So a lot of things have happened in the past few months and I’ve been too busy to update.

So on dec 4th i was hit by a girl in a honda accord who was trying to switch lanes and didnt bother to check her blind spot. The result is that my front lip is pretty much destroyed, the bumper took some damage as well as the fender. Im considering upgrading to an aftermarket bumper depending on the insurance situation.

Recently my stock radiator also took a dump, and cracked and sprayed coolant all over my engine bay. So I’ve changed out stock plastic tank radiator for a high performance 2 core aluminum version made by Ron Davis, while i was at it, i also changed out the hoses and replaced them with silicon counter parts made by Samco. While all the cooling parts were out i almost made it an opportunity to install my Mazmart thermostat.

In the near future, i signed up for a group buy for 2 piece Girodisk rotors, they are fully floating 2 piece design with directional vanes, along with new Carbotech pads i think they would make a pretty nice brake upgrade, and good for weight reduction too.

Finally got the car back into shape and hit up 2 track days almost consecutively. Buttonwillow CW13 and Autoclub Speedway Roval for mazfest. My times improved drastically with the new tires, and a little bit of more driving experience i’d like to think, i managed to knock down 9 seconds from my previous best laps on both of the tracks. Landing me a 2:17 on buttonwillow and a 2:09 on autoclub speedway (yes i know i can still use more work). The RS3s were great, intially they felt a little bit sloppy because of the softer sidewalls, but as they heated they gripped exceptionally. Also raising the car a little bit from its previous height helped the bumpstops to engage less often and made the car more predicatable going from neutral to slight oversteer at track out.

The radiator broke, probably due to tracking the car at high ambient temps, and also the high mileage of the car (over 100k miles, bye bye warranties). The plan is to replace it with a mazdaspeed competition radiator and replace all the stock rubber hoses with SAMCO silicon pieces. Also a new set of brake rotors and brake pads are in the near future.

some random photos

so been inactive for a while, i finally fixed my underbody damage. The shop did a pretty decent job even matching up the orange peel to stock, although they installed my aero flares a little too low, going back to get it fixed soon.

Recently i had to replace my battery and tires, so i got a braille 15lb battery to replace my red-top, and ordered a set of RS-3s. Since i was going to take the tires off anyways, thought i’d give my rims a refresher and get rid of that tired time attack look (its way played out).

Big thanks to Matt at VMR (http://www.velocitymotoring.com) for hooking up the powder coating!

Spent chill saturday night at AU79 in San Gaberiel with some friends. The usual crew, plus some new additions.

I woke up late and missed gerry’s call to go ride azusa, they wanted to go at 730am! So i decided to go anyways since the day seems clear and nice. Suited up, got my gopro and went. Such a nice day! and not that many other bikers on the road since i was late, nor cars. I went up azusa canyon to the top, saw some military looking trucks pull out and decided to head down. Went up GMR on the backside, and came down the front. By the time i got up to the top of GMR, i was pretty tired, havent been riding in a long time. Started loosing concentration and my lines got all wacky. All good though, made it down safely and rode home in time for another photoshoot with my friends. Good day in all.

I’m switching out the sound in these videos because they sound terrible. I guess the go-pro cam was knocking against the headlight where i was mounting it. Gotta figure out a better mounting solution.

If form follows function, then this would be perfect for the performance machine in post zombie apocalypse

So last Saturday was track day at streets of willow with speed-ventures. This is my first time going CCW. The track seems much faster than going CW. I had trouble with two areas, one was on the skid pad and the other, the bowl. Both involved a long straight at 100+mph going into a slow turn, the bowl is especially difficult since it was banked and also a decreasing radius turn.

In car video made from my Go-Pro before i ran out of batteries, the Evo blew its inter cooler piping mid run so it was getting towed.  Best time time of the day for me was 1:36.07, best time in the video was 1:38.7.

