Steguis Motorsports: April 2024

Sunday, April 28, 2024

New Aero working at Palmer Motorsports

It was great to finally get to my first track weekend this year. I ran with S2K Takeover and EMRA and it a blast. We had near perfect weather for two days. The new aero is working well and I dropped about 3 seconds from my previous visit late last year.

Palmer Motorsports Park - 4-28-2024

The aero definitely made a big difference to the car. The rear felt super stable. I'd argue it's actually a bit too stable and now I have some extra understeering even with the splitter up front. I'm planning to now increase the rear spring rates a little bit to rebalance the car. I had to wait a few times for the front to tuck in for some of the tighter corners and that killed a ton of time.

I set my personal best at 1:54.7 which is decent but definitely not the pace that S2000s can achieve with a good driver so I've got some work cut out for me. I can't wait to come back with a better suspension setup and grippier tires.

Friday, April 12, 2024

Drivetrain Refresh

When I got the timing belts and oil cooler sorted, we noted vibration in the torque tube at around 3500rpms. The 944 S2 uses a torque tube that has a split lengthwise that was designed to reduce harmonics and vibration. The problem is that over time this can spread over time causing the bearings inside to not sit properly. The vibration wasn't terrible but it was a sign of things to come and rather than wait for failure, I prefer to just fix it the right way the first time. I picked up a used late generation 944 from @944Barn on IG and had it delivered to Black Sea R&D in Georgia to have it fully refurbished and have their four of the steel shielded super bearings fitted. These bearings are made in the USA and built to better quality than the OEM ones from the 80s.

One of the used later gen torque tubes from 944Barn

Splines cleaned up

Steel shielded super bearings

Reassembled and powder coated

Since I was going to have the torque tube dropped anyway, it made sense to incorporate a number of normally labor intensive jobs as part of it to save on future labor. Looking at the previous owners' records the clutch was changed about a 13 years ago but the flywheel was only resurfaced not replaced. I ordered a brand new OEM clutch, flywheel, pressure plate and all associated hardware since it's almost a no brainer to do that now with it exposed as part of the torque tube replacement. With the clutch out it also made sense to replace the rear main seal.

New Rear Main Seal

New clutch, flywheel and pressure plate in

Newly refurbished torque tube installed

The foam that goes under the shifter for sound absorption had already started to crumble over the years so I had that replaced too since you can only get to it with the torque tube removed. Glad I did that since the old foam had definitely seen better days.

New foam (top) vs old foam (bottom)

Last but not least, I got a Wavetrac LSD installed with new bearings into the transmission and also put in a fresh new OEM transmission mount. I've had good experience with the Wavetrac LSD in my 911 so I figured for the price and performance, this was going to be a nice little upgrade.

Wavetrac LSD

Transmission back together with WaveTrac LSD and
Motul SAE 75W90 gear oil

New OEM transmission mount

All these changes really brought the car to the level of "restoration" I wanted for this car. It's been well take care of and driven over the years and really needed some proper investment and effort to make it as good as it was when it was new. It feels transformed from the day I picked it up and I'm definitely very happy with the outcome.

Super big thanks to Marcello at Hybrid Motors for getting this turned our super quick and making sure everything was done right including addressing a few other small leaks we uncovered as part of this work.

Maintenance Update:

Mileage: 96,788

- New OEM Transmission Mount

- New OEM shifter sound absorber foam

- New OEM clutch

- New OEM Flywheel + new bolts

- New OEM Pressure plate + new bolts

- New OEM pilot bearing and release bearing

- New OEM clutch fork shaft

- New OEM needle bearings for clutch fork

- New OEM guide tube for release bearing

- New clutch bellhousing, torque tube, transmission bolts

- New OEM rear main seal

- Remanufactured late gen torque tube with 4 stainless shielded super bearings by Black Sea R&D

- Wavetrac LSD (40.309.170WK)

- 3 quarts Motul 75W90 Gear Oil

Monday, April 8, 2024

Mr Sideways x Sakebomb Garage High Performance Radiator

I've been meaning to improve the cooling on my car for some time now and picked a Mr Sideways x Sakebomb Garage high performance dual pass radiator with 12 and 10 inch low profile SPAL fans. It's supposed to be a bit more efficient than my Koyo radiator with much quieter fans than my old FAL setup. I also wanted to go back to OEM rubber radiator hoses from the Samco Silicone hoses I had before due to the coolant smell you can sometimes get from coolant that permeates through them.

Mr Sideways x SBG radiator setup

First order of business was to drain the coolant of course, then removing the hoses and old radiator setup from the car.

Radiator drained

Old radiator removed

The fan switch had to get moved over to the new radiator.. For some reason my existing fan switch didn't have an O-ring and I didn't have a new one but thankfully SJF had some O-ring spares that worked. Getting the OEM hoses in was tight but not too terrible but after we put the new radiator in the car we ran into our first big-ish problem. My combo catch can / coolant overflow required us to move the AC line closer to the inside several years ago and this was now exactly where the upper coolant hose needed to route. We had to push the AC line down some more and not route the coolant hose through the bracket that normally supports it but instead just support it with the AN fittings going to the oil catch can.

New radiator in and hoses attached

Upper radiator hose supported by the catch can fittings

SJF uses a vacuum filler to vacuum the entire coolant system so we know the seals are good then about 1.5 Gallons of Honda Type-2 coolant was added.

Coolant getting sucked in by the vacuum

Once we got that filled, the old connectors from the previous radiator were cut and transferred and soldered to the new radiator since I have different radiator connectors from stock. The next problem were the radiator stays. The location of the radiator posts don't line up with the factory location so on the driver side, a 1/4-20 nutsert had to be installed into one of the existing holes and new holes drilled in both my radiator stay and carbon fiber cooling plate. We also had to drill new holes on the passenger side radiator stay so it could be bolted in. Additional carbin fiber had to be cut off to accommodate the new location of the coolant cap. For a radiator that's built for an S2000 you'd think they would have this sorted and not require additional fabrication.