More Racing!

July 26th, 2015

Another beautiful day for autocross!

I'm really starting to get the hang of this car.  Unfortunately I haven't had the time to buy any upgrades for it.  As you can see in the photo above, the stock suspension can only be pushed so far.  The front inside wheel is an inch off the ground, and you could fit a baby in that wheel-well gap!

I'm almost certain I won't have any modifications done on the car before next month's autocross, but it's still a blast to try and master control of your own car.  At the moment I have my eyes set on wider rims, stickier tires, a set of coilovers (Aragosta seems like the best), and even a Monster Sport F100 turbo kit, if I can get it to work.  About 30% increase in power would be terrifying!  >:]

Organizing

July 19th, 2015

If you've been following me so far, you know the interior has been in disarray with a jumbled mess of wires all over the place.  I decided that before my next autocross event, I'd clean  it all up and mount the boost gauge again.

When I relocated the HVAC panel, there was this support beam left there.  It's not really supporting anything at the moment, but instead of removing it, I just bolted the gauge to it.  My knee doesn't block it in this spot, so as long as the gas-engine is in the car and it has a turbo, this will do nicely.

I also decided to take the passenger seat out.  The seat probably only weighs 2kg, but any little bit of weight should help.  Because racecar!

Suede all the things

July 5th, 2015

I just can't leave cars alone.

As I've done to my last few cars, I wanted to wrap a few interior pieces in the Autozam with suede.  I get this self-adhesive stuff from a guy in Korea and it's pretty fun to work with.

As I started removing the plastic interior panels, I gained even more respect for Suzuki/Mazda.  When they built this car, they really wanted something as light as possible.  Every piece is as thin as possible.  Super flimsy, but it's all you need!

This piece in particular was a huge pain.  Apart from a Toyota Sera glove box, these B-pillars were the most complicated I've had to deal with.

It's important to leave yourself a lot of extra suede on the sides just in case.  Wrapping interiors has become a kind of meditation for me.  That's part of the reason I like it.  That and it makes the car feel a little more classy.

The rest of the pieces were pretty straight-forward.

Why leave it plain plastic when you can have suede??

Sure I'm adding a little weight, but it feels much nicer inside.

Even if I'm not changing something, I love to take apart cars just to find out more about them.

The deeper in you go, the more you understand the designers.  Especially on such a rare car like this, I'm amazed at all the bespoke parts.

I even found this:

Super Car Inspection!  Glad to see it was taken care of.  I have a feeling the oil was changed right before they shipped it from Japan.

I also started taking off the tint.  It's been impossible to see out of the back, and this should lighten up the interior a bit.  More on that next time.