updates?
A little late, but I have updates! Lol. Thanks to Kinger for finally getting me to put some words down about what I've been doing with this thing over the past couple years. We've had some similar experiences, and similar attitude toward what the car SHOULD be based on time, money and effort invested. These cars fight you every step of the way if you actually care about refinement. It is easy to build a fast polished turd, but if that's all I was doing I wouldn't have sunk this much money into it.
I went through a string of really bad luck with this car. I can say now that the car is better than ever, but it has been a long, long road to get here.
First off...things went wrong with the 8.8. About 4 years back I was away for an entire year for work and pretty much saved up with grand plans to do a T56 magnum, 8.8, twin disk clutch and maybe a couple other things all at once.
Pretty much everything turned into a shit show and fought me along the way. Nothing unexpected with a project car, but the thought was after dumping $6k into the car it'd be a little more "refined". For the money spent on top of the line parts, it shouldn't drive and act like a shitbox. It especially hurt since the whole motivation behind these mods was to make it more refined and a better street car. Before I did all this the car was the fastest and more fun to drive because the drivetrain atleast was without issues...it was just catless, had 4.10's and GTO gears screaming on the highway, had a mazda diff that might explode someday, had a heavy single disk clutch etc.
A summary of things I can remember - The driveshaft was built at the wrong length and needed to be remade on my dime, the magnum (brand new) pops out of reverse, the shifter leaks like a sieve and the whole underside is HEAVILY lubricated, the twin disk has an awful rattle at 1800 rpm, the 8.8 had gnarly gear whine and I rebuilt it with new gears only for it to still have whine...my custom dual exhaust didn't fit under the 8.8...once I got the car driving the car STILL had vibrations at highway speed...oh and I tried more of a street tire with the RE71R's only to find that they were just as bad as an R-Comp lol. Last but not least, the car had far worse wheel hop than with the old mazda diff (which I actually really liked, but wasn't a fan of how much NVH it transmitted with a fairly rigid mounting strategy).
So pretty much a major letdown both on refinement and performance. It is probably my least happy time period of owning the car, and the most money I had spent on it since completion.
Since that round of mods I kept rubbing on it to try and improve things and eventually had a pretty massive failure where the Samberg 8.8 mount completely failed and the driveshaft contacted the floor and destroyed my driveshaft, and basically broke the mounting points on the floor for the Samberg crossmember. That was another painful time...
So, lucky for me I live about 5 miles away from Ronin HQ and went and picked up their 8.8 mounting kit and after numerous months of downtime and a lot more expense I was back on the road. I had to buy another 8.8 (explorer vs cobra), and buy ANOTHER driveshaft because mine hit the floor and gouged it up. Come to find out - the dual exhaust again did NOT fit and needed to be rerouted around the larger Explorer diff lol.
When I finally got the car back on the road, I still had a lot of vibration at highway speed, a shocking amount of wheel hop, and the goddamn gears still whine (still bitter about this one lol I'm 0/3). Setting up a rear end is not rocket science but there's something about an aluminum case 8.8 that we just can't get right. The pattern looks good going in, and then coming out the actual wear pattern is different way off. I don't know if the aluminum cases move or what happens...but this is really just me complaining now. I'll get it someday when I want to put a 4th set of gears in...
So - long story still long - I am happier than ever with the car, and this is far and away the best it has ever been. I've put about 22,000 miles on the car since I originally built it. With these latest mods and after many years I've finally had the confidence to drive the car like it is capable of being driven. I've always driven it hard and was happy to powerslide it around slow speed, but it has always been nervous at higher speeds and I never really wanted to be on power while changing lanes in a straight line let alone powering through corners. I always had a sense of the car feeling like an arrow with no feathers.
I can now be full throttle 2nd gear through corners and that is an absolutely mind melting experience. I would put this thing up against any street car on the road right now, and if I lose a race at least I know I'll be having the most fun.
So, what has gotten me here -
- Highway Vibration - This has plagued me for the entire existence of my car including day 1 up until very recently. I think I have had 5 or more driveshaft iterations in the car. To only talk about the latest experience, the new driveshaft I had built after it hit the shop again did a shit job of balancing the shaft and it shook like a mofo. After taking it out again and threatening their life they returned it properly balanced, but still had a little shake to it. After clocking it a couple times I found the "happy spot" for it in the car and finally it is smooth up to 120mph coasting. Another experiment I did was that I hung a plumb bob from the axles and the driveshaft and used a T-square to find the horizontal alignment of the driveshaft in the car. The transmission was not on center with the differential and I found a noticeable improvement by moving the tail of the transmission over about 1/2" or more. Lastly, I had my latest set of tires road force balanced as I've always had to have my tires balanced multiple times to get them smooth. Road force nailed it on the first go.
- Wheel Hop - My buddy had a C6ZR1 for a while and he actually was crazy enough to pay about $4k to have all the suspension bushings replaced which spherical bearings. That car had horrible wheel hop, and then when it came back it was night and day difference. Within a couple days of that joy ride I contacted J-Auto and got his "battle version" lower control arm, toe link and trailing arm. Wheel hop has been reduced by about 80% over stock arms with Poly bushings. The remainder of the wheel hop I think could be fixed with solid bushings in the diff, but I'm not interested in going that route.
