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Safety Dance posted:I had pretty decent luck with Visual Studio Code. This and platformio will remove any need to use AS(S) or the Arduino IDE. I've been using both to turn out poo poo tier working projects for uhhhhh 6 or 7 years now. E: new page? ugh this shitpost wasn't worth it.
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Nov 1, 2023 02:14
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 01:02 |
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At this point I very much need to find something to use that can enable secureboot and encrypted firmware storage but I've been reluctant to try it out on my prototype because I really don't want to have to swap the esp32 if I gently caress it up. I threw a few extra esp32s on my order this time and I'll probably try one just airwired to my ftdi232 breakout and get my "whoops I hosed it" rounds over with for 3 bucks a pop that way.
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Nov 1, 2023 06:19
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You can't just blast all the code off and reflash it? That seems... severe.
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Nov 1, 2023 15:47
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Nope. There's a way to disable the encryption 3 times before you run out of hardware fuses to blow, but you only get so many shots. The whole idea is to put hardware protection for the firmware and device combination on there so one, people can't load other firmware on your device (I don't really care about this) and two, people can't reverse engineer your firmware, which I do care about because that's the important part and I'm likely going to have several hundred hours of work into it by the time the next rev is ready.
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Nov 1, 2023 21:37
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Sounds like you might be in luck if you manually load or keep a record of the encryption key and reflash everything but the protected bootloader space, but yeah that sounds like a good idea to gently caress around with that on cheap bits rather than your nice custom board.
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Nov 2, 2023 00:25
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Well. Been a while since I posted, whoops. Development on this thing got paused for a hot minute while I was in Massachusetts for Thanksgiving and Christmas and helping my parents with some serious structural issues on their house prior to their bathroom remodel, since they didn't want to be jacking up the house right after having a whole new shower put in and crack everything. I also ended up helping my friend Jack redo all the controls on his 1985 Acromax MX16 (Same as a Matsuura G500V or something like that) because the Yaskawa Yasnac MX1 and more importantly all of its servo drive equipment were getting ridiculously flaky, to the point of not being able to actually stay powered on with the servos enabled without getting random servo following error faults. Let alone actually cutting any parts. It scrapped a few projects out by doing this mid-cut prior to getting so bad it wouldn't even keep the servos powered on. So he is doing a full LinuxCNC/EMC2/Mach3/whatever it's called now setup with a couple Mesa Electronics 7180HD Ethernet to FPGA cards for the control interfacing. He's got that part well under control having done it before on a few machines he's converted to CNC operation over the years, but needed a second set of eyes and hands to get all the factory wiring reverse engineered on his machine because it was a horrible ratsnest with like 3 previous owners worth of totally undocumented and poorly done retrofits and repairs and of course the factory wiring diagrams were long gone and no longer accurate anyways. Enough yapping, here are some pictures of greasy junk and fluxy junk. Right before I left for Mass holidays I plugged my MT2500 scanner into the MJ and realized that I had been running in open loop with an O2 sensor stuck at 5V for the past... who knows how long, probably years. That is probably why my fuel economy has been even shittier than usual since forever. It further turned out that the titania based O2 sensors the RENIX EFI system uses (which are only shared with a few 80s-early 90s Volvos, Renaults, and Nissans) are in very low production by only a few companies, that they are seemingly of low quality and fail early and often, and also cost anywhere from 65 to 130 dollars each. That is not a combination that I enjoy. They're a narrowband sensor, but they don't work quite like the zirconia type sensors almost every vehicle on the road has used since then. The sensor element changes resistance based on rich or lean AFR, rather than changing their output voltage like zirconia. But being narrowband, I had an Idea. What if I could make a thing that would adapt one signal to the other? Well, it turns out that's even easier than I had hoped, because the RENIX system applies a 3.3kOhm pullup resistor to 5V internally, and uses the titania O2 sensor as its pulldown resistor, which varies from ~1kOhm to ~20kOhm. So I just needed to take the zirconia O2 sensor signal, run it into an open drain comparator tolerant of 12V (for ease of use that way I can steal my circuits power off the 12V heater circuit...) and compare to 450mV or so, which is the stoichiometric AFR voltage for zirconia O2s. I created my 450mV reference with a zener diode and a handful of resistors and we were off to the races:  And here it is IRL:  Assembled  And heatshrunk since this will be in the engine bay.  Sure enough, 1988s finest fuel injection system (a blatant lie, this piece of poo poo has less processing power than a Ti83+ and all the communication skills of a Ford EEC-III system, AKA nearly none, and cannot be tuned without hardware modification) now enters closed loop from a cold start within a quarter mile and I get 15mpg on winter gas driving like an rear end in a top hat again, rather than the 13-14mpg on summer gas I was getting previously. I have board blanks for another dozen units so once I get a few more tanks through this thing I'll probably put together a bunch of them and sell them to other RENIX victims who are tired of paying $65+ for an O2 sensor that sucks. Oh yeah, this is all working great with the worst no-name $21 Amazon O2 sensor, too. Even if I have to replace it just as often I have broken even on the very first unit made. Here is 1985s finest Japanese 4-axis CNC control cabinet: Main control processor, I/O, and CRTC (the white ceramic one, thanks Seat Safety Switch for identifying this one)  This is the ROM and RAM for the main control processor.  