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Re: Kenny's build thread

Posted: Apr 19th, 2017, 11:05 pm
by Kenny
So finally got around to fix the CV/Axle Bucket boot. Decided that since I had to take one of the buckets apart, might as well as do the famous Axle bucket swap (no real vibration under acceleration to speak off). This is easily one of the messiest jobs you will ever do on your car, especially when you have to cleanup the mess made by the boot coming off and spraying grease everywhere

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Here are some photos from the Track Night in America event last week

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Re: Kenny's build thread

Posted: Apr 21st, 2017, 6:41 pm
by Kenny
So as I've been tracking the car more and more, started to feel the that the stock seats were no longer cutting it. To try and stay in place I was having to brace myself with my knees, and this in turn made it difficult to be precise with my brake and throttle inputs. Only issue here is that the majority of the aftermarket seats that fit the S2000, don't fit me. I am what you could call "fluffy" (6'0" 280lbs 42" waist) and as you can imagine my options were extremely limited. I had tried several different seats: Recaro PP (barely fit, but harness holes are too low), Sparco EvoII US (fit decent, but requires extensive work to fit the car), and looked at ordering the Marrad ST3 (which are copies of the Recaro Pole Position ABE which are a little wider than the regular PP and have larger harness holes, but have no FIA or SFI certification). During my last track day with Track Night in America, one of the local S2000 guys had recently installed a Corbeau Forza Sport and I asked if I could sit in it. The seat fit me good (about the same as the Sparco EvoII US) is FIA certified, had proper harness holes, cost less than half of the Sparco and Recaro options, and best of all fit the S2000 with no modifications needed! So I decided to order the seat along with the Corbeau seat brackets with double locking sliders. Ordered the seats from THMotorsports who had the lowest price and also offered free shipping. The seat arrived one week after I ordered it, shipped directly from Corbeau

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The seat was packaged very well, it included the seat brackets in the box which are very well made with thick steel and predrilled for the S2000.

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The bracket install was very straightforward, the Forza Sport comes with options to either do a side mount or bottom mount, the Corbeau seat brackets use the bottom mounting option. To install just remove the 4 hex mounting bolts on the bottom of the seat, align with the holes in the slider and install.

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The brackets also include a place to mount the OEM seatbelt, which many aftermarket brackets do not

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Bracket install took maybe 10 minutes total, and the seat was ready to go in the car

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Here's a closeup of the seat and materials, it has good padding and the cloth like material seems to be good quality, I would say equal to what you get on a Sparco seat.

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FIA certification

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Side by side with the stock seat

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The seat install itself was very simple, I've read horror stories of installing aftermarket seats and how difficult it is, but with the Corbeau brackets, everything lined up perfectly out of the box, I pushed the seat slider all the way back and installed the front two bolts first but left them loose. Then pushed the seat all the way forward and using a long 3/8 extension easily bolted the back two bolts. Total install time, including removal of the stock seat and moving over the OEM seatbelt buckle was 45 minutes. Here are some pics of the seat installed:

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Before the install I took some pictures and measurements of myself in the seat with my helmet, just give others some idea of how low the seat fits. With both seats pused all the way back, the OEM seat was 40" from the floor of the car to the top of my head, the Corbeau seat was just under 39". So with this seat you also gain a little over an inch of headroom. Top is the Corbeau seat, bottom is the stock seat.

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Since I am happy with the seat and the ease of installation, I went ahead and ordered another for the passenger side as well. Had the wife try it out, and even though she is much smaller than me, she felt comfortable in the seat and said it felt much more supportive than the stock seat. Hopefully this helps some others in a similar situations, if anyone has any questions about the seat or the install, let me know!

Re: Kenny's build thread

Posted: Apr 24th, 2017, 8:53 pm
by Kenny
Finally got a chance to take some pictures of me in the seat with the seat belt buckled (extender didn't arrive till today).  There's not a ton of room to take pictures, but here you can see how the seat fits around my shoulders, its very snug but not uncomfortable.  Will take it for a spin soon and report back with driving impressions, also have a track day next week (May 5th) so should have some info from that as well.  The passenger side seat should arrive by Thursday, so will be installing that one next.

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Re: Kenny's build thread

Posted: Apr 28th, 2017, 12:11 pm
by Kenny
So finally got arround to getting the car dyno tuned. Up to this point the car had a street tune that was VERY conservative, the fueling was very rich, and the timing was extremely low. With the existing tune the car put down 352 RWHP / 235 ft/lbs, after adjusting the fuel to smooth it out, and adding some timing we ended up at 404 / 257 (SAE Corrected) @ 8280 RPM. This is still a very conservative tune to make sure it stays healthy on the track in all conditions.

