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Auto-X was a huge success!
A Mutual friend co-drove my car in TSM (Street tire SSM class special to NWOR) and laid down consistent 62s runs in my car. my best was a 65.007 but I punted 2 cones unfortunately. Up to me to get my driver mod up there now.
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All of us squadded up. All of us are in the Group Ohio Miata Owners. From left to right its Dave Birch (97' in STR), Steven Lynch (ES), Gabe Gretz (STS), Ryan Brown (ES, it was his first event as well), myself, then Bret Horn (He drove his MK6 GTI that day, he's turboing his 91' BRG). Kevin Luo brought his 350z (out of frame to the right) but co-drove Gabe's car that day.
It was an absolute blast. I can't wait until the next event.
I signed up for a Nelson Ledges track day August 10th, we'll see how she goes.
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Wow, time flies.*
After Auto-X, I had a bit of an oopsie.*
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Needed pretty much a new ass end of the car.*
Could have been worse, could have been this:
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I took a trip to Colorado, visited the Pikes Peak Museum at the Penrose Heritage Center.*
Came back from Colorado to this:
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Couldn't afford a full paint at the time, left in in Harlequin form for a bit.*
Then I went to MATG with some friends.
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Then it was time for Nelson Ledges with the boys.*
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Here's a video comparison between my friend Dave and myself. Dave has several track days under his belt.*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDUSR9_QhLA
Here's my footage of the last session of the day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIV1xA5kMkY
Take note, the billies are BOUNCY. Like Anime fan service episode bouncy. Also doesn't help that I was so low it was rebounding off the bumpstops 24/7. This will be addressed later.*
Tracking was way better than punting cones or touge ricing lol.*
Then, my dad expressed in interest in going to Radwood Detroit. So we went.
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I touched up the back end, gave it a nice Mad Max vibe I guess.*
I decided I hated how it looked. So I put the car away for the winter, up on stands preparing for another spring break refresh.*
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Well as it turns out, Corona basically gave me infinite spring break lol. I decided to use the time to round out the car and improve the garage a fair amount. You'll see this later.*
I found a SCREAMING deal on my dream wheels.*
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And then I went on a Clout Crusade.*
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Wheel woolie on a drill makes quick work of dusty mesh wheels.*
Back to actual car progress.
Step one was to make a space more conducive to actual work. That meant organized storage, lights, accessible power. Wrenching by candlelight was getting old fast.*
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Step two was address suspension.
My front sway was much too stiff for what I was using the car for, so I stepped down one level from RB. My FM endlinks were also too long and I hated how the lower rubber bushing bound up. The billies also desperately needed a revalve and some tenders in the front.
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Built my own end-links from stuff from QS components. Ended up at like $80 for all 4? Somewhere in that ballpark.*
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Billies got revalved by RAM engineering in Michigan, and I got some Hyperco 25# tenders. I was checking clearances and such here, but the tenders and guides rattled on the sleeves. I flipped them next time around.*
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I had to cut and modify the new links, but everything fit up nicely and worked through the active suspension travel range. It binds at full droop in the front, but I hope to never see that, and it frees up once you compress the suspension a bit.*
Step 3 was get the rear end sorted.*
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Bumper cut, get the LED ring tails back together,and then off to paint to match.*
While the panels are getting painted, I needed to finish up some odds and ends on the car. Hopefully make a dent in my parts stash.
CAD Certified template
Then to metal
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Paint and then into the car.
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Did one of these Auber gauge things for water temp. On the first test drive though she read 300 when OBD said 195... May need to adjust some things.*
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Nice clean look, amber LED color matches gauges and radio.*
I 3D printed the adapter from ABS Plastic.*
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The workhorse machine. If built billies are Miata Turbo "Zyduhs" Then I guess this you can call it the Miata Turbo "Proo-suh eye-tree mahk tree"
Moved to a Toyota COP setup. Made my own harness from the guide on Miata Turbo. Figured it would be better if I'm tracking to have easily accessed coils and plugs, unlike the Fab9 setup.*
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I needed more interior lighting. So I went to LEDs in the visor plates and knee lights in the dash plates.*
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Next step was making the car a bit more plush. Vibration Dampening, MLV.*
If you remember I did this on the finish panel last year, but this time I did the rest of the interior, door skins, deck lid and trunk.
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This is the trunk, but same idea applies to the rest of the car. Tap the panel to see how it rings, apply mat until you get a dead thump. Then lay down the MLV over the whole thing.*
I also added acoustic foam to the tunnels under the parcel panel just in front of the rear shock mounts. I swapped my jank Pioneer 4 way speakers for some nice Kicker 2 ways. This also let me take the spacers off my speaker grills and run them flush to the door card. I was tired of catching my shoes on them lol.*
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Almost there.*
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Polished and ceramic coated my glass. Makes a huge difference.*
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I'm happy with it. Also a good throwback to when I took similar photos with my first Miata.*
Coming Soon:*
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VTEC Time.*
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That heat shield turned out fantastic
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I absolutely love those Glowstars! Good buy there!
