Fun things first, a couple more photos watermarc took at the last driftvalley:
And the not so fun things:
So I had been running the stock temp gauge for the first event (big mistake) and it had always been acting funny. I had to get a new wiring harness from prosport for my temp gauge and I did not get it in time for the event. Once I got it wired in, the gauge read in the 200-220 range. The stock gauge was always in the middle. Once it even read this:
Not sure what kinda drugs the gauge was on. Anyway, turns out my water pump belt had been loose this whole time!
Man I felt dumb, I guess the belt was skipping. This meant that I had been beating on the car for awhile and the car had probably been running hot! Fortunately nothing was damaged too badly, I don't think. I frantically took a compression test of the engine cold and it was pretty low at 145 across all four. Not sure if it was due to running the car hot, but at least it was even.
This KA burns a decent amount of oil. I'm planning on doing valve seals soon, and hoping it makes it through the season. I have a spare longblock that needs work, and in the offseason I'm going to rebuild it to have something fresh for 2016!
Took the front end apart to do motor mounts, water pump, thermostat, and belts. Cutting up the core support and welding tabs for a bolt-on setup was one of the coolest things I've done to this thing! Makes life so easy:
Andy and I pulling the old mounts out:
NICE:
Nismo mounts are sweet. Raised the engine a bit for oil pan clearance, the trans mounts are dope too! Now the engine and trans don't feel like they have a mind of their own.