temps under control, if that is not enough a duct will be added to scoop more air up into the cooler matrix. I've also moved from Redline MT90 to Royal Purple Max Gear 75w90, based on a chap talking me round at the 2017 Autosport show, see if it makes any difference.
Cosmetically I replaced the rear right hand tail light and bashed the body ding out a little bit where I brushed a lamp post when parking.
In the car’s interior, the major changes were to the seats; however nothing is easy on an RX8. For a start I wanted to retain the forward/back sliders on the seats, and the floor pan is all lumps and bumps, so an expensive set of floor brackets and sliders had to be sourced from Corbeau in the USA.
The intention was then to fit on some spare Mitsubishi Evo VI Recaro reclining sports seats which Allan had left over from his Focus project. The seats however are also weird sizes underneath and not compatible with the Corbeau brackets, so the Focus Recaro sliders were grafted onto the Corbeau brackets and trial fitted.
They didn’t fit, the seat was over to the right when compared to the steering wheel, the wing on the seat interfered with the B-pillar when the rear door was shut, and the seat base sat higher than OEM giving even less helmet clearance.
Back to the work bench, seat rails adjusted to be right up against the centre console, and as low are possible. The seat install will be attempted at a later date.
Then onto the harnesses, as mentioned previously I want the car to retain its ability to move 4 people around if needed, this presented some challenges when trying to fit Allan’s TRS clip on 4-point 3” harnesses again left over from the Focus project and keeping all the angles correct as per the MSA blue book.
The floor mounts where not too bad, the sill OEM position could be used, and a spreader plate could be used on the inboard position which was welded in with the gearbox removed as mentioned previously, but the shoulder straps were a different kettle of fish.
The rear seat vertical cushions bolted in, only by two bolts admittedly but that’s more hassle to setup the car prior to every track day and four seat cushions to store whilst out on track. Fine with a garage, not so fine if you’re outside and it’s raining.
All the trim pieces were removed around the rear parcel shelf area and surveyed, the plan was to re-inforce the shelf between the C-pillars with 3mm mild steel, weld in harness points with spreader plates, and utilise all the stiff points of the structure, the internal webs and the webs around the ISOFIX points in the factory box section shelf/strut brace.
Out comes the rear window for access, the interior is stripped for access; steel plate formed to fit the shelf, and welded onto the OEM box section/strut brace.
Once done all the OEM plastics could be made to fit too which was a nice touch, the harnesses could clip on/off to the harness eyelets and comfortably reached the front seats.
Only thing needed to be done then was to remove the headrest off the rear cushions, I contemplated doing this DIY style because ‘it’s only a track car’, but given all the other plastics had been retained I’m going to make sure effort and get them professionally modified instead, should look good whilst being functional, nice. Just need to solve the front seat issues now before the harnesses can be utilised.
Interior rebuilt, hand held fire extinguisher refitted, some track decals fitted, suspension alignment and a MOT and that’s about it for winter upgrade 2016/2017. Roll on the track day season.
On the calendar for the UK we have Blyton Park outer in March as a shakedown primarily; Rockingham booked in May on the International Super Sports car circuit which includes the banked number one corner, and the Brands Hatch Indy day in December with the RX8OC. The main trip of the year though is we have booked to go with Book-A-Track on their Iberia trip Jerez in Spain, Estoril and Portimao in Portugal, can’t wait.
I want to get Mallory Park and Anglesey in there somewhere as well.
Thanks
Matt
Sorry about this, this is a big update spanning many months
A long drive down to Snetterton for a day on the 200 circuit occurred in October. Good day, challenging track and pretty decent weather.
The Kraken had no issues and got loads of laps in all day. The only minor point was gearbox oil again; alarm set at 120 degrees meant we sometimes had to come in earlier than we wanted to.
The Hadouken lunched its brake pads, and effectively only went out on track in the morning, emergency trip out to the not-so-local Euro car parts for onsite replacements of the pads was required.
The KaBoom2 had its share of problems, all related to electricity. No signs of anything wrong with the battery but come the morning of the track day it wouldn’t start. Got it off the back of the truck it arrived on and attempted numerous jump starts but the jump leads were not up to the task. In the end a bump start got it going and it was fine all day.
However the truck it came on then had battery issues itself and wouldn’t start, he spent most of the afternoon looking at that and trying to get it running properly. In the end, the Mazda bump started the truck, then the truck was kept running whilst a three person team was required to keep the truck running and revved up, the winch going, and to steer the Boom onto the back. Once loaded, the owner decided it would be a good idea to quit whilst he was ahead and set off on the 5hr return drive at around 3pm.
Once home the Kraken got a light check over with not much found that needed attention but one thing that didn’t work properly was the cars heater; the vents only blow luke warm at the best of times and previous attempts of flushing yielded little blockages. Decided to use an unsafe pressure of air to try and clear it, which worked perfectly.
1) After attempting normal, hose pressure flushing and back flushing directly at the heater matrix, for greater water velocity, I setup a full 30m of hose between the tap and the heater matrix.
2) I filled the entire hose reel and matrix with water. And then disconnected the pipe from the water supply and attached a blow gun to the end of the hose
3) Charged the air compressor to nearly 80psi
4) Used the air to force the water through the matrix
At first, I was using short, sharp bursts of air pressure to get things moving, but by the 6th of 7th flush it was full pressure from the off.
The speed of the water out into the bucket was incredible.
LOADS of rubbish started to come out in each bucket’s worth of purging.
Seemingly instant gasket, flakes of lime scale, some rusty flakes of steel, black paint, red paint, and silver paint, some sort of paper adhesive label, and a couple of 50mm long, 2mm wide slithers of gasket material.
Reassembled the car, started it and leak checked, nothing leaking in the engine bay or the passenger compartment, topped up the coolant and went for a drive.
HEAT!! Lovely, strong, warm, amazing, wonderful HEAT!!
I’m not concerned about the debris, this car has had two engines, two radiators, two water pumps, two thermostats and god knows how many other changes before my ownership, I guess the heater matrix is the most restrictive part of the coolant system and therefore is the one easily clogged.
Nothing else was found other than brake pads, so given that it was a late November track day the wet weather Uniroyal Rainsport 3 tyres were fitted in preparation for Silverstone, and both the front and rear brake pads where replaced. As the rears had now only lasted Snetterton and Blyton I went to higher duty yellowstuffs in both the front and rears this time.
The Hadouken however had some issues. A week or two before the Silverstone event in normal driving the clutch pedal dropped to the floor and gears could not be selected, hydraulics suspected.
John ordered a replacement clutch master and slave cylinder and stripped the car down to install them, at the same time he was replacing a leaking oil filter housing and a few other bits and bobs in the top half of the engine bay.
Replacement clutch master cylinder arrived and it was wrong, leading to a return and a replacement from another supplier being sent out, eating into the timeline.
Many late, cold and dark nights later the car was reassembled and the clutch bled. Spin round the block and it appeared to be fine. However the next morning, no gear selections and clutch to the floor again, this is the Friday before the Sunday Silverstone track day.
8pm Friday I go round with a friend to help John bleed up the clutch again, convinced that a slug of air is causing the problem, sure enough loads of air comes out and the pedal feel and travel is perfect, happy days.
It still won’t go into gear though, and it starts to make some horrendous noises.
PANIC STATIONS.
Couple of options; a last minute garage repair; a last minute DIY repair; or a forfeit of the track day.
Option A was explored and our friendly helpful garage Autocare in Longridge stepped up to the task. We just had to get it there, some 40 miles via country lanes at night. Oh and some parts.
Thankfully I had a number of parts in stock, a half worn clutch on the shelf, a gearbox ready for my oil cooler installation (the noise was that bad we thought the input shaft may be damaged) and some other bits and bobs. It was off to my house to collect my friends trusty diesel Rover 45, towing equipment, the parts, and then back to the Hadouken.
Then the real fun started, the Rover’s tow hook for the rigid towing bar we have was directly behind the fixed tow ball on the rover, so we couldn’t use that and had to revert to a rope. Rope on the Rover and Mazda, Mazda engine running for a/c, power brakes, power steering, wipers, lights etc. After all, it was raining and about 10pm at this point.
Off we go.
Then about 10 mins in, something dragging in the bell housing stalls the engine and it won’t restart, losing all the services. John then had to brake for the car in front without power brakes or steering. Turn the ignition on and off to conserve power in between windscreen wipes, and run without windscreen demisting. Nightmare.
Still we made it.
Next day, they had the box off by 8am, the destroyed release bearing found and replaced and the box back on and ready for pickup by 12pm, excellent service.
John joined us at Allan’s house and we all convoyed down to the Silverstone hotel together with no issues. Meal with the RX8OC which was good and then I got my head down for the night.
Silverstone then didn’t go so well. I had vomited before the kettle clicked off in the morning in the hotel, survived the sighting laps but then still felt awful and importantly, couldn’t concentrate. I handed the keys over to Allan as a race track is no place to have low concentration even if you did pay £200 to be there, climbed into the trusty Rover with the engine idling and the heater on and slept virtually all day, gutted.
Allan had the car all day and was determined to use it, however the day appeared to be oversubscribed, the track was wet and slippy, closed sessions were every other moment and the pit lane entry was heavily biased towards the front garages, not a great day at all.
He did get some track time in though and a session with an instructor in the morning dramatically improved his afternoon. Towards the end of the day he was not being overtaken by anything and passed lots of cars, very good progress.
Set off back and I was still in a bad way, gutted.
At this point it’s worth a bit of a fleet update.
I have leased a Golf R Estate (with DSG) to fulfil the daily driver roles and the Kraken was then free to go into maintenance for winter. I also had some house projects to work on which also needed some space, so the Noble went off to a friend’s garage for the winter.
Into the winter upgrade program, the Sohn tank was drained, the sight glass fittings removed (push fits with clear interconnecting pipe), and the unions blanked off. It’s just not reliable enough, so I fitted a M4 threaded bar into the cap as a dip stick instead. The dip stick, and the low level warning light should give ample monitoring on the levels, albeit not as quickly as a glance at a sight glass, but it should be more oil tight and trustworthy.
At the front end, small changes really, the fog lamps were removed and replaced with ducts, intended to cool the drivers foot well to stop the manifold BBQ’ing the footwell (and subsequently my foot, more on that later), however once done I really wasn’t happy with the pipe route of the air duct around the steering rack, I removed the pipework and blocked off the ducts at the bumper, they are there if I need them I guess.
The clutch master and slave cylinder were replaced to hopefully prevent premature failure, the steering rack knuckle was lubricated, and the engine oil and filter changed. Whilst I had the bleeding tools out I flushed the brake fluid to all corners as well.
The exhaust manifold needed some work. Previously I had fitted a Racing Beat tubular manifold and wrapped it in DEI heat wrap, with the DEI silicone sealer over the top in a hope to increase longevity. Well as I have mentioned before this combination does a great job of heating the clutch footrest and BBQ’ing your foot, something needed to be done and I originally intended to duct in cooling air but that didn’t work as mentioned previously.
