Final Wrenching
I believe the last bit of wrenching on the "race car" is done.
The Dezod brake pads have been replaced with Endless Y-Sport pads. Initial impressions are that they are significantly better pads. The Dezods were fine for street use, had better initial bite than the stock pads, but even just bedding them in I could tell that they didn't have a very high tolerance for heat, fading noticably after half a dozen or so stops from 45-60. The Endless pads seemed... well... endless. They took everything I threw at them and only showed a hint of fade once... and they recovered from that in about 30 seconds. I think they'll be outstanding on the race track.
Brake and clutch fluid have been flushed with Endless S-Four brake fluid. This stuff is good to 563 degrees F, which should be plenty of protection for our purposes. Thanks to my dear wife for the use of her left foot, we got everything bled. The most awkward thing I had to do today: Figure out how to get brake fluid into the brake fluid resevoir! I should have taken a photo... but it's pretty well buried under the cowl. I had to rig up a funnel with a piece of hose to get fluid in it!
Re-mounted the tachometer so that it is more solidly mounted and drilled a hole for the wires so that they're not running across the dashboard. That looks much nicer. Also fidgeted with the switch on the back of the tach... it can be set to work with anything from a 2 to 8 cylinder engine. I switched it to 3, so now it reads higher than the actual engine RPM. Why do that? Three reasons. 1. instead of the rev limiter kicking in at 6500 (bah!), it now appears to kick in at 8600... it's a psychological thing. 8,000 rpm seems much more "racy" 2. my fancy tach goes to 10,000 rpm... I paid for all that extra range, I want to use it! 3. This is the one that's actually relevant. It gives a little more "resolution" on the tach readout. When you're coming up to a shift point, what you see on the tach, while the actual number is inaccurate, the display is more precise. What shows as 500 rpm between 8000 and 8500 is actually only 375 rpm. I'm sure it will make all the difference in the world when we get to the drag strip!
BTW, I hooked up the G-Tech and got one good timed 0-60 run in before I started bedding in the brake pads. Traffic was too busy for that sort of thing today, so I only got the one run. With minor wheel spin on the launch, I managed 9.016. Not bad considering that most magazine tests on this car claimed 9.5-10 seconds.
What else did I do today? Oh, I checked the alignment. I'm starting to question the levelness of my garage floor, so I'm not going to make any claims to exact camber numbers, but we've got about -2.5 to -3.0 degrees and it's within less than half a degree from left to right. Good enough for this hack driver. I gave the toe one final tweak to center the steering wheel, and now have exactly 1/8" total toe in. Perfect. I didn't check the rear. No adjustments back there without using shims... it should be the same as it ever was, -.9 degrees camber and a smidge of toe-in. While I had the front wheels off to do the brake pads, I put some Loctite on all of the coilover adjustment lock rings and retightened them all. Hopefully, we'll get through the week without any issues there.
The car desperately needs to be washed, and I'm still thinking about taking it to an exhaust shop for some surgery to give it a little bit of a voice. I might look at the clutch pedal and see how easy it is to adjust, its release point is way too close to the floor and caused me to miss a couple of 2nd gear shifts this afternoon.
That's all for now!
