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Maybe we could start a thread about it see what kind of interest there was and all. The thing is the basis for them will have to be a set of JDM GVR4 knuckles which means probably the ones on my car come off but I cant do that when I have races to make it to we might need someone able to donate their set as well for temporary. The basic concept is to keep all your geometry as stock except the mount point for the tires. Axles are the only thing that will still be at a different angle than stock. if we did like 1.25" drop spindle the height your at where the control arm is bottoming out the suspension will be near stock location, lots of shock travel, lots of everything. then you'll be back to that point if your going race car low. like 1.5" ground clearance type stuff

Nice stiff there Drew. And believe me, I understand what you mean with races coming up all through the year and having the car is not an option. Like you said, we can start a thread and see how many "real" takers we have for something like this.
 
Just curious, what spring rates, ride heights, and tire/tire sizes are yall using? I don't seem to have much issue with the setup (cept when I decide to go curb hopping). While keeping the car low for CG purposes, suspension travel is also important.
 
Just curious, what spring rates, ride heights, and tire/tire sizes are yall using? I don't seem to have much issue with the setup (cept when I decide to go curb hopping). While keeping the car low for CG purposes, suspension travel is also important.

Well if you mean on track I use the following:

Struts: KYB AGX (Settings): Front 4 Rear 8
Springs: GC Coilovers with Eibach springs 650 lbs (front) 350 lbs (rear)
Tires: Hankook Z214 Slicks 225/50/16 (C71 compound)
Ride Height: I would have to check my log book on that one. But I think somewhere in the range of 4.5 " front and 5.5" rear. But again, I am not 100% on those right now.
 
If one of the mods could split out the SPC arm discussion I think that would be great.

Back on topic, I wanted to share my experience with the Wilwood 13x1.1 BSL6n kit.
I had ordered a 13x1.25" wilwood kit used off another forum, but after measuring the rotors and giving Todd (at TCE) a call, it turned out to be the 13x1.1 kit. I was bummed, but I decided I'd live with these until I get serious about race tires and roll cages.
Not only that, but Todd was incredibly helpful with part selection and pad choices.

The install was mostly straight forward. I had to do a bit of clearancing between the caliper mount and the front knuckles, but otherwise things bolted up pretty cleanly.

I started off with freshly turned rotors and bedded in the BP-10 pads. My first impressions were that if you had too much coffee and put your foot on the brake pedal abruptly, you sure as heck better have the shoulder strap of your seatbelt tight!

I ran the kit on the street for a few hundred miles and double checked all the lines. Everything looked good, so I pulled out the BP-10 pads and installed the Polymatrix B pads. After getting into a rhythm bleeding the double bleeders, it is actually pretty fast to change pads and bleed the whole front end.

The only thing about the big brake kits is they SEVERELY limit the number of wheels that will fit on your car. Attached is a picture of the kit installed behind my SSR Integral wheels (17x8 +38) and from the second pic you can see I have about 7 mm of clearance between the inner spokes and the caliper.

The last pic is the set of PolyB pads after my DE2 day at Phoenix International Raceway. They look almost brand new - my point being the Poly B compound never even broke a sweat slowing down my full weight 2g with 245 Kumho MX's. No brake cooling by the way. Top speed was over 120 mph, and there are three major braking zones on the 9 turn track, with lap times somewhere between a minute and a minute and a half (I didn't get any lap times in DE2, but they did ask if I wanted to test into DE3 :sneaky:)

Overall I was VERY impressed with the braking power. I was running stock rear brakes with Porterfield R4-S pads, and the balance was neutral to a bit more power up front. I loved the balance personally - but I let one instructor drive my car and he thought I needed a more aggressive pad in back.

FYI - The scary part about having an instructor drive your car isn't what I thought. I figured I'd be scared they'd break something, right? Wrong, the guy scared me in my own car on corner entry speed, resulting in scary top speeds prior to braking... The car is capable of sooo much more than I am right now! The cool part of having the instructor drive the car is when he gets out with a huge smile and says "That is the most fun f_cking car I've ever driven!"

That was quite a compliment. Atleast I know I didn't screw anything up too bad.
Yet ROFL

Up next I'll explain how my high coolant temps resulted in a bit of a pulsating brake pedal after the last session. Thanks to Todd @ TCE for helping me figure that one out - stay tuned!

Just ordered my v3 ECMLink as well, gotta thank the ECMTuning guys for the incredible support!!
 

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Very nice details! I purchased the 12.2"x0.81" Billet Super Lite 4-piston differential bore kit from Todd around 7-years ago and started out with BP-10 pads. They were an excellent pad for the street and had a very nice overall braking coefficient vs. temperature range for a cold pad. I ran these for around 4 years, going through less than 2 sets of pads. I also used Polymatrix "H" pads which were very nice at Road America and handled the abuse quite well, and Hawk Black's which were no where as good as good as the BP-10's or the "D"-pads.

