Most liked posts in thread: The Phoenix - The GP Roadster Project

Adjusted brackets, moved the splitter up about 3/8". Fabbed a filler panel to seal the gap in the bumper. Put some weather stripping on the top of the splitter to seal in the area in front of the wheels.





I think I got my money's worth out of this wheel...


Changed oil, wired oil temp sensor. Used the plug adapter for now, I'll drill and tap the pan later. Pulled an oil sample to take to the lab.


Then took it out and drove the everlovin snot outta it.
OMG, it's crazy how much difference the splitter makes above 70mph. The faster you go (over 70), the more planted the front end gets. I took some nice sweepers and esses at <speed redacted>, and had WAY more margin available. It will be beastly at VIR next week. The car is much, much better than the driver, right now.

I have the Aquamist system setup like I want, for now. Spraying just a little at high load, my IATs never went over 120F today, and recover almost instantly. But have only burned about half a gallon of meth in three hours of hammering on it, and it doesn't materially impact my AFR.

Even RaceCars go shopping, sometimes.


Back home. Beast mode complete.


Gotta do one more test fit of the 15's tomorrow, and get the track trailer packed.

 

Nah, I always make sure it's full of air before I drive.
:cornut:

 

Crazy good topless car T-shirt weather today, 70 degrees.

I spend about 6 hours fiddling with my suspension and alignment. I got the alignment PERFECT... then realized that my ride height was uneven, right side was about half an inch higher than the left, even though my coils were set to the same height on both sides. Argh.

So I got the ride height evened out, then had to do the alignment all over again. Because everything changes when you tilt the entire car half an inch to the right.

And with the fancy Greene Performance camber/caster plates, I have to drop the strut and plate to adjust camber. But it's totally worth it, because the added caster is incredible.

So... many iterations of tweaking camber front and rear, drop the car off the lift, shake and roll, measure, put it back on the lift, repeat. Probably 10 iterations. But finally got camber and toe right where I wanted, front and rear. And I took REALLY GOOD notes, so now I have a pretty good cookbook for "X adjustment yields Y change in camber or toe". I'm getting really good at toe adjustments, and rear camber.

Needed to drive, so decided to head down to visit my mom at the homestead, about half an hour away. Was having a nice visit, then looked outside and it was getting PRETTY DARK. Uh... why is that? Pulled up Dark Sky... and "rain starting in 30 minutes". WTF? it wasn't supposed to rain today... I'm in a car with no roof. And i left my car cover at home... Ugh. Looked at the radar... the rain is coming from the direction of home... meaning I'm going to be driving into the rain to get home... Double Ugh.

So I told my mom "Sorry, but I gotta go NOW..." and bolted.



Just some sprinkles and a light shower for the last few miles before I got home. The sky opened up just as I was backing into the driveway... LUCKY.



But now I know the wipers work. And as long as I'm moving and the windows are up, not much rain actually comes into the passenger compartment.

I'll keep the cover in the car, from now on...

Then decided to test-fit my track wheels and tires one more time, since I've adjusted so much stuff and added the splitter, just to make sure the car isn't too low for the track.



Glad I tried it, because I needed a few more mm of spacing on the rear to clear the trailing arm strut mount. Otherwise all as I expected. FWIW, I'm running 12mm front and 8mm rear spacers with the 6ULs, DT front brakes and 2nd gen JCW rear brakes, and BC/Greene Performance coilovers.

But the splitter is pretty darn low.



About 50mm after the car settled; 2" of ground clearance. cct1 says he ran even a little lower than this at the track and had no issues with riding the curbing on the corners. So should be good. But it's definitely not a street-friendly setup. I drove about 5 miles just to make sure everything was happy, and didn't drag anywhere... but also avoided potholes and speed bumps and parking curbs.

 

Indeed

 

Great story, thanks!

