CSP Build up pics and comments

Well, it's been a year now, and there have been a few changes made. Some have been in place for quite awhile, and some are brand new. Let's start with the older stuff and work up to the new.

2008 brought a rule change regarding seats. No longer are kart seats legal, so that meant that I'd have to put a real seat over there. The original plan was just run with the stock seat for awhile, but the weight on it was a bit too high. As luck would have it, I found a perfect option while visiting Fordahl Motorsports one day. Greg told me about an OMP seat that he had that was carbon fiber. After sitting in it, I loved it and the price was right. So, I mounted it on the sliders on the drivers side and then moved the Sparco over to the passenger side. The Sparco is hard mounted to the floor, and both seats along with mounting brackets are right around 21 pounds each. The rule says the lightest they can be is 20 pounds, so we're pretty close. On the plus side, after spending more time on the drivers side, the sliders now work great!

We've also swapped intakes, as some people believed the AEM unit to not be legal due to the removal of a splash shield. While I'm not convinced of that, I decided not to chance it and swapped it for a K&N Apollo intake. It essentially accomplishes the same thing that the AEM intake did, but doesn't get quite as much fresh air.

Now the big news! We were able to source a set of Moton Clubsport shocks and installed them along with Hypercoil springs at 650 front/450 rear rates.

After having run the car for the past couple of months with "stealthy" black fenders, they are finally off getting painted. I'll try to get pics posted once I get them back. I also got the Evo 2 installed in the car using Recaro sliders that Fordahl Motorsports helped to install. The kart seat on the passenger side was also bolted down using the factory mounting holes. It's definitely mounted well enough for passengers, though there aren't many people that fit in the seat...

While I was off in California filming a TV show, I left the car with Jim so that he and Tami could get some practice in the car. He installed an Odyssey PC545 which saves about 14 pounds. He also added some heat wrap around the intake and over the ECU. The rumor is that the temperature sender in the ECU will retard the timing if it gets too hot, so we have added the heat wrap to try to keep the temperature down.

As noted below, the 285/30/18s stuck out a fair amount on the 18x9.5" Enkei RPF1s. So, that meant the time for flaring had come. For the rear, I decided to cut part of the fender lip off to make it easier to roll the rest under and do some minor flaring. As always happens on cars when doing the same thing twice, the passenger side turned out better than the driver's side because of the lessons learned. The drivers side cutting was done by eye which consequently turned out to be less than perfect. So, for the passenger side, I put some duct tape around the lip to give me a line to cut to. It turned out much better, though it still looks fine on both sides.

Next up would be the front. Since I bought new fenders especially for this project, I didn't have to worry about heating up the paint to make it stay in place (which I apparently didn't do a good enough job on with the drivers side rear...) and was able to go to town on flaring. The tire stuck out about 1" or so, but flaring out approximately 1/2" worked well enough it appears. Again, I learned from the drivers side and went at the passenger side at a slightly different angle. I'll have to figure out which one ultimately is better, but I'll likely go back at the drivers side to match them.

Next up will be painting the fenders once I determine that the rolling/flaring was sufficient. I also need to trim the fender liners up front some since it will likely contact the tire under hard cornering.

Best of all, the flaring actually doesn't look as bad as I expected. Since the car has such hard and straight lines, going out at a different angle in the front was cause for worry. However, it ended up looking pretty good.

I spent last week in Texas with my friends Ann and Andy Hollis. Since Andy has decided that his STS2 Miata won't be going to back into CSP, he's put a number of items up for sale. Included in those are some kart seats that he previously used in his car. So, I knew going down that I'd likely be coming back with a seat, but to my surprise, I ended up bringing back another seat! While Andy and I were out and about one day, we stopped by our friend Bill Kim’s Soulspeed performance shop and he had a Sparco Evo 2 from his race car that was too good of a deal for me to pass up. So, I checked them both for the flight home! I don’t yet have them installed in the car, but will probably get that done tomorrow. The kart seat will probably be bolted directly to the floor.

Today I took the car into Fordahl’s to get it corner weighted and aligned. We found that there is a little bit of work to be done to try to balance out the car a little better, but got some good ideas. The good news is that I finally know the weight of the car and it’s less than I expected! It came in at 2325. This is obviously with the kart seat (it was just sitting in the car) and the straight pipe. So, given all of the other stuff that could be taken out, it would be pretty easy to get below 2300 if I were to get serious about it. Things that can be done include getting rid of the radio, speakers, foglights, and air conditioning, getting a lighter battery, pulling the airbag out of the steering wheel, etc. The Sparco seat may also save a couple of pounds, but I’m not expecting much. Interestingly, the weight bias isn't the perfect 50/50 that's advertised, but around 53/47 front/rear. This is probably mostly due to having a 1/8 tank of gas and the weight of the stock muffler being gone.

