Track's Logbook
 

Edit: Slight modification to this thread, I will also cover building up the car!! So expect a bit of back tracking as I get my old pictures organized in some fashion.

The idea here is to tell you guys about my track events, cover highlights, and touch a bit on the techniques that my instructor covers over the given week. This is open to discussion, but lets keep our junk in our pants! I consider myself a newbie to the track, but I love to learn and more so love to share my experience with others! With that said, I will try to stick to a regular format:

Club:
Track:
Dates:
Car/Mods:

general intro stuff. like how my I had to drill out my battery tie-down the night before, or perhaps how a cat ate a guy's dinner/breakfast because he left it in his car.

Day 1:
Joe's blabbering, with video links and highlights of what happened this day.

Day 2:
Joe's blabbering, with video links and highlights of what happened this day.

conclusions and any lasting impressions, perhaps what I would like to work on the next time I come to this track.

Club:THSCC
Track:Carolina Motorsports Park
Dates: Oct. 15-16
Car/Mods: No AC/PS, MSM Cam, Cat-back exhaust, and wheel well intake
Brakes: XP8s front and rear, RBF600, and Centric rotors. Nothing special, just a basic track brake setup.
Tires: 205/50R15 Direzza Star specs.

This is my second time at CMP. Its a great track to learn on, very little elevation changes, slower top speed, and a good mix of fast and slow corners. Also, I have been told its a great track to practice trail braking. I had an exciting time friday night as I packed too much in my trunk and it wouldn't open. Turns out something got lodged behind the mechanism and wouldn't let the latch move back far enough.

Day 1:
Great day overall, my instructor was a spec e30 racer. After the first two sessions he determined that my line was good enough that we could focus on improving my feel for the car, trail braking, and getting faster entrance speeds. The largest thing we focused on is pushing the envelope in small steps, then when you go too far, what to do. If the car was tracking out and seemed like it would go off, take steering out, and don't try to jerk it back. One big thing I learned is that you can take a thumb of steering out and add in more throttle. Naturally, as you push the envelope the rear will start to break loose. During my 3rd session, while playing with a red miata, I did some street braking into turn 8, got in too hot, and had a 3 tank slapper, then drove off the track. Good stuff, the miata driver was pretty quick and the only one who was able to keep up with me all weekend.
https://www.miataforumz.com/picture....&pictureid=291
Day 2:
More of the same as Day 1. I was solo'd for the day, but decided to bring my instructor back for my last session as its not every time you get such a great instructor. I feel that I could have 10 weekends with the guy and still learn more from him. anyways, I did great on my first solo, worked some on my entry to turn 3, turn 8, and turn 11. Turn 8 has two apexes that you can try, there is the classic apex, and one that is very late. I am more comfortable with the classic as I tend to trail brake a good bit in that corner and I am not confident I won't get out on the marbles if I turn in late. I had my first ever spin during my 3rd session. I was going about 100mph at the kink and turned in a bit to early (which is exactly what my instructor warned me about), which forced me to take too much of the hump and sent the car flying. You can see it in my Sun.S3 video. Originally I thought I input too much steering, but in my anxiousness I just turned in early. Session 4 went great, just did some clean up on my line and pushed my braking zone in turn 8 and turn 14 forward about ~25 feet. I am getting REALLY squirrel on turn 11 under braking and its mostly due to hard braking at 100mph on stock springs and shocks, which is causing the car to pitch forward so much that my rear tires are losing traction.

Had a great weekend, learned A LOT about the car. My instructor was particularly helpful in explaining how to balance the car in all situations and the great part is that we tried it all out. He also did some attention testing with me, which I love because I pay attention to the corner workers and surroundings very well. My videos will be posted late tomorrow.

Club:NASA - SE
Track:Carolina Motorsports Park
Dates: Oct. 22-23
Mods: No AC/PS, MSM Cam, Cat-back exhaust, and wheel well intake.
Brakes: XP8s front and rear, RBF600, and Centric rotors.
Tires: 205/50R15 Direzza Star specs.

