FSP 1st Gen Protege Project

[therieldeal]

from the looks of that brake rotor, i'm assuming this thing wont really be driven anywhere but the track/course?

[crazycanadian]

The rotors are no good for anything but auto crossing now.. They would crack and end up shot at a lapping day out on a track...

thats amazing though how weight you took out of them from doing it... you really are going all out to the limits of FSP on this car.. I always knew you americans were serious down there for autocrossing but wow.. thats really taking things all the way... awsome work man... I am really enjoying your write up..

[Kitty]

Why didnt you drill out another 4X100 on the rotor hat while you were at it?

[XelderX]

Yea...this is an AutoX only car. No registration or insurance so it gets towed everywhere. Wait till you see the rear rotors. I'll be doing those next week.

Why didnt you drill out another 4X100 on the rotor hat while you were at it?

My original plan was to do that, plus a little extra, but the rumor has it that the rules are going to change a little after this season and that won't be allowed anymore. If they don't make it illegal at the end of the season I'll probably do it for next year. I have one more trick on these to loose a little extra weight, but I need to get them back on the car with a new set of pads to measure something first.

[XelderX]

So I went and pulled a DX front swaybar today. Did anyone know that the DX front bar is hollow? It's 5lbs lighter than the LX front bar (8.5lbs : 3.5lbs). When I did my original calculations I did them thinking the DX front bar was solid. I just redid them for the hollow bar and the lb/in rate on teh DX bar is actually 115.7 lb/in. Suprisingly that is only 24.3 lb/in less than if it was solid.

[Zabac]

Justin, sorry for holding you up on the front part of the car, things were a little complicated with me being in Charlotte and all.
Hope everything is coming together well.

[XelderX]

Justin, sorry for holding you up on the front part of the car, things were a little complicated with me being in Charlotte and all.
Hope everything is coming together well.

You weren't holding me up at all. I had another project I was working up until just a few days ago. The timing was perfect.

[XelderX]

I'm finally back from endurance racing a $500 4 cylinder Mustang. After catching up on some sleep I got back to working on the FrankenPro. First is a shot of the very small (45 amps) Suzuki alternator. After that a few pictures of the cheap Ebay header, slightly modified. I'm not really happy with the header, but it will have to do for now. Finally, I got the front brakes mounted.

[Mazda_Powered]

nice!!!

JACK.

[FE3-323]

those rotors are crazy... it cant possibly stop too well

[cojsl]

Nice work! Thanks again for this build thread, it's really interesting.

[XelderX]

those rotors are crazy... it cant possibly stop too well

Surface area is not a part of the friction equation. The rotors/pads will have the same coefficient of friction regardless of holes drilled. The braking force can only be changed by the force applied to the brake pads or by changing pad/rotor material to change the coefficient of friction. What will change is that there is less surface area to disipate heat. This could cause the pads to overheat beyond their optimum range, but in autoX the runs are so short that brakes are very rarely overheated. Basically, as long as I don't reduce the heatsink abilty of the rotors to the point they can no longer maintain an optimum temperature range for the pads, I can drill as many holes as I want. Also with a lighter car the demand on the brakes is reduced.

[Turpro]

Looking great!!


Refreash my memory(cause I'm a lazy bastard and don't feel like reading thru the thread again lol) are you running 3rd gen rotors and spindles? Front and rear? Just wondering cause I'd like to run the newer 3rd gen 16s but they're 5 lug and if you have 3rd gen 4 lugs than it probably wouldn't be much harder to do the 5 lug setup.

[XelderX]

Looking great!!


Refreash my memory(cause I'm a lazy bastard and don't feel like reading thru the thread again lol) are you running 3rd gen rotors and spindles? Front and rear? Just wondering cause I'd like to run the newer 3rd gen 16s but they're 5 lug and if you have 3rd gen 4 lugs than it probably wouldn't be much harder to do the 5 lug setup.

I'm still using the 1st Gen spindles and rotors. I know that changing the front spindles for the 3rd Gen ones is just a matter of bolting them on and switching to 3rd Gen front struts. This picture was taken with the 3rd Gen spindle bolted on. Notice the 5 lugs.




I haven't really looked at the rears to see how close the 3rd Gen spindles are to bolting on to the 1st Gen laterl link/trailing arm.

[XelderX]

Just for reference for those who are staring suspiciously at my brake rotors. Here are a few pictures of what National level cars use for rotors...





I have all the wiring done for the Megasquirt and did some testing yesterday, but it appears something internally fubared inside the ECU. It's being shipped back to the guy that built it to test it so there probably won't be a whole lot of updates until I can get it back.