The ebay camber bolts came on Thursday and my fancy schmancy alignment tools came on Friday. I measured stuff to see where I was stock and put the bolts in on Friday afternoon. Just as I was starting to get set up to adjust the toe it started raining and it kept raining until late on Sunday. It finally dried out enough for me to go set the toe Monday. That was a longer job than it should have been.
Stock measurements:
Camber : LF -0.5, RF -0.7 LR -1.7 RR -1.5
Toe: in 1/16 in front, never did measure the rear because there's no adjustment and I forgot.
The camber bolts got me to LF -2.5 and RF -2.7. That might be more than I need, we'll see. They also got me to a toe in of 1 1/8 inches. Oi. Lesson here about the relationship between camber and toe. An hour of careful measuring got me back to right at zero toe. We'll see how all of this feels when Mrs. Deuce gets home and I can go for a test drive. Bad form to leave the kids napping while I go see if everything works. This is my first time actually measuring when messing with suspension stuff. That sounds idiotic, but if it looked and felt good then I left it alone, if something was bad then I took it to someone with lasers and such. It probably was idiotic. I'm happy to be doing it right.
Kids are home for spring break and I'm going a little batty. Decided to pull out and weigh the drivers seat in the deuce. Why? STF says that I can change seats so long as the one I put back in weighs at least 25 lbs. I figured that with as light as the car is I'd pull out the seat and see that it weighted something like 23 lbs.
Getting all of the wiring unhooked was the biggest deal. Even with the battery unhooked I was just a little nervous about the airbag in the seat going off. I didn't want to explain it to my wife. I was thrilled to see that there were speed holes in the bottom of the seat. It must be light!
Wrong, it weighs 42.5 pounds. It must be that with all of that airbag stuff they want the seat to not disintegrate when it goes off. Or something. The passenger seat should be close to the same, all it's missing from the drivers seat is the up and down mechanism. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 pounds of seats in there. Something to think about anyway.
Dang that is much heavier than I thought they would be.
singleslammer wrote:
Dang that is much heavier than I thought they would be.
Easy place to remove lots of weight!!!
I love this thread, keep the updates comming!
Nice pics.
Needs a front undertray and rear diffuser. That should actually help aero and mpg on this car.
jrw1621
PowerDork
3/19/12 9:18 a.m.
I like the pictures and commentary. I would like to see more of this kind of detail in new car reviews.
Tell me about left foot braking? Does the car freak out if you brake/gas @ the same time. I may be looking for a fun to drive 4 seated to replace the MR2 spyder in the not to distant future.
I haven't been LFB yet. I'll give it a go tomorrow and let you know what I think. After a few weeks the throttle definitely blips and hangs a bit when you shift. It's got to be some emissions thing dealing with slamming the throttle shut. Seems that pretty much all modern cars have this. Not cool.
amg_rx7 - now I'm spending way too much time searching for how to build an undertray. Lots of stuff out there that's pretty interesting. I need to spend some more time under the car and see if I can figure out a way to mount it securely an still be able to pop it off for autocross and oil changes and the like.
In reply to nocones:
I just did exactly that. My Spyder is now a project weekend car and the 2 is doing DD duty. It is about as entertaining as I have found in the cheap econobox category. I test drove all sorts of stuff manufactured in the last 5 years and have to say that the Mazda2 is about as fun and nimble as it gets in the 30+ mpg, 4 seater category. No LFB yet either though. I am not really that aggressive yet .
jrw1621
PowerDork
3/19/12 10:27 a.m.
Undertray.
Does the Fiesta offer an undertray in any of the trim levels (like the high mpg version)?
Seeing the shared design it may fit or adapt.
A lot of coilovers for these lil cars have the height adjustment perch over by the spring, and you just put in a replacement shock with the kit.
That said, there are still a number of coilover kits that appear to have the spring wrapped around the shock for this application, unless they are just using some stock photo, not of the actual product. I am pretty sure this car has been out in japan as the Mazda Demio for a little while longer than it has here, so there are a lot of aftermarket parts out there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_Demio#3rd_generation_.28DE.2C_2007-present.29
I can't find any that actually have a true coilover in the rear. Sure, they show pictures of a coilover, but either the fine print or further searching shows that the rear uses an adjustable perch in the stock location. There still might be an exception, but I've learned not to believe in the picture you see on a venders site unless it's a picture of something installed on the car. It's odd now few JDM parts I can find for the 2. There are some, but not as many as I would have thought.
As far as adapting a fiesta undertray, my initial searching says that the mk7 fiesta is undertrayless as well.