I've thought about that, but for now will stick with the current setup. I have a cover I'll carry and use when needed in the rain. I'll also carry the bikini top, when done, and will be able to put it on and off in a minute or two. The car should stay relatively dry with it on, they way I've designed it.

 

Yep, I have the temp strips - thanks!

The splitter only overhangs the front edge of the bumper by 2" at the corner, and only goes .5" lower. You'd have to hit a seriously aggressive curb straight on for it to bottom, even with only a couple of inches of ground clearance. At the approach angle you'll usually be riding the curbing at, it shouldn't be an issue.

 

Rainy week here, but should be nice at VIR this weekend. Getting ready to hit the road Friday.

First, make sure the GPness Poncho is good to go. I bought this cover from Roadster Solutions. It's designed to fit a MINI cabrio, with top up or down. But not with NO top. I tested it previously, and it just needed something ("garters") to hold it in place on the "hips" of the car. The Roadster Solutions folks sold me a few extra hold down straps with bendable padded hooks, and I sewed two of them on yesterday. Works perfectly.






Getting the track trailer packed and ready to roll. Stickers are important.



Finally, if I'm going to be driving a lot of miles to and from places, cruise control would be nice.

On the old car, I gave up cruise when I did the transmission swap. With the auto body harness, there were key bits missing (like clutch pedal switch wiring) that are necessary to support cruise. But with the new car, theoretically, cruise should be an option again.

But... I still want to keep my pretty carbon fiber steering wheel trim, instead of the ugly multifunction steering wheel (MFSW) buttons. Some of you may recall, on the old car, I did a hardware hack to use my old automatic shift paddles to control stereo volume. I decided to try a variant of this, to use the paddles to run the cruise control system...

Here are the important parts: the paddles, and a disassembled cruise control pod.


The paddles are designed to connect together and act interchangeably, so pushing or pulling either one would close one of two circuits. For the cruise, I need to simulate four button presses, so I'll need to separate the paddles and wire them independently.

The MFSW pods work in sort of a master/slave configuration. The right side with cruise is the master with most of the electronics on it (e.g. for translating button presses to bus messages), and the steering wheel MFSW harness plugs into this. Then it has a connection to the left side audio/bluetooth pod, which is really just sort of a "dumb" board with buttons.

Buttons on both pods work the same way. The circuit board has two pairs of contact pads under each button (the things that look like gold circles with an "S" through them). On each pair of contact pads, the "outer" half of the contacts is a common ground shared by all the pads; the "inner" half is the "signal" pad.
Pressing the button shorts across one or both pairs of contacts with a conductive rubber button. I'm replacing the "shorting" action of the rubber button, with a circuit through the appropriate shift paddle. I do this by very carefully soldering jumper wires to the appropriate contact pads, and wiring these to the paddles.

On each paddle, there are three wires connected to the paddle switch: Red, Green and Brown. Pulling a paddle closes a circuit on the Green and Brown wires. Pushing a paddle closes a circuit on the Green and Red wires. So Green acts as a common ground for the switch.

Separate the paddles, tie green from both sides to one of the "ground" pads on the MFSW cruise button pod, and tie the other four wires to the signal pads as appropriate. In my case, I'm making the left paddle do on/off (push) and resume (pull), and the right paddle does +/accel (pull) and -/coast (push).



After testing circuits with a multi-meter to ensure I don't have any inadvertent shorts, I carefully routed the wires, added plug connectors, and wrapped the board in electrical tape.


Install in the wheel, carefully routing all the wires to avoid pinches...


Moment of truth... start the car...


Press the "on/off" paddle...


Buwahahahahaha!!!

That's a good sign. On/off works as it should. I'll do a full operational test as soon as it stops raining.

 

Hardwired my V1 and mounted it on the cabrio windshield header panel.

Ran charging cable for my roll cage iPhone mount, that I use with Harry's Lap Timer.

Test drove between storms here. Stark Industries flappy paddle cruise control TOTALLY WORKS, first attempt. Amazing.