Thanks in advance.  Brian 

I’d like to put a tint or something on it to defeat the mirror but still retain the monitor function.

recommendations??

Here is my experience (please us the same format):

Pad: Hawk HP+

Car: 2006 GTI/2008 MX-5 – Street Cars

Location: Front

Calipers: Stock

Impressions: very good pad for a non-track dedicated car. Very good initial bite, even on the street. I have not had any overheating issues and they remain constant during the track session, including the heavy GTI. Also, rotor friendly.

I highly recommend this pad as the first upgrade level for the track without going full race pad.

Pad: Hawk Blue

Car: 1995 Golf – Kermit – Race Car

Location: Front

Calipers: Stock

Impressions: as a race pad, the brake won’t be firm until they reach operating temperature. Initial bite is good without being aggressive and very progressive increase of stopping power with increase of brake pedal pressure. I would describe them as linear. It is a very good choice for a car that weights less than 2500#. This compound is aggressive on rotors.

Pad: Hawk HT-10

Car: 1995 Golf – Kermit – Race Car

Location: Front

Calipers: Stock

Impressions: very similar to Hawk Blue with the benefit of being kinder to rotors. This is my current pad.

Pad: Hawk DTC-60

Car: 1995 Golf – Kermit – Race Car

Location: Front

Calipers: Wilwood Dynalug Pro

Impressions: these pads come up to temperature quick (which is good). Pedal and braking feel remains constant during a whole sprint race. Easy to modulate with a bit more aggressive initial bite than the HT-10. They might be too much for Kermit and it looks like they wear out quickly. I'm also using Ti backing plates to reduce chances of boiling the brake fluid. I have yet to assess rotor wear.

Pad: PFC-01

Car: 1995 Golf – Kermit – Race Car

Location: Front

Calipers: Wilwood Dynalug Pro

Impressions: I'm in love! Thank you guys for suggesting these pads. They are meant to be for Kermit. Braking torque is extremely constant during breaking and they are very easy to modulate. No brake fade even after a 45 min race. They last longer than the Hawk DTC-60 (but not by much) and they seem to be easy on rotors.

Smart Strings and BG racing seem to be the ones I see online and they're about the same price point.   BG looks to have had some minor quality issues like threaded holes needing re-tapped, but that's not a big deal to me.  however if the smartstrings is $50 more and has zero quality issues, why not just go that way?

There some others out there that go laser and do this and that and the other.  while they're cool, I'm not ready to fork out that kind of money for an alignment setup.

I already have a standard bubble-type camber/caster gauge, bumpsteer gauge, and corner scales, so I have the base model of all ancilliary equipment needed.  now I'm just looking for the string tools and any other things I don't know I'm missing.   (scale platform would be baller, but again I'm not that flush with cash after all the other recent racing related purchases.)

Here is the current setup. 

Front Brakes: 13x1.4" Coleman Floating rotors with AP Racing CP5800-10SOL 6 Piston Calipers Wilwood Polymatrix A Compound Pads

Rear Brakes: 12.19x.81" Fixed 2 piece rotors with Wilwood Superlite 4 piston calipers and Wilwood Polymatrix H Compound Pads

Master Cylinders are AP Racing with a bias bar no booster 7:1 pedal ratio.

First of all the car STOPS and in a hurry.  I can brake from 150mph+ to 50-65 for sharp corners no problem.  The problem is the car shakes like crazy until I'm hard on the brakes and there doesn't seem to be a lot of wiggle between no judder and lockup.  It does not judder when the brakes are cold on the first lap.

I'm thinking of going to PFC 01 pads based on some of the feedback i've seen on the board.  Any other potential pad compounds I should look out for?  It's a Hawk 109 or Wilwood 88 pad shape.

Edit:  This is a full race car so i don't have to worry about road manners outside the track.

Thanks!

Off the top of my head, i think i'd need the following done:

• sourcing K20 head
• aftermarket cams, valvetrain
• oil/water pump replacement 
• custom header/exhaust
• dyno tune

Proximity to DFW is a plus, but can drive up to a few hours away if needed to get the right level of experience. I was referred to Alamo Autosports in Arlington, but he went radio silent after I met with him to discuss the project (not confidence-inspiring for a project of this size), so I'm looking for an alternative.

