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speedy_w_beans

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Everything posted by speedy_w_beans

  1. I'm sure everyone is dying to know who advocated for plastic bushings...
  2. A little bit of advertising from back in the day... It still makes me smile!
  3. Another vote for the Super Hornet!
  4. Santa came early! Been a fan of these since the Team Hahn release; I'm happy Tamiya continues to bring new bodies to market. This was announced as a "tankpool24," but it seems like those decals disappeared from the final model. Maybe a licensing deal couldn't be reached? Interesting change between announcement and production.
  5. If your MB6 parts are just 850 brass bushings, you might consider replacing them with 850 flanged ball bearings. The ball bearings will have less friction and won't wear out like the bushings do, and the flanged feature will help keep the belt located in the center of the ball bearings. Example part: https://www.avidrc.com/product/1/bearings/16/5x8x25-Flanged-Metal-MF85ZZ-bearings.html
  6. Yes, you can get rubber tires for the F103 Tyrrell P34. Tamiya 19408053 includes two rear tires and two front tires for the F104W Lotus 79 and Wolf WR1. If you buy two sets you'll have enough plus a spare pair of rear tires. You're going to need the right wheels for the rubber tires, as well. One set of 19338097 will work for the rear, and two sets of 19338096 are needed for the front.
  7. I like where you"re going with the front dampers!
  8. It's funny to see the evolution of drift chassis over the past 10 years. People started with 4WD touring cars, slippery tires, locked rear diff, front one way, 50:50 and then CS (countersteer). Then it got even more interesting with front motor conversions, zero-Ackerman steering, KPI (king pin inclination) mods, and linked camber suspensions. Weight distribution has been all over the place with front motor, mid motor, mid rear motor, rear motor, as well as 4WD and 2WD. There have been belts (most) and now purely gear driven chassis too. I'm not sure what's forcing all the changes. Is it the pursuit of scale accuracy? Are drifting surface preferences changing? Is one architecture easier to drive than another? Actually, the evolution and choices available today are kind of confusing. How do you choose a drift chassis for the surface you want to drive on? What's also a little frustrating is it seems like Yokomo and MST offer quite a few kits of the same basic design; it's not clear why they have so many choices available. If someone can school me with a taxonomy of drift chassis architecture and the situations they address, it would be much appreciated.
  9. HK15138 from Hobbyking works ok as a Futaba S3003 replacement. I've been using Hobbyking's Turnigy DRFT-303 servos for some time and I like them better. They feel a little faster and come with ball bearings for about $5-6 USD. I also have some of the 4409MD servos, but none of mine center very well; there's too much gear lash so they are relegated to trucks/crawlers. Generally the DRFT-303 has worked well for me for 1/10 onroad and some basher buggies, and when they still sold clones of the Savox 1258TG/1256TG/1251TG for $30 USD I bought a few and they worked great for 1/8 scale buggies/truggies.
  10. If you have two pairs of needle nose pliers, it's relatively easy to bend body clips so the ends point downwards (away from the paint) or upwards (away from the outside of the body shell). Just bend the clips to form a kind of shallow "U" so the pointy ends and the round end are not in the same plane as the center portion of the clip. It'll help with paint scratching, and it will make it easier to remove the clips on the outside of the shell as well. Example here. You can see how I bent the round end of the clips up to make them easier to remove. Do the same to the pointed ends for both interior and exterior clips:
  11. Seems like there could be several reasons for people buying multiples of the same kit: Convenience: For those that go racing, having a second kit is a convenient source of spare parts. You don't necessarily know what will break on a new design, and if the track doesn't carry the spares then you can at least dig into the second kit for the day and replenish the parts at a more convenient time. Focus: Standardizing on a platform can make some sense depending on what aspect of the hobby is more important to you. For example, I know another TC member who has a sizeable collection of Associated TC3/TC4 chassis. His real love is body work, details, painting, etc. and constructing the chassis is not that interesting to him. So, when he finds a bargain TC3/TC4 chassis on eBay he just buys it to have it ready for another body. This means all of his on-road cars have common parts between them, and he's happy with that. He probably has a few tubs' worth of used chassis and spare parts that will last him as long