Here's 3 axes worth of servo loop I/O. Those 3 pairs (not the EPROMs with stickers, the 3 top left and bottom right) of huge purple ceramic TOKO chips are loving magic poo poo. Each pair contains hand-rolled fully hardware based linear, circular, exponential, and parabolic 2 axis interpolation controls that allow you to basically tell them what you want to happen and input your ABI encoder signals and it will simply output the ADC values for your servo drives to make it happen. I can't imagine what these ASICs must have cost in the 1980s but it probably was A loving Lot, and I wish I could bring myself to pull them off the boards and use them for something.  And here's the 4th axis worth of servo loop I/O.  Here's the power electronics cabinet. It's full of scary voltages, loud contactors, angry fans, and a wide variety of previous owner hacks and retrofits and retrofit hacks. This is where most of the sadness actually resides but given the total lack of schematics and archaic nature of the controls with accompanying impossibility of getting actual good replacement parts with any significant remaining lifetime, it was time for all of this to go.  And the machines soul over in the computer cabinet on the other side. Almost all of the pics so far were of the things in this swing-out card cage.  I do believe I took this picture right before we accidentally fed 24VDC into the I/O pins of a 5V tolerant Mesa FPGA card and accidentally made the FPGA very very unhappy. But we were unharmed due to the retroreflective safety vests. (I found that one in the trunk of a 1997 Honda Civic at my old favorite junkyard and it was free so I grabbed it for him. Junkyard thought I must have worn it in.)  By the time I had left we had reverse engineered essentially the entire ATC limit sensor and solenoid control system with accompanying wire numbers, the way oil and coolant pump controls, all of the servo and feedback encoder pinouts, all of the axis limit switches, the spindle position resolver and temp sensor, and part of the HMI panel wiring interface. The last part is a stretch goal since he can get the machine running without it and add it as a fancy "make this thing look original" feature later. You can use the on screen LinuxCNC/Mach3/EMC2 UI to do all the same stuff. I'll probably badger him into getting the factory HMI working when I head back out there in about March to help my parents with their place again. Got back home and assembled a couple more of the cruise converter units since I had now found all the hardware bugs*.  The next major revision is going to use an FPGA and the cheapest one I could find that met requirements was an Efinix Trion T13. Which comes in an BGA. Balls. I hate loving BGAs. Especially creating the ECAD symbols and footprints for them. I use EAGLE which uses XML libraries though so at least creating the footprint was cake, I spent a few minutes slapping together some C to poo poo out a blob of XML I could dump into the middle of my .lib file and massage into working.  Washed all the flux residue off the assembled boards and sealed them into their new homes since the hardware was fully functional*.  Even put on some snazzy fuckin' serial number and tamperproof stickers because I am 2 legit 2 quit.  Made myself a cruise control resistive muxed button panel simulator so I can use the specs from the factory service manual and a resistor sampler kit to test my code and create calibration files instead of traipsing through every junkyard in the county to get the button panels. It's ugly as hell but it works.  Made up the installation pigtails since these Molex CMC connectors use pins that are... very unforgiving to newbies trying to crimp them, and 99% of Jeep people are NOT good with wiring.  kastein posted:Amazingly, no hardware issues other than me putting an sc70-5 footprint on the board in one place and a sot23-5 on the BOM and parts order. Thus the oops wire, the part didn't exactly fit and I had to take some liberties with it to recover, but it worked first shot. Turns out the MIC5239-5.0 linear voltage regulator I used for my 5V rail is... very unstable. No fuckin idea why. I am using the same exact 10uF ceramic capacitor for its filter cap that I used from 2013-2017 on every single ECM I designed when I was at Terrafugia, and I prototyped every single one of those modules without a single problem stability wise. But now this is a problem because guess what, my 5V rail supplies my ADC Vref and feeds the 3.3V regulator for the MCU as well, so it's kind of a big deal if it flakes out and oscillates a fuckton, which is exactly what it's doing. I am currently waiting on a parts order to try and correct that, but guess what, I've already sealed the two units I intend to sell from this run up using the worlds strongest black RTV silicone. God drat it. I only discovered this AFTER sealing them up, because I had my prototype unit running rock solid for months beforehand and given I have been using this voltage regulator for 11 years on and off, assumed that it had no more surprises for me and that the only remaining bugs were firmware related. Turns out the voltage regulator has been unstable the whole time and the only reason the device was working correctly is it was being fed off the 5V rail from my USB RS232 dongle I use for burning firmware and debugging. I have a recovery plan but it's not one I like. Oh well, worst case I will have to pry these two poor things open and fix the 5V rail supply design. Or just scrap them and build new after redoing all the other stuff I didn't like about the first board rev and adding a ton of other features that should make them sell even better. My aim is for these to essentially make nearly any common engine swap work flawlessly with nearly any '96 and later longitudinal-engine Jeep or Dodge product, eventually, working from the most commonly swapped platforms to the least.