I met Lars (Shuiend) at this event. Thankfully, nothing too crazy happened before the event. First time its been uneventful, but I am not complaining! I came into this event with plans to work my way back up to ~100mph speeds through the kink. I was a little hestitant to try it again after my spin, so I focused on becoming more consistent and keep my anxiousness under control (at the kink). I planned to push my braking zones forward some this weekend, but I didn't get to that for a couple of reasons...I will cover them later.

Day 1:
My instructor this time was a miata driver, tall guy, who did TTE and was the 1st/2nd place finisher most of the time and had previously won TTE. He has been racing the same miata since 2000 and says he absolutely loves it. Anyways, we did our first two sessions which were pretty much a traffic jam. I asked him very nicely if he is fine with me working on my trail braking while we drive this and he said thats fine, as my line was good and my smoothness was great. We worked our way up to speed and in session 3 I asked him if he thought I was ready for HPDE 2, which might be good also to help with the traffic jam that is HPDE 1. He said do well in our last session, I will do a ride along with you in the morning in HPDE 2 (watch my traffic management, keeping track of corner workers, etc) and then he will turn me loose. He cleaned up my sloppy line around turn 3, and focus on getting my kink confidence up to par. He also told me that my suspension sucks, my shocks are pretty much gone, and that my car is extremely unstable on my high speed braking because I am unweighting my rear end.
https://www.miataforumz.com/picture....&pictureid=303

Videos:
Day 2:
Did the morning ride and was still pretty quick in HPDE 2. He turned me loose for session 2, where I was able to get my hands on a RaceChrono. Its a GPS based data acquisition for the track which is being promoted by Marty Howard from THSCC which I run with frequently. I used it for my second session and after getting my butterflies out over my first timed laps (including losing the rear end a couple of times), I turned in a 2:01.1 during my 4th lap. Noticeably I passed a couple of miatas and a very pretty red mustang who was a bit stingy on the point-by (not the only one it seems). I also got stuck behind an AI fox-body mustang who was a real dick, but then again it sucks to be passed by an inferior car. 3rd session was my last one with the RaceChrono and I made it count, turning in mt 2:01.0 lap with a loose rear end on turn 14. No major incidences, but I cleaned up my kink entrance and exit. I am entering the kink at about 96-97mph and exiting well into 98-99mph. thats only 1mph shy of what I was doing the weekend before, and I still a good quarter width of the car of track out to use.

Overall great weekend. It was great to meet Shuiend (who you can see in my last video of the weekend, Sun.S4), and we also met a bunch of miata guys close by.
https://www.miataforumz.com/picture....&pictureid=318
Note, I am the only non-turbo miata in the picture! My next time at CMP, the car will be completely different. I will have my suspension worked out, probably another 100lbs shaved off, xp10 fronts and possibly new tires. So its hard to set goals for the next time at CMP, but I certainly plan to push my braking forward more and increase my cornering speeds considerably (particularly around turn 3, the carousel, turn 8, the kink, and turn 12-13).

Videos:

https://www.miataforumz.com/picture....&pictureid=304

This mustang hates letting miatas by!

I am working on getting these videos w/ direct links and torrents (thanks FRT_Fun/Alex!). In the mean time, I will make a compilation video that will probably be about 20-25 minutes of interesting occurances during my weekend. I will probably combine both CMP weekends.

-I have one off and one spin
-I have an m3 on video spinning out after passing me.
-I have quiet a few cool passes.

Just got these put on today!
https://www.miataforumz.com/attachme...ine=1320186347

https://www.miataforumz.com/attachme...ine=1320186347
Here is whats on the come up for my car:

http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/k...r/IMAG0491.jpg

http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/k...r/IMAG0494.jpg

https://www.miataforumz.com/attachme...ine=1320186347

Still waiting on the front sway, tie rod ends, and a few clean up intake pieces.

https://www.miataforumz.com/attachme...ine=1320260846

Jelly.