Next job was to sort it out properly, step one was get the manifold off, heat wrap removed (which just crumbled off, not impressed, I won’t be using heat wrap again) and send it off to Zircotec for their Performance Motorsport white ceramic coating.
Then onto the tunnel/footwell, grilled seam sealer scraped back and all cleaned up properly with petrol, self-adhesive Cool-It heat barrier applied first to prevent absorption, then over the top some Nimbus Z11 double barrier heat shielding material left over from the Noble, riveted to the structure to ensure no rattles. Hopefully the three changes should keep it all under control and mean I don’t need to drive in a flip flop on the left foot.
Moving back, this is where the more serious stuff started to occur. Firstly a gearbox oil cooling pump was installed, along with a cooling matrix. No room on the RX8 for most of this stuff, so the cooler matrix went to the back on the left hand side, and the pump went on the bulkhead in the rear passenger foot well. A keen design philosophy for most of my mods is to maintain the cars ability to carry 4 people if needed. We have had breakdowns on track days and occupants have had to travel back in other cars, if needed, I wanted this to still be an option as long as possible, albeit maybe in reduced comfort.
This gearbox oil cooler was a big job, much bigger than I expected to be honest. The SPA gauge I have can trigger a relay to kick the pump in via an external alarm output so that’s straight forward enough, and I also have an override switch to manually turn the pump on if I wish. The indicator for pump operation and the override switch were put into the centre dash hood near the awesomeness gauge.
Then to plumbing, -6JIC PTFE pipe fittings used everywhere to complete the circuit, difficult to get all the required angles and bend radii right but not impossible. I decided to mount the bulk of the plumbing on the power girder (which runs under the prop shaft) where possible (rather than the car body) so that I could control the pipe which would see the engine movement, and make that pipe long enough to absorb it. This meant that the power girder had to be removed, pipe clamps and filter mounted welded on, and the shield over the fuel tank relieved to give pipe clearance on the LHS of the girder.
Then the actual gearbox, I bought a spare gearbox and took the tail casing off to assess where I can put the pipe take offs, drain and fill ports, and the sender for the gearbox oil temp gauge. Not a lot of internal space to be honest, and all the casing webs and curves make for difficult positioning. As a side note, there is a clear route from the gear selector to the sump of the gearbox, so you can fill with oil from the cabin if you wish without any issues.
I decided to use the OEM drain and fill points (M18x1.5) as pipe take offs for the oil cooler, and then put the drain, fill and sensor ports in the tail case in raised bosses tig welded on. Reason for this is raised bosses don’t impinge on the internal workings of the gearbox, and there is a bulkhead between the fluid moving the in/out to the pump and the sensor, hopefully dampening any abrupt temperature changes when the pump kicks in and preventing the pump from cycling on/off as cool oil is returned immediately from the cooler when initially turned on. The triggering output from the gauge is a simple one which rises/falls at the same temperature.
All that done, it was gearbox off, tail casing swap onto the original gearbox, check the clutch condition, weld some harness anchors into the tunnel, and then refit the gearbox.
Moving to the rear, two more of the control arms (the rear lateral arms and the lower trailing arms, I have already done the toe control arms) on each side were replaced for adjustable Japspeed items (only 2 left OEM now) in a hope to get back to ~1 degree of negative camber all round with the lower ride height. Turns out the Japspeed arms are set at very near OEM length on their minimum setting, probably aimed at the drifting crew who want a lot more negative camber. I changed the lock nuts to half lock nuts to gain a degree or so of adjustment to shorter than OEM if required.
I’m not impressed with the lower trailing arms, which have the anti-roll bar mounts on. There is an intermediate turn buckle, with a metal bracket sandwiched between the nut and the body of the arm to lock it, which you attach your anti roll bar to. I couldn’t get enough torque on the nut to stop the bracket rotating when lifting one wheel with a jack, I have no confidence that it can handle a 1300kg car doing 100mph round a corner and I feel I effectively have no anti roll bar at the rear now. I will get the cars suspension aligned and then I think I will weld the bracket directly to the control arm’s large diameter body, although this will mean that if I end up needing to adjust that section of arm, it’ll have to be in 360 degree stages, should be fine as there is plenty of adjustment in the other section of arm and its attached by an eccentric bolt.
The rear diff was removed, and one which had been fully overhauled and rebuilt (by WGT) with 5.385 crown and pinion (stock 231 RX8 is 4.444, the RX8 R3 one fitted previously was 4.777, this is 5.385 and my friend John has a 5.800 one in the Hadouken) and Powerflex purple diff mounts were installed. Should make better use of the available torque/ revs and increase acceleration at the expense of top speed which I don’t need/use.
The none-resonated decat was replaced with a Racing Beat dual silenced 3” decat pipe, and the Racing Beat single tailpipe 3” race exhaust was attached to that replacing the Sebring exhaust. Should pass all sound tests on all tracks, be lighter, give room for my oil cooler matrix and still spit out nice flames. As a side note, a lot of bolts were found to be not up to torque on disassembly, the girder nuts, some gearbox to engine bolts, and two of the prop shaft heat shield bolts were missing altogether. If you run your RX8 as a track car I would recommend turning a torque wrench on these bolts every fourth track day or something to confirm vibrations haven’t loosened them off.
With the deletion of one tailpipe there was now room in the exhaust box bay, so I cut the dummy mesh on the lower left hand rear valance of the bumper, trimmed the rear metal work on the car and welded up bracketry to permit a 9 row, 235mm APS oil cooler to be fitted there. In the exhaust bay I relieved the exhaust box heat shield to permit air to flow into the matrix from under the car. The combination of the large increase in oil capacity (stock oil capacity for the gearbox is 1.75 litres) from the cooler and 6m of oil lines on the car and the wide oil cooler in the airflow should now keep gearbox temps under control, if that is not enough a duct will be added to scoop more air up into the cooler matrix. I've also moved from Redline MT90 to Royal Purple Max Gear 75w90, based on a chap talking me round at the 2017 Autosport show, see if it makes any difference.
Cosmetically I replaced the rear right hand tail light and bashed the body ding out a little bit where I brushed a lamp post when parking.
In the car’s interior, the major changes were to the seats; however nothing is easy on an RX8. For a start I wanted to retain the forward/back sliders on the seats, and the floor pan is all lumps and bumps, so an expensive set of floor brackets and sliders had to be sourced from Corbeau in the USA.
The intention was then to fit on some spare Mitsubishi Evo VI Recaro reclining sports seats which Allan had left over from his Focus project. The seats however are also weird sizes underneath and not compatible with the Corbeau brackets, so the Focus Recaro sliders were grafted onto the Corbeau brackets and trial fitted.
They didn’t fit, the seat was over to the right when compared to the steering wheel, the wing on the seat interfered with the B-pillar when the rear door was shut, and the seat base sat higher than OEM giving even less helmet clearance.
Back to the work bench, seat rails adjusted to be right up against the centre console, and as low are possible. The seat install will be attempted at a later date.
Then onto the harnesses, as mentioned previously I want the car to retain its ability to move 4 people around if needed, this presented some challenges when trying to fit Allan’s TRS clip on 4-point 3” harnesses again left over from the Focus project and keeping all the angles correct as per the MSA blue book.
The floor mounts where not too bad, the sill OEM position could be used, and a spreader plate could be used on the inboard position which was welded in with the gearbox removed as mentioned previously, but the shoulder straps were a different kettle of fish.
The rear seat vertical cushions bolted in, only by two bolts admittedly but that’s more hassle to setup the car prior to every track day and four seat cushions to store whilst out on track. Fine with a garage, not so fine if you’re outside and it’s raining.
All the trim pieces were removed around the rear parcel shelf area and surveyed, the plan was to re-inforce the shelf between the C-pillars with 3mm mild steel, weld in harness points with spreader plates, and utilise all the stiff points of the structure, the internal webs and the webs around the ISOFIX points in the factory box section shelf/strut brace.
Out comes the rear window for access, the interior is stripped for access; steel plate formed to fit the shelf, and welded onto the OEM box section/strut brace.
Once done all the OEM plastics could be made to fit too which was a nice touch, the harnesses could clip on/off to the harness eyelets and comfortably reached the front seats.
Only thing needed to be done then was to remove the headrest off the rear cushions, I contemplated doing this DIY style because ‘it’s only a track car’, but given all the other plastics had been retained I’m going to make sure effort and get them professionally modified instead, should look good whilst being functional, nice. Just need to solve the front seat issues now before the harnesses can be utilised.
Interior rebuilt, hand held fire extinguisher refitted, some track decals fitted, suspension alignment and a MOT and that’s about it for winter upgrade 2016/2017. Roll on the track day season.
On the calendar for the UK we have Blyton Park outer in March as a shakedown primarily; Rockingham booked in May on the International Super Sports car circuit which includes the banked number one corner, and the Brands Hatch Indy day in December with the RX8OC. The main trip of the year though is we have booked to go with Book-A-Track on their Iberia trip Jerez in Spain, Estoril and Portimao in Portugal, can’t wait.
I want to get Mallory Park and Anglesey in there somewhere as well.
Thanks
Matt
Edited by StreetDragster on Friday 25th May 08:41
Update Time Again.
Well it’s had a bit of use now and I thought I would report back.
The 5.385 diff is good in gear, it’s nice to drive and it feels like a decent increase in performance has been attained. 85mph on the motorway is nearly 5krpm though, so we tend to commute around at the regulation 70mph now. However, being none-OEM gears with probably slightly different tolerances and hardening processes, and the stiff Powerflex diff mounts, it does make a bit of noise back there, mostly noticeable as you come on/off the throttle. Nothing I’m worried about, John’s with the 5.8 diff and the Powerflex black series mounts makes similar noises, maybe it’ll calm down with a bit more bedding in.
The gearbox cooler works well, however the rate in which the oil cools is not as high as I expected, therefore I lowered the activation temperature of the gearbox cooling systems from 105 degrees to 90 degrees.
Time to introduce another two cars to the pack, the RXstate and the RXcuse.
Leon and John (W) came along to almost all track days for passenger rides and the social side of it all. Well they have now decided to go into a cheap car and see how they get on. Locally a winning blue RX8 231 turned up, in a legal colour (one of each colour only allowed in our little series) which had decent structure and engine, just a slight misfire, all for the bargain price of £450. We had spare plugs, and coil packs in the spares pool of the other cars so replaced them, removed the oil from the sump as it had been over filled, replaced the wiper blades, cleaned out the elephant truck and replaced the brake pads and it’s good to go.
Another friend (Rich_D- “Dizzy”) has bought a silver one to join in, but that’s not seen the track yet, he is incapable of committing to anything and is the original author of the excuse book it has been named the RXcuse. Rick has also got a yellow one recently and has transplanted the engine from Boom 2 into the yellow one; it’s not seen a track yet either.