I also got the 285s installed. It appears that I’ll need to do a fair amount of flaring at a minimum in the front, and will likely have to flare the rears some as well. I was hoping not to have to do that, but oh well.

With the car lowered as much as I have it, the alignment capabilities are incredible! It can get well over 3 degrees of negative camber in the rear and right around 3 up front. I'm starting at 2.4 up front and 2.7 in the rear. I've got 0 toe up front and about 1/8" toe-in in the rear. We'll tune from there.

The Mazdaspeed LSD went in prior to my trip to Texas. Although the LSD didn't come with any tips on break-in, I followed the directions that Kaaz has for their LSDs. That meant a thoroughly fun half hour spent doing figure eights with a top speed of 25 mph. On the plus side, it should be in good shape now. I still need to replace the fluid, and will take care of the engine and transmission oil at the same time.

Well, I got it all installed. I have to admit that I'm quite surprised out how loud this new setup is!

For reference, I now have the AEM intake, DC Sports header, (yes, through Mazda Motorsports,) RS midpipe, and RS muffler. I ran my '06 with the stock header and midpipe along with the RS muffler (as well as the '07,) but also ran the '06 with a straight pipe replacing the muffler. This new setup seems to be as loud as the straight pipe, but is actually a bit different sound. I'm not sure I like the sound as much as with the straight pipe. Of course, for competition I'll likely put the straight pipe on with the header and RS midpipe. Should be VERY loud then!

The header install was a bit more difficult than anticipated. Actually, let me rephrase, getting the stock header out was a bit more difficult than anticipated. There is a fair amount of heat shielding on the stock one, and I took most of it off. The width of all of this made it difficult to get the header to move up and out. Add to that one of the heater core hoses being in the way. I ended up putting vice grips on the hose and pulled it off the tube. This helped a fair amount. Once the old header was out, the new one went in pretty easily.

The midpipe was quite easy in and of itself to install. Connect the front portion to the header (stock or race,) slide the rear half over it and connect the rear portion to the muffler, along with connecting the hanger and then tighten the clamp down once it's all lined up. All in all pretty simple. If only it ended there.....

As Brian noted, he has two bungs to allow connecting the oxygen sensors to the midpipe if the stock header is replaced. It's really quite cool to have all this "race" stuff on the car and not have to worry about codes. That said, it does require cutting the wires on the sensors and adding wire to extend the length. I'd estimate that I had to lengthen the rear sensor wiring by about 18" and the front by 12". The sensors are 4 wire, so it does require the addition of quite a bit of wire. It's pretty straight forward, but a bit of extra work.

As for the flywheel install, I've got to hand it to the Mazda engineers. They made this car easier to work on than the older cars. Whereas the PPF (powerplant frame) was a pain in the butt to disconnect on the old cars, the shape is more like a "Z" now, so just undo the 4 nuts at each end and it just falls down! The slave cylinder is now on the other side of the transmission and very easy to get at. In general, the center tunnel is more open to allow for easier access, including the bolts at the top of the transmission. The only kink I ran into was that there were two additional bolts that went through the engine and bolted to the transmission (all the others went through the tranny and bolted to the engine.) Probably due to everything being aluminum now instead of steel for the engine block previously.

The new flywheel is definitely significantly lighter than the stock one. One other nice design change is that the pilot bearing is not part of the flywheel now. It has nice roller bearings, so I'd imagine that it won't need to be replaced each time the clutch is changed as the old one did. Lastly, the engine in the NC doesn't rock back and forth the way the older ones did, so it's much easier to line everything up.

As you may know, I traded in my '06 with a 6 speed to get a '07 with a 5 speed. The reason behind this is that I'll be autocrossing the car in CSP, and the 6 speed gearing is just too short to be competitive. A lot of fun to drive, but I needed to shift to 3rd way too often on course. The extra 10 mph in 2nd for the 5 speed makes all the difference.

In any case, the new car feels like it'll get to the end of each at about the same time as the old car now that I've installed all this stuff, and that's with the 10 mph difference. I'm sure it's probably not this drastic, but the add on's made a noticeable difference. Note also, that I already had the AEM intake and RS muffler on prior to installing the new items.

Next up is installing the Mazdaspeed LSD and new fenders. My 285/30/18 (yes, you read that right....) Kumho V710s showed up today, so I'll get those mounted on my 18x9.5 Enkei RPF1s and see how much "massaging" needs to be done to these new front fenders to make them fit.