Ok, so some work got done on the car. A bit dirty since I drove it in the rain tonight, but I likely still!

https://www.miataforumz.com/attachme...ine=1320981325

https://www.miataforumz.com/attachme...ine=1320981325


So, update on the videos. We got the torrent stuff worked out, so expect links to the torrents soon. I will do a few torrent write-ups soon to go along with that. Lastly, I will continue to upload my videos to youtube. I am not too satisfied with Vimeo's restrictions on weekly uploads nor was the quality that good.

Torrents are up. Here they are, I have also added them to the respective post for the track event.

As an added bonus, I am almost uploading the videos at my first VIR event.

I will work on the individual session download write-up and perhaps a quick bit of info on how to work with Torrents.

Just as a quick side note for the torrents.

I suggest uTorrent for downloading these torrents. You can go here:
http://www.utorrent.com/help/guides/beginners-guide

It's pretty easy to follow, but all you really need to do is download and install uTorrent (Great torrent client, with a very good rep). Click the files above, and have uTorrent open them. From there the file will download to a folder on your computer.

Youtube videos are slowly going up too!

Got my car realigned and corner balanced today! Boy is she doing great. I am 4.75" at the pinch welds front. and possibly 4.8-4.9" at the rear. just a slight very low rake.

Now for the good stuff (with the driver and half a tank):

LF - 631 RF-609
LR - 601 RR- 561

50.4% cross weight

Total weight came in ~2400 lbs flat with 160 lbs in for the driver(I had a jacket, two quarts of oil in the trunk and a bunch of ---- in my glove box).

I would say 2250 for an NB is pretty f'in good don't ya think?

The alignment:

Front:
2.0* Camber
5* Caster
1mm Toe Out

Rear:
1.8* Camber
1mm Toe In

also did an oil change today, checking out my spark plugs and hoping to stop my ridiculously shitty valve cover leak which has moved up to the very front of the car now. God I hate the VC gasket right now.

MVPTrackTime RA
 

Club: MVP Track Time
Track: Road Atlanta
Dates: Nov. 18-19
Car/Mods:
-550/450 Bilsteins, RB hollow, stock end links, ES CA bushings
-msm cam, 01+ header, 2.25" exhaust
-15x8, 205/50R15 6ULs

Nothing too crazy before this event, although I have to mention that I saw the NICEST cars out at this event. A large number of GT3s, a radical, an AVENTADOR ,ACR-X and a GT40 replica which promptly wrecked on his first lap out. Got acquainted with the club. Tech was a decent, checked my battery, brake fluid and brake lights. the driver's meeting is ridiculously long on the amount of 40-50 minutes, but they give out coupons ($100 off a simpson item, free set of bridgestone tires, and an assortment of other similar stuff).

Day 1:
The kicker? They actually shared instructors. There was a total of 10 instructors for us, and 36 novices. Since this is my second time out on RA, I wanted an instructor for sure for my first 1-2 sessions to get reacquainted with the line. Also, as a novice you have to do this stupid lead-follow session which is ridiculous, because 5 students following one instructor just leads to the last 3 students learning nothing and wasting their 20 minute session. Anyways, the day went incident free, other than a few catches I had on turn 7 and turn 12. Both my instructors were NASA drivers, one in particular is a rx-8 TT driver who was really ------- fast. Got the line down well, and posted a 1:58 laptime by the end of the day with my instructor in the car.
https://www.miataforumz.com/picture....&pictureid=329
Day 2:
Woke up to a surprisingly wet and raining day. Completely unexpected, with no news of it until I saw everything was wet. Good thing I had decided to lay out the tarp and cover everything the night before. Anyways, today we had 46 students and the same 10 instructors. unfortunately, everyone freaked out over the rain and they signed up all the instructors before I could get a single one. No hard feelings, I remembered a few things from my class at previous DEs like stay off the gators and paint, give more space, test out your available traction before rolling into corners are obscene speeds, etc. First solo session out, I was flying on the first lap having done plenty of traction testing on the lead-follow lap and setup my tire pressure nicely. Second lap out, I pinched my trackout for turn 5 onto the short straight after the esses and spun the car. Thankfully, I was far enough ahead and saved the engine, so there was no issues getting back into the groove. Took it easy through the session, but not before kicking out the rear a couple of times on turn 7. The day got interesting after lunch where the track was completely dry. I ran pretty good through out the day. I met two guys at the track, one had a white/red miata and the other had a white s2000. Great guys, were very nice and it was pleasure to ride around on track with them. By the last session, they were both faster than me, so I think I need to work on my driving overall.
https://www.miataforumz.com/picture....&pictureid=330
https://www.miataforumz.com/picture....&pictureid=335
Conclusion:
A few things I picked up on is that I have a habit of pinching my trackout (not letting the car track out as it likes), and I have a very undeniable fear of oversteer. I have noticed it in two particular areas. First, when I trailbrake, I don't do leave enough braking to benefit from its ability to rotate my car. Second, I have a tendency not to get on the throttle enough in the whole sequence after turn 3.