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Re: Kenny's build thread

Posted: Apr 29th, 2017, 4:12 pm
by Cpt. Spock
nice numbers, especially considering thats still "conservative".

Re: Kenny's build thread

Posted: May 1st, 2017, 5:21 pm
by Kenny
Cpt. Spock wrote:nice numbers, especially considering thats still "conservative".
Yeah, I was happy with the results, we'll see how that translates on the track! :driving:

Also this weekend got to install the passenger side Corbeau Forza Sport seat

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The install took a little longer than the Driver's side seat due to complexity with the Air Bag sensor used in the 06+ cars. To ensure that the airbags stayed operational, had to remove the sensors from the stock seat rail and connect them with the new seat.

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For the time being I placed the rails next to the seat to test and make sure that they would keep the airbag light off.

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Took the car for a quick drive through some local twisty roads to test out the seats, and make sure no warning lights for the airbag system. Everything worked great and the wife even commented how comfortable the seats were, even better than the stock seats in her opinion. Get to try the seats out on the track this weekend, looking forward to seeing how they handle.

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Re: Kenny's build thread

Posted: Jun 2nd, 2017, 3:06 pm
by Kenny
So I am way overdue with some updates, so will try to cover some of the changes to the car. Not long after my last update I did another track day at MSR-C.

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The car ran great, but after the first session I lost one of the Longacre splitter support rods, and had some concerning squeaking coming from the brakes. So I decided to end my day early and left at lunch after 3 sessions.

During the week I decided to do a complete check of the entire braking system to make sure there was no binding, and that everything was working as expected. During this process as I was taking off the lug nuts on the front wheel, one of the studs broke off.

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I decided to go ahead and replace all of the studs with ARP extended studs as well as the wheel bearings with Timken OE replacements and the lug nuts with open end Muteki acorn nuts

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While trying to get the Axle Nut off the rear wheels I ended up breaking two 24" 1/2" breaker bars, the axle nut would not budge.

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Rather than break any more tools (and cause further damage to my ego) I decided to put everything back together and take the car to John Wallace to have him take care of them for me. I made sure I torqued all lug nuts back to 80 ft/lbs and had my wife follow me just in case something went wrong. This was a good idea as I was a couple of miles from John's house when I started feeling a vibration coming from the rear passenger wheel. I pulled over at a gas station and found that 4 of the 5 lug nuts on the rear wheel had come loose and were close to falling off completely.

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It appears that a couple of different items caused this to happen, first of all the plastic hubcentric ring in that wheel had become deformed/melted from tracking the car. So when I torqued the lug nuts on that side they seemed to be fully torqued, but after driving the hubcentric ring moved and the lugs were too loose and the vibrations caused them to back out. Also it appears that my Gorrilla Extended Lug Nuts which I had originally purchased to use with my Forgestar F14's were not properly seating against the seat of the TR Motorsports C3 wheels. Fortunately I had purchased new Muteki lug nuts to replace the Gorilla ones.

After getting the car back from John (who ended up having to use a 3 foot long 3/4" breaker bar with a cheater bar to get the axle nuts off) I decided to also address a couple of other items. A few months before I had purchased a set of used Eibach front and rear swaybars and wanted to get these installed. Halfway through the install I found that the supplied swaybar bushings were not the correct ones, and would not allow the bracket to be installed. Fortunately I was able to find some Energy Suspension bushings at my local AutoZone that worked. I only ended up doing the front swaybar as I have read that the softer AP2 S2000 rear swaybar is prefered.

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After getting the swaybar installed and having to take the knuckles off to have the new studs and bearings pressed in, I thought it was a good idea to have the alignment checked and updatedat Texas Track Works.

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Another trick I picked up from John was to use steel cable for the splitter supports rather than using splitter rods. This gives the splitter the ability to flex upwards if you have a bad off, rather than being solid and digging in and causing more damage.

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My next track day was great, we ran the 1.3 "short" course as MSR-C and this is by far my favorite configuration. The day started cool and the track was damp, fortunately the rain stayed away and was able to get some good runs in.

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That's it for now, will be taking a few months off from doing any tracking for the summer. During that time will hopefully be installing my Rockstar Garage roll bar and 5 point harnesses. Also picked up a NecksGen Rev HNR for use once I get the roll bar and harnesses installed.

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