The current series-
Kraken- Velocity Red – Matt (“StreetDragster”) & Allan
Hadouken- PZ Grey – John B (“Cabriolet”)
Sonic KaBoom 3 – Yellow – Rick (“Sonic KaBoomII”)
RXstate- Winning Blue – John W & Leon
RXcuse – Silver- Dizzy (“Rich_D”)
Blyton Park was attacked on the 24th of March 2017 by the Kraken, the Hadouken and the RXstate. Weather was good and forecast to be dry all day so the Kraken had semi slicks on, as did the Hadouken. The RXstate was on its supplied semi budget road tyres which were death traps.
The weather was excellent, warm and sunny all day, bit windy but the erection (lol) of a windbreak sorted that out. The day went well with the drivers quickly learning the circuit, getting some decent lines and cracking on making progress. It was a day organised by the Frank Hall of the Practical Performance Car club/team/forum who organise days like these for charity, always a really good day with a great mix of metal on the track, helps that it’s for a good cause too.
I personally treat these days as a test/shakedown day for the rest of the year, they are pretty cheap and Blyton is an open circuit with minimal furniture so you can really push it. This event highlighted some problems with the Kraken which needed sorting.
Problem 1, oil breathing. I had the small Toyo oil catch can, situated behind the air box on the side of the fuse box, lower than the intake. First hot session at Blyton it was a misfire combined with loads of smoke out the back, yellow flag, confirmed its not leaking and then pottered into the pits round the outside of the track. Found the catch can full (I had emptied it that morning) and the elephant truck, inlet, MAF & sensor, air filter and air box full of oil.
Well there’s your problem. I cleaned it all out in the paddock as best as I could and out we went again. Solved, happy days will look into it the issue further back at base.
Problem 2, gearbox oil leak. Odd one this, at 80mph on the motorway you could open the window and smell gearbox oil strongly, suggesting a catastrophic oil leak. Pull over, look under the car, nothing. Park overnight and there is a very small puddle of gearbox oil under the car, like 2 drops. Odd, another one for further research.
Problem 3, air conditioning. More air conditioning problems, it’s not working again. Most frustrating after 2 condensers, a receiver/drier, numerous recharges and check overs. Unfortunately there is only so much I can do at home without the charging machine and the UV dye so will have to see what I can see. I would consider leaving it as the car is getting more track only use, but with 3 track days in Spain/Portugal on the cards, I suspect it’ll be needed.
Problem 4, the most serious of the lot, the parcel shelf is rattling. There is something under the rear parcel shelf plastics, roughly in the middle that is buzzing whilst driving. It is driving me INSANE. I will find it and stop it.
Problem 5, I think the rear needs attention as its starting to get high speed understeer.
The RX-state did well too. It had some shakedown issues, mainly related to zero attention by the previous owner(s). Things discovered were that the heater fan fuse had failed at some point in the past and had not been replaced, the tyres were carved from granite, the brake/clutch fluid has never been changed and was supporting a small eco system, and the aftermarket cat/catback exhaust puts out nice flames. Happy days all round, the two drivers got to grips with the car very quickly and are really happy with how it turned out.
The Hadouken did splendidly all day, not an issue or hiccup. A couple of times the Kraken and the Hadouken got on track near each other and we had some great fun, both cars are very capable and were some of the faster stuff on the track overall. The cars themselves being very closely matched, John’s shorter diff giving him a touch more acceleration, but he needs an additional gear change which brings us back together. Really fun day.
Away from the RX8 I have decided to get some professional help to further improve my driving, I booked a day at the end of April at Anglesey and hired ARDS instructor Phiroze (“Fi-rose”) Bilimoria (http://www.phirozeracing.co.uk) to come along and give me (and John B/Hadouken) a full day of driver training. Anglesey has given me a bit of mental anguish since the Civic spin, so I thought it would be a good track to attack and crush that demon, and Phiroze will hopefully get me through it. Depending on how the day goes and the time/costs associated, I may enrol on further “track academy” courses.
I have also purchased a used curtain-sider type covered car trailer to start attending track days in rather than driving to/from. This is mainly due to my Mrs getting herself a lovely Range Rover Sport which just so happens to have the high towing capacity I needed, I also completed my B+E towing license a couple of years ago.
..and we have booked a further day, Mallory on the 16th of June 2017, happy days.
In prep for the Anglesey day I got the Kraken back in the garage and gave it a thorough check over which revealed a load of interesting problems.
Problem 1- Engine oil breathing, first thing I did was removed all the inlet trucking, air box, MAF and catch can. Clean and inspected it all and found some nasty congealed mess on the inlet to the catch can and all the way up the 8mm ID pipework, restricting flow down the pipe. I also reasoned that the Hadouken did everything the same as I did at Blyton with no issues whatsoever. John doesn’t have a catch can, and the cars are very similar except for his having the later post 2006 breather system on, where they revised the plumbing to the inlet manifold.
I decided to remove the catch can and lines, retrofit the revised breather system and see how it goes. There is a plan if it doesn’t work, but I’m not doing anything until I have proven that I still have a problem or not.
Problem 2- The gearbox oil leak appears to be coming from the [liquid] gasket between the gear housing and the tail case I removed for the gearbox oil cooler. Irritating, that’s a box off job to repair, given that it’s like 1 drop every two days I cleaned it all up with IPA and smeared some gasket paste on the outside which appears to have arrested the leak, not a great repair, but that’ll do for now until after Rockingham when I’ll pull the box and fix it properly.
The oil smell was from this very small leak being cooked off by the exhaust, surprising how strong a smell there was from such a tiny leak.
Problem 3- Air Conditioning, this one was easy. Under the car there was what looked like electrical wire wrapped around the rear suspension. Unravelling this showed that it was also wrapped around the front suspension, unravelling further and a quick pull extracted a shredded air conditioning belt. Simple fix, replace the belt and air conditioning is restored, awesome.
Problem 4- The rattle was fixed by removing all the plastics off the rear shelf, and applying thin foam when any of the two parts meet near the now reinforced parcel shelf.
Problem 5- The high speed understeer was looked at next, initially I thought that stiffening the rear suspension was the answer but with some help from the RX8OC I was pointed in the direction of the anti-roll bar instead. I have Japspeed adjustable rear arms which the anti-roll bar connects to, at the time of fitment I was a little concerned that there was nothing to prevent these arms rotating round the shaft except the pressure from the lock nut. Can this locknut resist a hard cornering 1300kg car? It seems not, the brackets are in different positions than what I mounted them at, different on each side of the car, showing that they have slipped, hence reducing the force applied by the anti-roll bar.
To counter this, I was going to weld up the entire arm to be rigid now that the suspension has been adjusted somewhere near. I decided not to do this in the end; this particular design of adjustable arm from Japspeed is fundamentally flawed. All the other arms are in compression/tension only and as such, work perfectly fine. However this one on the RX8 is also in torsion when the anti-roll bar is applying load, this simply rotates the arms about the spherical bearings in the rose joints and applies no force to the arms, effectively removing the anti-roll bar from the car.
Therefore I have removed the arms, and replaced with OEM arms, meaning I have lost the rear camber setting I wanted, and also meaning ANOTHER suspension setup FFS. That said, Japspeed were very good about it and refunded me the cost of the arms with just a small amount of discussion and agreement. They did mention that they will pass on the comments to their design department.
I also replaced the MAF screen in the Racing Bear air box as I had put my chub fingers through it when hastily removing the inlet system in the Blyton paddock. I made a bracket to better support the engine wiring loom near the pulleys, and I installed rear arch liners in an effort to keep any wheel spray away from the oil cooler.
Another thing completed was a clean out of the K&N air filter, I haven’t done this since I fitted it, LOADS of dirt came out of it by just banging it on the floor, and even more when I degreased it and washed it clean. A quick re-oil and it’s lovely and clean now ready for action.
Roll on Anglesey.
Anglesey was the first time that I decided to tow my car to/from an event, so this was a learning experience on the loading/unloading process. One of the things I learnt, very scarily is to get the nose weight right on the trailer. A horrible horrible sway developed on a downhill section of the motorway and I was convinced we were rolling over. Thankfully I got out of it in one piece, redistribution of weight within the trailer left everything ok and it towed fine for the rest of the trip, phew! Lesson learnt there and all towing since then has been better with proper weight distribution, also a nose weight gauge has been purchased to permit safe loading in future.
Weather was decent at Anglesey, overcast but dry and clear. Following the safety briefing Philroze cracked on with stage 1 of his tuition, getting us to understand the cornering principles for higher exit speed. Off we went practising what he taught us for a bit, much better, power getting on much earlier. Stage 2 was vision and stage 3 was weight transfer. Highly recommend his help for a day, learned a lot and I would like to repeat the experience/coaching at some point in the future, maybe with a structured coaching approach rather than a sporadic assistance on random track days. To be discussed later in 2017/18.
Kraken did well all day, no issues or failures, most notable was no oil burping issues now that it is on the later 2006 oil breather system. Same story for the Hadouken, no issues. However the £450 RXstate was not so lucky. 5-6 laps in loss of power, stalled and towed off the track. Couldn’t get it to start in the pits, plugs out, fuel pump fuse out and turned over, sounds odd. Let it cool for 2 hours and attempted restart, no success, suspected Apex seal failure.
Into the trailer it went and John W drove the Kraken home instead.
Next up was Rockingham ISSCL circuit, for this the Kraken needed a check over and oil’s topping up, otherwise it was good to go again. The RXstate however needed an engine transplant, and it was to be getting the Krakens old RotaryMotion engine which has been retained as a spare since the WGT engine transplant.
I was out of the country for a week, so the weekend before Rockingham (no pressure) the RXstate was attacked with the spanners, old engine out, new engine in, sump resealed and fitted and then fluids added and start up. All went reasonably well given that this was the first time the engine has been removed from this car. Started up well and appears to be running spot on with only a random miss fire to look into, plugs/coils suspected. However at the last second it was found that the Rockingham slot for the RXState hadn’t been booked, and the track day was full, so after all that Cinderella wouldn’t be going to the ball after all.
Onto Rockingham, Kraken loaded and trailered down without issue, stopped at a local hotel which was nice. 3 RX8’s and 2 Civic Type R’s were in attendance in our little group on this day. Weather was overcast and warm, with a threat of rain all day, thankfully the rain held off.
The track was really good and challenging, high speed and low speed sections, technical and open, scary concrete raised curbs and obviously the outer wall of the speedway. I had first tuition slot of the day, this in reality was a mistake and I should have gotten some laps in beforehand, I’ll aim for a 10:30 slot in future. The instructor was giving me directions and instructions whilst driving round an unfamiliar track, I simply couldn’t take in all the information he was giving me.
Eventually I did start to get some good laps in, and the RX8’s did well not being embarrassed too much by faster machinery. Caterham’s were out in force that day, training for an upcoming academy race, some of these were a little troublesome but overall the day went well. No issues with oil breathing, or in fact anything, Kraken running really well. Gearbox temps managed nicely by the cooler, all good.
The Hadouken had a moment at the end of the main outer banked section, a fuel starvation issue took John’s attention just prior to the hairpin, his line was not great and he over steered into the wall. Quite a light knock, and damage wouldn’t have been too bad had it not have hit one of the tow hooks, which punched its way through the front bumper support of the car. Not too much to repair thankfully.