Places to improve:
-clean up the sequence from turn 3 all the way to turn 6 (I get out of turn 3 pretty quick, but I am not staying on the throttle enough through the quarter circle, the turn into the esses, and the esses themselves).
-More trailbraking into turn 1, turn 5, turn 6, and turn 10a. This is just a matter of getting comfortable with trailbraking.
-Stemming from my recent suspension modifications, I need to start unlocking my new found grip, which is pretty much the summation of the first two.
-I need to get a feel for where the car wants to go (in otherwords, get comfortable with tracking out right at the apex). I am apexing into an area, rather than a point, which is probably hurting everything.

My next RA event is Dec. 3-4, so its not far away at all. I hope to drop my time down by at least 2 seconds if not more. I was really hoping to be with-in 8-10 seconds of SM times, which is a 1:44.

Club: NASA-SE
Track: Road Atlanta
Dates: Dec. 3-4
Car/Mods: Same as before, minus a decent alignment. grrrr!

Nothing too exciting the night before. Went out with Bryan (GeneSplicer) and Mike (Doppelganger). First time meeting them, very cool guys! They also seemed to have fun with some chick from girls gone wild named Michelle or something.

Day 1:
Great stuff, good day for driving. Temperature was warm enough for optimal tire temps, but cold enough to keep them from overheating. I think many NASA-SE track records were broken today. I was very slow in the first 3 sessions, mostly working out some comfort issues and dealing with a TON of plowing due to my reallllly fucked up toe in the front. Slow first session, instructor for the next two sessions, and then I let go and had a very very good last session. after running slower than 2:00 all day, I ran a 1:56 on the last session with plenty left on the table. Do note, I am not flat in all the locations I could be. RA has a lot of concrete walls and I am not a big fan of those considering I have to drive my car back (unlike VIR where I have no problem being flat through the esses and beyond, or CMP where the kink has a mile of run off in most directions).

We visited the skidpad, which showed me that my ridiculous front toe in was causing lots and lots of plowing. We tried to adjust toe, but due to lack of good location and wind, my toe was not necessarily fixed. I did take out a lot of the understeer and had a good bit of sideways fun on the skid pad. Jarod blew out his power steering on his G8 after doing some very clean donuts.
https://www.miataforumz.com/picture....&pictureid=404
Day 2:
Cooler day, started off with slightly higher tire pressure, but I really had zero problems with traction. I was consistently much faster, cleaned up my line from the chicane through turn 12, started carrying a lot more speed in turn 1, 3, the esses, turn 6, and through the chicane itself. I don't have exact numbers, but I know I bumped my turn 12 speed up atleast 4-6 mph more than the weekend before, and through turn 1, I was easily going 10 mph faster at the apex. I found a new line through 2 and 3 (I started using the left gator to push me out further and cut across the gator more) and turn 5 (don't touch the gator there, but I do a slight right to get a wider line, I will eventually use this to carry more speed and trackout OVER the right hand gators to the straight). I ran a 1:54.3 WITH traffic on the exit of 12 during the beginning of the lap and on the entrance of 12 during the end of the lap. I have no doubt that I could have ran a 1:53 on a cleaner lap, especially if it was earlier in the session. BTW, I was the fastest miata in DE2 by far. Even though one or two of the miatas were running R-Comps, I was consistently faster than them during the second day.
https://www.miataforumz.com/picture....&pictureid=396

