scannon

I attended a charity car and airplane show on Saturday. All the cars and some of the airplanes belonged to one man. There were 21 Ferraris including an Enzo, F-40, F-50, 288 GTO, 312PB race car, 250 GTB SWB Berlinetta Scaglietti, every model of mid-engine Ferraris starting with a Dino up though the F-430. The 250 GTB SWB Berlinetta Scaglietti had just been acquired in a trade with Nicholas Cage for a Bugatti Veyron. He had to throw in a couple million along with the Veyron to get the Ferrari. In addition he had on display the above mentioned Bugatti Veyron, a RR Phantom, Bently GT, AM Vanguish, a pair of Hummers, an E55 MB, 5 pristine original Mini Cooper S's and a Ford Pinto! There were also a pair of G-55 AMGs with superchargers. They were selling rides in either the Enzo or one of his Great Lakes open cockpit biplanes. I signed up for a ride in the Enzo and had to stay in town an extra day to get it. When I showed up Monday AM, the Enzo wouldn't start. A million dollar car with a dead battery. They had left the doors open for the show and drained the battery with the interior lights. His crew tried a jumper battery pack and that wouldn't work so we pushed the Enzo outside to jumper it from a running truck. As we were about to hook up the jumper cables, the owner yelled out don't hook it up, you can't jumpstart the car for fear of ruining the electronics. He was on the cell phone to the dealer. We don't know if the first attemps at a jump start damaged the car or not. He offered my money back (given to charity and matched by him) and then offered a ride in any of the other Ferraris (except the race car). I said I'd rather take a rain check on the Enzo as I would be back later in the summer. He agreed to that and threw in a ride in the biplane. We had a great ride, did a barrel roll or two, flew up a canyon and blew out the tail wheel tire on landing. Skip

It looks wide open but he never got out of 2nd gear and seldom near the top of it either. Skip

So it is two pieces. That makes sense, I couldn't figure out how you tapered it in without cuts or folds showing. Thanks, Skip

How did you get it to taper in at the front? That's the part I like about it.

Busa, I really like that exhaust shield for the way it covers the front of the muffler. How long is it, what is the diameter and where can I get one? Beautiful car, I love Brit car shows. If the show was in the USA they would have had to have done an environmental impact statement for the dripping oil to get their permit. Skip

That's really adding lightness!:lol:

Not sure what you are trying to adapt but I found most parts stores have lengths of pre-made brake line with a fitting on each end. For my clutch line I needed to connect the Caterham master cylinder to the metric Mazda slave cylinder. I bought one line with metric flare nuts and one with British flare nuts. I cut off one end of each, moved a metric flare nut onto the British line and made a new flare. The metric end goes into an afertmarket Miata braided line and on to the Miata solid tubing the rest of the way to the slave cylinder. Skip

I used the Aeroturbine muffler on my Miata powered Caterham. You can hear how it sounds on my car . I really like the sound and I have seen local independent dyno proof of their performance claims. They make a version with a built in resonator which is the one I used. I have never had a turbo that spooled up so quickly as this one does with the Aeroturbine muffler. Skip

Bob, Thanks for the info. I went out to the shop and pulled the speedometer and had a look at the connector. Although the pins/sockets are not marked, there is an empty space between the two wires coming from the sensor which I believe someone said are 6 & 8. I tried stuffing a wire in the empty socket hole and connecting it to one side of the sensor and the other side to ground. No joy when spinning the sensor. There are two other empty sockets so I tried both of them in the spirit of "if it doesn't work, try something else". No joy there either. I can't be sure my jumper is actually contacting the pin in the speedo side of the connector so I tried to remove the non-hot wire (pin 8) from the connector and move it over to pin 7. I could open the little protective door across the sockets but could not release the socket from the connector. They appear to be similar in construction to the ones on a Miata only smaller. The Miata sockets can be removed by inserting a small pick or allen wrench along side the wire to release the clip holding the socket in place. The hole is smaller in the Caterham connector and I couldn't find anything small enough to slip in there yet still rigid enough to do the job. Do you or anyone else know if this is the correct way to remove the socket from the connector or is there another trick to it?

I have had my SV for 1.5 years, just finishing it now and have only driven it a few, way too short times (still waiting for that pesky assigned VIN to arrive) without plates. I can already tell this is a keeper. The grins are ear to ear everytime I fire it up. My history with keeping cars is not good, I've owned 299 of them so far and until my current Miata the record was just under two years. Most lasted a few months. I've had the Miata for 8 years now and don't see me selling it anytime soon. As far as using the car for a coffin, I have long dreamed of having myself freeze dried when I die, strapped into the Miata with a smile on my face and have car and corpse launched into space in the direction of a certain star in the Southern Cross now officially named Kepler's Yellow Miata. Of course, I will have to win the lotto or a big lawsuit to be able to afford that.

Bob, Oh that it should be so simple as moving a pin on the connector! Please let me know what you find out after you talk to APT. Thanks, Skip

Not a BEC but I had my Caterham SV into RMSCI for an alignment last week by Nathan and Ben. Here are the settings: Front Camber -1.5 Caster 5.0 Toe In +2mm Rear Camber -1.7 Toe In 0.0 These are almost identical settings to what I use on my Miata except I run a little more negative camber both front and rear. Never any problems with cording the inside edge of the tires.