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Jan 30, 2024 14:20
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Gotta love replacing an entire cabinet's worth of '80s electronics with like a few small boxes. My late almost-brother-in-law was doing conversions like that on '70s analog and '80s digital CNC machines before he passed. I really wanted to hook up with him on that and learn something, unfortunately, cancer had other ideas. I'm definitely in favor of refitting machines like that - there's no reason to scrap the mechanical bits. I'm curious - why did you even need or use the Renix O2 on the MJ? It's LS-swapped, yeah? Shouldn't you have just used the OE GM O2?
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Feb 1, 2024 17:41
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It's the Honcho that's LS isn't it? Love modern electrics refits, its cool poo poo. Makes me think of stupid projects like say a 928 - notorious for terrible electronics, but surely today I could "simply" grab something like a Haltech Nexus and replace everything bumper to bumper.
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Feb 1, 2024 21:10
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Yeah, it's the J10 Honcho that's LS swapped. The MJ is the 177hp-when-new, 200k mile, consumes nearly as many dollars per mile in oil as gas, utterly uninspiring, wheezy, piece of poo poo, idles on 5 cylinders, may or may not have a rod knock, oil pressure is less than ideal nugget of trash. It is my daily driver and I haven't built a new shop yet and am broke as gently caress at the moment, so while I would LOVE to LS or EV or custom hybrid swap it at some point, I am simply limping it along on bare minimum dollars right now. So the O2 was of utmost importance as soon as I found out that's why I was only getting 13ish mpg and I about poo poo myself when rockauto wanted $66 for the same garbo sensor that I paid $30 for in 2013, and the local parts store wanted over $100. The board order for the adapter cost me $14.40 for TWELVE and the parts for each are no more than $5 or so, so while I am not going to get rich selling the adapters for $20 each, it still means anyone who gets one is saving money buying it plus the newer O2 sensor vs just one more replacement original type sensor, and it'll bring in a little money which is always welcome. I'll have to time myself building a stack next time and see if I'm even making minimum wage on them. Think I might do the next board order of those through jlcpcb instead of oshpark and get them to picknplace the zener and resistors as those probably took 3x as long as the rest of the BOM combined. (Laen, if you're reading this, I loving love oshpark and you should set up a picknplace line, because I will absolutely be a customer)
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Feb 2, 2024 10:36
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Oh, duh, MJ = Comanche. Oy, I have failed at Jeep.
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Feb 2, 2024 18:15
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An LS swapped MJ would rip though.
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Feb 4, 2024 00:56
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Oh it definitely would. My spare LQ9 might have ended up there (or the Roadmaster, or the RV) but for the fact that I accidentally sold it in Massachusetts while packing up the last of my life out there at the hangar in July. Guy came to buy the Grand Wagoneer, was too cheap to buy it and bought the LQ9 and 4L80e on a whim instead.
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Feb 4, 2024 06:02
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Elviscat posted:An LS swapped MJ would rip though. Knew a guy locally who had a turbo LS swapped MJ. Thing was scary fast and made all the right noises.
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Feb 5, 2024 11:36
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FORD WHY MUST YOU gently caress ME SO AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Windshield urethane jobs are loving miserable when you care about the paint and don't have the fancy $400-600 crank winch and pulleys style pro tool. Especially when someone used the kind of urethane that somehow failed in a few spots while being tougher than hell in others, and those others are where they used too much, letting it well up in the channel around where the wire is supposed to lay so it digs into the edge of the glass instead of going through the urethane and breaks every 2 minutes. At least the old windshield (which was barely serviceable) is now a lost cause so I can stop pretending to care about it. Not scratching the paint on this truck is the only thing I must not do now.