Mid-afternoon I decided to pack up and leave ahead of the rest of our team, I was due to fly out to the Middle East with work very early the following morning so needed to get home. Loaded the car on the trailer and returned to base without issues.
I checked the car over prior to the next outing which was Mallory park on the 16th of June, 2-3mm on the front tyres, 4-5mm on the rear tyres, and about 4mm on the front brake pads and 6mm on the rear brake pads. This should be enough to get through the track day but if not, it’ll be loaded into the trailer early. I will then replace all the brake pads, discs and tyres in preparation for the Iberia trip in September.
June comes around and before you knows it, it’s time to load the car back into the trailer and head down south again. Got to Mallory Park just before 8am on the 16th and signed up and unloaded. A few other chaps from the RX8OC were also attending this track day so met up with them throughout the day. Weather was very warm and very dry so naturally the car had its semi slick tyres on.
The track was great, being such a small track it was easy to practise cornering techniques on, if you didn’t get it right a minute later you’d be back around for another go. I don’t think I got the hairpin right all day but I was happy with most other corners, including Gerrard’s, although I think I could go faster if I had more bottle. One of the cars with us (John) went a little too full bore on occasion and ended up on the grass, no damage.
The last time we were at Mallory, a chap who races there told us that the technique for Gerrard’s was to approach without braking, sliding into the corner allowing the tyre scrub to take the speed off and get on the line. This is something I couldn’t bring myself to do on the day, best I could manage was a dab of the brakes, into 4th, and then drive it round on the limit of grip, adjusting my mid corner position with the throttle rather than the steering wheel.
We ran out of fuel round 4pm, 90 litres consumed, so it was pack up and home time. Loaded onto the trailer and then a 45 min wait to get off site due to the Mallory paddock being on the in-field and there is no bridge or tunnel to get off site, so you have to wait until they periodically close the track to allow egress. Home without issue.
There is now nothing in the calendar until the Iberia trip with BookATrack in August/September. Being three, expensive track days back to back with no time for maintenance, significant checking and maintenance will be completed beforehand.
I plan to change all the oils and filters, check the torque on all suspension bolts, the diff bolts, girder bolts, and basically anything I can access. I’m going to replace the spark plugs, brake discs, brake pads, and tyres. The gearbox will also be removed and inspected, we occasionally had a 5th gear crunch, not sure if this was driver or mechanical wear but a quick inspection will be performed and the gearbox maybe swapped as a precaution. I will have the suspension setup again, this time with a touch more front and rear camber. The seats will finally be replaced with the Evo 6 Recaro seats and the 3” wide TRS 4-point harnesses.
Hopefully then it will be ready to go.
After Iberia, the car is going to go on a diet. I have bought some corner scales and a levelling gantry. Step one will be find out what the car weights and what its weight distribution is with driver and passenger on board, and then we will start removing and moving stuff to bring the weight down. Will be interesting to see how much I can get out of it without upsetting the 50/50 distribution too much, no point having a really lightweight car that handles like a bag of spanners. This reduction in weight however will probably result in needing coil overs, and I think I’m going to switch to Whiteline Anti roll bars too so I can gain some adjustability, the Racing Beat ones have no adjustment. The Kraken understeers when compared to the Hadouken on the same circuit, therefore I want to make some changes to improve turn in.
Thanks
Matt
Well it’s had a bit of use now and I thought I would report back.
The 5.385 diff is good in gear, it’s nice to drive and it feels like a decent increase in performance has been attained. 85mph on the motorway is nearly 5krpm though, so we tend to commute around at the regulation 70mph now. However, being none-OEM gears with probably slightly different tolerances and hardening processes, and the stiff Powerflex diff mounts, it does make a bit of noise back there, mostly noticeable as you come on/off the throttle. Nothing I’m worried about, John’s with the 5.8 diff and the Powerflex black series mounts makes similar noises, maybe it’ll calm down with a bit more bedding in.
The gearbox cooler works well, however the rate in which the oil cools is not as high as I expected, therefore I lowered the activation temperature of the gearbox cooling systems from 105 degrees to 90 degrees.
Time to introduce another two cars to the pack, the RXstate and the RXcuse.
Leon and John (W) came along to almost all track days for passenger rides and the social side of it all. Well they have now decided to go into a cheap car and see how they get on. Locally a winning blue RX8 231 turned up, in a legal colour (one of each colour only allowed in our little series) which had decent structure and engine, just a slight misfire, all for the bargain price of £450. We had spare plugs, and coil packs in the spares pool of the other cars so replaced them, removed the oil from the sump as it had been over filled, replaced the wiper blades, cleaned out the elephant truck and replaced the brake pads and it’s good to go.
Another friend (Rich_D- “Dizzy”) has bought a silver one to join in, but that’s not seen the track yet, he is incapable of committing to anything and is the original author of the excuse book it has been named the RXcuse. Rick has also got a yellow one recently and has transplanted the engine from Boom 2 into the yellow one; it’s not seen a track yet either.
The current series-
Kraken- Velocity Red – Matt (“StreetDragster”) & Allan
Hadouken- PZ Grey – John B (“Cabriolet”)
Sonic KaBoom 3 – Yellow – Rick (“Sonic KaBoomII”)
RXstate- Winning Blue – John W & Leon
RXcuse – Silver- Dizzy (“Rich_D”)
Blyton Park was attacked on the 24th of March 2017 by the Kraken, the Hadouken and the RXstate. Weather was good and forecast to be dry all day so the Kraken had semi slicks on, as did the Hadouken. The RXstate was on its supplied semi budget road tyres which were death traps.
The weather was excellent, warm and sunny all day, bit windy but the erection (lol) of a windbreak sorted that out. The day went well with the drivers quickly learning the circuit, getting some decent lines and cracking on making progress. It was a day organised by the Frank Hall of the Practical Performance Car club/team/forum who organise days like these for charity, always a really good day with a great mix of metal on the track, helps that it’s for a good cause too.
I personally treat these days as a test/shakedown day for the rest of the year, they are pretty cheap and Blyton is an open circuit with minimal furniture so you can really push it. This event highlighted some problems with the Kraken which needed sorting.
Problem 1, oil breathing. I had the small Toyo oil catch can, situated behind the air box on the side of the fuse box, lower than the intake. First hot session at Blyton it was a misfire combined with loads of smoke out the back, yellow flag, confirmed its not leaking and then pottered into the pits round the outside of the track. Found the catch can full (I had emptied it that morning) and the elephant truck, inlet, MAF & sensor, air filter and air box full of oil.
Well there’s your problem. I cleaned it all out in the paddock as best as I could and out we went again. Solved, happy days will look into it the issue further back at base.
Problem 2, gearbox oil leak. Odd one this, at 80mph on the motorway you could open the window and smell gearbox oil strongly, suggesting a catastrophic oil leak. Pull over, look under the car, nothing. Park overnight and there is a very small puddle of gearbox oil under the car, like 2 drops. Odd, another one for further research.
Problem 3, air conditioning. More air conditioning problems, it’s not working again. Most frustrating after 2 condensers, a receiver/drier, numerous recharges and check overs. Unfortunately there is only so much I can do at home without the charging machine and the UV dye so will have to see what I can see. I would consider leaving it as the car is getting more track only use, but with 3 track days in Spain/Portugal on the cards, I suspect it’ll be needed.
Problem 4, the most serious of the lot, the parcel shelf is rattling. There is something under the rear parcel shelf plastics, roughly in the middle that is buzzing whilst driving. It is driving me INSANE. I will find it and stop it.
Problem 5, I think the rear needs attention as its starting to get high speed understeer.
The RX-state did well too. It had some shakedown issues, mainly related to zero attention by the previous owner(s). Things discovered were that the heater fan fuse had failed at some point in the past and had not been replaced, the tyres were carved from granite, the brake/clutch fluid has never been changed and was supporting a small eco system, and the aftermarket cat/catback exhaust puts out nice flames. Happy days all round, the two drivers got to grips with the car very quickly and are really happy with how it turned out.
The Hadouken did splendidly all day, not an issue or hiccup. A couple of times the Kraken and the Hadouken got on track near each other and we had some great fun, both cars are very capable and were some of the faster stuff on the track overall. The cars themselves being very closely matched, John’s shorter diff giving him a touch more acceleration, but he needs an additional gear change which brings us back together. Really fun day.
Away from the RX8 I have decided to get some professional help to further improve my driving, I booked a day at the end of April at Anglesey and hired ARDS instructor Phiroze (“Fi-rose”) Bilimoria (http://www.phirozeracing.co.uk) to come along and give me (and John B/Hadouken) a full day of driver training. Anglesey has given me a bit of mental anguish since the Civic spin, so I thought it would be a good track to attack and crush that demon, and Phiroze will hopefully get me through it. Depending on how the day goes and the time/costs associated, I may enrol on further “track academy” courses.
I have also purchased a used curtain-sider type covered car trailer to start attending track days in rather than driving to/from. This is mainly due to my Mrs getting herself a lovely Range Rover Sport which just so happens to have the high towing capacity I needed, I also completed my B+E towing license a couple of years ago.
..and we have booked a further day, Mallory on the 16th of June 2017, happy days.
In prep for the Anglesey day I got the Kraken back in the garage and gave it a thorough check over which revealed a load of interesting problems.
Problem 1- Engine oil breathing, first thing I did was removed all the inlet trucking, air box, MAF and catch can. Clean and inspected it all and found some nasty congealed mess on the inlet to the catch can and all the way up the 8mm ID pipework, restricting flow down the pipe. I also reasoned that the Hadouken did everything the same as I did at Blyton with no issues whatsoever. John doesn’t have a catch can, and the cars are very similar except for his having the later post 2006 breather system on, where they revised the plumbing to the inlet manifold.
I decided to remove the catch can and lines, retrofit the revised breather system and see how it goes. There is a plan if it doesn’t work, but I’m not doing anything until I have proven that I still have a problem or not.
Problem 2- The gearbox oil leak appears to be coming from the [liquid] gasket between the gear housing and the tail case I removed for the gearbox oil cooler. Irritating, that’s a box off job to repair, given that it’s like 1 drop every two days I cleaned it all up with IPA and smeared some gasket paste on the outside which appears to have arrested the leak, not a great repair, but that’ll do for now until after Rockingham when I’ll pull the box and fix it properly.
The oil smell was from this very small leak being cooked off by the exhaust, surprising how strong a smell there was from such a tiny leak.
Problem 3- Air Conditioning, this one was easy. Under the car there was what looked like electrical wire wrapped around the rear suspension. Unravelling this showed that it was also wrapped around the front suspension, unravelling further and a quick pull extracted a shredded air conditioning belt. Simple fix, replace the belt and air conditioning is restored, awesome.
Problem 4- The rattle was fixed by removing all the plastics off the rear shelf, and applying thin foam when any of the two parts meet near the now reinforced parcel shelf.