as he's in the hobby. Raw material: Sometimes kits go on closeout, and these are particularly interesting to get some raw material for custom projects. For example, I grabbed a few F104W Wolf WR1 kits when they were $99 with the intention of using parts from both to make a March 2-4-0 at some point (the opposite of a Tyrrell P34). Filling a gap in a collection (somewhat): Just due to timing, it was easier for me to buy two TA05V2 Motul Nismo GTR kits and one Cusco Dunlop Impreza shell than to buy one GTR kit and one Impreza kit. The complete Impreza kit couldn't be found, so buying the body shell and one extra TA05V2 chassis was the way to complete my TA05V2 collection. Curating pipelines: I've slowed down on purchasing new kits, but if a kit comes out and it calls to me, I may buy one to keep for future building. If a new kit comes out and it lights some passion in me, I may buy two: one to keep for the future, and one to build today. I suppose what I'm doing is keeping two pipelines full at the same time. There's a short-term (-10 year history, +5 year horizon?) queue to work on now, and there's a long-term (+10 to +15 year horizon) queue to enjoy when I retire hopefully. Breaking kits and selling spares: I don't do this, but we know others who do on eBay. I guess it's a way to play in the hobby for "free" or maybe make a little cash on the side. Buy six kits, break four of them and sell the parts, and keep two kits for free? I don't know the business model here, but it must be profitable if people keep doing it. I pretty much fall in the camp of curating pipelines, completing sub-collections, and buying raw material. I don't race or run an eBay business, nor do I focus on a single chassis to a great extent. But these all seem like reasons why people buy multiples of a kit.
  12. Not today, but last week we celebrated Thanksgiving in the USA, and I took a few days off work to have the full week. My wife had made plans for us to travel up to Indiana to visit her father and help him with his outdoor power equipment. One yard tractor, two lawn mowers, four weed eaters, one leaf blower, and one snow blower later we finally had all the filters/plugs/oil changed on this stuff. We also replaced a tail light he damaged on his car, repaired a battery tender, and swept and cleaned his garage so he's in good shape for this winter. He's 86 and has started to give up on maintenance/repairs, so when something breaks he just buys another. Hence the four weed eaters and two lawn mowers. Only after I had everything serviced and running again did he tell me how some of that equipment hadn't worked in over 5 years! I set him up with new gas cans, new oil mix, new fuel stabilizer just to be sure he was putting good fuel in everything again. Some of the more interesting/fun observations: - He had a handheld Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner; it probably hadn't been used in 10-15 years. We plugged it in and it ran for about 5 seconds, then the motor smoked pretty badly. My wife guessed it was acting flaky before and that's why it ended up in the garage. Thanks for the booby trap! We tossed it. - One of his weed eaters had something terribly wrong with it as well. It was an electric cord model; it would respond to the trigger but made a terrible grinding noise and ran sporadically. With so many other weed eaters to choose from, we opted to pitch this one. - My son and I did our best to drain the old fuel out of his lawn mowers and put some fresh in. We must have pulled on those rip cords dozens of times each. Just as my son gave up, I pulled the cord next and the mower roared to life. It was a funny moment of glory for me and a moment of defeat for him. We laughed about it for awhile. - When we were servicing his yard tractor I noticed the old oil filter didn't fit the flange correctly. The gasket made contact and it wasn't leaking, but clearly the filter was oversized. Someone didn't chase down the correct part. - The snow blower was pretty interesting. It was an old single-stage 2-stroke Sears Craftsman model with a Tecumseh HSK (Horizontal Snow King) engine in it. It was pretty seriously gummed up with old 2-stroke gas/oil. I think quite a bit of the gas evaporated, which left a heavy residue of oil in the fuel tank and carburetor. The exhaust smoked heavily for a good 20 minutes before the new fuel cleaned the old residue out of it. It's such a pain to start with the pull cord; fortunately it has a plug for an extension cord and an electric starter motor. - What made all of this more fun was the fact he threw out all of the owner manuals so we had no reference for spark plug or air filter numbers, or recommended oil weights. Fortunately I was able to find most of his equipment online and download PDFs of the manuals. It was a lot of work, but it was a nice diversion from the regular job. Plus, he's a nice guy so helping him is not a burden. He deserves to be treated well.
