The World of my Cars

At last , the long awaited moment after 5 months 28 days and 3 hours . I finally get to cruise down the street with Annabelle , it took me so long because i have to go to class as well for those are wondering and winter temperature of -20C just doesn't seem to nice to work in the garage as i can freeze my bum off.

TEST DRIVE review: This time the setup that i constructed made spooling time a lot more shorter , turbo spools from 3000rpm and hits full boost of 1 bar by 4500rpm and it's a lot more fun to drive especially in our autocross events though this is geared more towards road race events. Autocross are too small to use my turbo efficiently and powerband efficiently.

Overall I am very impressed with the microtech as this is the first time I have own a standalone ecu and let alone tuning it. The PLX unit was amazingly sophisticated, people in KL should get one of this for their modified car to see how well their engine is doing rather than blowing it up with tulang ikan boost controller( wouldn't comment more on that).

The wastegate dump tube is atmospheric vented to keep boost level in check and is stupid loud to begin with once it hits full boost. This is what kevin told me when he dragged with me on his car that he needs to cover his ears and wind up his window. *ROFL*

Corksport exhaust is very well made , the sound that came out was crisp and bassy unlike cheap system that doesn't use goot muffle materials.

I bought a handhelp as well to make quick adjustment on the go rather than always have a lap top plug into my car and it is very nifty to have one if you have a microtech as it shows all your other meters like air temp , water temp etc which is good for me cause more readings is better than 1 to make sure things are not acting up.


here is her new spec list.

Engine Management
================
Microtech Lt8s
Microtech Hand Unit
PLX M500 wideband O2 controller

Suspension and Chasis
=====================
Chassis Engineering 8 point roll cage
5 point RJ Simpson 3 inch harness
RSR lowering springs (1" lower in Rear , 1.5" lower in Front)
Tokico Blue Shock Absorbers
Recaro SPG full bucket Seat

Transmission and Drivetrain
===========================
SPEC stage II kevlar clutch kit
Clutch LSD
Redline MT90 fluid

Gauges and Electronics
======================
Greddy EGT Gauge
Blitz boost gauge
Greddy Fuel Pressure Gauge
Greddy Turbo Timer
Pioneer Single Disc CD player w/remote

Engine Fuel Mods
================
RS Akimoto Silicone hoses
680cc R/C engineering Primary Injectors
1680cc Bosch Secondary Injectors
SX Fuel Pressure Regulator
High Pressure Nipondenso Fuel pump
Greddy Oil Catch Can
Fluidyne Aluminum Radiator (3 inch )

Charging System
===============
Moroso Battery Box
Racing Beat Dual Alternator pulley
FD3S S6 100 AMP Alternator Upgrade
4ga battery wire

Ignition and Firing System
==========================
MSD-6A
NGK Racing Plugs
10mm MSD Race Wires

TurboCharger System
===================
Garrett T04e V-trim 0.7A/R comp side 0.81 turbine side
Greddy Front Mount Intercooler
HKS manifold
HKS Standard 40mm External wastegate (10psi spring)
TurboXS BOV ROFL
6061 Aluminum intercooler Piping
T-bolt Clamp

Exhaust System
==============
Megan Racing 3 inch Resonator
CorkSport Stainless steel Power Series exhaust system (3 inch from downpipe)

Wheels and Rollers
==================
17X7 Kosei K-1 Light weight wheels
Kumho R compound compound tires


P/s: Pls scroll down all the way when you see the title

"My skills and knowledge applied to her... 100% DIY"

or else it wouldn't make much sense with the chronology of events.

Here I would like to express thanks to the people who helped me out on the way as well.

Firstly:

Charmaine for being understanding to me that it is my dream to modify and build my own car that she sacrificed a lot of talk time with me.

Eric , Kevin , Jiasheen, Jun for lending me a hand to get the car and when the moments when i'm stuck under the car and need a hand to pull me out.

Sam for always fetching me to school with his car when I do not have my daily driver.

Modifyd performance for helping me with the welding part.

Joshua from Millenium motorsports for helping me with the base map and tuning for the Microtech , without you Annabell wouldn't run that well and kill so many other cars on the street.

rx7forum.com , teamfc3s.org and other various websites.




I added new things into my interior as well ....

Here you can see the
-Microtech Handheld controller which is a MUST HAVE
-my 21st birthday present from my good friends in wichita , a SPW dished steering wheel. I love the leather on it.
- A Blitz boost gauge , i ditch the Autometer one as i prefer reading metric system.








lets see the before picture above and the after picture of the intercooler size differences.

oh btw, that guy there is azim( my friend) just saying hello to me in wheatshocker apartment.



Another before and after , above is before , below is after of the engine bay mess and cleaniness i made to Annabelle to make sure everything looks great. At least i try to.




Oh and i ditch the ACT 6 puck unsprung clutch setup that came with the car , way too stiff . i can easily get cramps even at stop/start traffic light type of driving and seeing there is not even a jam in wichita roads.

Thus i ditch that setup and bought myself a new SPEC stage 2 kevlar disc and pressure plate which can hold 400rwhp.