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Feb 24, 2024 10:15
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Oh, also. I just realized I never actually posted this at the time, despite having a gently caress ton of time to spend either staring at corn fields or posting on the Internet while driving. June 2 of last year I finally was pretty sure I had my poo poo heap MJ and poo poo heap MJ trailer (the one I put airbags on 3 or 4 pages ago) in maybe roadworthy condition to hopefully survive a cross country road trip. So I packed up and hit the road on a whim late the third, despite originally planning on leaving bright and early the next day so I could get a full day in. Spare parts carried (partial list, I'm sure I'm forgetting some things): Full set front axle shafts Both driveshafts Fuel sending unit BNIB fuel pump and pickup sock Fuel hose Oil cooler hose Transmission cooler line fittings At least 3 power steering pressure lines BNIB (whoops) Coolant hose Hose clamps Crank sensor Distributor with cam sensor TPS IAT sensor ICM and coil ECU Fuel injector rail and stock injectors Handful of spare Volvo injectors Injector o rings Transmission solenoids Neutral safety switch Starter Alternator Fuses Bulbs Belt, tensioner pulleys, tensioner bolt Power steering pump and steering box Rebuilt steering box Rebuilt steering pump Water pump Thermostat and gaskets AC compressor Ujoints Brake caliper Oil Tools: Yes (almost literally yes. If it was an automotive tool and fit in the truck, it went in the truck or trailer toolbox. If it was a construction tool it went in the trailer. I had over 100 sizes of taps and dies, a MIG welder, and an oxyacetylene torch set with me for this road trip.) Other stuff: A custom strut thing I made that clips to my trailers ladder rack and makes a hammock hang from it comfortably A hammock, ratty rear end blanket, sleeping bag, sacrificial pillow A cooler completely full of ice, microwave burritos, hot sauce, and the finest of wholesale club pepper jack cheese A big roll of heavy duty aluminum foil Several gallons of water The entire remaining fraction of my gun collection that hadn't made it cross country yet. This was concerning as NY takes a very dim view of people driving through their state with guns without their state license even if you are licensed in your state apparently, unless you are literally just driving straight through without stopping in any way. So I made a custom waterproof gun safe that I welded to my trailer that bolts closed, and then bolted it closed and tack welded the bolts so they couldn't be unscrewed. And then locked the trailer to the truck. Given my budget and desire to not have my tools stolen out of a hotel parking lot (as well as the still ongoing pandemic) I decided I would be spending as much time as possible avoiding people and hotels and camping remote instead. Anyways. 9pm on the third of June I said gently caress it, filled the tank, and hit the highway. I simply did not stop until I had crossed into Pennsylvania. Stayed the night (and by night I mean 2am through around 5am) holed up on a back road near rausch creek off-road park in Tremont PA:  Here's the strut thing I made for the hammock. I figured no one's going to be tempted to scope out my tools if I'm snoring on top of them.  The next day I got a nice bright and early start at 5am and was already a zombie from running on 3 hours of sleep. I continued too far south on 81 and accidentally visited Maryland, then went West through WV and into OH. This hosed up my plans to swing by Rhyno's place, and unfortunately put me too far south to darken meatpimp and CornHolio's doorsteps as well. I also missed visiting all my friends in Michigan and Chicago. Whoops. Sorry. I made it as far as Covington IN that night and found myself a spot to hunker down for the night. Again only got 4 or so hours of sleep, then hit the road again. Visited an old friend from the NAXJA Jeep club in Ames IA for lunch and made Denver by around 4am. Crashed on a Facebook lovely car group fellow admins couch for the night then decided it was time to check over the Jeep and hit some junkyards if needed to fix stuff, as the next day would involve crossing the Rockies. Remembered my old friend Sam (the same one I confused by showing up unexpectedly to order a Subaru Justy engine gasket set from when he worked at Parker CO O'Reilly a decade ago) runs an off-road fabrication shop in Commerce City now, and figured if he was around I'd swing by. Good thing, too, because the funky noise I'd been hearing turned out to be the bearings in my alternator. I ended up doing some plumbing repairs on his shop since I had the tools with me so why not, and we decided to slap my factory remanufactured spare alternator in. Except... Uhhhh.... Why won't it fit? Oh gently caress, this is an 86-90 2.5L alternator, not a 87-90 4.0L one. Good thing I know a guy who runs a plasma table every day eh? I think he took longer to measure for this bracket than he did cutting and welding it.  At that point I headed down to Colorado Springs on a whim only to hear back from my friend Dewayne that he was in Arizona pulling B body parts at a junkyard that day, and my friend Jesse that he was busy with family poo poo so turned back around. Just when it got dark I heard from CSB and Bunsen that they were aiming for a spot within a few hours of Grand Junction CO (IIRC, things were kind of a blur by then) so I decided to cross Eisenhower Pass in the dark for the hell of it and meet them there instead of my original plan, which was to reduce my risk of dying and take i25 North and then i84 West. That pass is no fuckin joke. I think I was in first or second gear at full throttle falling towards 25mph for what felt like hours. Much to my surprise the low oil pressure, funny noise making RENIX 4.0 didn't fart any connecting rods out the side of the block, and I then had to deal with several hours of hair raising switchbacks, brake pumping, and hoping my engine braking would be enough because goddamn are there a lot of truck emergency ramps here. I think I ended up taking a nap in Minturn CO. Then more driving. Wound up in Grand Junction CO. I believe this is where I messaged CSB and found out that they had again experienced turbine-rich combustion in the nightmare F450.  I wasn't having mechanical problems, I was taking my lunch burritos off the top of the engine and checking my oil level. They made emergency moves to store Ahab's white whale in SLC while I, ironically, also headed for SLC. But due to schedule disaster fuckery ended up having to be elsewhere by the time I got there. So I hassled more former NAXJA people, crashed on their couch, and went junkyarding for things I knew I'd need in the future:  (Britt's B body wagon has some rust damage from its few years in Mass. I will need this to fix it.) Then headed up i15 to i84, and stopped off in John Day OR to visit my aunt and uncle at their farm and their significant collection of ACVWs. (This is nowhere near all of them. I think they have around 2 dozen right now including parts cars?)    