  13. "Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans." -- Allen Saunders, Reader's Digest, 1957 Pretty hard to make a plan these days. I grab bits of time here and there, but there's no point in trying to make grand projections (for me).
  14. I appreciate you putting some time into refreshing this model and posting about it. I have an 801X in the box still and have been thinking about building it, so the legwork you're doing is very helpful.
  15. TRF801XT. Super high quality, robust, no hop ups needed, drove great immediately.
  16. Great question; I never tried one. Part of the reason why I think 3500kV is near the limit is because there are limited gearing choices for that gearbox. The Mad Bull drove well on asphalt but the motor would get too hot to touch. At the beach, there was enough power to lose control on the packed sand pretty easily, but the motor stayed cooler there.
  17. I was running a Castle Sidewinder V2 ESC with Turnigy 3500 kV 4-pole motor and 2S LiPo a few years ago; the model could run non-stop at the local beach pretty well. It was on the verge of being uncontrollable, so I wouldn't go any higher than that.
  18. I've been driving the Speed 3 casually for the past two weeks just breaking in the clutch some more. It was pulling slightly to the right going down a straight road, and I could feel a little tire scrub in more aggressive driving on the highway, so I took it in for a wheel alignment this morning. I was a little worried removing the subframe and steering rack would make alignment challenging, but it turned out fine, and I could feel the difference taking it back home later in the morning. It kind of inspired me to go back to my original shopping list from April and update it. If anyone else is searching the Internet on how to replace a Mazdaspeed 3 clutch, I thought maybe this list would help him size up the job. This assumes the person thinking about doing this also has a garage space, several jacks and jack stands, a toolbox full of regular tools like screwdrivers, wrenches, sockets/ratchets, breaker bars, torque wrenches, and other tools, and a helper for a few of the bigger/heavier steps. Click on the image to make it larger, and right-click to save it. The spreadsheet captures several options since I was trying to decide whether to do the bare minimum or go all-in with some upgrades. BE: Bare Essentials, this is the minimum of material and tools I thought I could get away with. E: Esssentials, basically a full set of material and tools to do the service procedure. There are more new parts, more tools. MM: Motor Mounts, there are only two part numbers here for the polyurethane motor mounts. MC: Mazda clutch, the OEM parts needed to do replace one-for-one with factory parts and original torque/power specs. LC: LUK clutch, LUK supplied the OEM clutch, so buying LUK directly saves quite a bit of money for the same torque/power specs. SC: South Bend clutch, the "Stage 2 Endurance" upgrade capable of holding +100 lb-ft of torque, feramic pucks one side, normal pucks the other side At the bottom of the spreadsheet are some combinations of BE/E + LC/SB + MM and the cost spread was from $1600 to $3000 depending on options selected. As you know from the previous posts, I went for all the essentials, the motor mounts, and the South Bend option. I'm still accumulating mileage and heat cycles on the motor mounts, but if someone asked me to make a decision today I'd say skip the upper motor mounts (assuming he has the lower poly mount) and save $500 and a few hours on the job. Maybe the last thing to post about are some reflections on changes I've made to the car over the past 14 years and whether some of these were worth it or not. My application/perspective is to make this car as enjoyable on the street and highway as possible, but it's not meant to be a track car. Someone who wants a track toy would think about these modifications differently than I do. Tires: The car came with Bridgestone Potenza RE050A extreme performance summer tires. They lasted about 17,000 miles and I tried a lower-cost option with some Kumho Ecsta SPTs. They also lasted about 20,000 miles. Both tires had sharp handling for turning, but they both had lackluster forward bite in the street. Plus, my winters are below 0C and come with dustings of snow, so these were not great for part of the year. Both tires turned hard in the colder temperatures. After the Kumhos wore out I switched to Continental ExtremeContact DWS06 ultra high performance all season tires. I actually like these quite a bit. The tread pattern, compound, and sidewall construction make a huge difference. I no longer have any problems with forward bite or braking at any temperature on the street, and I sacrificed only a little steering response. I feel more confident in the rain and 1-2 dustings of light snow we get each year. Plus, the Continental tires took some of the harshness out of the bumps in the road. Overall they provided more comfort, more bite for accelerating/braking, and