In 2007, I changed over the calipers because the BSL's started creaking quite a bit, even after rebuilding, so I went to a fresh set of Forged Superlite 4-piston equal-bore calipers and changed the pads to a little more agressive cold friction pad for high-speed drag racing braking. Now, I use the Wilwood "D"-Pads for drag/street application. They are a bit more dusty than the BP-10's, but I am also stopping a car doing over 150mph very very quickly. Excellent coefficient of 0.50 up to 600 degrees F with no brake fade. I also use Wilwood 570 or Motul RBF 600 brake fluid. The key thing to never forget to do is to fully flush and bleed your brakes before a track event, or if it is on a street-driver only, I usually do it around 2-3 times a year to reduce potential of water contamination.

For the rears, I have stock rotors and calipers with stainless lines and EBC Green pads. This combination works well for my application and has left a near-neutral braking feel with slightly more bias to the front on very hard braking. For track, I would probably go with a higher temperature pad than the Green's as you would be burning through them in a race day or two, and would also be dealing with brake fade after a while of extended use, resulting in front brake bias.

The only changes I may make for this year would be to run scalloped rotors on the front, but I haven't made up my mind on that yet.

I know the kit I use is more of a street/strip setup vs. yours, since I am running 16" rims (Rota Slipstreams 45mm offset) I needed to stick with the 12.2" setup. My street rims are 17"x8".

I am very impressed with TCE Performance and Todd's customer service and technical support over the years, as I still purchase replacement parts directly through him vs. my other Wilwood suppliers. He sells an excellent product with a great business to back it up!
 
That wont solve the problem. your own control arms will still hit the fender because the dimensions of the spindle are still the dimensions of the spindle. The only thing I could think of is if you substantially lengthened the control arms, custom axles and set the tires further outbaord with a widebody and gave yourself clearance there but your talking about a foot further out because further out than that strut tower is frame parts. I guess you could cut out the entire front of the car and go tubular, suppose that solves the problem. But then your doing a bunch of crazy stuff just to get around redesigning only one part, the spindles. that and the price of the custom control arms is probably the same price or more than fabbing spindles. The baja guys are the ones to look at for this stuff. it wont be soon but I'll be getting these done for DSM eventually. They will be setup so that evo brakes are direct fit. If we can organize a group buy or something I could probably get them started much much sooner but I doubt enough people are interested. I imagine DSMers will want to just ride on bumpstops or take a hammer to their strut tower.

These typically run in the 300-400 range for a set on baja application stuff in MASS production. Which is pretty close to what people are paying just for spindles to accept evo brakes. If there was enough of a market I think they would be a viable option.

$400.00x2 Put me down for 2 possably 3 sets. My GF's Talon tsi and my spyder gst- evo conversions are complete ready for install minus the spindles. What if any would be the down side as both are driven on the street? Maybe start a New thread with what kind of time frame.
 
I shot off a couple inquiries to manufacturers. I warn you guys though, we will still need someones donor JDM GVR4 spindles (likely) and I wont have time to organize the GB aspect. I guess we'll wait to hear back on pricing, etc and go from there.
I'm guessing that nobody is gonna setup up to lend theirs so we probably have to build that cost in. Advantages to these are lighter weight and retain stock geometry with a drop and setup for evo brakes. I cant think of any downsides, this is the right way to lower your car.
 
unless we get a miracle this wont be happening any time soon. The guys that make spindles for off road trucks whole market just took a dump so they arent investing money in any new projects. One off fabrication looks stupid expensive. My contingency right now is a few guys interested and willing to pay $2-$3k each and even that is sketchy/up in the air

One place told me they could do it with an initial purchase of 2000 units LOL
 
Drew, could you post some numbers? Forecast prices, units produced, also could you forecast the sales for 5 years out and calculate a return on initial investment, additional funds needed to complete the project, and a break even point. Thanks.
 
I dont have that stuff, I'm persuing a small group production run right now and waiting to hear back. The only other number i have was fabtech who said they can do it for a 2000 unit initial purchase. Do I really need to ask him for pricing numbers on that? Even at $200 a set thats $400,000
 
So I'll wrap this up with my final track day experience of 2008. I realize I've concentrated more on the car than the events, but that was my biggest challenge of 2008 - getting the car running and sorted out. With a few exceptions, I'm at the point where the car won't change much until I start running either TA/TT, or get my comp license and run the race group.

So I had entered DE2 at PIR, and went through the usual car checkups before leaving for the track. I woke up at 3:30 in the morning, grabbed my bag and a good cold Monster energy drink, and drove almost 3 hours to the track.