The next day I hit the road again and drat that is a big river.  That is also Washington on the other side. I can see it now, just a matter of getting there. Getting down into the gorge with the HERITAGE UNITS  Made it to Portland, bothered ExplodingSims for a bit then hit the road again. It took me like 3 or 4 naps to make it as far as the Port Orchard/Bremerton area due to being ragged the gently caress out from driving 4500 miles in 6.5 days. I rolled into the driveway at like 5am on the 10th. Also not having AC took a bit of a toll.  First time this truck has seen the Pacific, or at least Puget Sound. Won't be the last since I took this picture at a state park that will be on my way to work.  Back to the present day, elviscat and I spent the day bullshitting with MikeyTsi and alternately bolting things onto his DSM, then much head scratching and unbolting them again. I think the three of us must have had some of those parts on and off 3 or 4 times trying to figure out which way they're supposed to go on. Long term projects are always fun that way, I went through the same thing trying to get my 5 ton back together in 2019 after doing most of a head gasket job in 2014 right before my life took a few sudden unexpected turns. kastein fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Feb 25, 2024 |
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Feb 25, 2024 13:52
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DRIVE DEVIANT ENDURO RACE PREP AND RACE (skip to the end for the pictures, I won't judge you) Friday the 12th we headed for The Ridge Motorsports Park in Shelton WA. The plan was to get one of the drivers (the one really local driver, who hosts/owns the car) some seat time and shake the car down, see what broke. It made it four laps. Two good ones and two more trying to float gears and/or jam it into gears after the clutch pedal stopped working. So I naturally am very worried, especially since there is glittery oil coming out of the clutch fork opening on the bellhousing, but we don't have any spares for anything in there so I decided to check what I DID have spares for, the clutch hydraulic system. The previous owner had replaced both the CMC and CSC with random brand ones and left all the flare nuts loose, the flex line not mounted correctly at the drivetrain end and kinked at an acute angle, and mangled and screwed the hardline on the bellhousing on BACKWARDS, then parked it in a field for a few years, so my suspicion was maybe the fluid had absorbed moisture and corroded the cylinder walls. CSC was replaced first. No dice. CMC was replaced next. No dice. Rebled several times since it was a bastard to bleed the first time. No dice. Internet research said the CSC piston should move roughly 0.580" with full pedal travel. Measurement indicated roughly 5/8". Uhoh, we have a problem in the transmission, or bellhousing. I drop the transmission. My first thought was why does it look like the clutch disc isn't centered in the pressure plate finger opening? Team mechanic #3 arrives w/ team leaders SO right at this moment and they have brought an autozone clutch kit with them because that's what was available. I point out that the clutch disc does not appear to be centered. She looks at it and agrees, then notices that there are, uh, flywheel bolts visible up through the gaps under the sides of the pressure plate, and they appear to be sideways. Not facing the engine. Sideways. Oh dear, I can see where this is going now. I pull a few pressure plate bolts and on the third or fourth one, I get this very odd feeling. I then realize that it's because the flywheel and pressure plate moved with the bolt instead of staying put. I remove a few more bolts and the whole thing kind of swivels a bit. Remove all of the bolts and suddenly I'm holding a pressure plate, a clutch disc, and a handful of FOUR flywheel bolts. The flywheel is partially held in place by a grand total of two remaining flywheel bolts and the flywheel holes are so badly egged out it can move around pretty much at will. One remaining bolt is finger tight, the other is halfway out. I remove the flywheel and announce that we are done for the weekend, there is no loving way this thing is going back together today, we have parts to order and may need a new crankshaft. Also the transmission fluid that was just changed and has a total of four laps on it looks like red lowrider paint. It's burgundy, and has a very substantial amount of brass flake in it that is likely the remains of several synchros. We order a bunch of parts (flywheel, racing clutch and pressure plate kit, fluid, flywheel bolts) and tools (M12x1.00 helicoil kit, M12x1.00 tap kit) for overnight delivery and plan on revisiting the situation Monday evening. Monday evening rolls around and I spend like 8 hours working on the car, but not the blown up clutch because it didn't arrive on time. I did manage to get the crank flange retapped and filed flat, so crisis avoided there. I think that was the day we tore the transmission down far enough to inspect the internals and measure synchro engagement, which was in spec on 3 synchros and out of spec on 3, we decided to send it because there was no way a rebuild kit was going to arrive in time and it felt like the synchros were grabbing still anyways. Tuesday parts still not there and I forgot to bring most of the stuff with me to work that I needed to work on the car afterwards so no progress. Wednesday parts have arrived so I go and finish various other projects on the car (secondary killswitch for the driver, among other things) and I think we put the transmission in but I can't remember. It's all kind of a blur at this point. I haven't gotten more than a few hours of sleep a night in nearly a week and I'm also working full time that week with another AI goon doing HVAC installs, and driving 200 miles a day between these 3 locations, so kind of burning the candle at both ends. Thursday we finally finish the car enough that it can get thrown on the trailer and be ready to go off to the race Friday the 19th. Friday is practice session, Saturday and Sunday racing. I actually get to sleep for the first time in a while. Friday I arrive late at the track and the car's already on course and doing well. Uneasily well. Like, well enough that I ended up spending most of the day just shooting the poo poo with nearby teams and helping an RX7 team diagnose their