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cool cool, i guess ill be fitting them in a couple of weeks

Saturday Maintenance completed:

- I washed my car for the first time in probably 6 months or more
- Vacuumed the interior
- Removed my sub and amp
- Replaced the pass. side axle and added more transmission fluid (royal purple 75w-90)
- Did my yearly oil change (Amsoil 5w-40, napa gold filter)
- Fixed a bunch of random things on the car
- Installed 17" TSW with Dunlop Direzza Z1
- Organized my autocross toolbox
- Cleaned 3 air filters (2 PRM, 1 generic)
- Checked all of my suspension components

Jesse's car is stranded at my house until he can get the MegaSquirt problem figured out... 2 out of 3 flat black mx-3s at my house don't run

I also test fitted the front traction bar front tow hook component and I found out I will not be able to use it on the DD Apparently I had never noticed my DS tow hook is bent in like crazy. I believe this is due to when I hit a curb doing about 55mph which also caused the huge gash in one of my TSW rims and broke my LCA. It literally pulled the bolt holes up to a different angle so I cannot fit the traction bar piece correctly (see pics below). Soooo I'm not sure how to fix it and maybe I'll just save this part for the Race Car. Bummer I really wanted to test it out sooner than later!

Sunday Race day!
I drove down to Eugene (about 2 hours south) and attended the first race of the autox season (IceBreaker 2012). The car felt amazing. The new MS seats, K-Sport coilovers and Dunlops all added up for an amazing improvement. It was a not for points event but I was very pleased with my time - I was only 3 seconds off the best car in the afternoon run group (not sure about the morning group). I will be getting a set of Kumho V710s very soon to go on my MS-01R rims, then we'll see. I would expect a minimum 2 sec improvement using them. I will post up results and vid once I get a chance.

Unfortunately on the way home I had serious overheating issues so it took me 3.5 hours to get home. I decided to just leapfrog home - I would get up to 70-100 mph before it overheated then shut car off and coast... every once in a while the circulation vacuum would kick in and I wouldn't have to pull over to manually get the vacuum going and add more water/coolant. I did this for about 125 miles...

I believe root cause is the radiator I swapped in from the Race Car. I was not having these issues before that. I remember having over-heating issues in that car too and I now believe it's due to the inability to flow fluid properly through the system. Anyways I will be swapping in a known good radiator to see if that fixes the issues.

How did the traction bars do? Edit: NM I should have read vs just looking over the much anticipated photos

It looks good clean BTW!

Josh wrote:How did the traction bars do?

he couldnt use it because his tow hook was bent....

I could bring over my ratcheting cable, and see if we can pull the tow hook back into place. I really wish I could have gone with you guys. I would have raced the Vibe, if I had to!

No snow, no ice, no freezing cold, no salt and sand, I hate you west coasters. Looks like a good day.

So I've been out of town for a week and a few things arrived while I was gone

I picked up these 2 HJC CF helmets off of ebay for a really good deal. All of the AutoX events require at least a 3/4 helmet with Snell2000 or newer stamping and some of the lapping/raceway events will require a full helmet. The 3/4 is the AC-13 and the full is the AC-12. I can't wait to start using these for events! They are coniderably lighter and actually my size (my old helmet was a little big).

I also picked up a set of absolutely mint AZ-3 mats - I have never seen a set of mats in this pristine condition! It's like they are brand new I also got a set of Autozam center caps but unfortunately I mismeasured and they are just a little too large for 15" mx-3 rims So they will just go into the Mooneggs Warehouse until I can find a use for them...

Mooneggs wrote:Unfortunately on the way home I had serious overheating issues so it took me 3.5 hours to get home. I decided to just leapfrog home - I would get up to 70-100 mph before it overheated then shut car off and coast... every once in a while the circulation vacuum would kick in and I wouldn't have to pull over to manually get the vacuum going and add more water/coolant. I did this for about 125 miles...

Even with the heat cranked it didn't help?

Nd4SpdSe wrote:Even with the heat cranked it didn't help?

nope not at all. I think the problem is that it cannot have proper circulation because the radiator is different. See the difference where it is is missing the extra port for the lower filler cap? I believe this is why it was simply pushing the fluid straight out the resevoir because it couldn't be sucked back in to the system properly.

Oh weird. Is one of the rads from an automatic?

Helmets are great!

i love that last warehouse pic..i actually imagine your parts place just like that..one day you need to whip it all out! and i know you been asked this 1,000,000,000 times but there is ALOT of pages to sort through here...When was that hood discontinued and is there others out there with it because it seems like you are the ONLY one i kind of want it because it reminds me of the mazdaspeed hood on the rx-7 but i may just fabricate my own once im out of school next december

I bought the hood off a local member (cjthor) who had it sitting in his shop for a couple years. I believe he got it from Oscar (EZ_4_FUN) but I'm not sure if he's still producing them.

As soon as I put mine on it seemed like several more people quickly attained them (one in the UK, and a couple in Canada). But I haven't seen any since then.

The only downside is I had to cut into some of the underside bracing to get my MS strut bar to fit since the hood tapers quicker than stock or the normal "Invader" style. It doesn't appear to have affected the structural integrity though...

i may have to pay this oscar a visit thanks moon!

jelly of those floor mats, amazing condition, and here i was all proud of the good condition MX3 mats i found at pnp