It's been a long time since I spent any lengthy amount of time on this forum other than reference because of some of it's inherent clunkieness, but I still check back from time to time to see if the posts have picked up some. Nice to know that there's still some activity. A lot of us are over on a Facebook page named Micro Monsters, if you're interested. I'll post a link at the end.
Now to some meat of the conversation. I have the Trackfinder lockers (front and rear) that have yet to be installed. At this time, I think that the TF's are the easiest to obtain. I ordered my parts back in February and had the whole thing shipped to my door in about 20 days. Lockers (both 26 and 28 spline) were the same price at $390.36, ring & pinions (again both front and rear) were $182.95, and extended forks were $138.68 per pair. I conducted business through email with them at picorp@hanmail.net. Payment is through Paypal, and there are courier charges and a Paypal fee that scales up according to how much you order from them. I ordered the full lot of front and rear lockers, front and rear ring & pinion, and the extended forks. The total price on that with courier charges and Paypal fee came to $1579.19.
There's a write-up on here for OBX LSD front torsen type differential. I plan on going with the OBX unit in the front as opposed to the TF to make steering in the front more road friendly. The internal gears need to be oriented correctly for front differential use and I'm still working that out in my head (I'm new to this too). A guy named Rich Bryant has a page that details the rebuild of the OBX LSD in detail, particularly gear orientation at the following web page ---->
http://rbryant.freeshell.org/obx_washers.htm There is also a website that sells the completely rebuilt OBX LSD and uses the washer kits from Rich Bryant, although they put the differential back exactly as it came apart, so any internal gear orientation that might need to be changed you'd have to do yourself, unless you know how to tell them what orientation you need. The rebuilt OBX LSD can be obtained at
http://turbosunleashed.com/shop/serviced-miata-p-444.html This is a 1994-1997/1999-2005 Mazda Miata spec differential, but as I understand it, it's an exact swap for the front differential in the Sportage. If someone here can positively confirm that, please ring in.
There are also solid diff spacers that can be obtained from a machinist down in California to replace the crush sleeves. I have already ordered and obtained these spacers and let them know that there may be more people interested. Spencer Weir of Weir Performance in CA has all the drawings and the price per spacer is $75. I got a pair for both front and rear and with shipping, it ran me $160.50 for the set. Contact info for Weir Performance is
http://www.weirperformance.com/contactus.htmlAdditionally, a couple of us have switched our ECU's over to Hyundai Tiburon/Elantra units. I have a write-up on it on the Micro Monsters facebook page on it. The earlier Tiburons and Elantras had 1.8L and 2.0L engines that didn't have variable valve timing, and those ECU's plug directly into our harness. A hack must be done to loop out auto trans function, and I'm still working out an AC issue, but the ECU swap gives better throttle response, has a bit more base ignition timing, and is set to run 245cc injectors. I'm running a 1998 Tiburon ECU and matching injectors, and have completely eliminated the air shrouded injector setup. Another person is running with an Elantra ECU with Volvo injectors.
So there ya go, hope all that is helpful.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/MicroMonsters/
