hashiriya

I can't confirm for sure but I might be able to be at this one.

Glad you are getting closer to your ideal setup. You are right in the way you have made the adjustment. The dampers should be wound right in and then backed of to the first click that you feel and this is is damper setting "0". Then you can back them off to your liking to at least 30 clicks. You may find you can get more but that's not really within the range of intended use. To balance the dampers left and right you want to always work from how many clicks out from fully hard.

I would recommend to run a little bit of rake on the car and the car feels much more alive. worth trying before investing in new roll bars and you could also get them if that doesn't make a difference.

The oval badge that used to be on the side of the tip looks quite Kakimoto to me...

Glad you are loving them. I found for road use softening the front dampers by a few clicks (5-7) made it even easier for daily use with very little detriment to handling. Have a play around and i'll be interested to see how you get on.

If you want a quieter supercharger solution, you're welcome to drive mine also.

Welcome to the Hipermax Club. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. I got momentarily lost checking out the website of where i was sending it too though...

HKS Stroker kit of crank rod and pistons retails at £2700+VAT (£3240 in the UK). It has stock 86mm bore and stroke is increased to 90mm. It's a bit more money than the examples knightryder gives but then you aren't getting the crank etc with that.

I agree that the dowel solution is not the best of ways to do things. the stock engine block itself is proving to be quite a bit stronger than anyone expected. A good set of rods and pistons is looking likely to be strong enough for most peoples unless you are after an extreme (and by that i mean 600+hp) amount of power. I keep toying with the idea of building my engine up and releasing the rest of the power from my supercharger... maybe about this time next year...

The water jackets on the FA20 are huge and is about as open deck as you can get. You certainly don't want to be looking at taking any material off the stock sleeve if you are going to run higher power. I believe a couple of places have re-sleeved these engines for high power use. The HKS stroker kit uses stock 86mm bore and just a longer stroke to increase displacement for this very reason and have seen 500-600hp from the engine so I'm guessing the stock sleeves aren't too bad as long as you don't reduce it's thickness. There is a process (I forget the name) where you knock dowels into the water jacket to help support the sleeves, I don't think it's practiced much anymore though.

The MSA tyre list is as this link: http://www.msauk.org/uploadedfiles/msa_forms/bluebooks/14/192_202_Common_Regulations_for_Permitted_Tyres_(L).pdf I know the TSS "street" classes require a 1A approved tyre. The R888 is a 1B tyre and would make the car fall into a "Pro" class

Just for some reference, this is a graph of oil viscosity of our base Super Racing oil.

In an attempt to bring this back to oil temps and the cooling of oil: When talking about engine oil, I always make a point about the temperature it reaches. As has been mentioned before oil is less viscous at higher temperatures meaning that it becomes easier to break the boundary layer and therefore have areas which there is no oil and so you have metal on metal friction which can lead to wear and damage. Lower viscosity oil will have less friction but also reach that critical point at lower temperature, where high viscosity oil will have more friction but is more resilient to breaking up at higher temps. The key is to balance these to make sure you are running as efficiently as possible and not letting the oil sap your power away whilst making sure it can give you adequate protection. The stock 0w20 oil is probably very stable up until around 120C but whilst I haven’t tested it I would be wary of it past 130C. If you are consistently running higher than this then you should look at either keeping the temperatures down through cooling or look at running a higher viscosity oil. The other key thing about engine oil is not just the lubrication that it offers but also how it is able to draw heat away from the engine. Cooling the engine is not just a job for the water/coolant but is helped by the oil also. So if the heat is being transferred form the engine to the oil then naturally the oil gets hotter which is desired based on cooling the engine but as I just mentioned you don’t want it to get so hot that it stops working as a lubricant. Ideally you want to get the heat into the oil at the engine and then get the heat out of the oil away from the engine. This is where an oil cooler can really help.

So you are saying that cooler denser air which has given you more explosive force to give you more power combusts cooler as well therefore transfering less heat to the engine block and therefore the fluids used to cool it? I don't quite get that one but hopefully someone can help me get my head around it

how much does the diff move by and if so are you transferring any stress you relieve from the drive shaft to the prop shaft?

The brake discs are slightly different sizes the solid disc is 286mm diameter where the ventilated is 290mm. The ventilated has 18mm width but I don't know how wide the solid discs are. The also specify a different caliper for the RC/G models but I don't know the exact difference in the measurements. Based on that, I wouldn't want to mix and match the combinations unless I was desperate.

