Open track day and parts runner build

[blake4591]

Hi all,

Since the mid-west has finally thawed of the spring I'm going to go ahead and get my build thread for this summer started. I'll do a quick little back ground on my car first and then get into what the plans are for the future. I bought my Festiva as a gas saver in the summer of 2009 when gas was $4 a gallon and I was daily driving 1976 K20 full size chevy truck. I enjoyed the car since it was a lot more fun to drive than the truck ever was but it was still just a transport device. When I went to college in the fall the Festiva became my mom's daily driver/ commuter and continued to collect miles. At college I was introduced to auto-crossing with gutted civics, neons, and turbo K-cars. I brought the festiva to college ran some auto-crosses and learned how well the stock brakes and suspension didn't work for that. This lead to me then doing a basic build in 2012. I did the aspire rear beam and front brakes and ran Rio front struts and some other stuff, you can see the build thread here. That worked ok for a while and made the car reasonably quick but never a top contender since there is only so much a b3 with 150K hard miles on it can be expected to do. When the 1.3 started using a quart of oil every 500 miles, even when driven easily, and the clutch would slip under anything over than the most gently shifts I decided it was time to do something. So two of my friends and myself jammed a BP in the car and had it running in about 3 days of our summer break. You can see the thread here. The car then once again became my mom’s daily driver since I couldn’t have 3 cars at my apartment and I was working on my 2.3 turbo swap in my 82 cougar wagon project. I finally went and picked up the Festiva and brought it back to my new house at the end of last summer with some big plans for it.

Despite the fact I haven't been posting a lot here recently I've been reading planning and ordering parts for a couple months. I’m planning to build a good car for picking up parts and running around town as well as taking to the open track days at my local track Waterford Hills and possibly other tracks depending on how things go.

Plans for the car are a long list of parts that includes corbeau seats, RCI harness, MK1 rear coilovers with 120 lb springs, MK2 front coilovers with 200 lb springs, direzza ZII tires, performance friction pads, and a bunch of other small items to put on the car in the next month or two. I also have some rust repair to take care of while the cars apart and I’m planning to pull out some interior bits for weight savings. Ultimately I’ll be happy if the car can match the spec maita track record while not being uncomfortable on a several hour highway trip.

There are two things that currently concern me though. I don’t know what the durability of the E series trans will be with the BP for road racing and the ZII tires only come in a 185/60R14 which isn't an ideal size.

[Advancedynamix]

I tried to fit 185/60-14 falken 615k's on my car before I gave up and went with the 13's. You'll need to do some surgery to fit them unfortunately, but your wallet will benefit from the larger tires. I chewed through a dozen sets of 185/60-13 r888s and half a dozen sets of slicks a year.

[blake4591]

I have run Falken Azenis in a 195/60 R14 on the car before for auto-crossing. I had to pound out the rear wheel arch lip in the pits to make them fit while everyone else was listening to the down and out cone rules. Haha They would defiantly not work with a car that is much more than a half inch lower than stock. I'm hoping going down to the 185 will help with the tire tuck and limit the amount of needed metal work. The 14" rims I have are a random craigslist find but they seem to have every good offset for a festiva since I have never had more than a gently rub on either the spring perch or the fender.

[blake4591]

This is going to be delayed for a bit. I started gutting the rear of the car and found significantly more rust than I was expecting. Its on the rear passenger lower seat belt mounting points and has caused sturtual damage to the rear passager strut tower. I'm just going try to find a cleaner shell to start with for reliability proposes.

[blake4591]

So, this weekend I went and bought another Festiva to get this project up and going again. The new car is a silver 89 with red strip that was originally an auto with A/C. I'm going to be going through it and fixing everything to make it right along with the upgrades for the track. The key though is that it has been parked for awhile so it has nearly no rust unlike my blue car that has a large amount of natural weight reduction. I'm going to get some pictures posted tonight of both cars.

[blake4591]

As promised pictures of both cars, just a little late.

First my original blue car that I've had for about 5 years.
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It has had a long rough life in the mid-west and is really starting to get rough. The doors, hatch, both rockers and the rear wheel arches all have significant rust.
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The final tipping point happen when I pulled the rear seat belts out and also pulled out a decent sized piece of the rear passenger strut tower.
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So I went to Cincinnati and picked up this nearly rust free '89
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Picture of it after I power washed off most of the crustiness.
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Engine bay is rust free and a ready home for a BP and G trans. The engine and auto trans came with the car but they rode in the trunk for the trip home.
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Car didn't have carpet and the seats are stained but I think a couple passes with the carpet extractor will get them in pretty good shape. I've started working through taking out all of the interior plans and scrubbing them to get them nice and fresh again.
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[Advancedynamix]

Nice score! And the 89 auto fuel pump bracket gives you lots of options.
You'll want to get an 89 EVTM, because the wiring is all different from the later F.I. cars. Your swap may be confusing unless you have the correct schematics. The 89 has a 3 plug ECM, but the plugs are not the same as a b6t/D or later bp ECU. You may be able to swap the wire terminals into a set of BP ECM plugs though.