The factory setup has an expansion tank with a 16psi cap, mounted up high (underneath the "mohawk" air intake cover if you've ever seen an Atom). Don't think this is relevant to my questions, but the radiator is mounted up front, and is sealed (well technically it has a bolt to bleed air, but it's not a traditional radiator with a radiator cap). 

Couple questions:

1) The swirl pot would typically be installed immediately after the main engine coolant outlet, is that correct? i.e. it should be fed by the hot coolant coming out of the motor?

2) Does the mounting height of the swirl pot relative to the motor matter?

3) Between the swirl pot and the expansion tank, which needs to be higher or does it not matter?

4) What should be the highest part of the system? 

5) If the factory cap on the expansion tank is 16psi, would going to an 18psi or as high as 22psi cap be problematic? 

Will be using on a variety of cars from open-wheel to vintage to good ol' Miatas.

I'm having some issues getting it all adjusted properly because of the amount the length of the stitched areas where it meets the buckles. Specifically on the lap belts. I have the belts setup to where the belt adjusters are JUST barely inside of the seat and accessible, so basically as tight as I get can them, but then at full tightness the lap belts are still not super snug. Is this just a problem with harnesses in general? Or do the Ultrashield's have more stitching than some harnesses? I'm not exactly super skinny, pretty average build. I imagine it would be better if I had a wider seat, but that wouldn't be ideal from a fit perspective for me or the car.

The other question I had is about the length of the anti-sub straps. I have them setup to be right in line with the SFI guidelines, but then the bracket on the bottom belt is almost down in between my legs. Its not immediately noticeably bad, but I can imagine it will start hurting after like 20 minutes in the car and I'm sure if I was in a wreck, it would destroy my inner thigh gap. Should I adjust these up? I think I would need the Camlock basically over my belly button in order to have that bracket high enough that it wouldn't stab my legs.

I need to buy a display+datalogger for the new car since the previous owner removed the MXL dash and I'm running a boosted car on stock gauge cluster (eek!!)

I ran across a decent price on a NIB Dash2Pro.  I'm curious what the opinions are on it vs. an AIM MXL2.   The both have OBD-II and CAN interface, but I can't seem to find any indication if "all CAN works" or if only certain models are natively supported.   based on how OBD-II and CAN standards work, I would *assume* that if it's capable of connecting to CAN bus, it should do it for all cars.

Also looking to thoughts on user-friendly and etc compared to the AIM?   I know the AIM stuff is pretty easy to use, but the price is up there for a full dash setup.

Thanks!

Has anyone used Hawk Talon rotors on a track car?

I've been using Centric 120 series and looking for something better that won't break the bank

The Talon advertising looks like they are supposed to be better, but am looking for real world experience

I am seriously considering installing instead of the 2 traditional oil cooler behind the car's foglight one or two or a combine water to oil cooler the likes of laminova or fluydine. I am replacing the radiator with a similar dimensions but thicker (going from 1.25" to 2.75") so coolant will receive a better cooling treatment. We are all aware that heat exchange between fluids is much faster/more efficient than air and when that day in the summer reads 90+ the air cooling on the track will probably not help that much.

From a financial and space requirements the water to oil cooler are way better since they dont need air flow to work. Anyone with an educated opinion on the subject please add your 2cents

https://m.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=58

This seems backwards or incomplete to me. I see the tire similar to a spring where decreasing pressure adds grip (and heat) until the tire is overheating, rolling over too much, or in danger of debeading.

I guess my gripe with the article is it doesn't specify where you started, but it still seems backwards to me. Am I just ignorant?

Edit: there was a chart near the back of Caroll Smith's "Tune to Win" which listed a bunch of things that could be adjusted to change balance, I should go back and reference that to start.

It seems that my pedal has a ton of travel and, under hard braking, my foot is buried way below the gas pedal. I would have to lift my foot completely to get to the gas pedal. This makes heel-toe difficult.

My thought was to put an extension on the brake pedal to raise the height a bit relative to the gas pedal. Has anyone else run into this and how did they deal with it or solve it?

Some background:
About 5,000 miles ago, I replaced the factory clutch, pressure plate, throwout bearing, flywheel, and pilot bearing (all with the Flyin’ Miata Happy Meal Kit).  The service went smoothly for the most part, except I had a difficult time mating the transmission to the engine.  I wrestled with it for a while before I grew frustrated and jammed it in a bit roughly and buttoned everything back up.  The car ran fine with no suspicious noises until it wouldn't go into gear a few weeks ago at Hallett. 