Problem 5- The high speed understeer was looked at next, initially I thought that stiffening the rear suspension was the answer but with some help from the RX8OC I was pointed in the direction of the anti-roll bar instead. I have Japspeed adjustable rear arms which the anti-roll bar connects to, at the time of fitment I was a little concerned that there was nothing to prevent these arms rotating round the shaft except the pressure from the lock nut. Can this locknut resist a hard cornering 1300kg car? It seems not, the brackets are in different positions than what I mounted them at, different on each side of the car, showing that they have slipped, hence reducing the force applied by the anti-roll bar.
To counter this, I was going to weld up the entire arm to be rigid now that the suspension has been adjusted somewhere near. I decided not to do this in the end; this particular design of adjustable arm from Japspeed is fundamentally flawed. All the other arms are in compression/tension only and as such, work perfectly fine. However this one on the RX8 is also in torsion when the anti-roll bar is applying load, this simply rotates the arms about the spherical bearings in the rose joints and applies no force to the arms, effectively removing the anti-roll bar from the car.
Therefore I have removed the arms, and replaced with OEM arms, meaning I have lost the rear camber setting I wanted, and also meaning ANOTHER suspension setup FFS. That said, Japspeed were very good about it and refunded me the cost of the arms with just a small amount of discussion and agreement. They did mention that they will pass on the comments to their design department.
I also replaced the MAF screen in the Racing Bear air box as I had put my chub fingers through it when hastily removing the inlet system in the Blyton paddock. I made a bracket to better support the engine wiring loom near the pulleys, and I installed rear arch liners in an effort to keep any wheel spray away from the oil cooler.
Another thing completed was a clean out of the K&N air filter, I haven’t done this since I fitted it, LOADS of dirt came out of it by just banging it on the floor, and even more when I degreased it and washed it clean. A quick re-oil and it’s lovely and clean now ready for action.
Roll on Anglesey.
Anglesey was the first time that I decided to tow my car to/from an event, so this was a learning experience on the loading/unloading process. One of the things I learnt, very scarily is to get the nose weight right on the trailer. A horrible horrible sway developed on a downhill section of the motorway and I was convinced we were rolling over. Thankfully I got out of it in one piece, redistribution of weight within the trailer left everything ok and it towed fine for the rest of the trip, phew! Lesson learnt there and all towing since then has been better with proper weight distribution, also a nose weight gauge has been purchased to permit safe loading in future.
Weather was decent at Anglesey, overcast but dry and clear. Following the safety briefing Philroze cracked on with stage 1 of his tuition, getting us to understand the cornering principles for higher exit speed. Off we went practising what he taught us for a bit, much better, power getting on much earlier. Stage 2 was vision and stage 3 was weight transfer. Highly recommend his help for a day, learned a lot and I would like to repeat the experience/coaching at some point in the future, maybe with a structured coaching approach rather than a sporadic assistance on random track days. To be discussed later in 2017/18.
Kraken did well all day, no issues or failures, most notable was no oil burping issues now that it is on the later 2006 oil breather system. Same story for the Hadouken, no issues. However the £450 RXstate was not so lucky. 5-6 laps in loss of power, stalled and towed off the track. Couldn’t get it to start in the pits, plugs out, fuel pump fuse out and turned over, sounds odd. Let it cool for 2 hours and attempted restart, no success, suspected Apex seal failure.
Into the trailer it went and John W drove the Kraken home instead.
Next up was Rockingham ISSCL circuit, for this the Kraken needed a check over and oil’s topping up, otherwise it was good to go again. The RXstate however needed an engine transplant, and it was to be getting the Krakens old RotaryMotion engine which has been retained as a spare since the WGT engine transplant.
I was out of the country for a week, so the weekend before Rockingham (no pressure) the RXstate was attacked with the spanners, old engine out, new engine in, sump resealed and fitted and then fluids added and start up. All went reasonably well given that this was the first time the engine has been removed from this car. Started up well and appears to be running spot on with only a random miss fire to look into, plugs/coils suspected. However at the last second it was found that the Rockingham slot for the RXState hadn’t been booked, and the track day was full, so after all that Cinderella wouldn’t be going to the ball after all.
Onto Rockingham, Kraken loaded and trailered down without issue, stopped at a local hotel which was nice. 3 RX8’s and 2 Civic Type R’s were in attendance in our little group on this day. Weather was overcast and warm, with a threat of rain all day, thankfully the rain held off.
The track was really good and challenging, high speed and low speed sections, technical and open, scary concrete raised curbs and obviously the outer wall of the speedway. I had first tuition slot of the day, this in reality was a mistake and I should have gotten some laps in beforehand, I’ll aim for a 10:30 slot in future. The instructor was giving me directions and instructions whilst driving round an unfamiliar track, I simply couldn’t take in all the information he was giving me.
Eventually I did start to get some good laps in, and the RX8’s did well not being embarrassed too much by faster machinery. Caterham’s were out in force that day, training for an upcoming academy race, some of these were a little troublesome but overall the day went well. No issues with oil breathing, or in fact anything, Kraken running really well. Gearbox temps managed nicely by the cooler, all good.
The Hadouken had a moment at the end of the main outer banked section, a fuel starvation issue took John’s attention just prior to the hairpin, his line was not great and he over steered into the wall. Quite a light knock, and damage wouldn’t have been too bad had it not have hit one of the tow hooks, which punched its way through the front bumper support of the car. Not too much to repair thankfully.
Mid-afternoon I decided to pack up and leave ahead of the rest of our team, I was due to fly out to the Middle East with work very early the following morning so needed to get home. Loaded the car on the trailer and returned to base without issues.
I checked the car over prior to the next outing which was Mallory park on the 16th of June, 2-3mm on the front tyres, 4-5mm on the rear tyres, and about 4mm on the front brake pads and 6mm on the rear brake pads. This should be enough to get through the track day but if not, it’ll be loaded into the trailer early. I will then replace all the brake pads, discs and tyres in preparation for the Iberia trip in September.
June comes around and before you knows it, it’s time to load the car back into the trailer and head down south again. Got to Mallory Park just before 8am on the 16th and signed up and unloaded. A few other chaps from the RX8OC were also attending this track day so met up with them throughout the day. Weather was very warm and very dry so naturally the car had its semi slick tyres on.
The track was great, being such a small track it was easy to practise cornering techniques on, if you didn’t get it right a minute later you’d be back around for another go. I don’t think I got the hairpin right all day but I was happy with most other corners, including Gerrard’s, although I think I could go faster if I had more bottle. One of the cars with us (John) went a little too full bore on occasion and ended up on the grass, no damage.
The last time we were at Mallory, a chap who races there told us that the technique for Gerrard’s was to approach without braking, sliding into the corner allowing the tyre scrub to take the speed off and get on the line. This is something I couldn’t bring myself to do on the day, best I could manage was a dab of the brakes, into 4th, and then drive it round on the limit of grip, adjusting my mid corner position with the throttle rather than the steering wheel.
We ran out of fuel round 4pm, 90 litres consumed, so it was pack up and home time. Loaded onto the trailer and then a 45 min wait to get off site due to the Mallory paddock being on the in-field and there is no bridge or tunnel to get off site, so you have to wait until they periodically close the track to allow egress. Home without issue.
There is now nothing in the calendar until the Iberia trip with BookATrack in August/September. Being three, expensive track days back to back with no time for maintenance, significant checking and maintenance will be completed beforehand.
I plan to change all the oils and filters, check the torque on all suspension bolts, the diff bolts, girder bolts, and basically anything I can access. I’m going to replace the spark plugs, brake discs, brake pads, and tyres. The gearbox will also be removed and inspected, we occasionally had a 5th gear crunch, not sure if this was driver or mechanical wear but a quick inspection will be performed and the gearbox maybe swapped as a precaution. I will have the suspension setup again, this time with a touch more front and rear camber. The seats will finally be replaced with the Evo 6 Recaro seats and the 3” wide TRS 4-point harnesses.
Hopefully then it will be ready to go.
After Iberia, the car is going to go on a diet. I have bought some corner scales and a levelling gantry. Step one will be find out what the car weights and what its weight distribution is with driver and passenger on board, and then we will start removing and moving stuff to bring the weight down. Will be interesting to see how much I can get out of it without upsetting the 50/50 distribution too much, no point having a really lightweight car that handles like a bag of spanners. This reduction in weight however will probably result in needing coil overs, and I think I’m going to switch to Whiteline Anti roll bars too so I can gain some adjustability, the Racing Beat ones have no adjustment. The Kraken understeers when compared to the Hadouken on the same circuit, therefore I want to make some changes to improve turn in.
Thanks
Matt
Edited by StreetDragster on Friday 25th May 08:42
Update Time
Fleet update, the Noble is up for sale, and the covered car trailer has been sold. Now I have only the Kraken, my Golf Estate and the Mrs’s Range Rover.
I purchased an un-covered Brian James car trailer with an electric winch, tyre rack and a storage box. I now understand the difference between premium and budget trailers and it’ll be a Brian James for me in future. I sold the covered trailer as it was like towing a parachute, and it was a pain to load and unload having to remove each section of the curtain-siding for tie downs, and the gull wings opening into the street giving issues with high sided vehicles passing when loading up kerbside. Ideally, I’d be buying a Brian James RS3 covered trailer which will do everything I want it to do, but at £11k with the options I’d want, they are a bit rich for me.
The Kraken is now none road legal and track use only, giving me some more flexibility with its modifications and reducing its running costs, no need for MOT, Tax or Insurance now.
Following Mallory there was nothing in the calendar before Iberia so this was the time to get the car prepped up. The difficultly with the Iberia trip is firstly the heat, everything will get very hot on the track, and secondly, the lack of time between events for maintenance. Normally the car gets a thorough check over after each event, but there wouldn’t be the opportunity to do that on this group of three events.
First check was tyres, 3mm on the fronts, 4mm on the rears. Enough for one or two track days, but probably not three, dammit, another £600 set of tyres ordered and fitted. The originals were retained and will be used when these new ones wear out.
Onto the brakes, 2mm remaining on both the front and rear discs before hitting the minimum thickness limit. This thickness was acceptable so no need to replace the discs yet, they will be re-measured after Iberia.
Pads, the rears had a couple of millimetres left and were retained for the emergency track toolkit, the fronts had 0.15mm left, value for money extracted there. Due to the 2mm disc thickness remaining I opted to go for another set of the disc-friendly YellowStuff brakes pads all round. On inspection, I found a badly damaged braided brake line on the front passenger side caliper, the outer PVC had split, and ¾ of the braid circumference underneath was damaged. All other corners fine, so I replaced that brake line with a new one and ran the line slightly differently to the caliper.
Replaced the spark plugs, diff oil, engine oil and engine oil filter, removed and adjusted the rear Koni dampers to full stiffness (were on ½ stiffness) and generally checked all the suspension bolts etc. for torque tightening, play in wheel bearings etc.