I am thinking that a tow vehicle will be the best mod for my next tangle with RA. With that, I will feel more comfortable staying flat all the way through 12, the esses, and going faster in 5. I am also not using the full grip in my 205/50 star specs, but it was a bit hard to get comfortable with my gobs of toe induced understeer. Good alignment, tow truck, and probably a new set of 205/50s (possibly move back to xp8s in the front) and I should be good to put down 1:50s on this track. Maybe even below a 1:50...that would be AWESOME!
https://www.miataforumz.com/picture....&pictureid=387

I got a chance to watch you in DE2 a few times (more time than we got to talk) and you were running what appeared to be good lines (to my rookie eyes) and were definitely running down other cars that should have been faster.

We didn't get to have that tow vehicle discussion but I would be happy to talk about it here if you want to open another thread. There are lots of extraneous tangents and fairly wild opinions on the MT version of that thread.

Tow Discussion:
https://www.miataforumz.com/miata-general-discussion-36/tow-vehicle-choices-516/

Broke an intake manifold stud today, but I got a ton of new parts on the way. Here is the run down:

Parts:
Wideband (MTX-L)
OBX 1.8 4-1 header (Racebeating knockoff?)
Fiberglass wrap for the headers
bulk chromoly for round 2 on getting a perfectly centered driver's seat
a TON of coroplast for a series of projects
phenolic gasket
Steering wheel
2001+ Bumper

I am also toying around with a series of other rigid lightweight plastics for making an undertray and ducting around the car. At this time this will be on the backburner as I sheared one of the intake manifold studs and I gotta get it out. I am still waiting on the phenolic gasket so its no hurry. So far the header, wrap, MTX-L, 01+ bumper, steering wheel, and chromoly are in. waiting on the phenolic and the coroplast. I am also picking up a leakdown tester soon and hopefully can borrow a friend's compressor and put to rest any engine health concerns. I will have some pictures soon.

I think that OBX header is of a different design, but it's actually "good". Difficult to install if I'm not mistaken, although for the price a little frustration is worth it. Apparently they rust, so put some high temp exhaust paint above and below your wrap. If it were me, I'd put two layers on the pipe and another on the wrap, that's more just for color though.

Edit: and you forgot to buy another stud if that list is complete.

How much was the obx header? Im kinda looking for 1.8 exhaust stuff for my 1.8 swap. Havent really looked into anything yet though.

Also, as an aside, how did you shear your stud??

I don't know why, but spur of the moment frustration convinced me to spend $81 on the miataroadster phenolic gasket kit with the longer intake manifold bolts. Hindsight says that was probably not the best decision, but looking at it, it uses 2 intake manifold gaskets and the phenolic so its probably overkill more than wasted money. As for the bolts, I could have picked them up from the local ace store.

BTW, any suggestions on high temp paint to use? I am about to go pick it up tomorrow along with metal ties from advancedauto. I think DEI stopped manufacturing the exhaust paint, so I maybe out of luck on that...

Overtorquing them? I don't know really, my torque wrench wasn't clicking on them for some reason, so I was guesstimating tightening them and on the last one I guessed too much. its not a big deal since the exhaust mani flange is so think, it shouldn't be hard to pull the stud out without too much frustration.

I bought it from their ebay store, I offered $145+$30 for shipping. with that said, I have seen it for sale for $150 at other stores, perhaps shipping will be cheaper there. It looks pretty good, the runners are slightly offset from the flange, but the welds look durable and should hold up for however long I need it.

oh, btw, I got the sheared stud out, but its a pain of course to go through and remove all the good ones using a giant channel lock and pliers. Any suggestions on easy ways to remove good studs with less hassle?