I gotta say, there is something really satisfying about rebuilding most of a car yourself and trusting it enough to drive it 150 miles to the track, beating on it for 4 sessions, and loading everything in the trunk to drive home.

As usual, the first session is pretty slow and traffic heavy. Which was fine, as this was my first track event with the brakes and (I think) the SPC front arms and additional caster and negative camber. After 2 or 3 laps I started getting into the gas and could tell immediately that my car had gone from heavy AWD pig to a responsive well balanced performance vehicle!

The second session I lined up early to try and get in front of most of the traffic. I was third in line, on the left side. They run two lines, and the left was usually the first to go. I was lined up behind a Z06 and an Astin Martin (don't remember the model). Well, they let the right side go first this time. Crap.
But it was lots of fun to chase the Z06 and Astin Martin. I was finally getting used to the car, and starting to push it a bit. They finally opened up the passing on the back straight, so I started getting into the throttle and passing up through the field.

I made it about 15 minutes into the 20 minute session, and my check engine light came on - coolant temps. I had DSMLink set to light my CEL at 226 degree coolant temps so I'd know to let off if it started running hot. So I took an easy lap, and pulled into the pits just to check the car out.

Everything was fine, and the coolant temps came down rather fast. So I hit the track for the last few minutes. At the checkered flag I headed to my parking area and let the car cool with the fans and heat on full blast for a few minutes. I sat there thinking of the car, the track, and what I could improve upon. For me that meant mainly start pushing the braking zones, and carrying more speed through corners.

One particular area I was working on for the third session was T5. By braking into T4 much later (and much less), and coming in wider, I was able to get a much better line on T5. It was such a speed improvement that I went from downshifting into second gear in the first two sessions, to where I could leave it in 3rd gear and just put the throttle down and wait for it to spool. This was a perfect example of going slower was faster. Instead of using second gear to power out of the long sweeper, I left it in third - and waiting for the turbo to spool gave me a much tighter line. By the time I was into boost I was able to drift wide into the following straight and gain enough speed that I had to brake 15 or 20 feet sooner to feel comfortable coming onto the oval. I was stoked! And I came up on some of the DE2 drivers fast enough that my instructor suggested I back off a few percent until we got out of traffic, and he asked if I'd be interested in driving the next day to test into DE3. Sweet!
The attached picture is me taking a bit wider line in T5 and dipping in tight for the next straight.
Again, my coolant temps had gotten pretty high so I had to hit the pits to check the car and let it cool a bit.

For the final session a friend of mine that runs with the race group sat in as my instructor. I was just out having fun, taking it easy on the car so I would make the 150 mile drive home. Though he suggested I try a few of the race lines. He gave me a few verbal instructions and pointed me around the track. It is amazing what only 2 or 3 feet can do for your speed on a track. It amazed me that a 7 foot wide car could go so much faster by moving over 18 inches. And by the end of the session he was suggesting that I take the safe line and slow down - he said he was going right over to the DE3 leader to bump me up. :hellyeah:

I ended up heading home after that day though, instead of staying another for DE3 - I was broke, tired, and didn't have a place to stay. Plus I was getting over a cold and knew I needed to catch up on sleep, or I was going to be sick again.

But I'm looking forward to the 2009 events, and hope to run my first Time Trial by the end of the year.

I have a feeling that 2009 will be my last year with a street car that is also a competitive track car. As my friend suggested, it is in my best interest to look into some pretty heavy safety features, race tires, and a good race gas tune. I suppose he is right. I'm at the point where I'd like to push the car farther, myself as a driver farther, and not stress about getting home if I push it too far. Time for a trailer?
 

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Sounds great man. :rocks: Reading about others on the track is very motivating.

You ever get out to Arroyo Seco Raceway?
 
I too have had some on-track overheating issues since installing my SSAC FMIC. Same secenario... I have DSMLink set to light my CEL at 225º coolant temps and after 10 minutes or so of lapping it would light up. Then I'd take a few cooldown laps and get back on it again.

This was with the stock radiator & thermostat, A/C removed, 50/50 coolant, and ductwork between the FMIC & radiator.

So then I got an aluminum radiator which is 1.5" thick (versus 1" stock). Hit the track again and experienced the same problem. D'oh!

This year I'm going to try a few more things. I picked up a 170º thermostat, WaterWetter, an external oil cooler, and will run 75 water /25 coolant. I've also given the coolant system a good (long overdue) flush. Hopefully these measures will eliminate my on-track overheating issues.
 
