Mid Season Upgrades - and a Time Attack Podium!

I know my regular updates have been anything but regular this year. Since mid-summer, we’ve been very busy in the Reed household. We welcomed our second daughter at the end of July and things have been very busy with the addition to the family.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t stopped with the car! Just with my blog upkeep!

So, with a looming due date, I kept finding myself in the garage thinking about a big project.  My new-to-me rebuilt e153 I’ve been using all year was solid… but it didn’t like to shift above 7000 rpm.  I found out this was due to the earlier e153 (91-92 mostly) being single synchro, while the later (93+) being double synchro.  It became really apparent when I synched together the same turns of the track from last year and this year, I was probably burning 1/10th of a second per upshift.  With 6 upshifts per lap, that’s a solid half a second, if not more. 

(Yes, that’s a paddleboard on the roof of my car)

I still had my old trans (originally from my first gen3 swap 8 years ago) sitting in the corner of the shop, but the LSD in it was toast.  Since I had to stay close to home (baby was due any day now), had plenty of time on my hands, and wanted to progress the car a bit… I decided to pull my current transmission, swap the LSD units, put them both back together, and install my double synchro trans with Quiafe LSD back into the car.  I admit, this is a lot of effort for what it was… but I had the time, and it was essentially a free mod since I had all the parts. 

I started by disassembling my old transmission sitting in the shop before taking my car apart just to see how difficult this would be.  The transmissions on these cars is a final frontier for me, I had never dug deep into one yet. 

 I mostly followed the BGB for transmission breakdown.  I took a lot of photos to make sure things would go back together the way they came apart.

I was also meticulous about keeping things clean and organized.  I would lay out parts in the order which they were removed to aid in re-assembly. 

After struggling with the 5th gear removal, I went and bought a better puller tool and things got easier.  I got the mid-case off and was a bit intimidated… until I realized the trans is essentially four parts, the input shaft (driven by the motor, right side in pic), the output shaft (middle shaft), shift selector rods (in front), and final drive(big gear mechanism on the left).  We would be leaving the input and output shaft be, and swapping the final drive/differential mechanism. 

Once I had removed the oem LSD from the 93+ trans, I realized this wasn’t that bad.  Take your time, be patient, and when necessary, hit a few things to help tap them loose. 

So, then I spent about three hours removing the engine/trans from my car.  I’m too good at this process.  Having a lift and cart to set the engine onto makes things easier and way less sketchy.

I removed the trans and inspected the clutch.

I measured the disc thickness in a few spots, and came up with 0.30”.  Everything looked ok, just dirty. 

I fired off an email to Clutchmasters to see how much life my clutch likely had left in it.  A few days later I heard back they start at .330” thick, and they recommend replacement at .295”.  With that in mind I ordered a replacement clutch from Clutchmasters.  By the time I had heard back from CM, ordered, and received the clutch I had already put the car back together, so the clutch is waiting to be installed this winter. 

Back to the project at hand!  I got the 91-92 trans off the engine and onto the operating table.  Time to disassemble this one as well.  

A couple of hour later, success!  The Quaife lsd was removed successfully and ready to assemble both trans back together.

 Assembly took more time than tear down.  I took my time here, the last thing I wanted was to miss a pin, spring, or bolt somewhere and find out by ruining a perfectly good transmission…or worst case, both!

Here you see me testing the torque setting on the bearings on the output shaft.  Note: these are different for early and late spec e153, so take notice of that. I did not replace the bearings for the LSD/final drive.  They all looked to be in great shape, and the bearing races all looked good, so I decided to send it.  So far things have been fine.  If you were installing a new LSD, you would have to replace these as they don’t come off the old assembly without being destroyed most of the time. 

After some cleaning and a lick of paint, the power unit was ready to go back in.  I also replaced an axle seal, and shift shaft dust boot as they had perished beyond my comfort level. 

 After testing the car, the shifting was noticeably better, especially at higher RPM.  Those double synchros make a big difference!  If you’re trying to source an e153, try to find a 93+.  It’s made a big difference in times, and overall driving feel.

 Well, that project is complete… it was a big one.  But we were still waiting for the kiddo.  So why not tackle some weight reduction.

 I’ve always wanted to replace the rear glass.  With the F40 engine lid and limited visibility, it being perfectly clear wasn’t a big deal to me.  It was some weight up high in the car, and in the rear, basically our most needed areas to reduce.

I removed the interior plastic pieces in the rear of the cabin, and the exterior rear valence (Carefully!).

Then using this slick harbor freight tool and a piano wire kit I was able to muscle the blade though the 28 year old sealant.

It was weird seeing the interior like that through the engine bay.  It made the car feel so small. 

