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Thread: Function>Everything

  1. #1
    3,000 rpm - starting to feel the power Pyr0monk3y's Avatar
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    Function>Everything

    After 2 years with my capsule of teenage freedom, I think it's time to start logging the triumphs and hardships I have experienced with my 1991 Miata.

    In March of 2012, just a few minutes after handing over my "life savings" in exchange for a beat up miata, I took this picture:



    That's what it looked like when I bought it. The hood is covered in rock chips, the paint is flaking everywhere, there's rust in front of the left rear wheel, and the weather stripping around the hard top is peeling up. The previous owner painted it in his back yard in what must have been a sand storm. He must have been in a hurry because there's over spray on all of the glass and you can see where the car had front mud flaps at the time it was painted.

    Two years later, here is my progress:



    Not a lot has changed. Appearance wise, the only changes you will notice are the wheels (these are my track wheels), a front lip, a tow hook, a race seat, and brake dust.

    Every single time I point a wrench in this car's direction I have the intention of making it safer, more reliable, and when the budget allows, faster. This is nothing other than a track car. It's not worth my time and effort to make it into anything else. I don't have a goal for the car, all I have is a philosophy of use: I use the car to commute to work every day and I do track days every other month.

    When I was shopping for cars I was told to buy something cheap and disposable, "because you're inexperienced. It will end up on fire, in a tire wall, probably drivers left after turn 10." This is an exact quote from an instructor I was talking with during lunch at VIR. I cannot argue with this, and I'm glad I followed this advice. Fortunately the car has not been wrecked yet but I can see why it was a good idea to buy something cheap and already beat up.

    Over the coming weeks I will fill in the gaps between these two pictures. I have taken lots of pictures, some of them are even interesting or useful. Unfortunately, I cannot offer much in terms of step by step pictorial guides, mainly because I usually have no idea what I'm doing and I'm in a hurry to get the car on track. However, I will do my best to at least explain what's going on in the pictures. I hope, as this thread unfolds, the bond between me and my first car becomes visible. The car feels very special to me now, I must resist the erg to coddle it. It's about time for another track day...

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  3. #2
    Ninja Messiah kung fu jesus's Avatar
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    This will be worth watching.

  4. #3
    3,000 rpm - starting to feel the power Pyr0monk3y's Avatar
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    History: March 2012

    Mods on car at time of purchase:
    • Jackson Racing catback exhaust
    • ghetto cold air intake (probably a hot air intake)
    • TRM C1M wheels
    • NA8 brakes w/ "hawk HT-10 pads" according to the PO
    • Hard top
    • Harddog hardcore roll bar
    • Koni shocks
    • Ground control sleeves and perches
    • Eibach springs, 650lb/in front, 450lb/in rear
    • misc weight reduction such as cruise control, stripped trunk, windshield washer system, etc


    Things included with car, but not installed:
    • Carbon Fiber hood
    • '96 M Edition Wheels
    • old parts from recent timing belt job
    • parts of OEM intake
    • part of windshield washer fluid system
    • Gforce 6 point harness
    • Gforce 5 point harness


    First things first, I threw the car on a lift and spent a good hour or so finding urgent problems and writing them down. Problems included an exhaust leak, a nail in the right rear tire which I must have picked up on the way home, a broken spring in the door lock that made the driver door impossible to unlock, no pedal pads on the pedals, and the bad rust in front of the left rear wheel.

    Plugged the tire until I could get another tire, no way you can permanently patch a hole in the side wall. The tire arrived just two days later from tire rack, I'm really impressed with their shipping time.



    I stuck a new gasket between the down pipe and the cat, found evidence of... something



    I stuck grip tape to the bare metal pedals. Awesome grip even in the rain.



    Included with the car, I got the hardtop, a paint matched carbon fiber hood in addition to the hood on the car, and a set of '96 M edition wheels with corded Hoosiers on them.











    Current Event:
    March 1, 2014



    I'm getting ready for a track day on March 20th. Part of the prep is rear hub replacement. I made these:



    Hardtop brackets have been long overdue





    I have been getting bad gas mileage and a rough idle lately. I replaced spark plugs and wires. They were also overdue.



    Last edited by Pyr0monk3y; 04-09-2014 at 05:16 PM.

  5. #4
    3,000 rpm - starting to feel the power Pyr0monk3y's Avatar
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    History: Spring and early summer of 2012

    In the week after I bough the car, I spent a lot of time cleaning the interior, changing oil, coolant, bleeding brakes and stopping rust when I found it.

