Greg's totally hetero Miata thread

[greg1647545532]

If you don't remember this eulogy for my Integra, I sold it after 8 years and 30 something track days to buy a Miata.

 

And here it is!

 

http://i.imgur.com/Ec1HFilh.jpg

 

It's a 99 with 77k miles, sport package (springs, sway bar, LSD, bilsteins, some other stuff) with A/C and absolutely nothing else. Manual steering, crank windows, manual locks. There's a radio and some seats. I bought it last weekend from an older gentleman who ordered it from the factory and was sad to see it go. But he had another Miata and a '58 Alfa so I'm sure he'll get over it.

 

It's got the roll bar, a racing beat header and cat back, and an aluminum radiator. Otherwise it's stock. The engine was replaced around 50k with a Mazda crate engine. 16 year old car, looks like this under the hood:

 

http://i.imgur.com/euUoHxZh.jpg

 

Plans are to learn how to drive it. First track day is June 1st, I have a few safety and driver comfort things that I'd like to do before then. I'm not a huge man, but the wheel sits on my knees and makes it hard to heel-toe.

[B3NN3TT]

Best color choice.

 

What a find!

[zeitgeist57]

Wow! Nice pickup with a perfect combo of factory options and the right aftermarket bolt-ons. :thumbup:

 

In order for any NB Miata to be "hetero", you gotta do somehing with those headlights:

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/6e/89/84/6e89844ea4fab9190cc52d14b6d7357c.jpg

[Cordell]

Fun little cars, you'll enjoy it.

[Orion]

Dem Wheels :no:

[Mr. Jones]

Time to join the Buckeye Miata Club!

[ImUrOBGYN]

Nice. Sounds like just the write options, too.

[Robochan]

Hope to see it June 1st.

[AudiOn19s]

After spending the weekend wedged in one of these puppies at mid ohio last weekend and even driving it one wet session ( though like a pussy cause it wasn't my car) I can attest that they are an absolute hoot!!!

[Patterson]

Contradictions are contradictory.

[bdhill]

Miatas are a blast. Great dd as well. Great balance. Excited to drive the 2015 when they arrive.

[greg1647545532]

http://i.imgur.com/HbB0nwlh.jpg

 

Everything gets so dusty just sitting in my garage. I hate it. Here it is on the tire rack wheels from my old car. I spent about 2 hours scrubbing them with HCl acid (Sure Kleen 600 masonry cleaner). All of my track wheels build up way too much brake dust, I need to clean them more frequently.

 

May need some spacers, they look OK for now but the stock ride height is going to bug me eventually. I'm going to try to hold out as long as I can, I'd like to do at least 1 track day on the stock suspension, preferably 3 or 4.

[zeitgeist57]

Is the "track day" an off-road excursion? :gabe:

[greg1647545532]

[greg1647545532]

Minor update to pass the time while I'm waiting for parts to come in. First up, replacing the long gangly antenna with something "sportier."

 

http://i.imgur.com/XfpIVMAh.jpg

 

This ended up being a pain. The stock antenna had a threaded section about an inch and a quarter long, and this $8 universal Chinese replacement antenna had maybe half an inch. I had to "machine" a threaded insert to press in to accept the shorter antenna. My goal is not to make any irreversible mods, no matter how dumb, so I had to do it this way so I can still screw in the stock antenna if I want. But my sleeve isn't quite tight enough. It's in there well enough for driving, but if you came up and yanked on the antenna it might come out. So don't do that. Radio works, though.

 

In a related vein, old school late 90s/early 00s radio hacking!

 

http://i.imgur.com/Zo1C4edh.jpg

 

Aux input in the arm rest (the switch is to flip on the "CD changer") with a marine 12V USB socket, so I can charge and/or listen to music without cables snaking around the already tight cabin. This may interfere with the shitty cupholders, but I've got a plan for that later.

 

And lastly, I mounted this fire extinguisher (on top of my new Lloyd floor mats, tres chic):

 

http://i.imgur.com/3YDXtLQh.jpg

 

A couple notes about fire extinguishers. I own this because ChumpCar required one in 2013. They now require a hard mounted, handle operated fire suppression system. From a safety perspective, manually operated fire extinguishers are dumb. The safest thing to do is to get out of the car, and fire suppression systems can provide valuable seconds to do unhook a harness/window net and survive. About the only thing this extinguisher can do is save the car, and even then, it's a tiny extinguisher. Any sort of oil fire is probably going to overwhelm it. There's a very narrow window of calamities where this thing might save the car, made narrower by the fact that this is essentially a stock 140hp street car.