So far the car is running great, the BHR coils really helped out and doing the cooling mod managed to keep the car in optimum temperatures. The brakes are phenomenal, the pads bite very hard and every time i can brake much later than before. The bad thing was that my tires are pretty much shot, they are all heat cycled out. After many tire squealing laps they didn’t even gum up, time for some new ones before the next track day!

There were 3 other RX8s besides Lionzoo and I. We met eddie who was awesome and pulling crazy drifts into the skid pad (much better than the drifters in the drifting event that was also happening on the balcony BTW), and also a black rx8 that looked really fast, so while i was walking around the pits, look at who i ran into! mazdamaniaaaaaaaac!

Some photos,

the maniacmobile,

This is a clean Hatchiroku, the interior on this thing is immaculate!

Pretty nice skyline, the driver had trouble pointing people by since he’s RHD haha

This Ferrari was slow! it was holding people up going 40mph in the blue group, and of course the driver wasn’t pointing anyone by. It did this for 2 laps and eventually got black flagged and bumped down to white group.

Later on one of the instructors got its hand on it though and mannn that thing could go, fastest lap time in the group set by the Ferrari.

This thing was hauling ass in the black group, faster than some of the much faster cars. it had no windows or interior and the gauge cluster was zip tied to the steering column, freaking awesome! There was also a stock hyundai accent in the black group that was keeping its pace with a lotus exige, (keep in mind that people in the black group are not slow, they’re all pretty good drivers, the hyundai driver was just insane)

Speaking of rats there was also this awesome car

yes that’s AstroTurf on the roof and hood and in case you can make it out, its also got a dolphin on top of it, LEMONS FTW

darin from westends hatch, i met darin a while back at his shop for corner balancing, and its good to see him out on the track, that guy is seriously fast!

and finally my car chilling a little bit by the overlook near the bowl, i really need to get some magnetic numbers or something the racing tape numbers look so cheap

UPDATE: New hardware was bought and we extracted the broken stud.  This time we used the correct torque specs and now everything works again.  HC’s engine actually sounds great for a higher mileage RX-8 engine.  -LionZoo (P.S. Time to update that About page since I’m no longer an engineer.  Now I’m even less human!)

So last night i tried to install the waterpump and thermostat after i’ve been putting it off for weeks. I wanted to get everything in before the track day on saturday. The install is pretty simple really, remove battery, loosen alternator belt, unbolt the waterpump, installed new one in reverse order, until i lost a bolt in the engine bay. I didn’t have a magnetic wand on hand (i know  i know) and the lighting wasnt too great, so after spending a good 30 minutes looking for it, even taking off the alternator, its soo amiss. Then maybe its the late hours and loss of concentration, i lost ANOTHER nut in the same spot. Then i decided that its probably a good idea to pack up and finish the next day before i make anymore mistakes. Then the worst of the night happened. While putting on the pulley, i over torqued one of the bolts and sheared it. Devastated, i hurriedly threw everything back together and locked the car up and went straight to sleep. This morning i find out i’ve been reading the torque specs wrong on the install diagram. While the rest of the components are marked in ft/lb, the pulley bolts are marked in in/lb, FAIL on my part for not catching that. Well i went out and bought the appropriate tools for relocating my lost nuts and extracting the sheared bolt. As well as some extra hardware to finish the project, hopefully it’ll be a much better night (fingers crossed)

pictures of the damage to come.

Found over at JDMstyletuning. I thought it was pretty badass.

The Group B referred to a set of regulations introduced in 1982 for competition vehicles in sportscar racing and rallying regulated by the FIA. The Group B regulations fostered some of the quickest, most powerful and sophisticated rally cars ever built. However, a series of major accidents, some fatal, were blamed on their outright speed. After the death of Henri Toivonen and his co-driver in the 1986 Tour de Corse, the FIA disestablished the class after four years. The short-lived Group B era has acquired legendary status among rally fans.

Here is a nice contrast to the video above, enjoy