ZRX Doug

Bump.. And, so..wha' hoppen? Did you go back with your best righteously angry customer face and rip 'em some new, um..solid waste holes?

Yup. Closer to two hundred measured at the crankshaft.. I dunno how I get along with a measly 142 rwhp on my ZRX..at least my (ex)wife can't make me sell it!

It's not really designed to hold pressurized liquids in a "slap it on like a band-aid" fashion, though it'll work pretty good (usually) if it's formed so that there's a bit of a mechanical bond instead of merely an adhesive one..likewise, it doesn't expand/contract at the same rate as aluminum, so it's apt to fall off eventually if a system experiences extreme temp cycles.

I've had good luck in the past fabricating my own. Go to the local Lowes or Home Depot or whatever and take a look at expanded foam (Styrofoam) insulation. You can buy sheets or bales of this stuff in a lot of different thicknesses. I use the 1/4" Dow BluCore fanfold stuff, but it can only be bought in 4 foot x 50 foot bales, so ya may not wanna go that route fo a single project.. Anyway, pick up whatever flavor you decide on, lay out your design on it and cut it out with a sharp razor blade or X-acto knife. If you need more thickness build as many laers as you want & glue 'em together with a hot glue gun set on the low temp. You can sand it to shape, even use a little body putty if you want to fill and smooth it..spray to match your interior with foam safe paint, and you're stylin'. I've got 6 x 9 Jenson 4-ways in the stock front door locations of my '89 GL, used this method and it looks like it came from the factory with 'em. I fly RC aircraft, we use this material a LOT these days..it's cheap at around thirty bucks a bale (that's about 30-40 airplanes, there!) really easy to work with, and finishes nicely..I've used it for body modifications on cars & motorcycles, as it is quite solid if you sheet it with fiberglass..super-fast way to build spoilers, air dams, flared fenderwells, etc..

I agree with most that Newbie said above except for the "if you get hosed" part. These guys are obligated by law to correct their mistake and to pay any expenses directly caused by their error (towing, tranny damage). DO NOT let them off the hook, no matter how hard they wriggle..guys like this give real mechanics a bad image, and my image is crappy enough as it is without making my (ex)job look sleazy too. :-p

Dude..I don't need to see the video. You already DID the "tests" to confirm the axle is wrong..basically, in the simplest terms I can come up with, the hole in the new axle(s) is larger than the shaft that it's supposed to attach to. The fit should be nice and tight, not sloppy like you've found yours to be. The inner CV is incorrect in the pic you took. He had the wrong axles in stock, and he installed them without bothering to check the fit of the inner spline. Have your vehicle towed back (DON'T flat tow it with the front wheels on the ground, it'll just screw up the splines on your tranny's output shafts more) and read my first post in this thread..heck, print it out and take it with you if ya want. The bottom line is that you are in no way at fault..they installed the wrong axles in your vehicle. You need to take it back and show them their error, they are obligated to fix it by law. If they have caused further damage to your transmission (probably not, but it's possible) then they are also responsible for repairing that. If they refuse, they'll still end up paying for fixing it at a reputable shop..it'll just take longer and you'll have to play games in small claims court or with the better business bureau..but my guess is that they'll look at it, say "Doh!" and smack their foreheads like Homer Simpson..followed immediately by them bending over backwards to make it right before you take legal actions. The only real question is whether the original problem is fixed..odds are pretty good that you still have a stripped hub on the right front wheel. I gotta tell ya..I'd like a piece of the "mechanic" who did this installation for you..he failed to notice your damaged hub, he failed to see anything wrong with the oversized inner CV spline before, during, and after an installation that must have been made pretty difficult by the fact that he was trying to pin together two components of differing diameter & spline count, and lastly when his makeshift "repair" crapped out, he failed to bother to just LOOK at it and realize his error. This guy is either stoned or retarded..no way he's a licensed mechanic.

WOOHOO! Do I get a cookie for guessing the problem? Go beat the tech who installed that thing over the head with it, and make damned sure they pay for any damages to your stubs caused by their incorrect axle installation.

No offense taken..just trying to give you a new angle or two to look at things from.

Well? What happened? Is the axle still spinning, did the tranny guys install the wrong axle(s), is the tranny really broken? Anxiously awaiting the conclusion to this lil' drama, here..