Scott - If you can get away with it (in the summer I bet you can) do not run antifreeze in it. Just run 2 bottles of water wetter and the rest water. Also, on your radiator, how many fans do you/can you run? If you can get 2 on there, run 2 and wire them to be turned on at the same time. The wiring is easy to do as well. You would be supsrised how much this will help you and the temps out. I did this and saw a 15 degree drop in coolant temps. My water temp never if ever gets over 190 degrees. 225 is way up there man.

That front mount is killing you as well. Not allot (if any) DSM road racers have had too much luck running a front mount wihtout over heating the car. Even with ducting it is going to be tough. I know Greg (Collier) even experimented with a V mount system and never really got it dialed in. But try a few of the things I suggested if you can and see the results. Hope this helps :thumb:
 
Thanks Eddie. I actually do have both OEM fans installed and rewired to activate with the A/C button (A/C is removed). So both fans will turn on if 1) the ECU turns them on, or 2) I hit the A/C button. Naturally, I always turn it on when on the track. :)
 
Thanks Eddie. I actually do have both OEM fans installed and rewired to activate with the A/C button (A/C is removed). So both fans will turn on if 1) the ECU turns them on, or 2) I hit the A/C button. Naturally, I always turn it on when on the track. :)

Ok, good to know Scott. So they can come on whenever you want them to correct? And yet you are still in the 220 degree range. Way to high man. Try the extra bottle of wetter next time and see if that helps any. I still think it has to do with not enough clean air getting to the radiator. How do you have the ducting getting air to it? Pics would be good if you have some ro can snap a few off. You mway want to think about a hood vent as well. This really is not to get air into the engine bay, but to force hot air out of the there. The less hot air you have in there the better.
 
My setup with the 225 degree temp issues were as follows:
Full AC system, 2ga front bumper, DVDT FMIC (huge), 180 oem thermostat, both stock fans and a bottle of water wetter with a water:coolant mix good to zero degrees (it gets cold here!)

I also foamed every gap between the radiator fan cage and the radiator, and the radiator perimeter to the frame/body. I was usuing an AZ Performance radiator - stock size but the core was a "high efficiency" core with very minimal spacing between fins. The core measures 1" thick.

I even cut out two vents in the front bumper cover, right next to the eagle/mitsu emblem area. This brings in fresh air that doesn't go thru the FMIC, it goes straight to the AC condenser and radiator. I tried ducting so any air going through the FMIC had to go through the radiator.

Even with both fans running on Hi through DSMLink I could get the car to 225 in ~15 minutes in phoenix.

As of last weekend, the setup is changing greatly and will hopefully be ready for a May event in Phoenix. I ordered a Koyo a while ago and finally found time to do the install. The koyo is a full 2" thick 2 row core. The 16g j-pipe no longer fits between the exhaust manifold and the radiator fans, so I flipped the compressor housing to fire downward. Well, that requires remounting the wastegate (oem internal), which is where I'm at right now. After welding one more post for the wastegate mount, it is ready to go back together. So the intercooler piping now fits...but the wastegate doesn't, it wont fit between the compressor housing and the radiator fan. So I'm planning on getting the two biggest SPAL/FAL fans I can fit on the radiator. I hope to fit over 2000 cfm of fans on there, but that will be next week's project.

I plan to wire the pass. side fan like OEM, using DSMLink to turn it on whenever. I plan to run a dash switch and relay to the AC side so I can flip it on for track days, and not pull the extra current unless I need it.

Oh, Scott - As I would see my CEL come on for high coolant temps, I'd maintain my pace through traffic and get in the pit lane as soon as I could. I'd roll into the pits, crank the heater up, and get out of the car to open the hood. Well, not doing a full cooldown lap left enough heat in the brakes to start depositing material when I came to a stop (or so my theory goes...). So every time I went back out on to the track I noticed it a bit more, and finally it hit me talking with TCE about brake pad selection. Gotta do a full cooldown lap to not abuse the pads and rotors!
 
I still think it has to do with not enough clean air getting to the radiator. How do you have the ducting getting air to it? Pics would be good if you have some ro can snap a few off. You may want to think about a hood vent as well. This really is not to get air into the engine bay, but to force hot air out of the there. The less hot air you have in there the better.
What I did was cut the stock ducting to fit, and supplemented it with aluminum sheet and foam pipe insulation. It's sealed up pretty good. The only place for air to escape between the FMIC & radiator is the small opening around the hood latch. I've got a bunch of pics here.

I should also mention that I was running both exhaust heat shields as well.

As for a hood vent, at some point I'd like to get a vented CF hood. But that's down the road. For now I'm going to try the oil cooler / waterwetter & water / 170º thermostat and see if that resolves the problem.


Gotta do a full cooldown lap to not abuse the pads and rotors!
Ah, yes. Cooldown laps are key. I would just do a couple slow laps and the coolant temps would drop to "normal", then I'd get back into it again.
 
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