The main task was to remove the gearbox and address the small leak it had, in the end I decided to replace the gearbox completely so I swapped the tail cases over on the new gearbox to the one modified for oil cooling and then got it all back on the car, bit of a risk as the ‘new’ gearbox (a low mileage used) had never been tested and the first time it would be used would be on Estoril. Due to the oil cooler lines being down the girder, I didn’t want to remove it from the car to do the swap; this made the change a little more difficult, especially on your back with the car on axle stands. Not impossible though if anyone is considering similar, but if you don’t have pipes down the girder, I’d take it off.
The Mitsubishi Evo 6 Recaros were finally installed with the 4 point 3” TRS harnesses. Allan had to hybrid Corbeau sub-frames (from the USA), with Recaro sliders (also from the USA) and a fair bit of welding to get everything in, and in the car as low as possible. Initial fit put the seat too far over towards the sill, putting the pedals in odd positions and too high, so helmet clearance was worse than standard. Thankfully the modified sub-frames now fit spot on, and clear the B-pillar. The passenger side though required a small section of chassis stiffening removing as the raised ‘lump’ fouled the slider, and a slider needed a trim with the angle grinder to clean the mounting bolt. All in though and looking good, and front/rear sliding works great. (BTW After this picture was taken the seat belts were altered to cross over behind the seats)
At a few recent track days I had been surprised that the water temperature had been getting up to some higher levels than I would expect with an alloy radiator and the massive bonnet vents. On inspection, I discovered that the foam at the bottom of the radiator which seals to the under-tray had gone missing and there was a gaping hole underneath the radiator. Given that the air will take the path of least resistance, it could explain the higher temp’s due to the reduced airflow through the radiator core.
However, the under-tray is not rigidly mounted (on my car at least) in the centre and flaps around a lot, making it difficult to get a decent seal. I decided to make a bolt in piece of metal to do both jobs. Turns out, there is no structure at the bottom of the radiator to mount anything to, so I extended the radiator mounting brackets forward, then put a cross piece between them. A vertical rib on the top sealed the bar to the radiator, and a piece of door seal rubber ‘P’ material on the bottom seals to the under tray. The under tray then is bolted up from the bottom via spacers into captive nuts, clamping the seal to keep everything secure. Hopefully that will be enough to divert the air up and into the radiator and get temps down a little bit. Whilst the front end was off I also removed the number plate and opened up all the mesh in the standard grill. I probably have a little too much air now in the that area and maybe an increase in drag accordingly, will see how coolant temps manage then may start to gradually reduce the air pressure in that area.
Another part that has had some work is the camera setup. Not sure I have mentioned it in this story but I have a GoPro Hero 2 and I hate the damn thing, it’s the biggest lump of junk I have ever been duped into buying (IMO). These cameras are marketed on being a rough and ready camera, which will perform its task of recording under extreme conditions, which is not my experience. It glitches, it tells you its recording when it isn’t, it starts recording and then randomly stops, corrupts video files when playing, I even bought the WIFI backpack and remote for it so I can trigger it down on the bumper and confirm its recording. This has its own problems, loosing connection with the camera, disagreeing between what’s on the camera and what is displayed on the wrist controller, range ok some days other days it’s down to a foot, just general garbage.
The camera batteries are very slow to charge, they don’t last long enough in the camera, accessories and attachments for them are very expensive, and I don’t trust it to do what I what it to, when I want it too. I've tried firmware updates (some of which bricked it and I needed to spend hours getting it back to the state it was pre-update, the ‘Pro Tune’ firmware being the most memorable), different batteries, different SD cards, finally swapping the camera chassis itself, the second one being only slightly better. With all that in mind, I barely use it now.
I still want to record though, and with GoPro being the market leaders in this sort of thing presented a problem, what to do and who else to go with. I decided that I wanted HD, and I wanted some telemetry, preferably a lap time and some speed data, I don’t need predictive lap time though. I don’t have a great deal of time to spend sat on a pc combining loads of data feeds together so I wanted an all in one solution that is simple to use.
Right place, right time, a Race-Keeper HDX2 turned up for sale at a really good price with two bullet cameras, external microphone and OBD2 adaptor. I jumped at it as they have some really cool features like auto start and stop once the car starts moving, separate dual HD camera feeds, 100MHz GPS, and the OBD2 connection gives all the car data (speed/revs/coolant temps/etc.). Hopefully it’ll pull some good video in Iberia. A 256GB SDHC class 10 SanDisk Extreme Pro card was purchased for it, stunned that you can get that much memory on an SD card nowadays.
Mounting the cameras though, well that was a bit of a challenge. The cameras are much larger that the ‘normal’ bullet cameras, and heavier, requiring a decent strength bracket. I wanted a view out of the windscreen, and then one of me so I can see how I’m moving the wheel, where I’m looking etc. This presented some issues.
I didn’t want to use a suction cup arrangement on the windscreen, they are too big and bulky, I took some measurements and thought I could use an off the shelf solution as the cameras have a ¼-20 UNC thread (standard tripod thread) in the top and bottom of them to assist with mounting. Mobius make a self-adhesive windscreen mount for their dash cams with this thread, so bought a mount and attempted to fit it. Works well, and puts the lens about 15mm from the glass.
The internal camera though, there was nothing to mount this to without a roll cage being in the car. Where the camera wanted to be was in a bit of free space, I couldn’t realistically mount it anywhere ideal without a long arm which would be prone to vibration. I settled for the structure in the roof around the rear screen, but it needed to be about 4-5” long to get the camera at the right angle to also see out the windscreen. I cut away some headlining to find the structure (headlining is being discarded after Iberia so I simply cut it with a Stanley knife) and set about making a bracket for it. The bracket I made from 0.8mm steel plate, and joined the camera using parts from their roll cage mount, without the roll cage obviously.
It took some work to make this bracket, I first made a cardboard template but that wasn’t rigid enough to allow for accurate aiming of the camera to make sure it was in the right place, I then tried it with stiff foam (the headlining material) but that wasn’t stiff enough, and I had no datum’s or reference points to work from. In the end, I simply made it out of metal, tacked it together, checked it, cut the tacks, lather, rinse and repeat. Once I had adjusted it to how I needed it, then made the braces and welded it up properly. I held the bracket to the car with M6 bolts into nutserts.
One thing that really did help though is Race-Keeper has a HDMI output which allows you to setup your cameras properly. Simply power the system up, plug it into a TV or your phone if it can take HDMI inputs and adjust your cameras to get the view right, very handy, similar to the GoPro’s WIFI viewfinder, if you can ever get it to work lol.
Main unit needed to be secured with the cables pointing either forwards or backwards so that the G-sensor works properly and within reach of all other cables. As the install was temporary for Iberia, I put it on the centre rear armrest. I made up a mounting plate for it (the rear of the Race-Keeper has a comb arrangement to locate the box) and secured it onto the armrest with rubber bobbins to cut down any vibration. The excess cables were stored within the armrest, and the lid then screwed shut. The GPS sensor went on the rear shelf, the microphone in the stale air vent behind the driver’s side rear tail light, and the OBD2 port tapped into the standard connector under the dash. That was it for the temporary Race-Keeper install, after Iberia, when the interior is out, it’ll be installed more permanently, hopefully up front, where the ashtray is on the standard car.
That was it for car preparation, I had to get the car to Donington for BookaTrack to load it onto their transport (Donington is where they are based), and I also wanted to shake it down before the trip as I had an unknown gearbox fitted, and had broken into the oil systems. On the 18th of August, conveniently there was an evening at Donington ran by Javelin.
I organised with BaT to drop the car off after hours, and then booked onto the evening session. I only need to do 20 laps or so to bed in the brakes and tyres, get the fluids up to temperature and confirm no leaks, etc.
It was arduous trip down to Donington, with heavy traffic, and I’m not sure I like evening sessions either as everybody seems way over zealous due to the short track time. The Kraken however was all good, no leaks, no issues, everything working as it should, brakes and tyres scrubbed in nicely. All good, I left the car with BaT and headed back, the next time I would see it would be in the paddock at Estoril in Portugal. I took filled jerry cans, wet tyres, tools and spares, fingers crossed we have everything we need.
No car jobs to do meant I had a bit of time to myself, this inevitably means I will end up buying car parts off the internet. Before I knew it, I had picked up 8off 17”x8” Mitsubishi Evo 8 Enkei alloy wheels from Rochdale, 4 silver ones with rubbish tyres on which I didn’t need, and 4 white ones with new Kumho W700 215/615/17 motorsport wet tyres on which I wanted. Elsewhere I also got some ex Clio cup series Michelin slick tyres in 205/610 17 sizes for £40 a tyre.
The intention is to go down to 17” wheels without spacers as part of the cars diet and also to run motorsport slicks/wets instead of road tyres now that no MOT is required. Downside to this is that the gearing will be further reduced to the equivalent of a 5.8 rear diff, I wanted to avoid that but will see how it goes.
Despite the weight penalty, I've also gone for a Safety Devices Front and Rear bolt in roll cage with double door bars. The risk of rolling with slicks is apparently considerably greater, and many track day organisers insist on them. Its cheap insurance if it ends up being required. I may also fit a plumbed in fire extinguisher.
In the garage, I've decided to take the opportunity to install a flush mounted scissor sill lift. This will require considerable groundworks in the garage so best done whilst I have no cars around, should give me plenty of access to the underside of the car without needing to use blocks of wood and a 4-step jacking process as it’s so low, and it’ll get lower on 17’s.
September rolls around and its collection at 5am and off onto a plane heading to Iberia. On this trip we have me, Allan, John B and Leon. Land in Lisbon, collect our hire car and head down the coast towards Estoril where we have 2 nights booked, lovely place.
First night was just a walk around and some tea, then the following day we set off for some culture. Over to Sintra to have a look at the castle and suchlike, then some beach destinations, Praia Da Adraga which was lovely and picturesque, and then some hire car off-roading over to Praia Da Ursa which required a proper hike down to the beach and back up to the car. Didn’t expect that!
In any case, it was a decent day spent out and about and we had seen some nice areas of the local region. Return to Estoril for some Pica Pow (local fried meat dish) and sleep.
Next day, its Estoril circuit for the track day and the Mazda’s made it without any issues, checked them over, all good, then out on track with the others. I think we were some of the slowest cars there, all the other stuff being Porsches, Caterham’s and Audi R8’s, but we still held our own out on track. Mazda’s performed well in all regards except for the heat, it was 37 degrees in the afternoon and it was just too hot for the engine oil, coolant, gearbox oil, air conditioning, tyres, and the drivers! Ended up being 5-6 lap sessions with frequent cool downs, which worked well.
From Estoril, it was into the car and drive down to Lagos to a villa we had hired for four nights. Lovely it was, I would thoroughly recommend it (“Villa Lucy”). Time then spent in Lagos walking around the marina, on the beach, eating and drinking, chilling at the villa, etc.
In the middle of our Lagos stay was the Portimão track day, which was excellent! Portimão is a great circuit, lots of blind crests and sweeping corners, really challenging and satisfying when you get it right. Got chatting to a lot of other people on the track day and managed to jump in a number of other cars, including a Porsche 997 GT3, which was really cool. Cheers John if your reading. Also got a run out in a Noble M400 too which was really good. The car had 97k miles on the clock and had done 180 track days! Amazing! Cheers Rob for that. Rob’s Noble track time had made me question if I should take my Noble down from sale, I gave it some considerable thought and in the end decided that it was still the right thing to do.