Ouch! We'll have to respectfully agree to disagree. While some of the flathead guys would indeed have jumped at the latest & greatest, the following week you'd have found them whittling away at their newly purchased engines with the same tools & techniques they were using on the old ones..but the fact is that quite a few of the flattie fans still exist, and they've continued to refine this "dead" engine with very little aftermarket support. The "exotic modern tech" angle hasn't got a thing to do with it..an IC engine is an IC engine, makes no difference if it's made today out of unobtanium cast in zero-gravity conditions or if Henry Ford built it by pouring molten iron over wet sand in his backyard..both will still respond to the same mods. As to what I "think" can be done..I don't THINK it, I know it. I've been building automotive & motorcycle engines for the past thirty freakin' years (yeah, 14 years old and built my first bracket engine, an AMC 390), and I've used the technique of resizing con-rods to obtain the CR I want on several occasions. It works, it's not a theory, it's a practice. And no, I'm not gonna rush out and build one of these engines to prove the point..I've no interest in it, and no use for it. I offered a different point of view to a guy who was seeking to change his compression ratio on the cheaps. Doesn't matter what flavor of engine he's running, it'll work on your choice of mills also.

Okey dokey then..you've got some sort of issue with the hub in the video..stripped splines most likely. And the axle shop apparently missed the hub damage when they installed your new axles, though I don't know how they could have torqued them properly if the hub(s) were stripped that badly. Does the car still do the same thing? Is the new axle spinning while the car's on the ground too?

Wait. Answer a few questions, please. 1. Did you initially have to tow the car in, or did you drive it there? 2. Assuming you drove in, what was the car doing that made you feel it needed axles? 3. What EXACTLY is the car doing now that makes you feel the tranny is dead? And is this different than what it was doing BEFORE the axle replacement? There are quite a few different scenarios that could play out here, but we're all just guessing until more info is provided.

I've been playing long enough to have modified the "cheap" part of that equation a wee bit..lots of valid modifications are "cheap" when speaking purely of a cash investment, but expensive in terms of sweat equity (either skull-sweat or the real kind)..as a group in general, motorsports enthusiasts are slowly devolving from a buncha guys who hand-ground their own flathead Ford camshafts into a buncha guys who purchase stuff and say "it can't be done" if the thing they want isn't already sitting on a shelf somewhere.

Hmm..wonder if they tried to install the wrong inners on your car? The larger diameter ones will slip right over the small output stubs, and a stupid enough mechanic could concievably just hammer the roll pins thru and call it "done" without ever realizing that the output shafts will just spin within the axles..it's concievable that the roll pins would even provide enough resistance to "drive" the thing while on the hoist and possibly outta the shop before the pins shear under real abuse. At this point, the tech will hear a grinding noise and your car will not move. Bozo will KNOW it's not an axle prob ('cuz he just put new ones on, right?) and make the leap to assuming the tranny is junk.. The reason I bring this thought up is that it took the local axle supplier three attempts (and a couple death threats) to get me the correct inner ends when I replaced my front axles last summer..I was wise (lucky is more like it!) enough to check that the splines mated properly before I started, but I can see how a properly motivated Bozo who's not familiar with the Subie world could manage to screw this one up..

There's no such thing..300+ horsepower air cooled VeeDub engines that originally were built to make 40 hp are proof of that..if ya throw enough time & money at ANYTHING, it'll make power. We're just trying to brainstorm a way around the "money" part of the equation, lol

Anything done to lower/raise compression MUST alter the quench area. Well, anything short of a stroked crankshaft that features the the same TDC height of the piston but a longer stroke, that is. Not knowing the particulars of this engine, I really don't know how much of a change it would take to get the compression you desire..but seriously, if you choose to do the math I think you'd discover it doesn't take much "drop" up/down the hole for significant compression changes. For instance, with my own Kawasaki engine ('99 ZRX-1100) we discovered another factory piston (ZX11) that features an identical dome design, but a wristpin that's 1mm lower on the piston, resulting in a 1mm increase in dome height at TDC. The 1mm diff is sufficient to raise static compression a full point (from 10.9:1 to 11:1) by itself, using a thinner head gasket and deleting the cylinder block base gasket results in a net gain closer to 3 compression points, or 11.25:1 or thereabouts. This is on an engine with a comparatively small bore diameter of 76mm..obviously, the larger the bore the greater the change. It's very nice "poor man's" solution for us ZRX guys desiring a tad more compression (or those ZX11 ones looking for a tad less).. This is a fun discussion! At least for me.. :-p I can see where you'd be hesitant to try whacky departures from the norm on YOUR engine (I'd be hesitant to risk my investment on the say-so of some yo-yo on a message board also), but keep it in mind and do a little exploration of the concept..ya may be pleasantly surprised.

No, the stroke length doesn't change, only the volume of the combustion chamber with the piston at TDC will. In other words, the "9" part of a 9:1 ratio would stay the same. Changing center-to-center length on a con-rod has the same effect as milling the head or running a thicker gasket, only you're doing it from the other end. As I said, I'm not real familiar with Subaru engines, but this isn't exactly "new ground" for the rest of the racing world. Resizing rods to get proper center-to-center measurement is a standard part of blueprinting an engine..this is just "blueprinting" to your specs rather than the manufacturers'. I wouldn't expect him to be shortening the rod enough to show any real-world effect on the bottom end of the engine as far as rod ratio & thrust face issues are concerned..maybe a few milimeters? I'd love to mess with this stuff in the real world, but for me the Soob is just my daily driver when it's too crummy out to ride a motorcycle..this is just mind candy for me, trying to give you guys a different angle on an old issue.

