street car gone road race

Small update,
Went to the track on Saturday and had a great time! Set a new personal best shaving over 1.6 seconds off my previous best, which is huge at a smallish track like this!! Night started off a little slower since it was hot(90f) but it cooled off into the evening and that’s when I decided to go for it. Footage here,
(Guy in the GT3 pissed me off)



One thing, I really need to investigate is brake ducts and potentially better brake fluid. I must’ve cooked the fluid Saturday as my pedal has yet to come back. It’s still soggy and just too long. Fluid is fresh as of 4 track days ago, along with new pads and rotors. I was pushing brake zones pretty hard and the car is full street weight but still, stop tech 660 fluid shouldn’t be cooking this easily...should it? I think that might be the next item to modify. Maybe start with ducts, and switch to the fancy expensive castrol fluid if I’m still having this issue.

Based on time from Saturday, not sure how much is left on this suspension/tire setup in terms of time. Maybe another second, or a half second? Either way, I’ll keep pushing. Next significant change is going to be suspension. Will be going with some better coilovers for sure. Also I want to note all my track days have been in extreme heat like 90+. The evening cooled off so much Saturday night it felt like the car picked up some power for sure. Maybe I need a better fmic in the future?

 

Check your pad life, and power bleed your brakes again. Are you still on OEM brake lines?

 

i have stainless braided lines all around. i do need to take a look at my pads, they were brand new beginning of the season, and these pads seem to last a whole year no problem but ive been getting faster so theres a chance they might be real worn. definitely need to bleed the brakes again, and am considering switching fluids to endless RF650. heard nothing but good about it, apparently its serious stuff.

 

Just a little update here, ever since my last track day and setting my new personal best, I’ve been looking into better brake pad options. Finally went with the Gloc R12 pads. They are aggressive. They are loud and sound terrible. The initial bite is not as high as the hawk HP+ and on the street, I really wasn’t impressed.

On the track? I guess this is a real race pad. NO issues with lack of braking power. The harder I press the pedal the harder I stop. They handled the heat of 3-4 hot laps without any decrease in stopping power. Super consistent throughout the whole day. They were well worth the cost.

My brake pedal still gets squishy and soft, ran a bottle and a half of new fluid through the system when installing the glocs but still having the same issue. I think I’ve just reached the thermal capacity of the braking system maybe? This didn’t impact me too much throughout the day though, the pads just kept on working. I brake later, still no issues. Very impressed.

Brake duct plates are being cut this week and I should have them for install next week. This should help with my fluid boiling.


Also, I set a new personal best. Breaking into a time I didn’t think I’d touch this summer! Finding now I’m running out of 4th gear on the straight. For reference last summer, I’d be braking at 6k rpm. Running out of gear sucks lol.

I have some sweet video of me lapping with another mazdaspeed 3 on slicks but the gps decided not to work for that one, maybe I’ll post it later.

Here’s me chasing a mustang GT performance pack. Big ass Brembo’s, lowering springs, decent tires, and the guy driving was a serious driver. Much skill.

 

I run GLoc R18s on the 2015 Mazda 3 we road race, great pads. Brake ducts should take car of the squishy pedal you are getting with the heat. We kept burning calipers off the car until we got the ducts and the Gloc brakes on it.

-Derrick

 

Thanks for the info! That’s good to hear. The squishy pedal really sucks. The gloc pads are great though very glad I made the change

 

In theory I will be building a new racecar for next year to run, it will be a Genpu for SCCA T3 class. I should have more relevant info as we brake/break stuff, lol.

-Derrick

 

Always looking for good info!

 

Brake duct plates have arrived!!!! Had these cut by a buddy locally, big thanks to @Maisonvi for hooking me up with the drawings!!

Not sure how I’ll attach ducting to the fog light opening, but I’ll figure something out. Hoping I can get this all installed before the season is completely over. It’s possible, but unlikely. No doubt this mod will be extremely helpful to me though!!

 

@gotovato; have you tried the Damond brass caliper bushings?

 

Not yet but I’m planning to! I’ve been leaning hard on my brakes this season as I push harder. Want to avoid bbk as long as possible ideally

 

Update. Tried a new track Saturday. This was a much tighter, more technical track with TONS of elevation change. Much more reliant on driver. First 3 sessions were a little rough as it was overcast and pretty damn cold. Couldn’t get any heat into tires or brakes and being that I had never driven the track, I was definitely pushing too hard. It wasn’t good.

Last 4 sessions? Well, sun came out a little and it warmed up, and I was right on pace finally. This track was amazing. Elevation change is the best thing ever. Blind corners, sweepers, tires were being leaned on heavily. Such fun.