only gave up a little steering. Conclusion: I'm pretty much hooked on these for street/highway use. Wheels: When I bought the Kumho tires I also bought a set of Enkei GTC01s to save a few pounds per corner. I thought the lighter weight might help with some of the bounciness/underdamping I felt in the suspension (less unsprung mass), plus they had a nice bling factor to them. For the longest time I thought these looked great with the black chrome/black scheme of the headlights and tail lights, but as time went by my eye started to see the stock brake calipers and rotors more and more. When I mounted the first set of Continental tires to these wheels, the light bulb went off and I realized the tire played more of a role in comfort than any weight savings in the wheel. So, for my second set of Continentals I switched back to the OEM wheels, and I think I'm in a happy spot where the brake calipers and rotors aren't quite as prominent anymore, and the ride comfort is the same thanks to the tires. Conclusion: Tires make the difference; OEM wheels are just fine, and ironically are probably more unique since many Speed3 owners put custom wheels on their cars. No point in showing off stock brake parts. Brakes: I'm still on the original rear rotors and pads, so nothing to say there. When the front pads wore out, I switched to some Centric rotors and Hawk HPS pads purchased from Tire Rack. I could have sourced some Mazda parts or equivalents from Volvo (S40), or some generic stuff from the local parts store, but I was keen on trying some Hawk pads. I didn't want a pad that would wear too quickly, nor did I want a track pad that needed some heat before working, and the HPS series sounded pretty good. Anyhow, these pads and rotors have been on the car for quite awhile, and for street/highway use I'm 100% satisfied. The rotors haven't warped and the pads have plenty of life in them; braking is smooth and there's plenty of bite. I haven't had any instances of fading. Conclusion: I'd buy this combination again, or some other rotor plus Hawk HPS pads. No complaints. Brake lines: After about ten years I swapped from the OEM lines to some Goodridge stainless steel braided lines. The goal was to see if I could get any more direct feeling between the brake pedal and the pads. I guess my expectations were high, because I didn't notice any meaningful difference between the OEM lines and the Goodridge lines. Conclusion: Not worth it in my application, I'd be inclined to skip this in the future on another car. Struts/shocks: Mentioned at the top of this thread, these made a huge difference and settled down the suspension. For the front struts I just transplanted the OEM springs with some spring compressors; the rear has the OEM springs as well. Conclusion: I'm 100% satisfied with Bilstein B6 struts and shocks; they work fine with the OEM springs and the Continental DWS tires I'm running. Sway bars: While the front subframe was out I toyed with the idea of installing stiffer front and rear sway bars. But, I've never really felt like the car needed to corner any flatter or rotate any better, and I've read any number of threads where other owners were breaking sway bar links, ruining bushings, or getting clunking noises from interfering parts. Then you have to probably invest in adjustable end links to dial out any preload on the bar, and I'm not convinced it's worth it for the street. Conclusion: Lubing the sway bar bushings to address creaking noises is good enough (for me). Transaxle fluid: When the car was brand new it seemed like shifting between gears was a little vague and inconsistent. People on the forums were experimenting with a variety of gear oils. Some included the friction modifiers for the limited slip differential, others did not. At one point I read the transaxle was built by Getrag and used in some European Ford vehicles, and they recommended XT-M5-QS gear oil. So, I tried some and it was definitely better than Mazda's original fill. It's pretty pricey at about $20/quart (3.5 quarts needed), but it seems to work fairly consistently across temperatures. Conclusion: Between the factory fill, some Mobil 1, and the Ford XT-M5-QS, the Ford oil worked the best for my use. Plus I feel better using something closer to spec for the transmission. I haven't tried Redline or Royal Purple oils. Rear motor mount: The factory original rear motor mount was very soft. Creeping through parking lots in first gear, you could really feel the sponginess of the rubber. Under hard acceleration, shifting gears was a little wonky since the engine was rotating and loading/unloading the mount so much. I went for a StreetUnit billet aluminum motor mount, and it immediately made a big difference. There was far less rotation of the powertrain in the engine bay, and that helped with some shifts. It did take some time for the polyurethane to break in; vibrations at idle with the air conditioner active were noticeable. At any other engine speed all vibrations disappeared. After