Thursday, September 30, 2010

Improvements - VisionGuard 8000 Alarm Instalation

During the repair process that my car had about a year and a half ago, I decided it was time to make a couple of mods.
 This is a series of posts from that time.

Video1 - ShockSensor instalation and location as close to the car's strongest center point as possible.
Video 2 - How it looks (everything I've done) in the end.

Improvements - Video Cameras Instalation

During the repair process that my car had about a year and a half ago, I decided it was time to make a couple of mods.
 This is a series of posts from that time.

Video 1 - Passing UPT Class5 cable from the front and rear of the car to the inside passenger seat.And then turning them into USB cable extension for the cameras.
Video 2 -Transforming a standard webcam into an infrared webcam. This is soooo very easy. The CCD inside a webcam is more than capable of interpreting infrared light. So capable that the lens need a infrared filter (the red glow you can see when looking into a webcam? that's the infrared filter). All you have to do is to remove this filter and replace-it with a normal light filter.
Video 3 - Testing the normal cameras.
Video 4 - Testing the IR cameras after tweaking
Video 5 - How it looks (everything I've done) in the end.
Video 6 - Final cameras and laptop.
Video 7 - Transformation of the X5Tech camera from powerleds to IR leds

Improvements - AudioSystem / Speakers inside the rollbar

During the repair process that my car had about a year and a half ago, I decided it was time to make a couple of mods.
 This is a series of posts from that time.

Video 1 - Installing the SonyXplode crossover.
Video 2 - Relocating Subwoofer, amplifiers, alarm and GPS locator to the car's center of gravity.
The weight of the amplifiers + subwoofers + speakers are almost equal to the spare "bicicle" wheel and jack.
Video 3 - Speakers inside the head protection bars
Video 4 - Another layer of silicone on the speaker adaptor
Video 5 - Sculpting the adapter to a nice look and feel
Video 6 - How it looks in the end.
Video 7 - The speaker mounts

Repairing the S2000 after a aquaplaning crash

Over an year ago, in one of the worse nights I've seen to date, under heavy rain and with my tires quite used, I aquaplanned.
How did that happen? The infamous IC19 in Portugal has a bad design, worse pavement and even worse drainage. So, starting a downhill, left turn with opposite relevé, the car hit a bump and landed in what is best described as a 10mts wide river crossing the pavement. Evidently, it immediately started a drift into the concrete, hitting the concrete with it's front right headlamp. Bad things can always go worse, so the airbag sensor is located exactly under the right front headlamp, so they deployed, shutting down the engine and locking the rear wheels, leading to a spin motion witch then culminated with the rear right end of the car in the concrete wall.
The entire accident happened in low speeds as it was raining heavily...causing little damage to the body panels and no damage at all to the chassis.
These videos where taken during the car's repair at AUTOCAMBOTA.
Why did I repair the car at a Renault dealer? Simple:
1- this car is hand built in japan by a group of craftsman with over 10year of fine craftsmanship at honda.
2- if I was to repair it at Honda in Portugal however, it would be repaired by the lowest cost in the business (and ultimately lowest quality in the business). The same guys that do the oil change in the Honda Jazz!
3- I have good friends at AutoCambota, and that means assurance that a qualified craftshman will repair my car... and so it happened, with video proof.

The Foto-report from post crash to full repair

Video1
Video2
Video3
Video4
Video5
Video6
Video7
Video8
Video9
Video10

That's it! ;)

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Improving tear resistance and water impermeability


As Promised in my other Post about how to solve tears and avoid new ones, this one is to improve water impermeability and also increase overall resistance of the soft-top.
So how?
Go to a civil-construction material warehouse near by and buy these products:

  • Liquid Silicone Insulator for roofs with 400% elastic property (16-to-18€)
  • SuperGel (3€)
  • A brush+tape+roll pain kit (3 to 4€) 

Paying particular attention to this... it's the silicone and NOT THE LIQUID RUBBER. Ohhhh and in BLACK.
Then use the roll and pour the silicone till it looks good.
Do it : a layer a day until it is satisfactory.

And this is the end result:
That's it... This is my original Honda Soft Top... on a car built in 06/2004... and I live in Portugal with hot dry summers, and cold wet winters... oh and some STUPID ass burgers that think they can open the car by cutting the soft-top and passing steel wires to try and unlock the door.

Taken care of, the soft-top does go a long way.

A a new photo report... this time with some nudity!

... nudity from the car's side, evidently!

I've just upgraded the car's onboard Computer (from an old ASUS T1000 to a new eeePC) and re-focused the onboard cameras, so I'll be posting new videos soon. Stay tunned.

Monday, July 12, 2010

My S2000

I have 2 sets of wheels:

  • the original ones (painted in BMW dark gray) running on FALKEN's FK452 
  • the 5Zigen GN+ Proracer running on TOYO R888's (still on the falkens when I took the picture)



I brought the 5Zigen's from Envyperformance  - http://www.envyperformance.com/ 
Both the ToyoR888's and the Falkens FK452 where brought at CAMSKILL. The 2 set's were delivered to my door in 5 days... and cost (shipment included) about 60% of the price 1 set of R888's would cost here in portugal... I DO RECOMEND THEM VERY MUCH - http://www.camskill.co.uk/ 

Solving tears and avoiding them.

Hi all.
My S2000 soft top got vandalized some time ago. Evidently I solved the problem using that old grandma's technique: some line and a needle.
But another problem happened. The spot where the fabric was teared was near a chronically tearing location. My patch increased the fabric tension and so another tear came up later.
SO I patched IT properly this time.