[blake4591]

I pulled all the seats out of the car last night but didn't get any pictures since I had a bunch of other things I needed to do, and it was getting dark. I also stopped at my buddies house and picked up his carpet extractor and everything else to properly clean the grim out of the seats.

Charlie,
I'm not sure exactly what my plan with the wiring is going to be yet. It really depends on how integrated the chassis and drive-train wiring is, and I wont know that until I pull the dash and really take a look at everything. I was originally going to poke around the junkyards for a 90 to 93 to pull the engine harness out of and update to that style. I also have thought about going to a micro-squirt setup, which I used for my 2.3 turbo project and liked. I'm pretty sure I want to move away from as much of the 89 only stuff as possible because I'm a little concerned about part availability in the future (89 is already 26 years ago). I also don't have the any of the sensors or engine parts for an 89. When I picked up the car it came with an 90 to 93 motor and an intake that the seller said was correct for the 89. After I took a look at the intake, it's just another 90-93. So, I'm going to have a lot of stuff to sell in the next couple months.

[Advancedynamix]

The engine and car harness are 1 piece, but it's not a bad plan to unwrap it all and replace anything that is crusty. These cars have less wiring in the entire front of the car than many modern vehicles have in just the front door harness. I 100% recommend the micro squirt setup, but suggest getting a newer engine to swap in than an EGT bp. Maybe a Kia BP, or a z series engine from a 99ish protege.
Also, one thing to note, a 2002-2005 kia Rio uses a 60-2 flywheel and it bolts to a bseries engine, as does the transmission. A nice high res crank signal will make tuning more consistent.

[blake4591]

Charlie,

I'm a little curious, what's your reasoning for finding a newer BP engine? Just newer electronics to work with? As far as I know the Kia BP block and head are very similar to the Mazda engines the main differences are just the electronics. I get that the Z engines are newer and have a lot of improvements for both performance and reliability, but what are the trans options? Has anyone ever looked into using one of these? I was heavily considering an FE3 the last time I was at a junkyard and walked past three sportages in one row (4 cylinder engines are normally around $200 if you pull it). I think the FE3 would be over kill for what I want, and I do want this car up and running this summer so I'm a little hesitant to go off in the uncharted territory. Living in the metro Detroit area there is no shortage of you pull it yards for me to look for parts at and most of them focus on stocking mid to late 90s and early 2000 cars so pretty much any engine from that time is easily located. I already have the EGT BP in the blue car and figured I'd pull it and just drop the 1.3 that came with the 89 into it. The blue car obviously isn't worth a lot, so I think there's no reason for it to have a bp in it anymore.

I didn't know about the Kia flywheel, that could be really useful has long as the pick-up mounting point is in the trans and not the block.

[Advancedynamix]

I'm not certain, but I think the Kia BP has a girdle that runs along the main caps and it's coil on plug, along with a CAS that will work better with a logic level ignition setup like what you'd use with a microsquirt controller.

The z series engines use the same basic transmission bolt pattern, so the trannies used on our b series swaps also work with the z series. I would not run a BP as a road race engine. It is much less harmonically stable than the b6 or ZL/ZM engines. Road racing is very strenuous on engines because it often requires over revving and long pulls at high speeds. This is where the smaller engines are superior to the larger b series. With that in mind, the FE engine is also likely to develop harmonic issues with less HP than a smaller 4 cylinder. A ZMDE would make a really nice Festiva road racing engine, but there is very little aftermarket support for this engine.

[blake4591]

That's very interesting that the Z series still uses the b series bell housing pattern. I could probably find either a 1.5 or a 1.6 without looking that hard, but either would be going into the unknown waters as far as fitment and controlling it. I may poke around a little more into the 1.5 with the variable intake timing, since it looks like it has around bp power output and probably a smoother torque curve. It also looks like it may be possible to build a hybrid 1.6 with vvt with parts from both engines.