I did more searching on the Fiesta super green economy package. It's mostly tires and grill block offs and these things. (image stolen from a thread on Fiesta Faction)
There is no front tray, just those long plastic things alongside the triangle muffler. They went through all the work to design and test and install those, but didn't put an undertray on. I'm wondering if that should tell me something.
I would be up for a GB on some decent aero panels for the 2. I think that some CNCed aluminum sheet panels would be perfect.
Poking around on Andy Hollis's Facebook page and reading about the shocks he had on his ST civic. Waaaaayyy at the bottom he alludes to the fact that he's planning on getting AST to build him some autocross shocks for his STF two. Now, I'm not the kind of guy that would make it worthwhile for someone like AST to develop a set of shocks for, but if they had already built a set for someone else...... and all they had to do was make another set.....
I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't even want the valving that Andy is looking for as I'd like something more all around than hardcore autocross focused so I wouldn't be wanting to steal any of the knowledge that he's sure to amass with his testing. Just, you know, they'd already have all of the info they'd need to make everything fit. That would be awesome.
Just throwing that out there. There's not much available for the duece right now, and nothing high end like AST. Maybe soon.
Cork sport is developing some adjustable Shocks that should be good.
Yea, I saw that. I need to see how that works out. It sounded like a shorter body shock that would use stock, or shorter but still stock style springs. If I'm going to stay in HS then I'd like a stock length body, if I'm going to go to STF then I'd like the adjustability of threaded perches and standard sized springs. They should at least be affordable and I'm betting they'll work great for what they are.
nocones wrote:
Tell me about left foot braking? Does the car freak out if you brake/gas @ the same time. I may be looking for a fun to drive 4 seated to replace the MR2 spyder in the not to distant future.
Oh, and nocones, LFB kills the throttle after about two seconds. You can stab the brakes while you have a foot on the gas and you're ok, but that's about it. When I was playing with it I needed very little brake pressure to kill the throttle. This has led me to question whether it's the brake pressure that trips the throttle kill or it's the brake switch itself. I'm very tempted to wrap a rubber band around the brake switch to keep it in all the time and see what happens. I'll let you know.
Edit to add that I put a rubber band around the brake switch to hold it in, and the stupid brain on the car still killed the throttle. I figured it would, but there was a small chance that some engineer somewhere had been lazy and I could easily defeat him. No such luck.
During the second run of my last autocross it occurred to me that my seat felt more like a slip and slide than a seat. I had used a second hand four point belt on my Focus years ago and I liked it. I did a bunch of searching online for thoughts and products and came to two schools of thought. The first was to buy a Schroth Rallye belt and go for it, I'd be fine and well strapped in. The second school of thought was that a four point belt in a stock uncaged car would cause me to die a horrible death when I inevitably flipped it over so I should only run stock belts because factory engineers are super awesome at their jobs. I was stuck not wanting to slide around with my stock belts but not wanting to die a horrible death. What to do. Then I stumbled across a few comments about a couple of autocrossers that only run the lap belt part of a harness at autocrosses. Now, they seem to do it because they like to be strapped in tight, but also like to be able to move their upper body around and see out the side windows and such. Interesting. I bet I could run a lap belt to strap me tight, then click my stock belt over it to protect me properly during my inevitable roll over. This would work autocrossing and when I finally get to a HPDE. Brilliant! I looked at all the usual suspects for belts, then I looked elsewhere and finally ended up at Wesco Performance. They make LOTS of belts. What I focused on were their old school flappy latch belts. I love belts like that. It's my favorite part of flying. Perfect.
Four days later this came. I got it in orange so that someday when an emergency crew is cutting me out of the car after my inevitable roll over they can see it better. Just trying to help out.
jrw1621
PowerDork
3/23/12 4:31 p.m.
mazdeuce wrote:
I did a bunch of searching online for thoughts and products and came to two schools of thought. The first was to buy a Schroth Rallye belt and go for it, I'd be fine and well strapped in. The second school of thought was that a four point belt in a stock uncaged car would cause me to die a horrible death when I inevitably flipped it over so I should only run stock belts because factory engineers are super awesome at their jobs. I was stuck not wanting to slide around with my stock belts but not wanting to die a horrible death. What to do.
In this dilemma, had you considered a "Dick Strap"?
Named after Dick Turner who taught autox and marketed the strap, it is a latching belt that goes under your arm pits and around the entire seat as added upper body restraint.
Cheap, effective, non-permanent.
http://www.gforce.com/products/netsanres/4290.php
If your car has seat mounted side airbags then this is not a good idea.
Yea, the deuce has seat mounted air bags. But I did think about it anyway. I also thought about the CG lock but the belt I got cost me half that and in the end the belt is easier to use and can be snugged tighter.