The bonus is STOCK clutch feeling but grips and rips like hell on full booost.

The above is some snap shot of my microtech program for my fuel maps and ignition maps , this are just some snap shot of it , the entire program is too huge to show all.




here is a snapshot of my PLX M500 reading , the a/f ratio is when i was cruising , i leaned it out to almost 14.5 for max fuel effiency but the dips is when i shift gear thats when it is tad bit richer.




Oh This is the single exit exhaust that i installed as well , it's a Corksport Cat-back system, loud but boy was spooling time a lot more shorter. I have some center muffler to quite it down as well but it's still out which always wakes up m y old neighbour. lol


After i got the base map on the microtech to run , i brought it over to the shop to get the problem corrected. $80 later , here is the results.




See this thing and now you know why it scrapes so much.


My inlet intercooler pipe , that small thing is not the radiator but my oil cooler.


here you can see the wrong measurement i took and the fabricator welded it up to my mock up pieces and here is what i got. A buldge from under the bumper cover which is hideous , and since my car is quite low it scrapes a lot when i go over bumps and potholes.

Material that i used was T6061 aluminum piping which doesn't retain much heat and disperse them fast enough to keep my charged air as cool as possible. Screw stainless steel i/c pipings like those used in malaysia man , we talk efficiency here.



Now i understand why it cost so much to do intercooler piping , the amount of measurements and trial and error fitting took me a staggering week because since the car is not running yet i can't tow it to the shop as towing is expensive and just don't want to waste that kinda money.

Here you can see I went from the Greddy 3 core friggin huge intercooler to this pea size intercooler, point to take into consideration for my deicision was spool time. This is a NPR intercooler taken from a Isuzu truck , and you know for a truck how much heat they could generate so if it works for the truck i'm sure it would do better on a sports car. I was right I only lost 0.5psi recorded by my microtech so i just have to use the AVC-R to raise the boost a little back up just to compensate that.

Picture of my interior when i was doing my wiring, that is my fuel pressure meter sitting on the floor carpet and the orange thing is my $8 walmart drill.




I did this as well , thermal wrapped the downpipe and a thermal kit for my turbo exhaust side to keep the heat low in my engine bay compartment. The lower the temp the higher the horsepower right =)




Oh before i wrapped it with thermal wrap I also ceramic coated it to withstand higher temp for the downpipe which is a 4" downpipe , HKS manifold , HKS wastegate and dumb tube.




My wiring done , although to you it's still quite a mess.




Almost there.




Wiring is hard job to do when the bay is so large and i'm so small , i literally have to lie down on my engine bay to solder each wire and make sure the connection is good.

I also bought some weatherproof electrical plugs to make disconnection easy and a breeze if i want to take out the upper manifold for modification next time around.




More wiring with turbo sitting there peacefully , and my bling bling oil inlet line. It was hard to cut those stainless steel hoses.




The journey begins to wire the Microtech engine harness into my car. It was such a pain man , seriously but its a nice experience to have when nobody is helping you out. Sighz

More picture of my interior setup since that day was a no progress day.



This pictures show how i cut the sparco sliders with my handy dremel to fit it with the stock rails.

fig 1. LoL i know it's silly but thats the thing that works , Greddy style ebay oil catch can , notice how shiny it is hidden under all those wires and my SX fuel regulator is in place.

If you look at the throttle body elbow , that actually came out from a N/A Series 5 rotary engine. Creative usage eh , cause N/A its on the other side so what i did was inverted it so i can use this as an elbow since i sold my Greddy one.

The alternator has also been upgraded to a FD alternator since it gives out 20A more than the FC so it's a good mod. That thing alone already cost me $155



Here we can see my Lower Intake Manifold (LIM) and my two secondary injectors. Since I'm using a standalone ecu I opted to go with the largest cc i can find which is 1600cc each . I thought with more room for fuel then next time upboosting wouldn't be a problem.

This are bosch 1600cc injectors and i just stick back with the rx7 stock primary injectors 550cc.

If i would do it all over again I would go 550cc/1000cc , cause leaning this injectors out were crazily tedious. Which ends up the poser effect of spitting fire on every gear shift. Bad on gas mileage though.


Here you can see my parallel fuel setup utilizing a NOS y pipe, ROFL my housemate actually thought i am going to put nitrous system inside my rx7.

There is two ways of feeding fuel into the rotary engine , one is a series and another way is parallel , since there is a fuel damper built into my sx regulator i feel it's better if i go with the parallel setup to make sure even amounts go to the primary/secondary injectors. The other option is in series which you will have to use an external fuel damper , I just want to keep the cost low.




After trying out that crappy DIY wideband which costed me $189 with the wideband O2 sensor , It gave me so much noise and crazy reading that i sold it and opted to get a PLX M500.

This baby is sweet costing at $500 a piece really tells how much this thing can offer as a a/f monitoring device , datalogging and more. it have 6 channel to monitor different aux inputs.

If you look closely in the black box you will see a USB thing with antennae. That's right baby , Wireless datalogging in your face. this is what i call a sweet gizmo.