alternator issues. I note that things seem to be going great and we should do well. Other lead mechanic tells me to shut up before I curse things any worse. We get enough drivers through the car that everyone's pretty comfortable with it and ready to hit the starting line Saturday. We even passed tech inspection with flying colors which was great since this was the first time any of us had installed a 6 point harness, or a race bucket seat, or coped and bent tube for a roll cage, or killswitches. Saturday started out alright. We had a few minor issues, but nothing unheard of. Radio comms weren't great because we were using GMRS and the track has a ridge running down the middle of it that blocks that, especially when you're running borrowed GMRS handhelds with little antennas on them. The car lost a few exhaust flange bolts that I'd called out as hinky bullshit we needed to replace ASAP so I got bolts and a gasket at the local parts store and proceeded to do possibly my fastest exhaust gasket install in history in the pit lane. The power steering fluid kept boiling over, we kept refilling it. We lost a valve stem on the backup set of tires because the dumbass who mounted and balanced them (hi, that's me) didn't realize the tires he took off were literally 20 years old and therefore didn't pay much attention to valve stem condition. Nothing major, just minor annoyances solved easily at fueling stops. One of our team drivers was out sick so a friend of the team who was actually a mechanic for another team whose car was presently too broken to run got to sit in for them, and uh, he broke the car at about 2:15pm with nearly 3 hours of race left to go. Well, more accurately, I and our other lead mechanic broke the car weeks before, but we didn't know that at the time. He was doing great and ticking down faster and faster laps one after the other when he came over the crest of the last group of turns, downshifted, the steering went from stiff to fully manual, the generator lamp came on, and the car started running like complete poo poo all at the same time. He is a skilled mechanic and knew that was a really loving bad sign so he drove it like the remaining 5 seconds of the lap and dumped it in pit lane. We pop the hood to investigate and I'm kind of mind boggled by the fact that the alt+waterpump belt is fully flopping around despite the alternator pinch bolt being tight still. The PS belt is missing but I expected that. Then I look deeper and uhh, why is the harmonic balancer at a funky angle? Oh no, it moves when I touch it. OK, drag this piece of poo poo into the pits, this isn't a pit lane repair anymore. We dig in farther and guess what, the crank bolt came loose, and allowed the harmonic balancer hub to flop around and chew up the end of the crank, the timing belt sprocket, and the woodruff key. It has also allowed the timing belt to ride forward with the sprocket, eat into the plastic timing cover, melt a bunch of gooey plastic poo poo all over itself, and skip two teeth on the intake cam sprocket. OK, we're probably out for today at least, but we send a team member back to the shop with an impact to cannibalize our second nastiest spare motor for parts to patch this pile back together so we can keep going if possible. They get back and, um, why are these parts completely different? It turns out there are not one, not two, but THREE variants of crank for the 1.6L. There's the small short nose, which is <1" diameter and so short there's a half inch of air inside the balancer hub under the bolt head, the small long nose which is <1" but less air and more metal, and the big nose, which is >1" and confusingly, back to more air under the head. Long story short, after pointing the finger at the previous owner and his fuckery, I realize that *I* am the person who hosed this up. We did not realize there were 3 different cranks on the 1.6L, and when I did the timing set on this car weeks ago, instead of impacting the crank bolt in like I wanted to I actually listened to our other lead mechanic and used a torque wrench, because it is in fact an important spinning object that needs to be torqued correctly per my usual rules. Unfortunately, I set the torque wrench to 86 foot pounds because it was a 1990 Miata, not realizing it had had a 1993 Miata engine installed with a different size bolt that requires 120 foot pounds. So after a few hours of maintained high throttle, high speed operation it shook loose and trashed everything around it. We managed to get the old crank sprocket off (the crank was all boogered up around the keyway and required a lot of painstaking work with a jewelers file to get it back off) and start trying to figure out where we're going to get parts to fix this engine or swap it. The team leader says ok gently caress it, we have a race to run tomorrow, I'm getting ahold of the guy I bought our spare rolling chassis from and asking what he wants for a motor. So at 8:15pm I find myself rolling into this strangers shop in Puyallup to buy a 1.6L Miata engine for $1400. He's a real cool dude and throws in a ton of spare parts while I'm there because it turns out he parts out Miatas as his main source of income and ends up with huge stacks of the parts that don't sell as well. I head down to the shop and roll in at 10:30pm to find that the other lead mechanic has the transmission out already and the engine about 10 minutes from out. We spend a few hours stripping the old engine down and moving parts over, she calls it a night and crashes on the couch and I and team mechanic #4 spend the entire night getting the transmission mated up, then the whole drivetrain slowly shoehorned into the chassis with the new drop mounts. At 6:15am I wake up literally sitting crosslegged on the shop floor with the powerplant frame between me and mechanic #4, who is *also* passed out sitting crosslegged. It's been a long night. The last thing I remember doing is googling powerplant frame to differential fastener diagrams at 5:45am. He doesn't remember falling asleep at all. We go back to hooking up the new engine and transmission and at 7:30am the car rolls onto the trailer needing only oil, coolant, ignition wires hooked up, intake tract hooked up, and shift lever installation. Team leader hauls rear end off up the highway towing the car along with an entire minivan full of drivers and mechanics. Other lead mechanic and I spend another 20 or 30 minutes wandering around the shop packing up the remaining tools and spare parts. At the last minute I decide we are bringing the old engine and all the parts to fix it, mostly so that the car knows it can't pull any bullshit because we will gut its rear end with zero compunction and slam dunk that piece of poo poo engine right back