Brake pedal was giving me some trouble. I think the fluid is very very cooked, even clutch is feeling a little funny. Need to do a full flush...for the 3rd time this season. Damn. Hoping those brake ducts eliminate this issue for next year. Brake pads did amazing as expected! Learned they really don’t work in the cold lol.

Ps.
Need to investigate why my ebrake light was coming on during hard braking and hard acceleration. Brake fluid is full?

Footage. It gets good after about the 4min mark!

 

Are you getting a lot of dive and/or squat when braking and accelerating? I’ve had the brake light flash at similar times from brake fluid sloshing around in reservoir.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Actually yes! I get a ton of dive/squat so that makes sense. Better suspension should help that I’m thinking

 

Well, I pulled the car out of hibernation to get started on 2020 season prep. I’ve got a bit of a list to go through.

started by towing the car up to my buddies shop where it will sit for the next month or so while we get the first chunk of work done.
- brake ducts
- duct fmic/rad/oil cooler
- afr failsafe to be installed
- oil pressure/temp gauge install
- fix my leaking turbo oil return
Will focus on getting that done this month. First up, brake ducts and rad/fmic ducting



Brake ducting looks like it’ll be pretty straight forward. Already pulled out the fog lights and found the opening is approx 3”. So the plan there is to go with a 3” stainless pipe at the opening with some tabs welded to the side so I can use the oem fog light mounting locations. Will fix any little openings with duct tape. This 3” will need to be reduced down to 2” to fit the duct hose I have. Still trying to find something that’ll do that reduction for me.

the bigger thing here is the rad/fmic ducting. Planning to go behind the crash bar and try to seal both sides of the fmic core to the rad so air is forced through the rad instead of around the sides.

next thing is trying to figure out how to seal it to the bumper. May just extend each side of the fmic/rad out to mate with the bumper. Thinking of boxing in the rad/fmic completely to force air through that area instead of around everywhere. Even a little box around my oil cooler to help force air through. I’m still unsure of how to approach this but I guess we’ll figure it out. That’s all for now, should have some more progress by this weekend or next.

 

Got some more done this weekend.


wrapped my oil cooler lines up, this dei sleeve is pretty good quality. Should do a bit for sure. You wouldn't believe how hot these lines get during a track day. It’s crazy. The idea was to sleeve the lines anywhere where they touch each other, you know, to keep the hot line from heating up the cool line.


Next I started on the interior. Got my oil temp/pressure gauge and afr failsafe installed. This part wasn’t too bad. Had to drill some holes in the vents but that was expected.



today was painful. There is NO way you’re getting all these lines through on the driver side without drilling a hole in the firewall. I wasn’t down with that. there’s 5 lines in total and one of them is the thick wire for the 02 sensor.

Went through the big ass gromet on the passenger side. Only shitty part about that is I’ll have to cut and extend the lines for the oil pressure and oil temp sensors since they won’t reach my sandwich plate. Not a huge deal, just a little annoying. That’ll be finished up next weekend hopefully lol. Pain in my ass.

brake duct progress is slow but it’s going. My buddy modified the dust shields to fit and welded on some 2” pipe to attach the hose to. No pictures of that right now. Although my buddy is making my some adapters for my fog light openings. These will be 3D printed soon and hopefully fitment is good.


that’s all for now. Hoping to finish up the gauges and put the whole interior back together next weekend.

 

gay

 

Much more progress today.

gauges are wired up, they work. It was more work then I thought it would be but they look good and seem to be pretty nice pieces. Still need to install oil temp/pressure sensor and setup the failsafe but all the wiring has been ran to where it needs to be.


Still need to hook up the dimmer wire, will just run that to the radio and grab it there. Left some length of wire behind the dash ready to go for that dimmer shit.
Put the interior back together and that is good to go now!

Brake duct plates installed. Can move the steering wheel lock to lock, nothing rubs or hits or does anything stupid. Hose fits on the plates nicely also.



Front bumper with hose for ducting should all be done next weekend. Installed and ready to go.

also fixed my oil drain line today. The line looked ok but the clamp I used wasn’t very tight and the hose was kinda short. Just used longer hose this time. Will see how that works.


picked up some nice stuff for my wastegate water cooling lines


That’ll be done next week. Mocked up length for the hose, I need another 2ft run, also need another 90 degree an fitting but it’s going to be real nice.


That’s all for this week!

 

Look so like it’s all coming along @gotovato. Are you running a thermostat in-line with the oil cooler? I ran an oil cooler for a few years and with a tmic was able to route the lines out to the fender and around the front. Looks like you fmic plumbing would be in the way for that though.

 

So I do have an thermostatic sandwich plate for my oil cooler currently. I’ll be swapping it out with a non thermostatic sandwich plate as I need the ports for my oil temp/pressure sensors. I’ll see how that works, if it over cools the oil or not. Hoping it’s ok without a thermostat.