Today I got a regular email notifying me that I had a PM on the forum. I went there and it was there.:hurray: This time I didn't get the flash screen upon going to the forum as I had with the previous couple of times when the PM was missing so I think you have solved the problem. Thanks and get along with making a living! Skip

I had a chat with Keith this AM and he checked the manual. Apparently the sensor should be providing a 5 volt pulse. From Keith's later email: "Looks as if it's not that tough to convert voltage pulses into the sort of signal you need. You've got half of a "hall effect switch", and it looks like a switching output transitor will finish things off. In other words, a moderate electronics geek should have no trouble sorting this out with parts from Radio Shack." Any electronic geeks out there willing to figure this out for me? Thanks, Skip

Bob, Thanks again for the new info. I tried repeated touching of the two wires. The speedo jumped up to about 40 mph immediately. I wonder if I am feeding too much current to the speedo doing this. I'm not aware of any other speedometers working with the Miata sensor but I will see if I can find a service manual for the '00 Miata and see if there is any info in there on the signal structure. I'm leaving in the AM to pickup my new trailer in Nebraska and won't get a chance to pursue this until the weekend. I will take some ohm readings on the Caterham sensor to see if we can determine what it is.

Bob inspired me to do some late night experimenting in the shop. I made a couple of discoveries. 1. Neither of the wires when run through the Miata sensor to ground make the speedo work or even quiver. Shorting between the two wires going to the speedo produces a jump in the speedo needle as seen before. 2. Directly grounding one of the wires produces nothing, grounding the other one directly produces a blown fuse. No suprise there. 3. Running a continuity check with my multimeter produces 8 beeps per revolution. 4. There are 16 distinct detents felt when rotating the sensor gear through one revolution. Checking the resistance while rotating the sensor gear produces a momentary resistance of either 500 ohm +- a bit or 50 ohm +- quite a bit. This happens during the transit between detents. When the gear stops in any of the 16 detents, it reads 225 ohms every time. It looks like this sensor is not a simple off and on switch. Any suggestions? As you can tell, electronics is not my strongest skill. While preparing to raise the car on stands to get at the connection I noticed that my oil pan seemed much closer to the floor than I remembered. The last time I measured it was 3.75". When I checked it tonight it was down to 2.25"!!! I have added parts and fluids since the last time it was measured and I assume the springs have settled a bit as well but I wasn't expecting to lose 1.5" of clearance. I imagine it drops even lower when I am in the car.

Bob, Thanks for the info on the speedo. I have an extra Miata sensor so I can do some experimenting. Do you have a guess whether it will be the hot wire through the reed switch to ground or the non-hot wire through the switch to ground. It seems like right now I have the hot wire through the reed switch and back to the speedo which doesn't work. How do you calibrate the speedo using the odo push button? Is this documented somewhere I can access? Thanks, Skip

My Caterham has an electric speedometer. There is a two wire connector to the sensor on the transmission. One side is hot and if I make a connection across the two terminals, I can see the speedometer needle make a small jump. Nathan at RMSCI tells me that the Caterham sensor is supposed to produce 8 pulses per revolution. The electric sensor in my Miata transmission also makes 8 pulses per revolution, however, it is a reed switch which I can watch make and break with a continuity checker while I turn the gear. The Caterham sensor is not an off and on switch and when I connected the Miata reed switch to the Caterham speedometer wiring, I got nothing in the way of needle movement while driving. Can anyone educate me about how the Caterham sensor works and what I might do to make the Miata sensor work with the Caterham speedometer? Another problem is the idiot light for the alternator. It stays on whether the engine is running or not. I have measured the voltage at 14.4 volts while the engine is running and about 12 volts when the engine is off so I think it is safe to say the charging system is working. Any suggestions to make the idiot light function? I connected the wire in the Miata harness for the idiot light to the wire in the Caterham harness for its idiot light. Thanks, Skip

Sorry, don't have any disco potatos. I think it sizes up inbetween the two turbos I have.

I have been sneaking a few drives in it since they took away my plates. :hurray: I've booted it through 1st and 2nd a couple of times and it is stupid fast. It is also the fastest spooling turbo I have driven, boost is all but instantaneous. The turbo is FM's standard Garrett GT2560R (also known as the GT28R) mounted on their new design exhaust manifold. This turbo was on my Miata which dyno'd at 250 RWHP and 265 lb ft of torque. It got moved to the Caterham when I upgraded the Miata to a GT3071R.

My video skills haven't improved much but here is a tour of my soon to be completed and legal Caterham SV. I've made a few runs to redline in 1st and 2nd, it is stupid fast! Just what I was looking for. Skip

Looks great! Are you required to have a front plate and what would a cop think about this one and your regular one on the back? I tried to get SE7EN here in Colorado yesterday but it was taken.

I am staying logged on as well. However, most of the threads wrap within my screen but a few of them require use of the scroll bar to read the last third or so on each sentence, a minor annoyance. Can this be fixed? I don't recall this happening on the previous version. Skip

How are those attached to the headlights?

Since the engine is an unmodified 1.8 liter junkyard engine with only a turbo and Link ECU, I can only get 240 -250 WRHP out of it and have it last. This engine should have in the neighborhood of 240 lb ft of torque to go with the HP. This should satisfy my inner G-force junkie for a year or two. Once I am used to this power level and my wallet has recovered, I will build one of Flyin Miata's 2.0 liter strokers with forged internals and head work. That should easily put it in the 320 - 350 RWHP range with similar torque. I think that will be sufficient and as far as I will take it. One person has taken the 2.0 stroker engine to 636 RWHP and 430 RWHP is not uncommon. I'm not planning on going there.