Here’s the rear glass leaned up against the 1/8” polycarbonate we’re going to use to replace it. 

With the aggressive curve of the glass I used some paper to make a template to transfer to the flat polycarbonate.

Once traced out it was time to start cutting. Going slow with a jigsaw, be careful to not chip the poly. Plexiglass will not work, it just breaks into shards if you try to cut like this, polycarbonate is much easier to work with.

Once cut and cleaned up, I set up to start mounting the new window.  The 1/8” thick poly takes some muscling, but it will bend to fit the MR2 without having to heat it up to mold.

I used a few self tappers to hold the new piece in place for final fitment. 

Then I pulled the window, and on the inside face I cut a line in the protective film for painting a border around to make it look more OEM.

Then, paint.

While the paint cured, I drilled out the mounting holes and installed rivnuts for installing the lighter poly window.  With some foam tape between the rivnuts it should be plenty watertight, and removable if I need to in the future.

Here’s the new window, and tapered hardware.  The OEM one weighed 5 pounds more with all the stuff I removed.  A solid 5 pounds saved!

Project finished, you would probably never pick up it was poly in person unless I pointed it out to you. 

While buttoning up the interior I also removed the remaining sub box sheet metal, and the remaining sound deadening on the gas tank tunnel.  Another 7 pounds removed!

Throughout the last year I’ve realized my parking brake has been dragging, especially when hot coming off the track.  It makes a noise I thought was a wheel bearing going bad, but would go away if I grabbed some e-brake and released it while moving.  I decided to see if I even needed an e-brake… by removing it.  The entire system (calipers, brackets, lines, interior handle) was a whopping 17 pounds!  I know it’s the lowest point of the car, but removing weight is removing weight.  We’ve chipped away another 29 pounds.  Couple that with the savings from the headlights, we’re removed 41 pounds off the car this summer.  Theoretically the car should be about 2350 pounds without driver and fuel, or 2550 with.  With 309whp, those are pretty good numbers!

Since removing it, I haven’t missed the e-brake either.  It’s just as easy to leave the car in gear when parking. 

Now, I wanted more downforce.  Not only more, but preferably cheap.  The front of my car has a lot of bite and great grip for the most part I’m never fighting understeer.  Usually it’s the rear grip that could be better.  When a buddy with a fast S2000 posted a picture on IG of a gigantic new rear wing he bought, I had to ask what was happening with his 9Lives wing he was previously using.  He agreed to sell to me for a solid price, so I picked it up. 

A real 2d wing should have more downforce than my ebay/NRG/voltex knockoff 3d wing.  Upon doing more research, 3d wings (with different angles on the blade) are meant to be mounted a bit lower on the rear of the car and the middle portion is at a different angle to better cope with the air coming at a downward angle off the backside of the coupe of the car…in my case, the f40 lid. 

A 2d wing is easier to actually calculate the downforce it will create in free flowing air, and is easier to tune for the best results since it should be more effective at roof height or higher. 

The 9lives wing I picked up was made of aluminum.While it’s heavier than my carbon replica wing… it’s substantially stronger.

But, it wasn’t totally bolt on.  The wing mounts were too close together.

With the help of a local welder, I had then widened to meet my existing wing stands.  I only had to drill one hole to mount the wing at 5 degrees angle of attack.  That gives us the best downforce to drag ratio for the speeds we hit at the tracks local to me. 

As you can see, these wings have a TON of adjustment points available.  This mount solution was really just to test and to be temporary until I had more time and data to build legitimate wingstands this winter.  Also, I won’t be leaving this blade raw aluminum…it’s blinding in the sun!

Here’s my angle of attack measurement.  While the slab in my shop isn’t perfectly flat, this is pretty close for me!

The cool things with the 9Lives wings is you can add and change gurney flaps on them for more or less downforce and drag.  9Lives sells them for about $50 each… but when looking at the end of the wing I let out an audible hmmmmm and realized some 1/16” aluminum angle would work perfectly there once trimmed down. 

With the endplate off you can see how the gurney flap slides in.  The aluminum angle cost me about $11, and half hour of my time to trim to fit into the slot on the wing.  Since I destroyed an older carbon wing of mine, I realized they are totally hollow on the inside, you can see this aluminum wing extrusion has more material and support, making it much stronger overall.  I can easily put all my weight on this without issue. 

With the 5 degree attack angle, and ¾” gurney flap, 9Lives rates this wing at 474 pounds of downforce at 140mph!  My top speeds are 137 currently, but even at 100mph this wing will make 240 pounds of downforce.  My old carbon wing… likely about half that. 

