Honey Badger's Completely Off-the-Rails Race Car Build and Track Adventure Thread

[raidernixon]

Welp, at this point I think I should just accept the name Kevin the engine destroyer.

Was out at COTA last week and managed to blow up the Miata engine. Blown head gasket, warped head, and unhappy cylinder walls. Sigh.

This is what happened when we removed the spark plugs and turned the engine over - that's a lot of water



Some pics of when we got the head off

Flat bar and feeler gauge showed about 17 thousandths of warpage on the head. Whoops.

On the bright side, the new trailer doubles as a pretty sweet mobile garage when my real garage is full of a different broken race car.

I was told these little suckers were bullet proof. Friend of mine said I must be the .50cal with armor penetrating round. Whoops. At this point, I should just start my own machine shop.

Time for a J-swap?! I have a J-swap in a former spec na miata and it is an absolute riot.

 

[honeybadger]

Better to had them and lost them, then never had them at all. I will gladly take the pain of losing them to have had the joy of having and loved them.

Sorry, not trying to be debbie downer.

Oh for sure. I think I laughed more with that pup in 4 years than I have with all other furry friends I'd had before combined. He was the dog that introduced me to GSDs and he completely changed my entire perspective on dogs and the saying man's best friend. It was incredible painful, but totally worth the short years we had him.

Time for a J-swap?! I have a J-swap in a former spec na miata and it is an absolute riot.

We're seriously looking at k swapping it in the future. Don't want to spend 10k right now since I'm in the middle of building HB - but maybe afterwards. K swap would make it a blast for some time attack and endurance racing

 

[wingnutt]

nice…not to derail anymore, but maybe you saw this elsewhere in the forum

he is our male, 140# full blooded DDR.
we had to put his non-DDR sister down last year, she just lost all control over her hind end, but he’s doing his best to fill her shoes!

I actually took the passenger seat out of the R and made her a bed on the floor when we moved down to San Diego

 

[honeybadger]

Welp, I had hoped I was going to get more progress done on the badger, but it's been a bit of a roller coaster since I melted the miata motor. The entire thing outside the block and crank was toast - head was warped beyond repair, pistons and bearings all had damage from using water as lubricant, etc. Don't air cool your miata, kids.

Drove up to Dallas yesterday to pickup an in-progress rebuild of another BP motor. This one has forged CP pistons and carrillo H-beam rods, and ARP fasteners. Perfect for BOOST (coming in the future). Ordered up the remaining parts to complete the assembly last night--including a coolant reroute, bigger radiator, boundary engineering oil pump, and an AEM water gauge. So I'll be playing miata engine builder for the next 2 weeks so I can hopefully make my string of fall events at COTA.

Let's see if we can Kevin-proof this replacement motor

 

[50 Deep]

I initially was wondering what happened to the other 4 cylinders....... then I realized....

 

[honeybadger]

Well, I did a thing yesterday. Ordered a Daytona Coupe R kit - delivery is looking like May, so I have plenty of time to start sourcing parts not included in the kit like the dash, fuel cell, and powertrain.

Pretty excited. This will be the perfect partner to HB - like a more raw, over-powered Miata.

 

[galaxy]

Well, I did a thing yesterday. Ordered a Daytona Coupe R kit - delivery is looking like May, so I have plenty of time to start sourcing parts not included in the kit like the dash, fuel cell, and powertrain.
Pretty excited. This will be the perfect partner to HB - like a more raw, over-powered Miata.

Actually on my short list. First big question...you had to order based on engine platform; what are you going with? Modular? Old V8?

 

[honeybadger]

Actually on my short list. First big question...you had to order based on engine platform; what are you going with? Modular? Old V8?

Originally was thinking Coyote, but ended up getting a killer deal from a friend on a high output 302 and TKO - so going to go with that. The more I thought about it, the more I felt it fits with the ethos of how I want to build this kit - no aero, long gearing, and tons of mechanical grip (from big, grippy slicks). This one is less about setting lap records and more about just pounding the pavement and having a blast with some old school muscle.

HB will be the big aero, high commitment time attack car.

 

[sublime1996525]

Well, I did a thing yesterday. Ordered a Daytona Coupe R kit - delivery is looking like May, so I have plenty of time to start sourcing parts not included in the kit like the dash, fuel cell, and powertrain.

Pretty excited. This will be the perfect partner to HB - like a more raw, over-powered Miata.

HELL YES!!!! This is a bucket list car for me. I'm so stoked to see the progress.

 

[1 old racer]

HELL YES!!!! This is a bucket list car for me. I'm so stoked to see the progress.