- LSD - Far out man.... I had a Torsen T2R in my car with the cobra 8.8. Previous to that I had the S4 T2 clutch type LSD. With the stock diff I absolutely loved the car and found it to be one of the most predictable and progressive cars I've ever driven. With the Torsen diff (which is most recommended and most popular for the 8.
I found it to be very unpredictable in transitioning in and out of slides, and when spinning tires in a straight line did a lot of tail wagging back and forth. I could ramble more about the nature of how a Torsen diff works and while I understand their benefit on the track, I find a clutch pack diff is stupid simple to drive and my preference. I put a cobra clutch type LSD back in the car with the carbon clutches and I hope it lives for a while. The feel and predictability is back and I'm in love.
Side note and something that most people don't realize, the Cobra Clunk is almost guaranteed to be in the Torsen style differentials. Tolerance stackup on multiple gear interfaces causes a lot of delay between driveshaft rotation and axle rotation. My clunking is gone after installing a clutch pack diff. - Tires - I put a full slick on the car. This one was a pretty huge gamble, but it was transformative. It is still a DOT-R tire, but the Maxxis RC-1 has literally zero tread pattern except one groove. They're silent, perfectly round, balanced with minimal weight, and grip like a mother fucker. I have had experience with RE71-R tires and R888's. Of those two, I liked the R888. Considering the Maxxis...it is the best driving experience I've ever had. I think overall performance of all three would likely be similar, but the Maxxis surprisingly makes the best street tire (but I've had to Uber to work the couple times it rained in Cali).
- Bump Steer - So just like everything else I've had to re-engineer or replace from Samberg, the bumpsteer correction is insufficient in his kit. I had about 3/8" toe out across the range of travel of the suspension. Who gives a flying fuck where your alignment is if the wheel it going to move by 1/8" or more when you hit the gas. For fucks sake. Anyways, I borrowed Mattster's Longacre bumpsteer kit and took some real measurements. I have only 17" wheels so I have extremely minimal room to the wheel barrel, but was able to spend some quality time with a grinder and profile some things and space the tie rod further down by about 1/8". I still have toe out through the wheel motion, but it is about 1/3 what it used to be. I can let go of the steering wheel and go full throttle and the car never strays from center. It is absolutely amazing, and so much more confidence inspiring.
- Seat - I took a gamble and bought a Tillett B5 carbon Lotus seat from a guy who was too fat to fit in it. I didn't know of anyone at the time who had put a Tillett in the FD, but I saw pictures of them in other tiny cars. I absolutely love this thing. I always griped that my stock seat sat me too high. Now I'm basically on the ground, and it fits me like a less aggressive karting seat. I love it!!
So what does the car still need? Well, performance has never been better...but it can't really do it for a long time.
1. Brakes - if pushed hard I bet I could catch my stock brakes on fire. The speeds you can gain in such a short time are just dumb. I need a brake system I can confidently stop for a 20 minute session without requiring race pads. I don't mind fast pad wear, and there are street friendly high temp pads, but the rotors are physically just too small.
2. My 17" wheels severely limit brake size. I can cram a tiny BBK under the 17" Enkeis, but the final form of this car will likely have 18's both for aesthetics and performance
3. Cooling - this is a major one...I have no oil cooler right now, and the Samberg cooling system does not provide enough cooling capacity for the car. In my opinion, that is both cooling power, and water capacity. Also, when the car heat soaks it does not have a large enough reservoir to capture the water and it pushes it out the tank onto the ground.
4. Heat Soak - This is a big ass engine in a tiny space. I need a vented hood. I want to scoot style hood with the front vent sealed off. Baby viper doo doo dooo do do.
5. Oil Pressure - So with driving the car full time on slicks...both cornering and accelerating in a straight line I've seen dips in oil pressure. I'm not really sure how I've kept from spinning a bearing as I think this happens much more often than I realize. The car needs a larger oil reservoir, and a more reliable pickup. I have the improved racing baffle right now and it just isn't enough.
6. Fuel pressure - I've gone through a number of fuel pump pickups and still even with a hydramat have fuel starvation issues. Putting the full slick on the car didn't help. I went to install a Hyperion baffle the other day and noticed fuel seeping up past my wiring harness. I think it is time to breakdown and order an in-tank surge tank before I actually break something.
7. Not urgent, but it needs reverse fixed. I'm tempted to faceplate the trans. I'm an idiot. I also want to fix my leaking shifter.
What does it not need? More power.
What am I doing? Yeah...building an engine. I started about 1.5 years ago collecting LS7 parts and am slowly working toward completing it.
It will be an 8000 rpm solid roller cam dry sumped 428" LS7 that will require re-engineering the entire cooling system and will add 150+ horsepower over my current stroker. I have almost all the hard parts I need minus an EFI and a dry sump. What I need more than anything is time to work on it.
Motivation is to take the car as it sits to Texas Mile and run 200 mph. It has been a bucket list item for the last 10 years and was a huge inspiration when I was building the car. Mark (GNX7) took his with his buddies and ran 194 and 196 mph. I don't know if I'll crack 200 in street trim, but it'll get close.