Heat again was an issue for the Mazda’s, as it was another 35 degrees but the shorter sessions again dealt with it nicely. John, being on BlueStuff pads and grooved discs had to do a pad change at lunch which was hard work in the heat, but everyone pitched in to get the job done quickly, well, everyone except me lol.
I was running YellowStuff pads and OEM solid discs, got through all three track days on the same brakes which were good, although I’ll admit the braking in John’s car is better with more pedal feel and perceivable braking power. However, I can still brake down to the limit of the tyres which is as much braking force that can be practically applied.
From Portimão it was another couple of days in Lagos before we headed over to Jerez in Spain, stopping at the Golf Course next to the circuit.
This place was a 7-star affair and wow, it was nice, well above my normal hotel standards. It had a buffet for both evening meal and breakfast and both of them were the best buffets I have even seen, no complaints at all.
Onto the final track day, Jerez, this was also an excellent circuit, unlike Portimão it’s a circuit that is quite open and flows really well, it didn’t take long to be getting some decent lines and pace sorted. Again, heat was an issue but the short sessions dealt with it. Got a run here in a Porsche 996 GT3 RS on slicks, this was an experience! Cheers Adrian if your reading. Hot in that car though, Perspex windows with little air windows, no air conditioning, fans blow hot air, no carpet or insulation on the bulkheads etc etc. Epic experience though.
Finished all three days without any major car issues at all, had met some interesting people and thoroughly enjoyed myself. There was a little knock developing from the front right-hand corner somewhere that will need some investigation, and I have chargrilled the exhaust heat shield but all is well.
The Race-Keeper performed well too, being totally fit and forget and recording good footage of the event. A lap of each track, and some bloopers are shown below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ah3rilCSSk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey9MyhFmWdc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs86UUxEttI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9evrAh_LW0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_GoMxcFLq4
From Jerez, we then headed down to Fuengirola in Spain for 4 days of chilling out, which turned out to be anything like.
We hired scooters for a day and did a 60-mile tour of the local area, including a hike up to “Antena Mirador” just outside of Benalmadena. This took some 2 hours to ascend on our 50cc scooters, as it’s nearly a 1km high, but only 20 mins to get back down ha-ha. Total cost for the day was 3 euros in fuel and 18 euros hire, bargain.
Leon did some fly boarding down in Marbella, he’s a snow boarder anyway so whilst he inhaled his fair share of sea water, he appeared to pick it up pretty quickly and was soon Ironman-ing it around the skyline and even doing some diving, very impressive. The rest of us watched from a little dingy and that was still a good way to spend a morning.
On another day, we got Jet Ski’s for a bit which was a good laugh, even though they had to be restricted as if they weren’t restricted you would need a license to use one in Spain.
At some point, we went to a water park which was a riot, right up until the point in which I cracked a rib. That made the rest of the holiday a pain killer induced blur.
Just before leaving, we hired some Segway’s for a tour of the Benalmadena harbour, 10 euros well spent there.
And then it was home time
Not a bad way to spend 12 days on the continent
A week later John and I took a ride down to Donington to collect the Mazda’s. The Kraken is on lay up for a while whilst this sill lift installation into the garage is finished. I want to do some major work on it over winter 2017.
I’m moving to Tein Monosport Coilovers with A-EDFC, stripping the interior and removing any unnecessary weight, 17” wheels and proper slick tyres, Perspex side windows, roll cage, and 6 point 2” harnesses to better match my Simpson Hybrid FHR whilst hopefully retaining the Evo 6 seats if possible. I’m also going to remove the under drive pulleys and reinstall the OEM ones, this is to see if the decreased/increased water flow helps with the higher water temperatures. I can’t help but suspect the water pump, even though it was a new genuine Mazda one installed when the engine went in, I may move to an electric water pump if I’m still having issues. There is also the knock/clunk developing which feels like the front right-hand corner to investigate.
I've decided against home-setup for the suspension and corner weighting after talking to the owner of ‘Centre of Gravity’ who was out with some of his customers cars in Iberia. He knows his stuff and I think I’m going to let them do an initial setup so I have a datum to work from in future.
Thanks
Matt
Fleet update, the Noble is up for sale, and the covered car trailer has been sold. Now I have only the Kraken, my Golf Estate and the Mrs’s Range Rover.
I purchased an un-covered Brian James car trailer with an electric winch, tyre rack and a storage box. I now understand the difference between premium and budget trailers and it’ll be a Brian James for me in future. I sold the covered trailer as it was like towing a parachute, and it was a pain to load and unload having to remove each section of the curtain-siding for tie downs, and the gull wings opening into the street giving issues with high sided vehicles passing when loading up kerbside. Ideally, I’d be buying a Brian James RS3 covered trailer which will do everything I want it to do, but at £11k with the options I’d want, they are a bit rich for me.
The Kraken is now none road legal and track use only, giving me some more flexibility with its modifications and reducing its running costs, no need for MOT, Tax or Insurance now.
Following Mallory there was nothing in the calendar before Iberia so this was the time to get the car prepped up. The difficultly with the Iberia trip is firstly the heat, everything will get very hot on the track, and secondly, the lack of time between events for maintenance. Normally the car gets a thorough check over after each event, but there wouldn’t be the opportunity to do that on this group of three events.
First check was tyres, 3mm on the fronts, 4mm on the rears. Enough for one or two track days, but probably not three, dammit, another £600 set of tyres ordered and fitted. The originals were retained and will be used when these new ones wear out.
Onto the brakes, 2mm remaining on both the front and rear discs before hitting the minimum thickness limit. This thickness was acceptable so no need to replace the discs yet, they will be re-measured after Iberia.
Pads, the rears had a couple of millimetres left and were retained for the emergency track toolkit, the fronts had 0.15mm left, value for money extracted there. Due to the 2mm disc thickness remaining I opted to go for another set of the disc-friendly YellowStuff brakes pads all round. On inspection, I found a badly damaged braided brake line on the front passenger side caliper, the outer PVC had split, and ¾ of the braid circumference underneath was damaged. All other corners fine, so I replaced that brake line with a new one and ran the line slightly differently to the caliper.
Replaced the spark plugs, diff oil, engine oil and engine oil filter, removed and adjusted the rear Koni dampers to full stiffness (were on ½ stiffness) and generally checked all the suspension bolts etc. for torque tightening, play in wheel bearings etc.
The main task was to remove the gearbox and address the small leak it had, in the end I decided to replace the gearbox completely so I swapped the tail cases over on the new gearbox to the one modified for oil cooling and then got it all back on the car, bit of a risk as the ‘new’ gearbox (a low mileage used) had never been tested and the first time it would be used would be on Estoril. Due to the oil cooler lines being down the girder, I didn’t want to remove it from the car to do the swap; this made the change a little more difficult, especially on your back with the car on axle stands. Not impossible though if anyone is considering similar, but if you don’t have pipes down the girder, I’d take it off.
The Mitsubishi Evo 6 Recaros were finally installed with the 4 point 3” TRS harnesses. Allan had to hybrid Corbeau sub-frames (from the USA), with Recaro sliders (also from the USA) and a fair bit of welding to get everything in, and in the car as low as possible. Initial fit put the seat too far over towards the sill, putting the pedals in odd positions and too high, so helmet clearance was worse than standard. Thankfully the modified sub-frames now fit spot on, and clear the B-pillar. The passenger side though required a small section of chassis stiffening removing as the raised ‘lump’ fouled the slider, and a slider needed a trim with the angle grinder to clean the mounting bolt. All in though and looking good, and front/rear sliding works great. (BTW After this picture was taken the seat belts were altered to cross over behind the seats)
At a few recent track days I had been surprised that the water temperature had been getting up to some higher levels than I would expect with an alloy radiator and the massive bonnet vents. On inspection, I discovered that the foam at the bottom of the radiator which seals to the under-tray had gone missing and there was a gaping hole underneath the radiator. Given that the air will take the path of least resistance, it could explain the higher temp’s due to the reduced airflow through the radiator core.
However, the under-tray is not rigidly mounted (on my car at least) in the centre and flaps around a lot, making it difficult to get a decent seal. I decided to make a bolt in piece of metal to do both jobs. Turns out, there is no structure at the bottom of the radiator to mount anything to, so I extended the radiator mounting brackets forward, then put a cross piece between them. A vertical rib on the top sealed the bar to the radiator, and a piece of door seal rubber ‘P’ material on the bottom seals to the under tray. The under tray then is bolted up from the bottom via spacers into captive nuts, clamping the seal to keep everything secure. Hopefully that will be enough to divert the air up and into the radiator and get temps down a little bit. Whilst the front end was off I also removed the number plate and opened up all the mesh in the standard grill. I probably have a little too much air now in the that area and maybe an increase in drag accordingly, will see how coolant temps manage then may start to gradually reduce the air pressure in that area.
Another part that has had some work is the camera setup. Not sure I have mentioned it in this story but I have a GoPro Hero 2 and I hate the damn thing, it’s the biggest lump of junk I have ever been duped into buying (IMO). These cameras are marketed on being a rough and ready camera, which will perform its task of recording under extreme conditions, which is not my experience. It glitches, it tells you its recording when it isn’t, it starts recording and then randomly stops, corrupts video files when playing, I even bought the WIFI backpack and remote for it so I can trigger it down on the bumper and confirm its recording. This has its own problems, loosing connection with the camera, disagreeing between what’s on the camera and what is displayed on the wrist controller, range ok some days other days it’s down to a foot, just general garbage.
The camera batteries are very slow to charge, they don’t last long enough in the camera, accessories and attachments for them are very expensive, and I don’t trust it to do what I what it to, when I want it too. I've tried firmware updates (some of which bricked it and I needed to spend hours getting it back to the state it was pre-update, the ‘Pro Tune’ firmware being the most memorable), different batteries, different SD cards, finally swapping the camera chassis itself, the second one being only slightly better. With all that in mind, I barely use it now.
I still want to record though, and with GoPro being the market leaders in this sort of thing presented a problem, what to do and who else to go with. I decided that I wanted HD, and I wanted some telemetry, preferably a lap time and some speed data, I don’t need predictive lap time though. I don’t have a great deal of time to spend sat on a pc combining loads of data feeds together so I wanted an all in one solution that is simple to use.
Right place, right time, a Race-Keeper HDX2 turned up for sale at a really good price with two bullet cameras, external microphone and OBD2 adaptor. I jumped at it as they have some really cool features like auto start and stop once the car starts moving, separate dual HD camera feeds, 100MHz GPS, and the OBD2 connection gives all the car data (speed/revs/coolant temps/etc.). Hopefully it’ll pull some good video in Iberia. A 256GB SDHC class 10 SanDisk Extreme Pro card was purchased for it, stunned that you can get that much memory on an SD card nowadays.