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TRACK TIME
TRACK TIME
Went to Mid Ohio with Autointerests for the weekend.
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My boy Dave in the blue #74. We were trading places the whole session as each of us were faster in different spots. Stupid Subaru was holding us up.
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For the weekend I put on a set of PFC 97 pads. The HPSs were not cutting it lol. It felt so nice to have a consistent and confident brake pedal turn after turn after turn. Especially diving into T7 at 100+mph
Brake caliper bolt fell off on Saturday and caused issues but I got it fixed up enough for Sunday. Only other casualties were super dusty wheels and a cap popped off one of my shocks.
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I ran a 2.00.93 as my PB that day, could have gone sub 2 but traffic in later sessions held me up.
Video of best lap:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u70W5EOCzwI
Next up is Nelson Ledges in 2 weeks!
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Been a while hasn't it?
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Nelson Ledges was a success. Got down into the 1:25s, I would knock this down to a low 23 at a later track day in August.
Side note: The PFCs shed an insane amount of dust and demolish rotors. My poor Glowstars...
Next was NASA @ Pitt Race
Had to help a friend get their car together in time for race weekend...
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COP Kit fixing the classic NB1 ignition issues.
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Nasa @ Pitt was fun, first weekend on Gloc R10/R8s. I couldn't stand the PFC dust. Lead-Follow instruction sucked, couldn't push at all.
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Was in the high 2:20s all weekend.
Took a break from tracking to go to MATG with my friends.
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I had another Nelson Ledges event after, but no photos or data. Borrowed a friend's AIM, managed to get down into the 23s. Probably more out there, track is so sketchy I'm hesitant to push.
Lastly, Carfest @ Pitt Race.
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Whole gang getting seat time.
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PB was a 2:14! Whats crazy is I was stuck in the mid 2:16s all day, then I just went out in open session, track felt like it had decent grip so I decided to push a bit. Didn't expect to set a new PB by a fair margin lol.
Video:*f'k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is7L...annel=BrapBrap
I have a decent amount of plans for the off-season. Should be fun coming up.
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Ah where were we?*f'k
Offseason I decided to get into iRacing. I got a G27, but the 270mm wheel felt very unnatural. 3D printer to the rescue!
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Picked these up from Tarmac88, figured it was time for more track focused wheels/ tires.*f'k
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Hit 90k driving it to/from work
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Then I put it away for the winter, then school started, then it started getting warm and I forgot how much fun the car was. I also procrastinated a ton of maintence lol.*f'k
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Fixed the circuit sports coolant tank and its shit design. Now I don't spill coolant in left turns.*f'k
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That should be one piece. Replaced it with a Mazdacomp on the drivers side, OEM on passenger.*f'k
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Car Make Corns heatshield decided to just not hold together at the weld. Washer + hammer made it at least not rattle
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VC Gasket, painted VC, new PCV, fresh coils, re-did the coil harness, new plugs and all driveline fluids.*f'k
While I had the VC off and plugs out I played with my Boroscope. Order of 1 to 4
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Dunno what I'm looking at to be honest. But I don't see chips or cracks or the usual signs of detonation on the edges of the piston though.*f'k
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Stage one of this project.
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Finally getting some proper safety back in the car too.*f'k
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Cobra Monaco Pro 40th Anniversary editions, Schroth Enduro harnesses and I'll be wearing an SHR Flex HANS.*f'k
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All just in time for Kmiata Day. I fit and clear broomstick, however my 6'6" instructor was never clearing broomstick unfortunately.*f'k
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Squadded up
I did go 4 off and blew off my front lip. New one was required.*f'k
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I gotta say this IKON MOTORSPORTS rep GV from Amazon is the best RepGV i've ever fitted. Actually perfect, no crease or short end like the others. Also seemed more flexible and smoother/ shinier than usual.*f'k
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And got these on after the track day. Definitely a difference, most noticeable in high frequency bumps and potholes. Front end rattles a lot less and theres more of a "thunk" than a rattle or shake when hitting bumps now.*f'k
Recently got into Drones too, so the Miata took a bit of a backseat to that as I started in the hobby and did my best to learn.*f'k
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Until next time.
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Only 4 months since my last update? Seems longer but a lot happened.
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Was at a track day at Nelson Ledges and had some... issues.
Car was burning a lot of oil, but I assumed this was valve stem seals as it was intermittent and only on accelerating from a stop or at the bottom of a hill. I got everything to swap them, but wanted to "limp" it through the track day. I also got TB/WP and front end seals to do as they've probably never been changed before.
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Second session out I lost my oil cap. I chalked this up to BP vibrations and me just not tightening it. Was quite scary seeing oil spray on my windshield through the hood vents lol. Was pretty bummed as I've had that cap since 2016, bought it before I even got a Miata. Was signed by Mad Mike at FDATL 2016. Little did I know this was a precursor to some more serious issues.