about 10 years the original polyurethane's mounting hole started to go egg-shaped, and the mount was squeaking pretty badly under the car. StreetUnit still supports this mount with replacement bushings, so last year I refreshed those and all is well again. If anything, the new bushings are a little nicer and don't contribute vibrations at idle as much as the old ones. Maybe they're a different durometer? Conclusion: I would absolutely recommend a rear motor mount for this car and would do it again in a heartbeat. Solid shifter bushings: This was the last area I looked into during my quest for the perfect shifting Mazdaspeed 3. The shifter assembly in the center console was secured to the floor with rubber bushings. Maybe Mazda was trying to isolate some vibration from the shift lever itself, but the side effect was I'd sometimes get caught on a selector gate. The selector springs in combination with the rubber bushings didn't make shifting any easier, so I went with some TWM solid aluminum bushings to anchor that assembly to the floor completely. It worked really well; instead of a floppy springy sensation, the shifter feels more like a bolt-action rifle now. There's no question about selector/shifter position. Conclusion: Definitely put in some solid shift bushings. It completely changes the feel of the lever for the better. Breather vent: I mentioned the breather vent in the thread above. Basically, what happens over time is a rubber plug under spring compression semi-seals itself to the breath vent on the transmission. When this happens, pressure builds up inside the case. Some people have attributed this to difficult shifting in higher gears; others have noticed the hiss of air when they open their transmission drain ports. This leads to concerns about pressure forcing gear oil out the axle shaft seals. I can't say I've directly experienced any driveability issues, but I did hear some hissing when I drained the fluid while working on the clutch. The modification is to pull the crimped cap off the breather vent and replace the rubber plug with a sheet metal equivalent that won't get stuck. I did this as mentioned above, but since I wasn't having shifting problems it doesn't seem to have made any difference (for now). Conclusion: Not sure if it does anything, but it's easy to do, costs nothing, and doesn't put anything at risk. Cold air intake: This is one of the first modifications I made to the car after 1 year of ownership, or 9,000 miles. Some other owners were trying different cold air intakes / short ram intakes and posting dyno charts, and it looked like the Mazdaspeed (sourced from AEM) cold air intake was providing about +25 hp and +50 lb-ft of torque peak. For a car that comes from the factory with 263 hp and 280 lb-ft, this is a meaningful gain for a few hundred dollars. After a little while people started complaining about check engine lights and fuel trims that were outside normal limits; I never had that problem, but when AEM issued an air flow straightener I bought and installed one in front of the MAF sensor. Conclusion: Well worth the money, definitely provides more zoom-zoom along with some nice turbo noises. Turbo inlet pipe: Some people noticed the OEM turbo inlet pipe was kind of restrictive, plus it was made of plastic and kind of questionable quality. I bought a Cobb silicone turbo inlet pipe with the intention of eliminating any restrictions and upgrading to a nicer part. To be honest, since I'm not running a larger turbo or making any more boost, it doesn't provide any driving benefit from what I can tell. However, I will say the OEM piece was pretty pathetic especially where it connected to the turbo inlet, so I have no regrets spending the money for a decent silicone hose here. Conclusion: Just a "nice to have" for me, probably essential for someone doing something more extreme with his Speed3. Turbo: I mentioned this at the top of the thread; the current turbo is just the stock K04 rebuilt with a new CHRA. I'm not after a lot more power, and I like the way this unit spools, so rebuilding it was an economical choice. If this turbo dies in the near future, I'll probably take a closer look at a BNR S1 or S2 instead. For now this is fine. I'm still running the stock charge air cooler and high pressure fuel pump as well. Conclusion: None, really. It's good enough for me. Cat back exhaust system: I upgraded from the factory exhaust system to the Mazdaspeed cat back system the same time as the Mazdaspeed cold air intake. Supposedly the exhaust is worth another +5 hp, but I bought it more for the sound. It's not as raw as a straight pipe or as raspy as a resonator delete, but it does provide more growl under throttle. It doesn't drone too much at highway cruising speeds. Conclusion: After watching lots of YouTube videos of other owners and their exhaust systems, I just wanted the matched CAI/CBE set to keep it simple. It's more of a personal choice, really, unless you're going for a down pipe/straight pipe setup for pure performance