jloehlein

The QA1 rep got back to me very quickly - it looks like the DS404 should suit my needs. Thanks. The upper ball joint does appear to be the tie rod end from a 60's Ford truck. I've got a set of Moog replacements. Were you suggesting to change the design or just make sure to use a quality brand?

Thanks - I reached out to QA1, will see what they've got.

Well, it's been a busy past month with a couple track days (including a friend wrecking a car during the first, then us fixing it for the second) and an autocross. I haven't made a ton of progress, but I did manage to get the drivetrain out of the Miata and did a test fit in the Rotus. It seems like I'd only have ~3.5" of ground clearance with the VVT actuator touching the hood. I will try to find some FWD oil pans to see if that would gain me some more clearance. One thing I am having trouble finding is info on the shocks. They're Koni 80-2091, 15.5" extended length, 11" compressed. Even the Koni rebuilders can't find info about them in their systems. Rebuilding cost seems pretty high. The spring rates are ~80lbs/in front and ~100lbs/in rear. I'd be interested in what other folks are using for shocks. I have no plans to race the car, just street drive and maybe autocross it non-competitively.

Good call - it looks like there are a few videos and threads online with Exocet owners paring down the harness. Thanks for the recommendation! Sounds pretty good to me and certainly can't hurt - I'll pick up a can. Ya - I'm mildly concerned about the motor fitting, but after measuring it and measuring the car on the ground, I think I can maintain 4-5" of ground clearance. If it does create a problem, I may just swap it with the non-VVT motor in my Lemons car and mount it a bit higher. As for the Megasquirt, it's a plug and play kit for the Miata that has been running the car for the past 4 or 5 years. Thankfully, I'm friends with the guy who did the VVT swap in the car, so I've got all the details on it.

Good news - I got the donor Miata running this past weekend. It's got a VVT motor from an '02 in it and a Megasquirt. Now to take it all apart and figure out what parts of the harness I want to keep and what I want to re-make. Hopefully I can pull the drivetrain and get it mocked up in the chassis before Thanksgiving.

They're in the most exciting condition...unknown :smilielol5: I sent you an email through the forum, let me know if you don't get it.

Thanks, xcarguy! It's neat to see all the build pics - definitely a lot of ideas. I've gotta wash the frame and then I can start cutting out the rotary mounts and fixing some random stuff. Once I fabricate the new mounts, I should be able to strip and re-paint the frame. Thinking about using ZRC Galvanizing Compound - a friend of mine sails and his anchor is painted with it. If it can stand up to tons of salt water exposure, it should be more than adequate for a frame/ Anyone have any recommendations on how to treat the insides of tubes to prevent corrosion?

Got the frame all stripped down. Just need to separate the floorpan and it'll be completely disassembled. The only thing that gave me any trouble was that one of the serrated sleeves in a rear control arm bushing started wearing its way through the mounting tab. Had to pry the tabs apart to get it out. Contemplating just replacing the rear arms with heims and swage tubes - my Birkin is set up with all heims and it rides great. Thinking about what to do in the front, as well. http://www.usa7s.net/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=16025&stc=1

Thanks, guys. I'm looking forward to making some progress, especially as I wrap up a couple other projects.

With the car being 30 years old, sitting for at least a decade, some shady welding done to mount the rotary, and the fire, I've decided I'm going to pull pull the car down to the bare frame and rebuild the whole thing. It'll be getting a Miata drivetrain because I have a bunch of them and have no desire to mess with the rotary. Here is what the car looks like right now. http://www.usa7s.net/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=16005&stc=1http://www.usa7s.net/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=16004&stc=1http://www.usa7s.net/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=16006&stc=1 The body was made in 3 pieces (the two sides and the rear), but they were all welded together after being attached to the frame, so I had to get it off in one piece. After chiseling off at least 100 rivets and a little bit of bending, it's off. http://www.usa7s.net/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=16007&stc=1 If anyone has any good ideas about replacing that burnt section, let me know. My current thoughts are to just cut the sides off (either before the bend at the windshield or right before where the body gets taller for the rear wheels) and re-make both as separate pieces. That sounds pretty simple to me. Anyways, at this point, I'm going to keep stripping the car down. I'm planning on getting the shocks rebuilt and replacing all of the bushings/joints. I found all the part numbers for the joints, bearings and brakes, but if anyone has any idea what control arm bushings were used, let me know! I'm really bad at taking pictures while I'm working, but I'm going to try and do so and force myself to keep this thread updated.

