It's time for another PHOTO POST!

Before I post a bunch of photos, I'll say that I bought a new radiator and it arrived today. It's much thicker than my current radiator so hopefully that'll help with the cooling.

On Saturday I washed and waxed the monster, and my friend Mike and I went and shot some silly and artypants shots in downtown Boston. We had a ball and came away with some pretty rad shots. Rad means totally sweet, by the way.





















The rest are here if you're curious / bored.

Weight and balancing

Got the car corner balanced today. It made a pretty big difference in handling and braking, but it'll be much more quantifiable when I'm on the track or at a hillclimb. Torque steer lessened, and under heavy braking it now squats straight instead of squiggly. I'm really pleased with the results!

Now for some numbers.
The car weighs 1588lbs all by itself.
The hood/front weighs 42 pounds.

Before the corner balancing the values with me in the driver's seat were:
LF: 558
RF: 519
LR: 317
RR: 295

After corner balancing:
LF: 555
RF: 519
LR: 353
RR: 310

Now, I'm not sure exactly what is trying to be accomplished with this stuff, but it started out pretty close, but he got it SUPER close. So that's awesome.

I gotta say I'm a little disappointed by the total weight of the car; I was hoping it would be in the 1400's like it was before the transplant. But I guess when you put a bigger, heavier motor in .... your car weighs more even if you take out the heater core and put in lighter seats and take out carpeting and put on lighter wheels and rear trailing arms and lighter disc brakes and ... stuff. And apparently the minitec subframe is heavier than the stock front subframe too. But it's cool. A 1588 pound car is still a pretty light car. And it's cute!

This car is really coming along!

It's the little things. I mean ... obviously it's the big things. New motor, new interior, new electronics, all of that makes this car what I love. But as I live with it and make the little changes to make it fit better or work better, it really becomes the car I adore. And I really do adore it. It's getting to be what I've always wanted: a real custom-fit race car.

The little things:

1) I got new sparco grip pedals which do a couple things: they bring the pedals that teeny bit closer to my feet, which makes it more comfortable. Also, they make the car easier to control and heel-toeing much easier.

2) The new bigger steering wheel does 2 great things: 1, its is closer to me so it's easier to control it. 2, it is a much bigger diameter so it makes it MUCH easier to handle the torque steer. Love it. Plus it looks sweet.

3) The gas pedal was at a weird angle where it would start almost perpendicular to the sole of my shoe, so when getting on the gas, the change in angle would make a really jerky transition which made smooth application of throttle really difficult. So Bill got the blow torch out and heated the pedal arm till it was glowing red, and bent it to a way better angle. He is very much like a samurai sword maker in his mastery of metals.

4) The fuel level sender wire kept disconnecting so we fixed that and now I know how much fuel is in the tank. Handy.

5) The oil pressure sender was acting like a crazy fool and giving me all sorts of ridinculous readings, so bill switched the ground and power wires and that seemed to do the trick. Rock and roll.

So none of these things are a really big deal in and of themselves, but in combination they really make the cockpit a nice place to be, and fill me with pride and paint my face with smiles.

I love my gas station.

I went to get an inspection today. I was worried about the headlight situation: the right headlight is much dimmer than the left, and when you turn on the high beams it turns off for a second and then slowly fades on. Pretty cool feature!

The guy I was dealing with was a very nice middle-aged russian dude. He noticed the headlight problem and then just proceeded to check the blinkers. He gave me all P's and printed the sticker.

Thanks Expo Motors Inc. in Brighton!

Finally!

I was successful at last, installing the new wheel. It is a Momo Mod 8 - 390mm diameter, 90mm of dish. I wanted it as close to me as I could possibly get it. I came home from work and went to auto zone and found some lug nut washers which fit pretty well around the steering column. Hoorays!



I don't have a fisheye lens, but I really want one. So I made that ridiculous thing. There's a super hi rez version of it if you click it. Silliness, I swear.

I took it for a little drive and found that the wheel size makes a pretty big difference. The car is much easier to steer at slow speeds, and the torque steer on hard acceleration is much more manageable. I can't lie to you, I'm pretty fucking pumped about how this car is sorting out.

I need to bend the gas pedal towards me though because it's at a funny angle which makes it very difficult to modulate smoothly; you start off with the thing almost perpendicular to the bottom of your shoe. That ain't right.

Next week I'm getting the car corner balanced at DSG; we'll see how that improves the torque steer situation. Apparently, according to other VTEC mini owners, it is very effective. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm remaining optimistic.

Wheel and pedals... almost.

So I installed the pedals. It was more of a byatch than I thought it would because the mini pedals are very small, so there aren't a lot of options in terms of placement. Also, the pedals are a rounded, so it's tough to drill them where you marked em, and also tough to get the pedals to actually bolt on straight. Anyway, enough bitching, they're pretty sweet but I'm totally unused to them so they're kinda weird and annoying; we'll see how that goes. They accentuate the problem that the pedal action isn't very smooth. I have to work on that.

I ALMOST installed the wheel. I finally got the right size socket ( that would be 1 and 5/16ths ) but stupidly got it with a 3/4" drive. My impact drill is 1/2". So today I got a 1/2" to 3/4" adapter and was finally able to remove the old wheel with the help of Scott's puller. Yay! BUT the new adapter allows more threads through, and a bit of the spline so when I screw down the bolt all the way, there's still a little play.

Currently on the lookout for some big ass washers.

Photos to come when wheel is properly installed.

Hillclimb: Okemo II

The FJ finally got to fulfill its destiny as a tow vehicle this weekend, and it did its job well. Tristan and I hooked it up to a uhaul trailer and wehauled the mini 4 hours north to Ludlow VT. Frankly, it's not a 4 hour trip, but I'm inexperienced at this towing thing, and hovered around 60 on the highway, and went quite slowly on the backcountry squiggly roads. But she towed like a champ and I'm proud of its V6, air conditioning, stereo, and plush ride. Way nicer than driving to the event in the competition vehicle.

Quy took this awesome photo of the mini taking off at start:




The mini went so fast it was blurry in photographs. But not so fast that it did particularly well in the results. In fact, I got last in my class. But I beat 2 911 Carrera 4 S's, and that makes me glad. I also didn't stuff it into the trees so that makes me even more glad. I had an absolute blast driving this car, it is totally ridiculous. If I can eliminate or just lessen the torque steer it will not only be more fun to drive, but more competitive I'm sure. After watching my in car footage I can see about 17,047 places where I could have done something better; especially the point where I mistook esses for a hairpin. Gotta learn the course.

Also gotta fix the cooling problem - I only got 2 full runs up the mountain; the 3rd time up I overheated towards the end and had to let up and coast. Balls.

Summary:
Main things:
It's awesome.
I need to fix the cooling
I need to fix the torque steer

Little things
I need to fix the speedometer
I need a window net so I can feel the breeze
That's all I can think of for now.

I leave you for now with 2 videos, one Tristan got of me zooming by, and one of the in-car from my best (though crappy) run up the hill.