My observations upon dropping the transmission:

• The throwout bearing is clearly not centering on the pressure plate diaphragm/fingers (see Exhibit A below).
• The pilot bearing is severely damaged with about half its roller bearings missing/torn off (see Exhibit B below).

My diagnosis:
I believe I may have screwed something up when I impatiently strong-armed the transmission while mating it to the engine.  The clutch may have not been perfectly centered (even though I used the alignment tool) which made the transmission/engine mating more difficult.  This may have caused the TOB to be off-center on the pressure plate diaphragm and eventually led to the pilot bearing failure.

I have little experience with this sort of thing, so I'm hoping someone here can confirm or deny my diagnosis.

Exhibit A - throwout bearing not centering on pressure plate

Exhibit B - pilot bearing failure

https://www.holley.com/products/fuel_systems/hydramat/

demo video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfE1v65fNZI

Started with stripping the lip, the undertrays, the grill, OE ducting, etc.

Initially I thought I would start at the rear most Subframe bolts or the Cross brace bolts to see how far back I could extend.  Based on other pictures I’ve seen, etc I didn’t think I’d get there with a standard 4x8’ piece of material, but decided to measure things out starting from there anyway.  These 4 bolts (M10 I think) sit “inside” of the LCA’s so I thought using them in the rear with some spacers or whatever is required would make for about the strongest rear mount I could come up with, and wouldn’t get in the way of the LCA’s.   Spoiler alert, too bad but they’re almost 5ft from where I’ll want the splitter to extend in the front, and I need to go more than 5ft wide, so I guess I’ll be bringing the “rear forward”.  I’ll probably measure / trace the template out on an angle on the plywood or whatever I use to get more than 48”.....but I don’t think I’ll get enough.

The bolt I’m pointing at I’m calling the “cross brace” bolt, which is about 7” forward of that rear most subframe bolt (seen to the right).....and it’s also basically the “low point” in there, so I’ll target about an inch behind that to extend (if possible)...

Now, for some good old Canadian (Metric) measurements.  I started off by going about 65cm wide between the control arms, which also straddles those cross brace bolts nicely.  Then I roughed out the spacing between the arms etc. for reference later to square everything up, and also check against the measurements taken before trying to hold the cardboard in place with a knee while measuring / marking ?

Zip tied that portion into place, then moved on to filling out the corners.  Initial cut to fit stationary wheels, then measure and trim to account for steering travel.  Probably need to clearance some more, but for now left with about an inch of clearance all around.

Finally, traced out about 2” from vertical all around the bumper (the width of my level and a sharpie) to get a rough estimate of the total width and depth of the splitter.  Worked out to about 62” wide and about 56” deep to an inch past the rear most subframe bolts.  Subtracting ~7” to move up to an inch behind the cross brace bolts gets me to ~49”......without yet accounting for the cardboard flex vs ridgid plywood / frame.  So I’m in the ballpark of extending a couple of inches past the air dam, and maybe reaching that one set of M10 bolts depending on what this thing looks like all traced out.

Honestly I went about this without really doing any research, so I’ll probably do that tomorrow.  If any of you have any advice / tips / tricks, or things you wish you had noticed your first time around, let me know.

Most interested in mounting locations, and good ideas to make things removable etc.  I’m assuming that people use the frame rails in the wheel arches to build vertical supports (accessible from the side of the car to remove), and connect them up to a frame on the splitter.  I’m assuming once I look, I’ll find some “standard” locations / logical mounting configurations.

I upgraded from a SoloDL to a Solo2 DL in March (about 6 months ago), and have had nothing but constant issues with the Solo2. I'm getting useless/nonsensical/inaccurate g-force data from the Solo2. This is even after having to send my Solo2 in for service due to it constantly losing GPS accuracy mid-session and stopping both lap-timing and predictive timing. AIM fixed the timing issue by replacing the GPS antenna, however my Solo2's g-force data (both internal accelerometers & GPS-derived g-force data) is either completely nonsensical on the internal accelerometers, or super "jaggy" and all over the place for the GPS-derived data. This makes it impossible to do any sort of relative analysis.

I feel like I either have a lemon of a Solo2 unit, or the Solo2's are just inherently problematic vs the Solos. I had no issues with my Solo in several years of ownership, and it's super-frustrating wasting testing session after testing session with the Solo2 collecting what ends up being useless g-force data. 

Any thoughts/suggestions welcome.