I painted and wrapped the header, and installed it into the car today. I also stopped by ace and found some studs for the intake side, but unfortunately they weren't long enough really for the phenolic. Anyone see any problems with using bolts instead of studs on the intake manifold side?

Lastly, wrapping the header was a ton of trouble. I got fiberglass bits all over me and then when I went to put the header in the car, I fucked up half the runners lol. I redid it, but its not so pretty anymore, anyone know what to do with the frayed end?

Tomorrow, I will be installing the MTX-L and getting it wired up. I am working this week, so progress will be down to a crawl again. I am thinking tomorrow will be dedicated to setting up the MTX-L, Wednesday/Thursday will be the seat mount redux, and Friday I will get the intake manifold put on.

How do people wire up the narrow band simulator into the stock ECU? should I cut the old o2 and use the connector it has for the narrow band simulator or what?

For good studs, put two nuts on and snug them against each other, then put a wrench on the back one. This is called the two nut or double nut method.

For the wrap, fold it back in on itself than use two clamps to tie down and corners that might catch on stuff.

Thanks for the suggestions Josh.

I redid the wrap today, just because it frayed so much. I got it in this time with little if anything damage to the wrapping, but my #2 runner was a bit short. No big deal really.

here are some pictures:
https://www.miataforumz.com/attachme...ine=1325042298

https://www.miataforumz.com/attachme...ine=1325042298

https://www.miataforumz.com/attachme...ine=1325042298

Unfortunately, I spent the day redoing the wrap and didn't get started till late. But in the process, I did my EGR elimination as I was able to find a 1/2" compression fitting which fit on the EGR nipple. On the intake side, I have some plastic/foam similar to phenolic material which I will be using.

With that said, I orderd some zinc plated studs and copper nuts for the exhaust side and found some cheap longer studs which I will be trying on the intake side. I think it is ok to use bolts on the intake side, but I am hesitant to do it since i would rather shear off the stud on the manifold side rather than in the head.

Anyways, enough blabbering, tomorrow I will be assessing the MTX-L situation, I still need to figure out how to wire up the MTX-L narrowband to the stock ECU.

hey Track, does the engine feel stronger post-installation of the OBX? I've been pretty skeptical over this brand and stuff but the $400 piece from racing beat just sounds too much for me (coming from a guy who bought rmf replica headers for hondas for like $200+).

haven't ran it yet, but I will let you know. I am fixing a vacuum and exhaust leak, among a few other annoying issues.

(skip boring ? go to the bold Here)
Exhaust leaks are all fixed up. I got my idle AFRs down to something reasonable and drove her around the development, she did great. Sounds louder with the new header, but I suspect the majority of that is due to the fact my big shifter boot tore and is no longer in place.

With all that said, my header wrap has finally stopped smoking and my AFRs are looking decent, I am not sure exactly if I have any vacuum leaks normally, but my AFRs drop everytime I hook up the vacuum gauge. That tells me the vacuum gauge has a leak on its own, which I will deal with at another time.

Here:
Car feels great, all problems seem to be worked out and I think my lean condition before was due to a faulty o2 sensor rather than anything else. I will be taking the car out for a serious drive tomorrow as I have a shittacular amount of clean-up to do today. Stay tuned!

Drove the car today, still building up a base line for my AFRs. I seem to have a vacuum leak of sorts that goes and comes, but I can't be sure until I do some more testing and watching. Car is feeling great, I took out another 3/8" in ride height today. I am sitting at just over 4.5" front and 4.8" rear. I can't really go any lower in the front, so thats where I will be from now on.

Ok, so I can give an answer to this now:

I did not notice a power difference between this and the 2001+ header that was originally on my 1999. I wasn't expecting anything, but I did have a nice 4" wide flat spot in my stock downpipe from bottoming out on a speed bump/hump at some point.

Now the OBX header has some advantages, its a 4-1 which is nice. It also gave the car a nice deeper sound. I would say its probably lighter than the 01+ header and downpipe, but not by much more than a few lbs.

Disadvantages: the #4 runner is a bitch. I had the hardest time tightening the nut under it and it caused an exhaust leak for a short while. But other than that, I am satisfied. Mostly I moved to a one piece header for the wider collector and so I could wrap it (although you certainly can wrap the stock header).


