My fleet - they say they are Fords, but they are Mazdas

[AndreyB]

My race crap can is Ford Festiva - originally it's a Mazda 121, but it now has a 1.8 engine from Mazda 323 - they have later used this block in some Miatas.



Oh, and my test vehicle is Ford Aspire - again, that's a Mazda design. This has the original 1.3 engine. That's enough for development

[AndreyB]

There was some misunderstanding between the owner and his mechanic so this sat parked for 5 years. Unfortunately, a window got busted a year ago, but that means I got a really sweet deal on this thing. Now I need to get it back to life

[AndreyB]

Aspire camshaft position sensor looks like this



Here is how it looks on logic analyzer - three cam revolutions on this picture

[AndreyB]

LeMons Road America: Nail-Biting Battles In All Classes

After first day, we are second in class B - one lap behind the leader of class and on the same lap with the guys who are on the 3rd place!

We have the best lap time, but we are also loosing 2 minutes every pit stop to add oil This is great anyway, we were not even dreaming about being competitive at this long track.

[AndreyB]

We have won our class! It was incredible - after 14.5 hours we had a 8 seconds lead on a Camaro!

http://blog.caranddriver.com/lemons-wisconsin-winners-bmw-beats-acura-by-two-seconds/

[kb1gtt]

Congrats and good job. I'd bet that was fun.

[AndreyB]

[AndreyB]

Now on http://www.drive2.ru/cars/ford/festiva/festiva/andrey239/

[AndreyB]

Sweet memories:

A year ago (two years ago?) the fenders were simpler and the wing was simpler and the suspension was higher..

[AndreyB]

Just for the record - full standalone mode

[AndreyB]

BTW http://forums.24hoursoflemons.com/viewtopic.php?id=25326

[AndreyB]

Today we were wrenching on the yellow race car and something pretty funny had happened.

A week ago we have added a dash bar to the roll cage - this means the remaining part of the original dash is now gone, I had a chance to take out five pounds of unneeded wires. This is still work in progress. At the same time, we have swapped the engine head - something about the valve seals, and we are also upgrading to a better head. It's actually a project by itself - we've massaged a RWD head on a FWD engine. Anyway, back to the story.

So, we are trying to crank the engine for the first time just to let the oil get to the head, and it would not crank. The starter solenoid engages, and that's it. And that's after I've cut five pounds of wires, so you can image the looks I was given. Next thing - we've got smoke around the dash area... The looks are getting gloomier.

I inspect the wires and everything looks fine! We keep trying to crank it or at least figure out where the smoke is coming from... The smoke is coming from the clutch pedal spring! We are trying to crank the car after a head swap & a major wire re-work, and we get smoke of a... PEDAL SPRING?!

To be continued.

[hasse.69]

Forgot some ground wire perhaps???

[skeeters_keeper]

clutch switch isn't grounding properly.

[puff]

probably, you forgot to ground the engine so that the starter-related currents come back through the clutch ground?

[AndreyB]

probably, you forgot to ground the engine so that the starter-related currents come back through the clutch ground?

Exactly, the clutch spring was engine ground.

[AndreyB]

I guess I should get it once there are five engines running rusEfi?

[AndreyB]

BTW here is the now-yellow race car build log: http://www.fordfestiva.com/forums/showthread.php?40332-460-festiva-to-run-in-Lemons

And here is our bragging thread - http://forums.24hoursoflemons.com/viewtopic.php?pid=235215

[puff]

it's secret (the first link):
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[AndreyB]

The whole race today is one cooling system flashing practice for us While we do not have water in the oil, we have oil in the water. And apparently when they mix, they create some amazing premium gunk.

Still not sure what was the root cause of oil in the water in the first place, but it kind of looks like we have washed all this away. We really hope the issue was with oil cooler or one of oil cooler gaskets (that's engine oil cooler, not transmission engine cooler, it sits under the oil filter and it's water-cooled, so if it's cracked that's one of the spots where water meets oil)

And don't you dare suggest it's the head gasket! We need that much luck after all this pain today.

[kb1gtt]

Sounds like a bummer. Did you get to drive it at all before you found the issue(s)? Hopefully it was caught before damage.

[AndreyB]

The whole story does not make much sense to me. We've found the issue on Friday, we did a lame fast flush (big mistake) and declared it to be OK. At that point we hoped that the oil is just residual of what got into the coolant while the head swap.

Things went south on the racing day morning and we were fighting for the first half of the day, but then everyone got a stint and today we are planning to drive it again. How well this would go only time would tell.

[kb1gtt]

Here's hoping all goes well, enjoy.

[AndreyB]

Who knows what it was... Maybe we've spilled oil into coolant passages while swapping a head, maybe the oil cooler was cracked. I guess we would never find out.

What is important - the car ran strong the whole Sunday, so we had some real fun on the track! Especially without the pressure of competing for a position

[puff]

do you have a dedicated driver in your team? or everyone in the team may drive the racing car?

[AndreyB]

do you have a dedicated driver in your team? or everyone in the team may drive the racing car?

The whole point of being on the team is to race. So, we split costs and driving time. With 14 hours of racing on a race weekend, everyone gets 3+ hours if things go well. This time even with 4 hours of downtime we got 2 hours per driver.

[puff]

the concept is quite different comparing to pro racing with their 'roles'
so you should probably be quite a good racing driver?

[AndreyB]

so you should probably be quite a good racing driver?

Tobe honest I might be the slowest driver on the team

Here is the best driver:
[video][/video]

[puff]

so it really lasts 24 hours? are there any restrictions for the cars?

[AndreyB]

Usually it is 8 hours on Saturday and 6 hours on Sunday, there is one true 24 hours race every year - we had to drive 15 hours to attend it last year.

http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/prices-rules
With all safety and expenses it costs about $5K to run your first race, because a $500 car is only a tiny part of what you would need. Cage seat tires fuel...