Okay, so what got done, and how did it go?
Old List:
1.Remove full dash, air ducting, sound deadening behind dash, and tar of floors
2.Remove ACD pump (still in there from swap, but now not functional. About 20lbs off the left front of the car)
3.Remove Headlights and HID ballasts
4.Make A)"Custom" Sawzalled fenders to allow additional lowering or B) Custom C/F widebody fenders
5.Re-align for additional front camber
6.Remove tail-lights and make custom covers (C/F?)
7.Swap springs front to rear
8.Remove A/C system
9.Make drivers front window, removeable for rain events
10.Tape passanger door lock so it stops locking everytime you close door
11.Fiberglass/modify 2nd bumper and paint to match
1-3 were most of the work. Taking the dash out without damaging anything was very time consuming. There are a lot of hidden bolts in bad locations making it hard to take apart. However I did get it done, and the crash bar bolted back in to use as the gauge mounting. The dash/ACD Pump and bracket/headlights took a total of 93lbs off of the car since the last time it was weighed. The car still had full A/C, heater core, and blower motor all sitting over the front of the vehicle that need to come out.
Left weight is perfect. Cross weight has some wedge. Hopefully I can fix that through the removal of the A/C off the right front corner. 63/37 weight bias to the front right right now. A lot of that should come out with the removal of the HVAC off the from the front end. I will be doing some relocation as well. However due to budget, that may not be till next year.
I was able to get the car "aligned." It's worse off than it was before Mineral wells thanks to the tune shop having the subframe down. Not much that can be done now. The good news, it didn't affect any uneven tire wear on the bias-slicks. There is a steering wheel pull when going straight and letting go of the wheel, but what fun is going straight? :D
The rest didn't get done purely due to time. I took an extra 2 days to get ready and pack rather than rush and possibly make mistakes.
I took two days down in Lincoln to prep, rather than rushing down and running the ProSolo. Glad I did. I never would have had the time to check over the suspension the way I did. I found that the shop that had done the transmission, had left out some washers that were in place on the coilovers to clamp properly on the knuckle. There was more than .5" of vertical play in the front wheels when I caught this.
A few runs on the test course, and the car seemed to be acting up. It seemed like it was starving on fuel. The wind noise makes most of it hard to notice, but you can hear it choking coming through the finish. It was doing it lightly through out the run, but I wasn't sure what to do about a minor miss.
It presented itself a lot more heavily on the actual course. There were a lot higher speeds, and larger throttle zones where the car really started jerking hard. I modified the audio on this video to limit wind noise so the throttle can be hear. The horrible over-driving is brought to you by a lack of course walks, and trying to figure out what the hell was going on with the car!
After taking a mechanical and having a bunch of great people over trying to help, we thought the vehicle speed sensor might have been loose. So I gave it another run. The next run was even worse. I pulled off course early to avoid having a EP Civic catch me. That's right, I was afraid a Civic would catch me...
Jeremy Foley was nice enough to let me take my final run in his BSP car. However, with the ABS and ACD out, the brakes locked up on light application. I managed to over-drive this run as well, and like the other two, take a cone with me. I decided that being 5 seconds out with a non-working car, sleep was a worthy cause. So I packed up and made the early trip home (having to work at 6am the next day).
After speaking with a number of people and getting some leads on where to start, I checked the relays/resistors on the firewall behind the intake manifold. Sure enough, the #3 fuel pump relay was unplugged. That relay switches at WOT to allow full power to the fuel pump. With it being disconnected, the current was running through the resistor all the time, putting the fuel pump in low output mode. This is what was giving me both the misfire, and the lean burning symptoms. A quick run down the block, the car seemed to make a lot more power.
The next step, is to test it more under heavy loads. I've got a local autocross in 2 weeks to shake down the car and get any bugs out before CenDiv's (What? Test the car before trailering multiple hours out of state to events? Unheard of!)
The next two weeks goals are as follows:
1. Continue work on making new bumper
2. Remove HVAC system
3. Install/mount C/F trunk
4. Make taillight replacements
5. Cleanup dash wiring and remove excess weight
6. Remove sound deadening tar from floor pan
-Mike
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