Other things I tackled this weekend was redesigning my seat mount. That went successfully, I moved my seat back 3/4" and towards the trans tunnel 1". This has made it a lot more comfortable, but is forcing me to relearn the pedals a bit since the leverage has changed. it has also stopped it from hitting my door now.

That's about it. Up next is redoing the radiator ducting, and making a new undertray for the car. I am using coroplast this time around and will update how it goes and suggestions.

thanks for the reply.

Damn you get a lot of accomplished. Where did you buy your wrap? I want to do this before putting my 01 header on my '00.

http://www.siliconeintakes.com/


I bought the 50'x2". Don't buy the double thick stuff and try to keep 1/4" of overlap (or the least amount possible in other words).

Wear gloves and DO NOT itch your face. lol

Small amount of work this weekend. I was planning to take out the roll bar and removed my seatbelts, but I decided that was too much work for 3 lbs of weight. I post-poned this until another time. I plan to do it as my driver side seat belt clinks around very annoyingly.

On a different note, I made a block off plate for the radio and mounted my window switch and wideband gauge in it. Put a good ol' MFz sticker on there and changed out the one in my window (don't have a picture of that one).
https://www.miataforumz.com/attachme...ine=1325981891

I zip tied mine to the bottom of the roll bar for this very reason.

Working on an oil cooler setup. I will be using a Mocal sandwich plate, and using an inline NPT fitting for temperature. post more info tomorrow.

I like your window switch solution! I kinda lol'd when I saw it. how well does it work there?

worked fine so far, the coroplast is actually pretty stiff and the surround took out any play in it. I guess we will see how it holds up to repeated use, but I suspect I won't have power windows for much past February.

I have been lazy about the tow vehicle thing while I take care of higher priority financials.

I cheated on the tow vehicle this year. I traded in the wife's car for an SUV for towing er uh, hauling baby crap. :) She figured me out when I commented on why it must be a Touareg with Air Suspension, because of it's 7700 lb/towing.

Now, I just need a trailer. I think for this season, I'll just uhual it. But, before I can actually borrow her truck, I got to get her to drive my car again. It's a manual and after she learned, she had a bit of a panic moment picking me up at the airport and stopped driving it.

Ok, So Oil cooler:

Mocal Sandwich
Mocal BSP to -8
-8 male to-8 female with 1/8 NPT port
2x 90* -8 Swivel
2x Straight -8
10' -8 SS Jegs hose
Setrab 13 row
22mmx1.5 to -8 (goes on the oil cooler)

Total comes out to about $360 with shipping. More expensive than the FM kit, but I blame the mocal plate which is $100, when you could easily get an equivalent cheaper. For simplicity's sake, I am probably just going to buy the FM kit and get the 1/8 NPT port adapter and call it a day. Unless I can find some sort of thermostat for the oil which would allow me to use a different sandwhich plate.

Anyways, Small updates coming up soon (2 weeks):

-Bought a set of used 99 injectors to get cleaned. Last idea I have for weird idle and semi-random leaning out.
-Buying 01+ headlight connectors to finish up the front bumper conversion.
-Will start on the undertray/radiator re-ducting as soon as I finish the bumper conversion.

What are you paying for the oil cooler? The link doesn't work.
http://www.racerpartswholesale.com/c...ol_Oil_Coolers

well the setrab 13 row is pretty expensive. Looking at the dimensions, its bigger than the 24 row tru-cool, so I am assuming its probably all you would need.

Anyways, price from ANplumbing is $134 including the 22mm to -8 connector.

I am considering going with a cheaper cooler, I just haven't finished reading about them yet.

What cooler did you go with Josh? Also, any suggestions on 1/8 NPT temp sensor and gauge?

The 24 tru-cool I believe. I know that's the brand, not sure if that's the right size.

Not sure about the 1/8" NPT port. I salvaged my sandwich plate from an ebay oil cooler kit and it came with two ports.