Taylor Rotorsports . Projects

June, 2006:

Before, we mentioned the front end of Gary's SRX7 being a wee-bit tall, and now we have an answer for it. It had OEM springs on the front end. This doesn't explain the rear being tall, as it is fairly obviously equipped with the TMC black spec springs, but it at least explains the front ride-height and the car's horrible push. There was some additional work to be done to the fueling system, along with more front suspension work, which we did in preparation for Gary's trek up to Hallett for the NASA race 6/17-18. So after plumbing and tweaking the fuel system we set about doing a Taylor Rotorsports Front Suspension Overhaul(tm) and Taylor Rotorsports Winning Setup (remember, we won at MSR-Houston!). Some pictures of the process below.

November, 2005:

Gary came to us with one car and two broken engines. The original motor smoked like a Texas pit barbeque, so they bought an engine off of eBay which turned out to be a Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) engine. At first glance there's just a few minor differences, but upon closer inspection of the internal pieces there's actually quite a difference.

You can see in the pictures the difference of the intake ports on the JDM engine vs. USDM engine (in the top right two pictures the JDM pieces are in the foreground). For more lingo, the JDM engine is a 6-port, like the later 13B engine, where the USDM is a mere 4-port. Which means the intake is different, too! You can make out another difference in the first picture, and that is an additional cooling line that comes off the back of the waterpump... which means another unique piece! Since the JDM pieces aren't really SCCA legal, we swapped Gary some US-spec pieces for his Japanese pieces. One final problem was the running of the oil cooler lines. In what appears to be an attempt to delete the heater core and the associated hard line, the cooler lines are looped around so that no water circulation occurs. There was no visible damage to bearings inside the engine, so failure of it was probably not due to overheated oil, though it sure didn't help matters.

After a thorough cleaning of the parts, we put together what will become Gary's backup engine. For the time being, Gary is running this piece in the car. The only difference between the backup and "good" engines are a few hundred dollars of machine work. Both are getting all new seals and associated hardware. Unfortunately not many pictures of it going together (damn deadlines) but two of it going together and finished. You can see the cleaned and painted irons, along with the nice clean rotors, as well as the new oil seals. Normally we do a little polishing on the rotor housings, but our Dremel was out of service during this period.

After all that work, we set our sights on the front end, dialing in as much legal camber as we could. Either because of the relatively new suspension, or because of a mixed up part or two, the front end is still rather high compared to our cars. A remedy may be in the near future, who knows.