1st - Get some IRON-ON-FABRIC-with-rubber, get you grandma's ironing tool and an electronics soldering iron (the lower wattage the best).
2nd - Cut the patch on the outside and iron-it down.
3rd - Go to the interior side and using the soldering iron, fuse the other patch on the inside.
4rth - Go back to the outside and patch a reinforcement one over the already fused patch
THAT's IT!

Recommendation: to avoid stress on both the motors and the fabric, I recommend wrapping the lower with bar in plastic fiber computer cable guides, like I've done here:
 

Improving Perfection

Hi everyone.
I've got an 2004 S2000 AP1 Rev2 F20C. Not too long ago I decided to install a CAI.
I tried to go for something that would render top end power, but without loosing torque curve immediately under VTEC engagement point.
After some consideration I decided to go the AEM V2 way. Why? Well, under 400€ is was the very best thing.
The car felt stronger, but I've always felt that I got more torque than high RPM power.
VTEC kick in got noisier, and that was coherent with the pipe inside pipe "resonance design". But that also meant that the car was struggling more to get air at that particular point. But was still an improvement.

Having a degree in Technology of Mechanical Engineering, and a "thirst" for knowledge on every thing that is both mechanical and efficient, I invested some time thinking on a way to improve the car.

Studying all the intake improvements for the s2000, I realized that the you could divide them into 3 groups.
1 - Torque oriented - Like the standard CAI from AEM and so many others. Basically it's a long thin pipe that stretches from the throttle body assembly, all the way down to the front bumper just under the front right headlight.
2 - Power oriented - J's racing carbon unit and a couple of items from other manufacturer's. It's a carbon elbow from the air filter box to the throttle body assembly curving in an enlarged section tube.
3 - Middle term - It's the Full spoon assembly and the AEM V2 - It's a combination of an enlarged pipe to increase Peak Hp with an extension of the intake system providing better torque curve. The AEM V2 is very similar to the standard CAI but has 2 tubes (on inside the other) and works the sound wave to force air to swirl differently depending on the rpm and emulating both a large short tube (loud intake and power at high rpm) and the thin long tube (lower intake sound and torque at low rpm).

Not too happy with this result, I decided to do a small test. I cut the dummy hole in the bumper, directly in front of the AEM V2 air filter. I thought that, if fluid mechanics didn't abandon-me, the high pressure air forced by the car's body into that hole would create an increase of pressure in that compartment under the headlight. This would help the VTEC transition and should be noticeable but the less loud "powaaaaaa". Did it work? No! Too many respiration and water purging holes, so very little pressure was created. I had to do something more radical.
I was thinking about protecting that entire section and make it impermeable when I found the 4th type of S2000 Intake!

As you can see in this photo, from my friend Nuno Santos shop Autopamplona, this intake system provides a huge potential for high rpm power, but also has an extension, trying to preserve torque.

But this is far from the catch to this intake...

It also has a HUGE catcher that enables it to channel high pressure air from the front of the car into the intake system. and that's exactly what I was trying to do. Only their approach was... rather radical, and ultimately better.

So I started my own project to change my AEM V2 into something like this. And this time, IT WORKED!

1st - Grab your laptop, check the S2000 maintenance manual and then disassemble the front bumper. Easy 5mnt procedure as the manual shows.


You can see clearly look at the AEM V2 AirFilter in this next picture.
2nd - Since you're disassembling the car's intake, clean the air filter, dry it, and spray new airfilter oil.
3rd - The fabrication begins. Get the materials. The best way to do this is to buy fiberglass, paper tape, silicone and sheet of metal grid. The metal grid will allow you to:

  •  - Mold the forms you want.
  •  - Hold that forms during fiberglass coating
  •  - Gain a few scars

4th - Mold the chamber in a balloon shape around what was the air filter space. Read a couple of book about aerodynamics  first so you can come up with a design that helps to squeeze air into the filter.
REMEMBER TO place the bumper to test for clearance, and the good thing about the steel grid is that it deforms to the bumper to you can check the areas to workout next.
...and you should come up with something like this.
5th - Use the paper tape to cover everything and make smooth surfaces.
6th - Time to wrap-it-up in fiberglass!
... and you should come up with this. I made a section cutting to remove the steel grid and to allow space to mount the air filter on the CAI. The small part on the floor is the cover I've cut.
7th - Give-it some color and install-it.
This is where the silicone comes in. It will seal the fiberglass box to the CAI and will also smooth the box's interior, removing any imperfection the fiberglass on paper might have left. 
REMEMBER to allow space to install the air filter. And after the silicone is dry, install the air filter.
8th - Close the Box, with the cover cut out earlier, and seal everything with either silicone or some polyester filler.
The filter is visible at the end of the air box, and so is the silicone smoothing partially done.
9th - Spray some black ink, and mount the front bumper.
10th - Take it out and rev-it-up.

Did it work? YEAH! My VTEC entry is so smooth that you no longer ear-it, you just feel-it. It gets very clear that the faster you go, the better throttle response you get. The car feels stronger and a small uphill that I used to end at around 180Km/h to 185Km/h, now comes in at over 190Km/h as THIS VIDEO SHOWS...and it's UP-hill, so both torque and high rpm are very important features.

Here is a new video on a different (longer) uphill.

Another UP-HILL 100-to-200 video, why always up-hill? Cause I'm trying to archive Hi-end power AND torque.

Hope you liked it.

NEXT on to-do list :
  - 3 step aerodynamic improvement
  - Brake cooling improvement
  - Better Intake
  - Ultimate exhaust system

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