Mine as well. Post uour build pics so we can live vicariously thru you

 

[Muligan]

Presuming its from Factory Five based on that pic... great choice! I built a Cobra replica using their basic kit and have had eight wonderful seasons and 18k miles with it so far.

 

[Hack]

Well, I did a thing yesterday. Ordered a Daytona Coupe R kit - delivery is looking like May, so I have plenty of time to start sourcing parts not included in the kit like the dash, fuel cell, and powertrain.

Pretty excited. This will be the perfect partner to HB - like a more raw, over-powered Miata.

I realize it's slightly off topic to this forum, but I hope you post lots of information about it. I would love to build something like this, but my biggest sticking point is head room. I have no idea whether the Factory Five Daytona coupe would work for me.

Are you going with a stick rear axle or IRS?

 

[honeybadger]

HELL YES!!!! This is a bucket list car for me. I'm so stoked to see the progress.

Same here. I'll definitely be sharing the build progress and such!

Mine as well. Post uour build pics so we can live vicariously thru you

For sure!

Presuming its from Factory Five based on that pic... great choice! I built a Cobra replica using their basic kit and have had eight wonderful seasons and 18k miles with it so far.

Yep - it's their Coupe R kit - so will be fully race ready. Not 100% sure it'll be raced, but there's a good chance once I get it all sorted and feel comfortable in full attack mode with no aero or nannies (like ABS).

I realize it's slightly off topic to this forum, but I hope you post lots of information about it. I would love to build something like this, but my biggest sticking point is head room. I have no idea whether the Factory Five Daytona coupe would work for me.

Are you going with a stick rear axle or IRS?

Yep - i'll definitely share the build journey. Re: headroom, from what I've read tall guys can now fit since they re-worked the design to give more headroom in the Gen 3 chassis.

I am going with IRS - I thought hard about axle, but too many tracks I run at have kerbs and I wanted to be able to adjust camber in the rear. Everything else will be old school - well, except for the AIM digital dash and PDM

 

[honeybadger]

Well, spent the weekend at COTA with the Miata last weekend. First time this year I've really had a chance to put a number of laps into the Miata and it was a pretty solid weekend. Fastest lap of the weekend actually came in the last session of day 1 - I decided to spend day 2 working on carrying more momentum into T11, T12, and T15 and just managing the car with steering while being able to stay flat on the throttle. This is much harder in the Miata because throttle really doesn't help (only so much 95 whp can do). It's all about how you setup with turn in and the brake pedal - no throttle steering.

My fastest lap shows how much time I was losing in those corners from the car stepping out too much.





Couple times it was pretty close. I had a few that were real close to being a spin. The manual steering wasn't helping here, either





Started getting it a bit better by midday on day 2. Not fast, but managed to stay in it





I managed to get it by the very last session of day 2



Hopefully I can put it all together at the CHIN event at the end of this month. Supposedly have a theoretical best of 2:48 which would be getting into the "respectable" time for a relatively stock NA miata. In the meantime, I need to spend some more time studying footage and get back to work on the HB cage.

 

[honeybadger]

Finally got back to working on HB after a much need fall break to re-energize, tend to some neglected honey-do's, and catch up with some friends.

Before the cage install, I still needed to remove the rear package tray and the roof. Got started on removing the rear package tray. Had to tackle it in a few steps (step-by-step will be in a video I am currently editing) since there a million spot welds I needed to drill out.

Essentially I cut the main part of the tray out with a cut off wheel so I had easy access to the support structures on each side. Then tackled the spot welds. Still need to clean them up - but got the entire tray out

Almost 20lbs! nice

FOr the roof, there are a ton of spot welds on the front and back under the window trim. Drill those out and then you're ready to cut the sides. There's no elegant to do this from what I can tell. As you can see from where I pried the front corner up, the sides are rolled and then bonded to the side of the roof structure.

My approach was to cut about 1/4" from the gap between the main roof skin and the roof structure.

I've since done a bit of clean up of that edge with a cut off wheel. I need to finish it up with a sander to get it smooth. I have a detailer belt sander coming on thursday that should make it quick work.

For those interested, the roof is bonded with something like a bronze brazing. Not entirely sure - it's definitely not epoxy-like and it doesn't spark when the cutoff wheel hits it

With both off, we're ready to install the Trackspec cage. Tons of room for activities!

For those interested, roof skin was 9.8lbs. Carbon replacement should come in around 5lbs. So net savings of almost 25lbs. Between this and all the other crap I removed the from interior, we should more than offset of the weight of the cage. Final weights will be interesting.