reasons. Don't want to annoy the neighbors too much. Clutch: As noted above, I went for the South Bend Stage 2 Endurance setup and opted for a new slave cylinder. After break-in the pedal free play is good, the engagement point is good, the engagement is smooth and progressive, yet it holds with no slipping at what pulls on the highway. The pedal force is slightly higher but not annoying. Conclusion: Though I haven't accumulated many miles on it, I'm 100% satisfied with this flywheel/clutch disc/pressure plate setup and I'd buy another one. Seems like a good quality product. Passenger/driver motor mounts: Shortly after this car was introduced Mazda issued a recall for the driver side / transmission motor mount because there were instances of it failing, allowing the whole engine to drop in the bay. It was considered a safety issue so it became a recall. I took my car in right away and exchanged the mount, and it never gave me any problems. As part of the clutch replacement job it seemed like a good time to try some stiffer top mounts to go with the stiffer rear motor mount. These SURE/StreetUnit Torq S3 mounts continue to get quieter, but the car is still louder when accelerating from a stop light. What's interesting is all the noise seems to be in the passenger compartment; it's not audible to someone outside the car. I say this because the technician doing the alignment today was moving it around the parking lot, and I could not hear any trace of noise except for the cat back exhaust. Maybe there's hope? Conclusion: Essential for big power builds and track use, but I'm still waiting to cast judgment on this. Worst case, I'll go back to new OEM rubber mounts. Radio: The OEM radio malfunctioned after a few years of ownership; the 6-disc changer jammed and the eject button refused to work anymore. Even though this was supposed to be a Bose system, the sound wasn't that great either. I went to Crutchfield online and ordered a JVC head unit and steering wheel interface to maintain the same button functions. They supplied the mounting chassis/face for the center console as well as wiring adapters, and it all went in easily enough. Changing the head unit revealed the Bose amplifier, speakers, tweeters, and subwoofer actually sounded just fine; all the dullness came from the OEM head unit from a different supplier. So this was a big improvement, plus the double-DIN chassis/face provided a storage compartment under the head unit. Great for sunglasses, a phone, or a wallet. Two complaints: 1) The original trip computer was no longer available but the display is needed to show HVAC settings, and 2) the JVC display was difficult to read in sunny conditions. Just a few years ago I changed out the JVC head unit for a newer Sony with Bluetooth. The display is more readable and this makes streaming music much nicer than plugging in an aux cable. Conclusion: Don't bother with the OEM head unit; it's not that great. Keep the Bose amps/speakers/subwoofers and upgrade the source. Center console display: All of the gauges and controls have red lettering/numbering on top of a black background, but for some reason the original radio display had black characters and symbols on a red background. Even the newer JVC and Sony head units have programmable colors for the buttons and display, and that's all set to red on black as well. So, I read where some people had done a modification to the original radio display by peeling off the front polarizer and applying a new polarizer in a different orientation. I bought a second radio display off eBay, made sure it worked, bought some LCD polarizer film, and went to work on it. The end result is I now have red HVAC symbols and temperature on a black background like the rest of the control and display scheme. It looks great at night but could afford to be slightly brighter during the day. It would be easy enough to open the display and change the red LEDs to some others with higher output to compensate, but it's not enough of a problem to do something. It's still readable during the day. Conclusion: Worth doing only if it bothers you. So that's about it. This post is for posterity; maybe it'll provide some perspective and guidance to someone who picks up a second-hand Speed3 in the future.
  19. Whoa, that red and silver front suspension caught my eye!
  20. Putting a dab of ball diff / silicone grease on the machine screw makes it go in more smoothly.
  21. I know exactly what you mean! My parents still live in northeastern Ohio and they've lost a number of vehicles to rust before the powertrain gave out.
  22. Thanks! Yeah, I think it's getting harder to find clean Gen 1s with single-owner history. They're either modded to death, crashed, or in the junkyard by now. The deciding factor for me will be parts availability in the future. Fortunately, the 2.3L block seems to be common between this car, the Mazdaspeed 6, the CX-7 SUV, and I think some of Ford's Ecoboost products.
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