I don't know how significant the harmonic differences between the b6 and bp are going to be. All 180 degree inline fours are going to have inherent imbalance of having two pistons pairs and non-overlapping power strokes. The crank torsional vibration is going to be high on any 4 cylinder but that is mostly determined by maximum engine torque and rod/stroke ratio. The BP's rod to stroke is a little worse since it has that extra 1.4mm stroke and the rods are common with the b6. Neither of them have what I would consider the best rod stroke ratio. I have seen long rod kits for the bp that would help with this and I would seriously consider, if I was going to build the engine for track only duty. The other thing to consider is the larger and most likely heavier bp pistons, which are going to cause more vibration at high engine speeds. Without weighing the pistons and getting out my I.C.E. book I couldn't tell you exactly when the bp would start seeing significantly higher vibration. I would venture to guess that it's part of why b6s had a 7200 rpm redline and bp's had a 7000 rpm redline from Mazda. With all that said, I haven't heard of anything that would make me think the bp would not be acceptable for only occasional open track days. I don't follow spec Miata closely but I would image that those guys would have any large differences in reliability between the bp and the b6 on road courses all worked out by now.

[blake4591]

I was looking around and reading up about the z series. The 1.5 with VVT is not a US engine, so only the ZM-DE 1.6l (105hp @ 5500 and 107ftlbs @ 4000) would be readily available for swaps.

[bhazard]

The 1.5 was here in the protege. Non vvt.

[Advancedynamix]

That's very interesting that the Z series still uses the b series bell housing pattern. I could probably find either a 1.5 or a 1.6 without looking that hard, but either would be going into the unknown waters as far as fitment and controlling it. I may poke around a little more into the 1.5 with the variable intake timing, since it looks like it has around bp power output and probably a smoother torque curve. It also looks like it may be possible to build a hybrid 1.6 with vvt with parts from both engines.

I don't know how significant the harmonic differences between the b6 and bp are going to be. All 180 degree inline fours are going to have inherent imbalance of having two pistons pairs and non-overlapping power strokes. The crank torsional vibration is going to be high on any 4 cylinder but that is mostly determined by maximum engine torque and rod/stroke ratio. The BP's rod to stroke is a little worse since it has that extra 1.4mm stroke and the rods are common with the b6. Neither of them have what I would consider the best rod stroke ratio. I have seen long rod kits for the bp that would help with this and I would seriously consider, if I was going to build the engine for track only duty. The other thing to consider is the larger and most likely heavier bp pistons, which are going to cause more vibration at high engine speeds. Without weighing the pistons and getting out my I.C.E. book I couldn't tell you exactly when the bp would start seeing significantly higher vibration. I would venture to guess that it's part of why b6s had a 7200 rpm redline and bp's had a 7000 rpm redline from Mazda. With all that said, I haven't heard of anything that would make me think the bp would not be acceptable for only occasional open track days. I don't follow spec Miata closely but I would image that those guys would have any large differences in reliability between the bp and the b6 on road courses all worked out by now.

I can tell you first hand that the BP engine suffers from much more harmonic based issues than the B6 on the track. The stroke is the killer. The longer you stroke a flat crank engine, the worse the harmonic issues will be. I spend a decent amount of time discussing and improving spec Miata race cars. I actually just got back from a day of pounding out laps in one today.

There are ways around the harmonic problems, like a balance shaft, fluid dampening or even counterweighted rods (e30 M3 BMW engines had these, and it allowed a 2.5L inline 4 to rev to 10K RPM). The BP also doesn't fit all that well in Festiva, so when you factor the added effort to get it to fit, plus the added weight and the fact that it is more likely to break (and hurt transmissions which are very susceptible to harmonic induced failure) when really pushed hard... not worth it IMHO.

The ZLDE can be had from Japanese engine importers for very cheap since they are hard to sell, and they still ship them over once and awhile. I bought one a while back and it's being stored in my shed waiting for the right car to go in.
The ZL and ZM engines have much better head design than the B series. They are solid lifter engines and they have a favorable intake port shape and angle. One of these engines would be excellent if built properly. You rarely see any effort put into these engines because they were the smallest base engine of the cars they were offered in, but they are probably one of the most underestimated inline 4 engines ever produced by Mazda. The 1.5 is a short stroke version and I have reason to believe it has a much better rod ratio than the B6, also due to longer rods. The ZMDE was more potent than it's bigger brother, even without the vvt. I have not torn mine down yet, but as soon as I get some space freed up I will do that. I would like to do a big bore short stroke Z series with reground cams and higher compression. I am pretty confident I can get nearly 180hp from a setup like this, naturally aspirated. This would make a very nice Festiva road race engine.