    The one hardship I experienced in this period was a broken lug stud. I swear, lug studs are out to get me. I have never had an easy time with a project that involved lug studs. This dates back to my preteen days when my brother decided to take our '76 Camaro project car for a joy ride... and forgot to torque the lugs. This was right after a long night of swapping in a new Eaton diff and breaking our bench vise trying to press lug studs into our new axles. I learned some new words that night and a few more that following day.

    My miata's broken stud was a result of the tire shop tightening the lugs to what must have been 150 ft lb or something crazy. I was taking the wheel off to bleed the brakes and it just snapped. As I was taking off the next 3 lugs, I set the torque wrench higher every time. 100 ft lb, 125, then maxed out at 150. The wrench clicked every time before the lug broke loose. Thankfully the other three studs held strong. I rode my bike to autozone and bought a couple studs and nuts. I pounded the broken stud out and discovered the new stud's flange was too large to install in the hub without removing the hub. I'm lazy so I took the stud to the bench grinder and ground it down on one side until it fit. For a while I thought this might have been a bad idea but later I saw that it's actually a pretty common thing to trim miata studs for easier installation. ARP actually puts a flat spot on their miata studs by default.

    After getting the car somewhat sorted, I drove it where ever I needed to go for 3 months. Work, school, cruises on the weekends, and even a little off roading to get to a shooting range once. I loved it. 3 months after buying the car I did my first real track day in it. I went to VIR's south course with cheap street tires, unknown brake pads, 5 months of driving experience, and no instructor.

    It was awesome.
    This is the only clip I have handy at the moment. It is a result of taking oak tree in 2nd on my out lap. I was surprised to find power oversteer on a dry track. I will post plenty of gopro video in due time, but I'm limited by my perilously slow upload speed.


    After this track day, I did research and some post track day inspection. I didn't have enough camber or tire pressure so the tires got chewed up pretty bad on the outside edge. I got a decent alignment and played with tire pressures for the next month until the next track day. I was delighted to see that my brake pads had worn a negligible amount and I even got 18MPG on the track. Yea, I was slow. I got tired of sliding around inside the car so I stole this racing seat off a sim racing pod and stuck it in the car.




    The car came with the latch and link g-force harnesses. At the time I knew nothing about safety so I hastily made some adapter plates to bolt the sucker to the factory rails. It lowered me a half inch but the seat wasn't centered with the steering wheel and I lost a lot of leg room.

    Moving on to the next track day, this time I had my brother ride along as an instructor. This particular organization makes newbs drive behind a pace car. Every lap the car behind the pace car pulls into the pits so the next person can have a turn learning the line from the pace car driver. The trick here is to know the guy running pit lane that day and ask to wait in the pits until the pace car has pulled ahead about half a lap. That's what we did here:



    Not much happened between this track day and the next, I think they were only a couple weeks apart.



    It rained this time but I actually don't mind a rainy track day. I feel like I learn a lot more about car control in a low grip environment. Sadly, the fuzion ZRi tires I was on sucked. I never knew when the were going to slide or stick and they hydroplaned all over the place. Oh well, they still had tread and drove fine on the street, I considered them good enough for learning.

    More history later, this post is long enough.
    Last edited by Pyr0monk3y; 03-06-2014 at 01:34 AM.

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  7. #5
    Idling - Listen to it purr... Codersozer's Avatar
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    Nice, Any gopro video in the rain? Also, ditch the harness And use the 3pt belt until you have a HNR.

  8. #6
    3,000 rpm - starting to feel the power Pyr0monk3y's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Codersozer View Post
    Nice, Any gopro video in the rain? Also, ditch the harness And use the 3pt belt until you have a HNR.
    No gopro in the rain, sorry. All I have is that picture. That's what I get for bumming cameras all the time.

    Regarding HNR, what do you recommend? I have $700 ready to spend on safety equipment. I'm struggling to decide what route to take when developing my safety system. I can't afford to drop thousands and do it all at once like I should, but I want to be as safe as possible with the budget I currently have.

    I'll spoil part of the story and tell you now. I ditched the seat in the above post and went with a sparco sprint V bolted in a very well made, solid, FIA spec seat bracket. My harness geometry is accurate and the seat fits me very well. I know this doesn't have any impact on the necessity of an HNR, I just wanted you to have some current information.

    List of current safety equipment:

    • FIA Seat
    • SFI Gforce harnesses (I know...)
    • Hard dog Hardcore roll bar
    • non airbag steering wheel
    • Snell 2010 helmet (Has provisions for HANS)
    • FIA gloves


    Stuff on my list:
    • HNR
    • Scroth profi-II harness
    • fire suit

  9. #7
    Ninja Messiah kung fu jesus's Avatar
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    HNRs are best left to personal preference and fit.