If'n ya never dragged it, how'd ya come up with that thar "14 second" figure, fella? Actually, I agree with you..going around curves is way more fun than drag racing, but the stuff I attack the twisties with only comes with two wheels and a set of handlebars..however, if you've never driven something that'll do 150+ mph in the quarter, you have NO IDEA of the skills involved in that little bit of straight line driving. Add the joy of having a potential bomb disguised as a transmission sitting 'twixt your legs while your crotch nestles up against a differential and a pair of drag slicks wanna rub elbows (literally) with you, front wheels that'd look at home on a kids BMX bike (minus the brakes), and it makes for a whole different sort of challenge. If'n I can't find my penis, it's just 'cuz it crawled back inside out of sheer terror.. Just to give ya an idea of what it feels like, here's a pic of my old office, and one of the whole car..(things got much more "finished" than in these pics..they were taken the day I bought the car. It looked as though it was originally built by someone who subscribed to your belief in Home Depot..took about a year & a half of nights & weekends working before I felt it was "safe.") Howzat for chest-beating? While all this penis-waving is sorta fun & all, it doesn't change the fact that threaded rod really doesn't belong on an automotive engine, or that a tap isn't a reamer.

Ah. Had one of those blinding revelation thingys while driving home..if the naturally aspirated piston has more compression than you want, but the compression face is too thin for cutting, why not just drop it further below the deck to get the ratio you want by "shortening" the rod? Assuming it's not too dramatic a drop, it'd be a simple matter to mill X amount off the parting face of the rod and have the milled rod honed true, effectively moving the big end up X amount.

Nah, it's actually pretty cheap to resize rods if you can find a shop that'll do it..but if what you say about the deck clearance is true, there's no point in it. From your description, it sounds like the cheapest way out (machine shop-wise, rather than aftermarket parts-wise) would be to add material to the dished area of the turbo pistons and then machine to the CR you're trying to achieve.

You just like to fight, dontcha? So what's the story behind the 14 second SVX, anyway? *(BTW, my last race car was a SBC powered front engine dragster running high 8's, but my only flat four drag car (VW type III) ran in the mid twelves back when I was 18-19 years old w/a stock bottom end.) :-p *See, now THAT qualifies as "beating my chest"..still don't see where penis size comes in, though.. Your turn.

I'll be the first to confess that I'm not particularly well versed in the world of Subaru..but have you given any thought to the other end of the assembly? Perhaps you could have a set of connecting rods resized (off-center boring on either the big or little end) to move the piston a tad further up into the combustion chamber. Not sure if Subaru gives you enough meat on the rod ends to work with, just thought I'd toss a different angle out for ya to think on. Failing that, any possibility of moving the wrist pin further down on the piston with a little welding & reboring?

I don't wanna beat a dead horse here..but, what the hey, I'm getting hammered by you swell folks for picking on the impeccable logic of the local big fish in this-here small pond, so why not go for the brass ring, huh? I pointed out that readily available (and cheap!) GM studs intended for this use are a better choice of material than threaded rod of an unknown grade, and that all other things being equal, a helicoiled stud of the same diameter will provide better service than a non-helicoiled one. I further attempted to explain that using a tap for a reamer is a sketchy practice at best, and likely to cause damage to either the tool or the material being worked at worst. These things are NOT my opinion, they are fact. I then jokingly (notice the little smiley icon, anyone?) asked that the person who held the opposing viewpoint never work on my car. At that point, I'm accused of "waving my penis around," given the gentleman's life story (who is waving what, here?), and told that I'm a bad, bad boy. Presumably stating facts is a no-no in this forum. Pardon me. Likewise, telling someone where they can obtain a ready-made component built for the job they're doing for a few bucks more than a chunk of weak-assed threaded rod that they're gonna have to cut to fit is also a cardinal sin. (Can I say "weak-assed" here?) Forgive me father. As for the "hack" comment, hey, I calls 'em like I sees 'em..but I don't resort to mean language like "hack" until someone accuses me of waving my wongleflute around. Am I allowed to say "wongleflute" here? It's amazing the cool roadside repairs one can pull off with a roll of duct tape and a coat hanger. However, when the person requesting help is doing so via the internet, one would assume he's not stranded in the middle of nowhere, unless he's got a really long DSL cable..knowing this, why would you recommend anything less than the best repair technique?

Cool! That's just what I wanted to hear..I'll see about tearing into it next weekend. Thanks again.

If you decide to get it repaired, check with your local motorcycle machine shops..lots of experience in welding up exotic alloys at these places.