Then, lap after a PB i'm backing off a bit. Coming out of carousel I floor it and there's nothing. Not the usual Miata 0 power, but genuinely no acceleration. Look behind me and see a massive cloud of smoke. Fuck.
Put it in neutral an coasted to the pits. Car died on track but was able to restart it and limp it to my spot. Was misfiring badly, and didn't get better after I swapped plugs. Friend had a compression tester...
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Thats cylinder 3. Lmao. Full results were 120-60-0-120
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Definitely a different feeling than when my crunched first NA came off the flatbed. I was able to drive it into my garage though, albeit smoking up my entire neighborhood.
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First signs from the teardown were... Interesting.
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F. Thats cylinder 2 lol, made 60psi with a hole in the piston.
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Gnarly.
My moneys on an injector clogging and the cylinder leaning out and exploding.
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Up and out.
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Lined up a VVT dropout with equal miles to my chassis. So my ODO is correct... Perfect coincidence. But, I also scored a BP4W head and had a local head shop completely refresh it.
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Luckily I had TB/WP and a bunch of seals ready to go already. Just needed a few odds and ends and I could re-seal the whole motor.
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Coming together.
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Also pulled my diff to do poly bushings, come to find out i've been whipping an open diff this whole time. Theres another excuse for being slow lol.
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Found a 4.3 Torsen locally rebuilt by Miata Boxes. Put it in my spare RX7 housing with poly bushings. Should make a good difference.
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Had the VC, Squaretop and header coated. Header was coated with Cerakote, should improve its durability and reduce how hot the bay gets.
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Wouldn't be a "me" project without some pointless personal touch items. Got these from Alethia Motorsports.
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No project is complete without a good wash and wax.
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And she's all buttoned up.
I'm still driving it around and finding/ solving little issues, but she's 99% there.
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The 1% turned out to be the fact I forgot to tighten the lower alternator bolt:
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Took it on a drone trip to a local park. Skip to 5:00
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I put about 2 gas tanks through it around town with 0 issues, put it away sometime in November.
Then, here in Ohio we had a weird singular warm Wednesday in February so I took her out for a good evening drive:
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Came home to a puddle of coolant right under the weep hole of the trans... Considering I run 70/30 and we had a couple really cold days I jumped to freeze plug at the back of the head. AKA engine out again.
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I did diagnosis the right way though. Turns out the lower bolt on the reroute got loose and the reroute was leaking onto the trans. Fixed in an afternoon. Then took her back out for some photos
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iPhone photos hit different.
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I had a week between the end of the semester and when I start another summer Co-op. So I did what I do best; grind away at a major project(s) for 10hrs a day for a week making an absolute mess along the way and testing how many cups of coffee I can consume without ill effect.
This time its FINALLY time to swap the dashboard. As simple as "swap" sounds, there's of course so much more to this.
Step 1: old dash out (the easiest part)
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Step 2: Dash in right?
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Wasn't that easy
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After flocking I noticed some pegs were broken and made an effort to fix them
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Speaking of flock, they still look great even after a year of sitting in the garage
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Also had to fix a crack in the glovebox
Thats plastic weld I swear
The dash pull revealed that I was missing the HVAC clamps and I was probably losing a lot of air to it just blasting around the passenger footwell.
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Nothing duct tape cant fix. I ordered some clamps and they arrived just in time to install before I put the dash in.
Stealing an idea from Adam/ Revlimiter I also wanted to use mesh to protect the defrost vents.
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Wonder how well this will stay in place when driving...
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Nice.
Since my original VIN tag says AIRBAG but I have no airbags, and I wanted to do something special.
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Hand-stamped vin plate. Thats all the internet will see of this though. You'll have to see it in person for the end results.
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I bought a used RevLimiter switch panel and sanded/polished the backing plate.
Also, since the NA8 glovebox lock mechanism is totally different to the NA6 version I had to manually re-pin the lock cylinder of the NA6 mech to work with my key. That was annoyingly tedious.
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Refurbed the knee panel, this thing was super crusty before. Wire wheel and paint go a long way.
I then decided to try my hand at Auto Upholstery. I bought pre-made leather pieces from RedLine leather about 5 years ago a month after I got my first Miata. Yes, I was planning this swap from day 1.
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Corner piece turned out quite nice I think.
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Trying to keep the seam straight across the pad, and level.
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The shakey midnight mockup pic lol.
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HVAC mockup
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I bought this fancy Retrosound hideaway antenna about the same time I bought the leather bits for the first Miata. The mega plan. Funny, I wanted a Retrosound radio back then but changed my mind.
Its powered/ amplified? Basically its an active antenna and can get pretty good reception even inside a dash. I stuck it to the underside of the top.
Enough messing about with accessories, its real install time.
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Aaaaand all buttoned up.
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I love my interior.
Until next time!
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Your dash is incredible! You really hit the details. I like the garbage-can mesh screen.
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+1 on the creative use of trash bin; and great looking updates!