 

Furthermore, there's a chance that it might become a projectile in an accident. Some people won't mount these sorts of extinguishers for that reason.

 

Personally, I feel that it's in there pretty good, and if I didn't put it in this car then it'd essentially be a paperweight in my garage. Also, I watched my cousin's car burn to a totalled state because nobody was close enough with an extinguisher to stop the fire when it was small. Also, I'm a ricer and I had fun making this bracket. My requirement was that it bolt to the floor (via the front seat holes) rather than the seat because I want it to stay in there with my race seats as well, but still allow the seat to slide forward for when my kids ride with me. So it sits a bit forward but it doesn't get in the way. I like it.

 

Now I'm waiting on my steering hub adapter from Japan and my new roll bar from Cali. I'm not sure I'm going to get everything in by June 1st, since I'm busy the next few weekends even if stuff shows up. There's no way I'm passing a broomstick test with the stock seats, so I may be doing the first track day of the year in my Mazda5 instead of this. C'est la vei.

[greg1647545532]

double post

[Robochan]

California roll bar? Wouldnt be a blackbird fab would it?

[greg1647545532]

California roll bar? Wouldnt be a blackbird fab would it?

 

:nod:

[greg1647545532]

The challenge with this car over the summer has been getting it to a point where I feel safe driving it on street and track. In order to get my racing seat in the right place, I installed a transmission tunnel cutout panel and then took it to Moorespeed to have Jon reinstall the stock seat mounts. This way I can have a race seat mounted as low as possible and still go back to the stock seats for street driving. He does good work, here's his mounting solution before I painted it and put the carpet back:

 

http://i.imgur.com/WzniZb7h.jpg

 

Long story short, after much cutting, drilling, swearing, and utter hatred of such a stupid, small car, I finally have a track car with some proper safety gear when I need it:

 

http://i.imgur.com/QFCIP9jh.jpg

 

I also bought Flyin' Miata's 12lb hitch and picked up this sweet trailer from a guy on FB. Needed some rehab but it's turned out great:

 

http://i.imgur.com/v1HJqLVh.jpg

 

Livin' the life!

 

Two weeks ago I took the car out to Summit Point to flog it around the Shenandoah circuit. As predicted, it's a second or two off the pace of the old Integra, but considering the fact that it's basically stock I'm pretty pleased. Slower on the straights but more grip in the corners, nearest I can tell.

 

It pulled double duty that weekend as I let a friend co-drive it. Direzza ZIIs held up great but the Hawk HP+ were complete garbage as usual, I had to swap them out for race pads over lunch on Saturday and it completely transformed the car. Still some work to be done in this area but for now I'm pleased.

 

Last weekend I took it to Mid-Ohio, check out this suspension travel!

 

http://i.imgur.com/r8aa6sEh.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/19X5YOdh.jpg

 

Since I was instructing I almost always had a passenger and I rarely turned on my lap timer, but at one point flyin' solo I managed a 1:50.8 on 205 NT01s. That's 2.5 seconds slower than the Integra, which at this point is mostly attributable to lack of power (the Honda was hitting about 117-118 on the back straight, best I managed in the Miata was 109). But crucially, since I can now compare myself to all the other Miatas out there, it's revealed a big deficit in my driving. I'm sure there's another 1.5 seconds in it as it sits that's within my talent level, so I've got some stuff to work on. Unfortunately I don't always practice what I preach, so next spring I'm going to throw money at the chassis and the suspension.

[greg1647545532]

Next up party people, I have these 15" steelies I yanked off our now defunct ChumpCar. Tried to run them at summit point to use up the tires but surprise! they were already used up, 2 had slow leaks and didn't last more than a session.

 

http://i.imgur.com/EX8cU4eh.jpg

 

The plan is to paint them and then throw on the shittiest Chinese tires $180 can buy. Default color is some sort of a medium silver, any other suggestions?

[ImUrOBGYN]

Same color they are now but repainted, obviously.

[zeitgeist57]

Looking good!

 

Don't paint the steelies white. Anything else would be fine.