Mounting the cameras though, well that was a bit of a challenge. The cameras are much larger that the ‘normal’ bullet cameras, and heavier, requiring a decent strength bracket. I wanted a view out of the windscreen, and then one of me so I can see how I’m moving the wheel, where I’m looking etc. This presented some issues.
I didn’t want to use a suction cup arrangement on the windscreen, they are too big and bulky, I took some measurements and thought I could use an off the shelf solution as the cameras have a ¼-20 UNC thread (standard tripod thread) in the top and bottom of them to assist with mounting. Mobius make a self-adhesive windscreen mount for their dash cams with this thread, so bought a mount and attempted to fit it. Works well, and puts the lens about 15mm from the glass.
The internal camera though, there was nothing to mount this to without a roll cage being in the car. Where the camera wanted to be was in a bit of free space, I couldn’t realistically mount it anywhere ideal without a long arm which would be prone to vibration. I settled for the structure in the roof around the rear screen, but it needed to be about 4-5” long to get the camera at the right angle to also see out the windscreen. I cut away some headlining to find the structure (headlining is being discarded after Iberia so I simply cut it with a Stanley knife) and set about making a bracket for it. The bracket I made from 0.8mm steel plate, and joined the camera using parts from their roll cage mount, without the roll cage obviously.
It took some work to make this bracket, I first made a cardboard template but that wasn’t rigid enough to allow for accurate aiming of the camera to make sure it was in the right place, I then tried it with stiff foam (the headlining material) but that wasn’t stiff enough, and I had no datum’s or reference points to work from. In the end, I simply made it out of metal, tacked it together, checked it, cut the tacks, lather, rinse and repeat. Once I had adjusted it to how I needed it, then made the braces and welded it up properly. I held the bracket to the car with M6 bolts into nutserts.
One thing that really did help though is Race-Keeper has a HDMI output which allows you to setup your cameras properly. Simply power the system up, plug it into a TV or your phone if it can take HDMI inputs and adjust your cameras to get the view right, very handy, similar to the GoPro’s WIFI viewfinder, if you can ever get it to work lol.
Main unit needed to be secured with the cables pointing either forwards or backwards so that the G-sensor works properly and within reach of all other cables. As the install was temporary for Iberia, I put it on the centre rear armrest. I made up a mounting plate for it (the rear of the Race-Keeper has a comb arrangement to locate the box) and secured it onto the armrest with rubber bobbins to cut down any vibration. The excess cables were stored within the armrest, and the lid then screwed shut. The GPS sensor went on the rear shelf, the microphone in the stale air vent behind the driver’s side rear tail light, and the OBD2 port tapped into the standard connector under the dash. That was it for the temporary Race-Keeper install, after Iberia, when the interior is out, it’ll be installed more permanently, hopefully up front, where the ashtray is on the standard car.
That was it for car preparation, I had to get the car to Donington for BookaTrack to load it onto their transport (Donington is where they are based), and I also wanted to shake it down before the trip as I had an unknown gearbox fitted, and had broken into the oil systems. On the 18th of August, conveniently there was an evening at Donington ran by Javelin.
I organised with BaT to drop the car off after hours, and then booked onto the evening session. I only need to do 20 laps or so to bed in the brakes and tyres, get the fluids up to temperature and confirm no leaks, etc.
It was arduous trip down to Donington, with heavy traffic, and I’m not sure I like evening sessions either as everybody seems way over zealous due to the short track time. The Kraken however was all good, no leaks, no issues, everything working as it should, brakes and tyres scrubbed in nicely. All good, I left the car with BaT and headed back, the next time I would see it would be in the paddock at Estoril in Portugal. I took filled jerry cans, wet tyres, tools and spares, fingers crossed we have everything we need.
No car jobs to do meant I had a bit of time to myself, this inevitably means I will end up buying car parts off the internet. Before I knew it, I had picked up 8off 17”x8” Mitsubishi Evo 8 Enkei alloy wheels from Rochdale, 4 silver ones with rubbish tyres on which I didn’t need, and 4 white ones with new Kumho W700 215/615/17 motorsport wet tyres on which I wanted. Elsewhere I also got some ex Clio cup series Michelin slick tyres in 205/610 17 sizes for £40 a tyre.
The intention is to go down to 17” wheels without spacers as part of the cars diet and also to run motorsport slicks/wets instead of road tyres now that no MOT is required. Downside to this is that the gearing will be further reduced to the equivalent of a 5.8 rear diff, I wanted to avoid that but will see how it goes.
Despite the weight penalty, I've also gone for a Safety Devices Front and Rear bolt in roll cage with double door bars. The risk of rolling with slicks is apparently considerably greater, and many track day organisers insist on them. Its cheap insurance if it ends up being required. I may also fit a plumbed in fire extinguisher.
In the garage, I've decided to take the opportunity to install a flush mounted scissor sill lift. This will require considerable groundworks in the garage so best done whilst I have no cars around, should give me plenty of access to the underside of the car without needing to use blocks of wood and a 4-step jacking process as it’s so low, and it’ll get lower on 17’s.
September rolls around and its collection at 5am and off onto a plane heading to Iberia. On this trip we have me, Allan, John B and Leon. Land in Lisbon, collect our hire car and head down the coast towards Estoril where we have 2 nights booked, lovely place.
First night was just a walk around and some tea, then the following day we set off for some culture. Over to Sintra to have a look at the castle and suchlike, then some beach destinations, Praia Da Adraga which was lovely and picturesque, and then some hire car off-roading over to Praia Da Ursa which required a proper hike down to the beach and back up to the car. Didn’t expect that!
In any case, it was a decent day spent out and about and we had seen some nice areas of the local region. Return to Estoril for some Pica Pow (local fried meat dish) and sleep.
Next day, its Estoril circuit for the track day and the Mazda’s made it without any issues, checked them over, all good, then out on track with the others. I think we were some of the slowest cars there, all the other stuff being Porsches, Caterham’s and Audi R8’s, but we still held our own out on track. Mazda’s performed well in all regards except for the heat, it was 37 degrees in the afternoon and it was just too hot for the engine oil, coolant, gearbox oil, air conditioning, tyres, and the drivers! Ended up being 5-6 lap sessions with frequent cool downs, which worked well.
From Estoril, it was into the car and drive down to Lagos to a villa we had hired for four nights. Lovely it was, I would thoroughly recommend it (“Villa Lucy”). Time then spent in Lagos walking around the marina, on the beach, eating and drinking, chilling at the villa, etc.
In the middle of our Lagos stay was the Portimão track day, which was excellent! Portimão is a great circuit, lots of blind crests and sweeping corners, really challenging and satisfying when you get it right. Got chatting to a lot of other people on the track day and managed to jump in a number of other cars, including a Porsche 997 GT3, which was really cool. Cheers John if your reading. Also got a run out in a Noble M400 too which was really good. The car had 97k miles on the clock and had done 180 track days! Amazing! Cheers Rob for that. Rob’s Noble track time had made me question if I should take my Noble down from sale, I gave it some considerable thought and in the end decided that it was still the right thing to do.
Heat again was an issue for the Mazda’s, as it was another 35 degrees but the shorter sessions again dealt with it nicely. John, being on BlueStuff pads and grooved discs had to do a pad change at lunch which was hard work in the heat, but everyone pitched in to get the job done quickly, well, everyone except me lol.
I was running YellowStuff pads and OEM solid discs, got through all three track days on the same brakes which were good, although I’ll admit the braking in John’s car is better with more pedal feel and perceivable braking power. However, I can still brake down to the limit of the tyres which is as much braking force that can be practically applied.
From Portimão it was another couple of days in Lagos before we headed over to Jerez in Spain, stopping at the Golf Course next to the circuit.
This place was a 7-star affair and wow, it was nice, well above my normal hotel standards. It had a buffet for both evening meal and breakfast and both of them were the best buffets I have even seen, no complaints at all.
Onto the final track day, Jerez, this was also an excellent circuit, unlike Portimão it’s a circuit that is quite open and flows really well, it didn’t take long to be getting some decent lines and pace sorted. Again, heat was an issue but the short sessions dealt with it. Got a run here in a Porsche 996 GT3 RS on slicks, this was an experience! Cheers Adrian if your reading. Hot in that car though, Perspex windows with little air windows, no air conditioning, fans blow hot air, no carpet or insulation on the bulkheads etc etc. Epic experience though.
Finished all three days without any major car issues at all, had met some interesting people and thoroughly enjoyed myself. There was a little knock developing from the front right-hand corner somewhere that will need some investigation, and I have chargrilled the exhaust heat shield but all is well.
The Race-Keeper performed well too, being totally fit and forget and recording good footage of the event. A lap of each track, and some bloopers are shown below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ah3rilCSSk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey9MyhFmWdc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs86UUxEttI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9evrAh_LW0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_GoMxcFLq4
From Jerez, we then headed down to Fuengirola in Spain for 4 days of chilling out, which turned out to be anything like.
We hired scooters for a day and did a 60-mile tour of the local area, including a hike up to “Antena Mirador” just outside of Benalmadena. This took some 2 hours to ascend on our 50cc scooters, as it’s nearly a 1km high, but only 20 mins to get back down ha-ha. Total cost for the day was 3 euros in fuel and 18 euros hire, bargain.
Leon did some fly boarding down in Marbella, he’s a snow boarder anyway so whilst he inhaled his fair share of sea water, he appeared to pick it up pretty quickly and was soon Ironman-ing it around the skyline and even doing some diving, very impressive. The rest of us watched from a little dingy and that was still a good way to spend a morning.
On another day, we got Jet Ski’s for a bit which was a good laugh, even though they had to be restricted as if they weren’t restricted you would need a license to use one in Spain.
At some point, we went to a water park which was a riot, right up until the point in which I cracked a rib. That made the rest of the holiday a pain killer induced blur.
Just before leaving, we hired some Segway’s for a tour of the Benalmadena harbour, 10 euros well spent there.
And then it was home time
Not a bad way to spend 12 days on the continent
A week later John and I took a ride down to Donington to collect the Mazda’s. The Kraken is on lay up for a while whilst this sill lift installation into the garage is finished. I want to do some major work on it over winter 2017.
I’m moving to Tein Monosport Coilovers with A-EDFC, stripping the interior and removing any unnecessary weight, 17” wheels and proper slick tyres, Perspex side windows, roll cage, and 6 point 2” harnesses to better match my Simpson Hybrid FHR whilst hopefully retaining the Evo 6 seats if possible. I’m also going to remove the under drive pulleys and reinstall the OEM ones, this is to see if the decreased/increased water flow helps with the higher water temperatures. I can’t help but suspect the water pump, even though it was a new genuine Mazda one installed when the engine went in, I may move to an electric water pump if I’m still having issues. There is also the knock/clunk developing which feels like the front right-hand corner to investigate.
I've decided against home-setup for the suspension and corner weighting after talking to the owner of ‘Centre of Gravity’ who was out with some of his customers cars in Iberia. He knows his stuff and I think I’m going to let them do an initial setup so I have a datum to work from in future.
Thanks
Matt
Edited by StreetDragster on Friday 25th May 08:43
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