Back in Winning Blue. Our 'new' Project Blue!

[Brian]

Since we don't have 244 hp now we don't need our 70 duro engine mounts so we are playing with the new IL MotorSports Mounts. These are a few ounces less weight than stock thanks to less metal, but quite a bit more rubber, and that larger volume of rubber is also high durometer. So far they don't feel much stiffer than stock but the design certainly looks like it will reduce the motor movement a lot. First impressions are that I like them, but need to get motor break-in mileage complete and do some autocross events to see how well these work on the vital shift from 2nd to 3rd when really pushing it.

[elloco54]

So what solo class does the 2.5 swap put this car in. Have you had a chance to auto-x or dyno the car yet

[skeeler]

SSM, I believe.

[Brian]

Hope to get to dyno this week.

Hmm...perhaps I will run SSM this weekend!

[Brian]

A little DYNO UPDATE for Project BLUE with 2.5 Conversion Normally Aspirated
200 HP at the wheels, 195 Ft/lbs of Torque!
MotoEast Intake, MotoEast Tune, RoadsterSport Prototype Header and Exhaust

Tune is a bit rich with low 12s all the way across, could tune for a bit more but will leave the tune alone for now and test a few different header/exhaust configurations to figure out what this 2.5 really wants on exhaust side. We autocrossed this car all day last Sunday with two drivers and it is a joy to push through the cones hard all day with 200 normally aspirated Horses. Feels stout everywhere in the band because it is! Look at the torque curve, and that's with stock Mazda cams....more is certainly available!


Low line is original best stock run on this car, middle line is with RoadsterSport header, midpipe and RSII exhaust....and high pair of overlapping lines are 2.5 runs today.

[Chris Thompson]

I think I can speak for most of us when I say....WOW! We all want 500 more CC's

[Brian]

More testing! Feels like Deja Vu, these results remind me lots of our 2.0 engine testing. Had our friends at PPE make us a long tube with BIGGER primaries, and we matched that against version of ours with bigger primaries (note I also moved collector up out of the flange to have room for O2 bungs and other changes, made this test unit about 2 years ago but it proved overkill on the normally aspirated 2.0, now it looks to be perfect for 2.5 so it may yet give birth to a new finished product). The goal of the testing is to find how much header the 2.5 really wants.

Green high line is testing from prior page of Prototype RoadsterSport with bigger primaries. Blue/Red lines are larger primary PPE. Low Pink line is best stock results 2.0, just to show how much the 2.5 is massively stronger EVERYWHERE. Results remind me very much of what we got on the 2.0 with smaller versions of these headers, the torque lines cross repeatedly at the low to mid range with the PPE having more total area under the curve in that range, but the big fat shortie owns the top end with more total area under the curve and better peak numbers. So, where to YOU want your power? We hope to put versions of BOTH of these choices in production this year, this new bigger 1.62 inch primary PPE Long Tube is perfect for 2.0 liter customers, and this testing shows it still does a solid job if the customer upgrades later to 2.5 liter.

Youtube of dyno today...CLICK HERE

[grippy]

Great results! Nice to see work being done on this.
Did you run it with OTS 2.0 header for comparison? What size midpipe on the dyno above with the big header?

[Brian]

Have not yet run our standard size header on this 2.5 for comparison. Used our standard 2.5 RoadsterSport midpipe and SuperQ exhaust.

[tommyo]

Any chance of marketing a kit to do this swap?