Hey folks. So, I picked up this 1988 Rotus (I believe #44) a few months ago and figured I would post up here to share what I'm doing and hopefully get some help along the way. I got this car from the original owner. At some point in the early 2000s, a turbo rotary motor was swapped in. The car was fast, but never ran quite right. So, at some point over a decade ago, the car was given to a shop where it was torn apart. And then it sat...for a long time. While it was in the shop, it caught on fire. Allegedly, a battery charger was sitting on the passenger fender and something happened that caused it to ignite. Thankfully, a passerby saw the flash, broke into the shop and put the fire out before it spread. There is damage to the passenger side panel, but the nose and hood were off, so they were fine. Here is what the car as I picked it up from the shop where it had been for over a decade. http://www.usa7s.net/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=15999&stc=1 I got all the parts, including a new fender and the rotary motor, in pieces. Had to mount the nose to see what it would look like. Not bad. http://www.usa7s.net/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=16000&stc=1 I like the brown interior, though there are like 5 different kinds of gauges in the dash - something I'll have to change or I won't be able to sleep at night. http://www.usa7s.net/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=16001&stc=1 Here's the fancy wiring job that was done at the shop. I cut all this out and will be rewiring the whole car. http://www.usa7s.net/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=16002&stc=1

Fair. Gotta love light cars! It does seem like they are Golf rotors with some machine work done. Thanks, all for the help.

Thanks. I've reached out. In the meantime, if anyone knows what they're off of, post it up!

I have an '09 Birkin S3. I'm planning on doing several track days this year to sort out the suspension and any other bugs that we can find. I need to buy a spare set of brake rotors. I know I can order front rotors for a '95 VW Golf, but I can't find any rear rotors that match my measurements. It supposedly has MkV VW GTI rear calipers. Here are the rotor measurements: Diameter: 9" Width: 0.4" Total height: ~1.25" Bolt pattern: 4x100mm Any idea what would fit? I've looked at Miatas, Civics, Mini Coopers, MkIII Golf and none seem to be the same. Thanks in advance.

When I bought my Birkin, the seller sent me a signed bill of sale, I wired the money, then he sent the title. I don't believe wire transfers can be reversed - so that seems like a pretty safe way if you're receiving money.

If it is, it's not mine. It was stuck in the fenced-in area around my pool, I opened the gate to let it out and it followed me down to the garage. I snapped a picture because I couldn't believe it. A couple days later it showed up again and hung around for a bit. Haven't seen it since.

The Birkin I bought earlier this year had a roll cage on it, but it was too small for me to pass the broomstick test for track days. I am 6' and fit under the cage, but not with my helmet on. I built a new cage that's ~4" taller. Figured someone might want the old one. It seems like it's made of 1.5"x0.080" tube. The mounting plates are fairly thin - maybe 1/8" and the quality of the welds is poor. I'm located in central VA - obviously it'd be easiest to pick it up, but I might be able to find someone to ship it. Looking for $200. PM me here or email me at justin dot loehlein at gmail. Here is the cage on the car - my friend is ~5'5" For reference, here it is off the car next to the new one

My Birkin came with a Typhoon ECU. I needed to do a lot of tuning to get the car running properly and wasn't a big fan of the software, so I installed a Megasquirt. I've got the Typhoon ECU and the serial cable for sale. I'll also throw in a used 35-pin connector. Looking for $500 shipped. Shoot me a PM or email at justin dot loehlein at gmail

Finally got the car running what I will consider 100%. The throttle was still pretty sensitive, so I stole a throttle cam off a spare Porsche 944 throttle body my friend had lying around. We used a Miata throttle cable to get it to work. Oh, and I also swapped in a Microsquirt ECU. That involved digging the engine harness out of the car. The Microsquirt and Typhoon use the same connector, so most of the work was just labeling wires and then pulling them out of the connector and moving them to a new location. With the Microsquirt in, we spent a bunch of time tuning and brought it back to the dyno. Between that and the throttle cam the car is much smoother to drive. Took it to a test and tune autocross today and dominated everything with fenders. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my GoPro, but it was a blast. Here are the final dyno numbers. I suspect it's got stage 3 cams in it (torque peak is like 6800rpm) and the car would be faster with a cam that traded off peak power for more mid-range. Whatever though - it's plenty fast. Now we just need to build another, taller roll cage so I can drive it on track. If anyone wants to buy the Typhoon or existing roll cage, shoot me a note!