in if anything goes wrong. We arrive and the car is already running, our friend from the other team has primed the oil system, cut a few degrees of timing and fattened up the fuel table on the mspnp2 just for safety since we don't know the exact build of the old motor yet. We get everything ready to rock and roll and the car is on the track and turning laps by 9:30am, less than 12 hours after the new motor arrived at the shop, 50 miles away. A few hours of racing later disaster strikes. One of the throttle body coolant loop hoses has split and is pissing coolant loving everywhere. Car's overheated but not too bad. We are running scared in pit lane and half rear end bypass the TB coolant loop entirely by rerouting one hose. Leak stops, fill cooling system, car goes back out. Car comes back in and it is REALLY loving HOT this time. Very frighteningly hot. Coolant everywhere again. It turns out if you reroute hoses like that maybe you should try and keep them from getting cut up by the belt. We steal the same hose off the old motor in the back of my truck (glad I brought it now) and send it back out with a bonus ziptie to keep it from saying hi to the belt again. This time it cooked it pretty good, we are worried now but fill it back up with water. Wishing we replaced all the hoses on this motor while it was out, but again, last minute fix, no time, stores weren't even open at 4am when we needed them. Few hours later the car comes back in AGAIN, even hotter this time. Driver did not notice that the generator warning lamp was on, because the belt decided to self immolate this time. We can't really figure out why but figure since all the hoses on that motor were a solid 3 decades old there was a good chance the belt was too. I slap the belt off the original motor on it, we fill it right back up with water and send it right back out again. This time we are out of water wetter and distilled water so it got a mix of Dasani and water mechanic #4 borrowed from the track bathroom shower. It'll do, it only has to be in there a few hours. A few hours later the checkered flag waves and we all breathe a sigh of relief because THAT SHITBOX IS STILL RUNNING. It's definitely down on power from the start of the day, but whatever, it's still running. I think we might have surprised a few of the old guard teams, especially when we packed up Saturday evening and went home only to reappear Sunday with a fresh motor and a running car and set right back up. I know the reputation among most gearheads of people flying the intersectional pride flag is that they have no real world skills and don't know gently caress about poo poo so I'm guessing more than a few were startled that we finished either day let alone recovering from a catastrophic engine failure on day 1. We were out of the action for about half of Saturday and yet we were #58/81 (#22/32 in class) then, out of action several hours Sunday and despite that, #54/82 (#22/35 in class). I think that's a pretty solid showing for a bunch of dorks who literally have never done this before in a car we only got in November and had driven exactly ten miles, five of them with no clutch pedal, before taking it out on the track for its first race. We all have a lot of poo poo to learn and I doubt I'll ever drive the car because I suck at HPDE but I will continue applying my apocalypse mechanic skills to keeping this pile alive for as much track time as possible every race weekend. Anyways, sorry about the wall of text, here are a bunch of pictures of a busted rear end car. oh no  oh no  aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  why is there so much metal missing aaaaaaaaa gently caress  transmission after its gasoline bath and clearance checking  crank in its haggard initial state. Never let anyone tell you you can't weld aluminum to steel, you can  ground down the high spots that the flywheel bolts banged into the flange when they egged the holes out  crank flange reflattened with a brand new file and all holes retapped  patterning for the drivers killswitch (track official killswitch is on the passenger vertical of the main cage hoop and unreachable when wearing arm restraints)  after sheet metal brake work (actually I held it carefully over one corner of the hydraulic press one spot at a time and wanged on it with a deadblow until it was a nice even cone)  welded  put in place  car trimmed and bent to fit cone, cone trimmed to fit car  welded in and painted   from below with switch partially installed  1.8 flywheel installed with ARP bolts. sadface is due to the bolt not feeling quite right going in. It torqued down fine and we used a butt-ton of loctite so it aint going anywhere.  I believe this was either Friday or Saturday about to go out on the track  RACE CAR   the team our tuner and engine destroyer friend is from. An NSX owner with more money than skill came up on the pace car lineup way way too hot, panicked, slammed on the brakes and slid into it sideways a little while before this picture was taken. Bent the foxbodies wheel, axle flange, and one axle tube, they were midway through swapping the rearend out when I stopped by   our chowdered crank, mostly cleaned up  why'd you make the big nose crank on the 1.6 so loving short, you Mazda assholes  it ate the poo poo out of the balancer hub  one motor, two motor  mating engine and transmission  according to the timestamps this was 2:10am  did you know that if you are holding the rear end end of your transmission up with a ratchet strap and the strap isn't long enough to loop around the tube, you can ziptie it to the cage if you use six of them  not sure when this was or what I was doing, probably either checking tire pressures or about to dive under the car with an impact and put the exhaust back together  left to right: friend of the team/tuner/engine blower upper, founder of the club, me, one of the other drivers from team 151, other lead mechanic w/ the gold HF ratchet we won for heroic repairs, our media/streaming specialist, team lead+driver, one of our drivers  founder of the club and me looking like a dork in a clown car, wanted to see if I could drive it. I cannot. The dash bar is essentially pressfit in between my patella and tibia. On and off the trailer only till I make the cage way better.  I have a zillion pictures of building this nugget but I keep forgetting to upload and post about them as the imgur mobile app gets worse every week. fin
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Apr 23, 2024 11:46
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Bummer about the disaster strikes, but the perseverance is great, and I love that there's a gold HF ratchet prize. The last pic doesn't seem far off from someone getting into their kid's Cozy Coupe! 