 Ok, the car was ready.  We had a few track days lined up at the end of the season, but most importantly, I had signed up for one more Time Attack event.  Ongrid is fairly new track day organization, especially in the PNW.  They held a time attack event mid summer at Oregon Raceway Park, but I was not able to attend.  They had one final event up here, Ongrid Ridge Wars. 

The cool thing about the Ongrid time attack events are the rules… or lack of.  They run three classes, a street class limited by 255 width/200tw tires, v6 NA, and no aero.  There was also a mod class, limited by 295 width/200tw tires, and basic aero.  And then, the race class.  Literally the only rule was run what ya brung. 

Since I have MANY laps at the Ridge with my A052 tires, I wanted to spend a day really learning my Hoosier A7s.  I only had a few sessions on them, and they seemed fantastic but a bit numb to me.  In the spring I got one session on the Ridge with them, and ran a somewhat casual 1:48.3 lap.  So, I checked the box for the race class.

I knew a lot of PNW locals coming to the event, and they were all tight lipped about which class they were going to run.  At the drivers meeting I knew right away there was a ringer amongst us.  Our friend Kevin has a well built, but nothing crazy, e92 m3.  He does A LOT of track days.  I see him at almost every one I’m at.  Utilizing BMW spec takeoff slicks he’s capable of really low 1:44s, and even 1:43 laps.  So I knew right there I was probably fighting for second place.  We had a bunch of other fast PNW drivers there, including my buddy Karl who sold me the 9Lives wing that was on my car now.  His NA s2000 is one of the fastest, and he recently picked up some Yoko A005 slicks.  Another buddy John in his 2gr mr2 was also in our class.  He recently went wide with some flares, and I knew he’d be a contender with 295 wide rear a052s.  I had my work cut out for me. 

The time attack portion of the day was 3 sessions.  They gridded you just like GTA, by fastest previous time to make sure you weren’t going to cause traffic amongst others trying for their fastest.  They gridded me about 6th, which was great and also a bit nerving.  These were some of the fastest guys in the PNW area, and many I called friends.  I didn’t want to do anything dumb. 

First lap in and the track was cold.  Ambient temps were only 50 or so when we started.  It took 4-5 laps to trust the grip the tires were giving.  I laid the hammer down and found a 1:47.8, and then a 1:47.3.  I was ecstatic.  But, at the same time worried.  The car had developed a bad shudder under braking, which had me braking earlier than I would’ve liked.  But, I was in second place in race class, so I was happy.

The second session might prove to be ideal conditions.  It had warmed up to mid 60s and the track had been rubbered in all morning by the others participating in HPDE.  I knew I had to make this count.  I had a hard goal of 1:46 on the A7s.

 I was also gridded higher now, 4th to go out.  It should be noted that besides tires my car falls firmly in the Mod class.  There were two very fast guys in the mod class ahead of me.  One in a 911 GT3, and the other, my buddy Jared in his Sector1 S2000, powered by a J32 v6. 

1:46.7!  As you can see I was very happy.  But, at the same time, my brakes were feeling worse.  The shudder is noticeable in the video under heavy brake zones.  Once they cooled down I pulled the front wheels and checked everything to be sure something wasn’t loose.  It all looked and felt fine. 

I had a solid 1.5 second lead over 3rd place, Karl in his S2000.  Kevin had a run a 1:43, so he was way ahead in first, pretty much uncatchable for me.  I still wanted to go out for the final session and see if I could find a bit more time.  I knew there were a few turns I could’ve optimized on my best lap. 

I had a great first sector, and actually caught up to Jared, which took me by surprise on my hot lap, so I backed off and set up for another try… but the brakes were scaring me by then.  I’ve run these used ST43 pads for two years now… it’s probably time for new pads at the least. 

 So I came in and anxiously awaited to see the timing to go live on the app.  Then it did, I had a solid 2nd place in the race class!  I’ve never been on a podium with anything related to cars or driving so this was really cool for me. 

The transmission shifted wonderfully all day, especially quick above 7000 rpm.  The new wing made the rear of the car much more planted, especially through the high speed turns 1-5.  The Hoosiers came alive for me, they really perform well when being asked to do two things at once.  This is especially helpful when trail braking, where I think I found the most pace throughout the day.  When at their limit, they do give you a fair bit of warning, I think I’m hooked on the purple crack!

Our good friend Emilio was competing in the Street class and was in a similar situation, he was alone in 2nd place having run a 1:54 in his 2zz MR-S, great for him too! 

This was a great way to end my track season.  We had unexpectedly great weather, and the car, and driver, performed.  I know what I need to improve in myself, and the car to go even faster next year.  Stay tuned because that will start happening soon!