Well some calculations by me (could be out by a bit) suggest that an AT could do approximately 180mph at the top of 5th at 7500rpm. Extending it with a 3.7 drive would give in theory a top speed in 5th gear at 208mph. So unless you are reaching over 180mph on circuit in an AT then a longer drive won't help you any as it will only reduce acceleration. In a MT car 5th takes you to around 133mph. Using a 3.7 would then extend this to 148mph. so if your top speed is going to be between this range then it might possibly be of benefit but it depends if the acceleration lost through all the gears would be more than what you lose through being in 6th for a short time. Now to try and bring it back to something vaguely related to rabs sale post, the speeds you can expect to see in each gear with standard vs 4.67 final drive are as follows: MT 1st, stock: 37, 4.67: 32mph 2nd, stock: 61, 4.67: 54mph 3rd, stock: 87, 4.67: 76mph 4th, stock:110, 4.67: 97mph 5th, stock: 134, 4.67: 118mph 6th, stock: 175, 4.67: 153mph AT 1st, stock: 38, 4.67: 33mph 2nd, stock: 65, 4.67: 57mph 3rd, stock: 95, 4.67: 84mph 4th, stock:134, 4.67: 118mph 5th, stock: 188, 4.67: 165mph 6th, stock: 230, 4.67: 202mph so unless you plan on doing over 150mph in a manual or over 200 in an auto this will work fine for you

Good point raised Keith, is the final drive the same on both manual and automatic and just he gearbox ratios are different? I believe there are some versions of the car out there (I think maybe Japan only) with a 3.7 final drive which is just crazy. maybe the versions with the 16inch wheels?

I believe the stock car has a 4.1 ratio final drive (manual cars) so switching to 4.67 would mean approximately 14% increase in rpm when cruising (i.e. cruising at 3000 would be 3400 at the same speed) but it also means 14% torque being transfered to the ground. Think of it as a 25hp power gain (if you have a stock engine) which lets be honest won't be undriveable in lower gears and if you can put up with a few hundred extra revs at cruise then you won't suffer too much. bare in mind that whilst the engine is doing more revs, it is under less load.

Interesting. I wonder how big the grooves are. Anything large enough to make a significant difference to cooling will most likley compromise it's structural integrity and fall apart. Whilst I'm not going to say no about this, I'm going to remain skeptical.

The teeth can be a problem but it's normally about heat generation. The smaller sprocket would naturally rotate faster and generate more heat and we all know that heat is the enemy. For what you gain it can be quite high risk

Sure thing Lauren, lets do a car swap sometime!

(Trying not to sound too preachy as someone who works for a manufacturer) I'd certainly recommend trying to find a mono-tube setup over a twin tube for various performance reasons. The larger piston mentioned above is one of those for sure. If you are looking for a good all round setup for road and circuit the key is in finding a damper which can offer high levels of dampening at slow piston speeds and less dampening at higher piston speeds. this would allow the car to feel firm and planted when cornering etc but will have that "give" when hitting bumps etc. This way you don't need to have too hard a spring and can still get the cornering performance. The setup like the Tein EDFC offers such a solution by electronically adjusting the dampening force during those situations and I can't comment first hand as I've not driven a set before but I do wonder how quickly a stepper motor setup could react in those situations. I'd be interested to hear more about that from people with experience. My HKS Hipermax setup has an internal valve setup which allows the oil flow through the shaft to be different in compression and extension and also has been setup in other areas to achieve the slow/fast dampening performance I mentioned above. the mono-tube structure is one of the factors that allows this also. It doesn't have the electronic control that TEIN do so it's not as "on the fly" but I feel it's able to cope in almost every situation. I've always said that anyone who is interested in any of the parts I have on my car are always welcome to drive my car on a suitable occasion. If any of you want to have a go, just shout me anytime.

I have 225 tyres on a 7.5J wheel on my car and love how I can still get the car to move around underneath me to enjoy the car. If I was out purely to go fast I think I would be considering a 235 front on a 265 rear maybe, but that would transform the car into something totally different. a 235 tyre on a 8.5J rim all round might be a strong all rounder option also

Well done Keith. I picked you because I knew you'd be up for it.