I've got a Birkin with a Zetec motor in it. It has an Intermotor 12807 coil, which looks like it is sourced from a variety of cars, including Fiestas and Mondeos. Anyways, I'm putting a Microsquirt standalone in it and need to set the max coil dwell time. Was wondering if anyone here has that value handy so I don't have to find it via trial and error.

Alright, took the car down to the dyno today. The Typhoon ECU and SXTune software are fairly clunky, but we got a safe tune on it. I've gotta go back through the logs, but it seems like it's making about 5psi or boost at 4500rpm and 12psi at almost 7k. The car ended up putting down 245hp and 191ft-lbs. We only wound the car out to ~6800rpm for now. I'm going to take care of a few things and we'll head back to the dyno to do some more tuning later. .

At this point, you'll want an SA2015-rated helmet. You can pick basic ones up for as little as ~$180 all over the internet.

Well, good news on a number of fronts. 1) I basically finished my Dad's Cobra. It's at his house now, waiting for the DMV inspector to come bring the VIN tag. Then we can drive it around, tune it, and button up any loose ends. 2) We put a spare oil pressure gauge on the Birkin and it shows ~60psi at 3k rpm, a lot better than the 35 the VDO gauge showed. I don't trust any of the VDO gauges in the car - the odometer blinks in and out, the tach gets stuck occasionally, the voltmeter reads 12v all the time, and the coolant temp reads over 220 when the ECU is seeing 180. Oh well, at least I know I have good oil pressure. 3) I started re-tuning the car from scratch and with ~2hrs work so far, the car runs way better. AFRs under acceleration are 11.5-12.5 and 13-14 cruising around. The hesitation and jerkiness is all gone. I suspect that after the supercharger was put on, the fuel curve was still the same shape as when the car had ITBs - and there is a big difference between 5% throttle opening across (4) ~50mm throttle bodies vs a single ~65mm throttle body. I switched the ECU to speed density and used the fuel table shape from a 2.0L Honda motor (K20). Once I dialed in the idle, we drove it around a bit and I tweaked everything under 5k rpm, staying out of boost. We're setting up dyno time over the next couple weeks to really tune it. I'm excited to see what it'll do. 4) I was trying to figure out how to use all this newly found free time (I've been busting my @ss on my Dad's car for the last 6 months to get it done), so we threw the Birkin on the scales. 1310lbs with 3/4 tank of gas. Not too bad. Balance is not terrible with a driver (2nd pic). Next steps are dyno tuning, corner weighting, and alignment. Anyone have any track-oriented alignment specs handy I can use as a starting point?

Here are a few shots of the nose of the car and the front of the motor. The supercharger is really buried in there, kind of difficult to see anything. The intake from the filter makes a 90 degree turn into the supercharger inlet through the sheet metal brace that has a few holes punched in it. As it comes out of the supercharger, you can clearly see the BOV and it just runs into the throttle body. We also noticed that the hose to the Accusump is leaking from the back of one of the fittings, so I'm ordering more hose and replacing it.

I only have what was on the listing and linked in the post on this site. Are you looking for something specific? The Cobra is a MkIV. It's got a 408w, Tremec TKO600, and 3-link rear end. I put some 3.08 gears in there to calm it down a bit. Just using the Konis and springs that came with the kit. Thanks. We'll see how long this stuff lasts on the exhaust. I'm hoping to get the tune pretty close on the street - might then spend some time dyno tuning. Might do the Cobra and Birkin together. Re: wetsanding, thankfully my Dad is mostly retired, so that's pretty much done already and I've just gotta polish everything now. We're pretty close - very exciting after ~2 years.