I mounted the O2 sensor permanently on my car to make sure everything was right and it's located 12" down the downpipe for accurate reading.



This is a shot of my interior and my nifty fire-extinguisher if anything goes wrong in the race track. If you can see above my air-cond vent that is the shitty DIY wideband which still cost quite a bit.

and if you peek through the bars you can see my microtech mounted sideways so i can monitor if it is throwing any error codes with the led. I have a hand held with this which i shall post the picture when all is done.

The seat is a recaro SPG replica i got off the internet. Very nice full bucket design and grips my waist very well , i transfered this from my S14 to this car cause the stock driver seat was junked.


Test fitting of my Garrett T04e with 0.81 a/r exhaust side for faster spool up time


I open it up to measure and make sure everything was right and changed the turbine housing side for it as well as the one that came with it was too large ( 1.00 a/r)

That's me working on the car , notice the empty engine bay. Yes i yanked everything out including the engine to clean things up and make sure to do things right.



Maybe this would be nice on a wiralution too eh =)




You can see here is a picture of Eric and Sheun wuay checking out what have i been up to.

Figure 1: This picture is a comparison insisted by my friend Eric so he put his cell phone next to it to compare the turbo inlet size and the overall turbo size




Figure 2. The T04R 1.15 A/r , drag setup notice how shiny it is



Figure 3. The engine bay, cluttered and messy with the amount of dead bugs and dust collected from the bad treatment of David




Figure 4. The atmospheric vented Greddy BOV , boy this thing is loud . you can hear it blowing off a mile away even with 0 psi.


Figure 6. The gadgetry to control this setup.


David was aiming to get 450rwhp with this setup at 1.5 bar sadly he didnt get it tuned well enough as it were already maxing out all the injectors and gotta sell this car to get married. Oh well i guess it's good for me then but i'll junk everything to go with new stuff for reliability though.

(picture 1)This is her heart , look how messy everything is with the hoses , injectors and 3" Greddy intercooler piping kit. ugly ugly



(picture 2)Here is the picture of her initial dual exhaust setup , I don't like it at all though it looks cool for the people here cause it sells for like $700 new... crazy man







(picture 3)Shows you how wide the Greddy 3 core is.

This is all a few pictures of the before stages. I have a lot more but wouldn't want to bore anyone viewing this.

I will also include some review about this setup on my next post of all the gadgetry to pump out the horses in this baby.

Here it is people the long awaited post of my Mazda rx-7. Just before I start out , this car was purchased solely for the goal of ultimate horsepower , never have i never thought I will tune and build up a car of this scale myself especially a rotary engine which everyone seems to think of being "sensitive".

Here is the the specifications when I first bought the car(modified by David , previous owner)

MK5 reman engine 13bt from mazda
apex-i avcr
apex'i itc
HKS AIC
2x 650cc primary injectors
2x 550cc secondary injectors
2x 550cc additional injectors
Greddy 3 core intercooler
Greddy RACE bov
Garrett T04R (1.15 a/r)
Greddy oil pressure
Greddy fuel pressure
Greddy egt
autometer boost gauge
8 point roll cage
Moroso battery box
generic oil catch can
MSD ignition
NGK plugs
K&N air filter
Kosei racing 17" wheels
tokico blue shocks
RSR springs
5 pt camlocks harness
Racing Beat dual exhaust

car ran high 12's for previous owner and dynoed 350rwhp on 0.8 bar with race gas.


the setup above is pretty alright but just not what i need for daily driver , and a drift/track car cause the turbo spool time is crazy it gets spooling only by 4000 and full boost of 0.8 bar around 5700rpm till 8000rpm.......thats very late for my taste kinda like when it kicks in its like being rammed by a truck and i get crazy fish tailing car.

To top it all up , the car is getting bad gas mileage and for a rotary i still think a stand alone computer on the car is necessary thus i went ahead to yank out the whole car and re-do it to my taste.

Pictures will be coming soon to show the BEFORE , In between and AFTER stage , it's going to be a long post of my dear "Annabelle"

i want to put some history of my cars that i've owned in the US. Let me first start out with the first one considering this is only a car cause the first car that i've bought the last time was a wrecked eagle talon tsi ( 4wd turbo) but its in pieces so i sold that off and bought this one to cure my craze for drifting.

A silvia S14 , the car is a bit heavy with the wide wheel base it is not so much of a sports car with reaction time slower than what a sports car should be thus makes this an ideal sliding car cause you can just flick the tail and go in a drift with just clutch kicking or e-braking techniques which is amateur techniques used in the world of drifting.

Different than the S14 back in asia , this is actually equipped with a truck engine which is coded KA24DE , 2.4 liter 165hp and gobs of torque to break the rear end anytime you want it to be. Sadly one one fine night i crashed into my buddy's blue civic si in a rain while trying to do a choku dori. Seeing the expense to repair body damage is so high because of the labor invovled , i just sold it off for cheaps to another fellow malaysian who doesn't even race.

My next car i bought was a Mazda RX7 turbo.....this is a baby and real fun thing to work on and to drive on. but more on this later as it will take up several post since i have more history to share with this baby than the s14.