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Apr 23, 2024 12:28
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drat I love this thread
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Apr 23, 2024 14:27
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drat dude, nicely done.
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Apr 23, 2024 16:01
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Your ability to function with little or no sleep is a superhuman skill. kastein posted:I think we might have surprised a few of the old guard teams, especially when we packed up Saturday evening and went home only to reappear Sunday with a fresh motor and a running car and set right back up. I know the reputation among most gearheads of people flying the intersectional pride flag is that they have no real world skills and don't know gently caress about poo poo so I'm guessing more than a few were startled that we finished either day let alone recovering from a catastrophic engine failure on day 1. We all know this is because they purposely try to exclude people from the sport. Thankfully a lot of the current guard, now a lot of GenX-ers, are realizing they need to be more inclusive or a lot of motorsports are going to die very quickly.
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Apr 23, 2024 17:04
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A+ heroics, would read again
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Apr 23, 2024 20:35
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Epic! Just  that whoever did that clutch just apparently slapped stuff together with no torque wrench or Loctite. Ruined that nice Fidanza aluminum flywheel.I really should join up with some budget race guys before I get even older. I note not one, but two orange FC RX-7s. This makes me happy. Also, I fit about the same in an NA Miata. It's really annoying.
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Apr 23, 2024 22:47
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Oh hey! I've raced with the orange dudes before. Nice team. Amazed they still run rotaries. Was our LS Rx-8 there? I haven't been racing due to my schedule, the ridge is my favorite track.
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Apr 24, 2024 00:53
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Thanks all - it was an amazing weekend with a great group. No way dude, that's awesome. Let me know when you're headed up here next, it's only an hour from me and I can stop by and hang out/grab parts and fuel for you/whatever. Yeah, they were a real cool team. Their alternator issue turned out to be twofold. They had 2 ones that fit in unknown condition including one that previously would make charge if you blipped the engine to 4k or higher at startup, plus one that was allegedly good but wouldn't fit their bracketry, and one they borrowed that was the same as the other 2 but also didn't charge. Or rather, some of them would charge and some wouldn't but we couldn't really tell what was what because they had MULTIPLE confounding issues. A radiator fan and EWP drawing about 45 amps together plus the engine management and race data system drawing nearly 20 meant that their poor 80A (rated, at best) alternators were fighting a nearly losing battle right from the beginning, add in a cold blooded rotary that has to be started multiple times on a partially flat battery because it normally sits around in the trailer between races and you have a recipe for "huh it's at 12.2 volts, are we charging? are we not? let's swap the alternator" until you can't remember which alternator got you a tenth of a volt charge in 15 minutes and which didn't and how many times you've started the car on each and oh no the jump pack is nearly flat now. After a bunch of beating around the bushes and a few rounds of finding missing tenths of a volt due to bad connections and dirty mounting faces they eventually brought all 4 alternators to the parts store for testing and all of them were allegedly functional as far as the testing machine was concerned. Then we bolted one of them on and the actual original builder of the car arrived and was like yeah, those alternators are way undersized, I knew this, I said this would happen, we need a bigger alt, let's put my DC clamp ammeter on here and see what is actually happening. Oh yeah, 12.5 volts and the alt is putting out 75 amps, it's doing it's job, it just plain isn't big enough. So they stuck the battery on the charger overnight, minimized loads on the vehicle, hooked it to a jump pack every time they needed to start it and sent it. As far as I can remember they made the checkered flag both days. I'd pit next to them again literally any day. My suggestion was to grab the biggest CS144 GM 1 wire style they could get their hands on that was in stock at every OReillys nationwide, remake their custom brackets to fit it, and slap it in. They're so dirt simple mud truck guys can run them successfully, that means much less headache at the track, and much more commonly available spares. I'm not actually sure if there was an LS RX8. What car number would it be?
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Apr 24, 2024 01:29
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holy poo poo dude, i am in awe of your ability to achieve so much. i am capable of either going to work or accomplishing one (1) task per day, if i burn all my mental energy on it. this is literal superhero poo poo. props.
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Apr 24, 2024 08:47
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