Better late than never

[— Agent☣Orange —]

I would never have done all that but I admire those with the guts to do so.

[Warhammer]

I received my Eunos "V" horn button from RevLimiter love br.com today. Typical of Adam's work, it's top notch. Unfortunately, it was not a drop-in installation for my steering wheel. The outer diameter of the horn button was too large to fit my Momo wheel with the 6-bolt trim ring. So, I opened up the original horn button and the RevLimiter unit and swapped around some of the parts. The plastic RevLimiter Eunos tmiter button is a bit thicker than the original stamped metal Momo button. So the final button works, but the amount of movement when you press it is very small. Not really a big deal, just know that if you even rest your hand on the button, it'll likely sound.

On to the eye candy!



The gold and silver foil of the "V" logo looks great with the "brushed titanium" finish of the Momo wheel, which is kind of between silver and gold itself. I really like bringing the Eunos theme in to the interior of the car.

[Warhammer]

I finally got around to installing my LED fog lights. Most of the project was making brackets to hold the lights in the correct location. After trying some angle iron, I figured out that using some 1" square steel bar worked just right. I drilled holes in both ends of a 2.5" piece of bar stock; a smaller hole that is the diameter of the bolt and a larger hole for the bolt head on each end.





There were already some convenient threaded hols just inside the bumper openings. The brackets I made move the lights 1" down and 1" forward from these holes. Then the light mounts give me enough side-to-side adjustment to center the lights in the openings.

[Warhammer]

All bolted up! I'm pretty happy with the positioning of the light in the bumper openings.


The fogs lights are super focused and have a razor sharp cut off line. Here you can see how little glare they throw.




I'll get some pics of how they pattern against a wall and post them later.

I was going to wire them to operate off of the original fog light switch, but I ran into a snag there. Something is not working in the fog light circuit, so until I can track it down, I just hooked them up to turn on with the driving lights. That'll do until I get a chance to figure out what's going on with the switch.

[Warhammer]

I installed a Clark & Clark trunk lift kit a few months ago.

I really like being able to push the trunk button on my remote and watch the trunk lid slowly open on its own. (Yes, I know I'm just a big kid.) When I installed my rear wing, the trunk lid was too heavy for the single gas strut to lift it. Luckily, Clark & Clark offer a right-hand lift kit (to be used with the original left-hand kit) for just such circumstances. Right strut require just a little bit of trimming on the trunk liner.

So now I have a matched set of trunks lifts and the lid pops up as smooth as you please.

[Warhammer]

I had some time to play around today, so I made some cosmetic changes to the rear of my car. Here's the "Before" picture.



I've been trying to decide what to do with the rear badging on the car. Originally, there were three badges. The Mazda "M" on the trunk lid, and the "Mazda" and "Miata" badges on either side of the license plate. I don't wnat to go through the work to fill the holes and paint the rear of the car, but I also don't want to use the original badges (I gotta be me!), so what to do? I had added this little GT badge a few months ago.



I like the color scheme of flat black with white lettering. But I was having a hard time finding something I liked for the left side that matched that color scheme. Finally, I decided that I would just have to make something myself. So, I ordered a chrome "Roadster" badge with white lettering from Carbon Miata. I scuffed up the chrome with some fine sandpaper. Then I sharpened a crayon and scribbled all over the white lettering, leaving a nice waxy layer that paint would have a hard time sticking to. After a few coats of flat black paint, I waited for the paint to set up but not dry completely (about an hour). Then, using a toothpick, I carefully scraped out all of the paint from the white lettering. It wasn't difficult, just tedious. After about and hour of detail work, I ended up with this:



I think it's a nice match to the black and white GT badge. And, I love having something that can't just be bought off the shelf. (You'd never guess by looking at the rest of my car, would you?)

Next, I cleaned up a little detail that has always bugged me a little bit. The hole for the trunk lock has always looked ugly to me. Especially on a white care, it just looks like a big dark hole. So, I decided to plug the hole. I found some of these online:


I ground a slight taper on the back of a cap to help it sit more flush against the lock. Then I used a leftover AC o-ring to give it a little bit of a tighter fit.


Popped into the lock hole, you get this:



Now for the trunk lid. I've been through a few iterations on this one. First, I used cut vinyl in the "911 Porsha" font to add "Eunos" to the lid. I tried it in red, then in flat black, and with a few different spacings between the letters. Second, I had acrylic letters laser cut to replace the vinyl. That's where things were when I started this morning. Off came the "Eunos" letters and the tape residue got cleaned up. Then, on went a Eunos "V" from RevLimiter, to match the Vs on the hood and horn button. As always, Adam's work is top quality and looks beautiful.



Finally, I got out the vinyl cutter and played with adding "Eunos" to the rear bumper. I started with 3" tall letters and normal spacing:



But I thought the spacing needed to be wider. So, I pulled them off and tried them with about 3 times the space.



The wider spacing definitely works better. I'm just not so sure about the 3.5" letters. I'm think I'm going to try them somewhat flattened, so that the are the same width, but about an inch shorter.

[Warhammer]

Ok, I'm stopping here for the night. I think this looks pretty good. Same width and letter spacing, but only 2" tall. For some reason, the lettering looks larger in the pictures than it does in person. (Does this picture make my butt look big?!?) I'll post up a before/after comparison.

[Warhammer]

Can't... leave... well... enough.. alone!!!

I took another 1/2 inch off the letter height. I'm finally happy with the look of the letters. I'll leave it alone for a while.





Time to clean up the mess I made in the garage.

[CollinMB]

To each their own, but it kinda reminds me of early 2000's mustangs with the stamped bumpers and the ricers would paint in the lettering with a contrasting color.

[Warhammer]

To each their own, but it kinda reminds me of early 2000's mustangs with the stamped bumpers and the ricers would paint in the lettering with a contrasting color.

Yeah, I always liked that look!

[— Agent☣Orange —]

06CFE7DD-A906-4F21-8285-7B19772BB54C.jpeg

In my humble opinion.

[— Phatmiata —]

looks good! I'm sure the guys on the street are gonna test you with that wing now. Those LED fogs look insanely bright

[lucmor444]

I preferred the lettering on the boot lid - but it's your car!

[Warhammer]

The Miata got a good washing (well overdue) today and I started working on the new graphics.

First, the red and black Ferrari stripes came off.





Kinda looked cool with the red middle stripe removed and the black spears still there!

After the stripes were off, I polished the area with some Maguire's liquid polishing compound. It's amazing how quickly stripes will leave a ghost image behind. These stripes were only on for a few months.

[Warhammer]

Then it was time to start with the new graphics. My inspiration are the Academy Motorsports Aston Martins from the British GT3 race series.

Her are a few pics. Just imagine them without all the sponsorship stickers and the numbers on the doors.





Of course, I'll be sticking with red and black, to match my interior. I'll have to figure out what to do about the nose, since the grille openings are so different between the two cars. I have a few ideas already.