  10. #8
    Idling - Listen to it purr... Codersozer's Avatar
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    This is what I have. A lot of people go back and forth between a Hans and a Hybrid or other HNR systems. I like this one because 1) it is very comfortable 2) you can wear it with a 3 pt belt 3) Works at multiple angular impacts.

    I walked away from a big hit at 90 degrees while wearing this device with nothing sore on my head, neck, chest, or sides.

    http://www.usracegear.com/product/SS-HS

    If you have any questions about it, call Craig @ US race gear. He is a VERY big advocate of the Hybrid and will convince you why you need this over a HANS in an instant.

  11. #9
    3,000 rpm - starting to feel the power Pyr0monk3y's Avatar
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    It looks like that uses your ribcage to distribute some of the load. I'll have to try that on before making a decision, I will also try to find some crash test data that shows how it works and where the load is distributed. I have bad lungs and scar tissue on my sides, I have to be careful about how things fit around my ribcage.

    I have worn a HANS and it was pretty comfortable, but if there's something better I definitely want it so long as it isn't painful to wear.

  12. #10
    Idling - Listen to it purr... Codersozer's Avatar
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    Oh okay. Ive seen research that a HANS uses your pectorals as leverage to dissipate the load as well. There will always be pros and cons of every system.

    with that being said, I hope to meet you out at a track day or something.

  13. #11
    3,000 rpm - starting to feel the power Pyr0monk3y's Avatar
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    History: Late summer, fall and winter of 2012

    This is where the story pics up a bit. Some work is about to be done, and some lessons learned.

    To deal with the terrible fitment of my race seat, I gave myself some legroom by fitting a neat steering wheel:



    Works bell hub, 30mm spacer, and NRG 320mm suede wheel. I gotta say, it's one of my favorite mods. I can't explain why, it's just.... RACECAR!!!

    Shortly after installing my snazzy new wheel, I did some drifting in a friend's parking lot. A week later, on my way home from work, I heard some noise from the differential under engine braking. Upon pulling into my driveway, I heard a loud pop and the car shuddered a little. I went ahead and pulled it into the shop and picked the car up. This came out of the diff:



    These too:



    I peered into the drain hole and watched the pinion gear as i turned the drive shaft. Two teeth missing. Time for a new diff. I can't be sure if my drift session the week before damaged the diff or if it was just time. I didn't clutch kick or use the e-brake. I use weight transition to initiate my slides. The whole point of drifting, for me, is to learn more about car control and recovery. After 190,000 miles including lots of track days, I'm leaning towards the hypothesis of the diff dying of natural causes.

    I searched for a new diff for a week until I found a full torsen swap kit with 140K on it. The price was right so I grabbed it. Since this car is my DD, the swap occurred ASAP. I was riding my bike and borrowing my dads truck to get parts. It was fun though, I genuinely enjoy challenges like this... to a point. The first obstacle was the first step, the axle nuts. I tugged on my 1/2" drive torque wrench until the extension snapped. Then I grabbed a 3/4" drive ratchet and cracked the socket. I hitched a ride to harbor freight and bought a 3/4" torque wrench and a 29mm socket. I made sure to buy the beefiest impact socket they had. When I got back I attached a jack handle and some iron pipe to the end of that torque wrench, I'm talking about eight feet of leverage. I cracked the jack handle. I tried a 1/2" impact gun, a 3/4" impact gun, 2 different air compressors, and a blow torch. Nothing moved either axle nut. I was so pissed off. At this point in my development as a mechanic, this was the loudest I had ever shouted at an inanimate object. I then resorted to the Jeremy Clarkson technique. No, I didn't punch Peirs Morgan, that would've been nice though. I borrowed an aviation tech friend's 1" drive, snap-on breaker bar and we hammered on it with the BFH. Job done! I thought the axle would ring off or the nut would round off, but I suspect the hour long soak in PB blast helped while I went to get the breaker bar. The rest of the job went pretty smooth except for separating the diff from the PPF. There's some sort of aluminum bushing that you have to chisel out. Took me 30 minutes, and the bushing was mangled pretty bad.

    The results though, I love the torsen! Mine has a 4.1 ratio which is perfect for VIR, I used to run out of revs on the short straights.

    After getting the car back on it's feet, I started school and then happened to get sick and had to have surgery. I took a rest from working on the car for a while except for reinstalling the stock seat to make the car easier to get in and out of. I think I did three track days that fall/winter, one was a two day event. I have no gopro or pictures so that period of time is a little foggy. I did front wheel bearings, valve cover gasket and worked on cleaning up the engine bay some over Christmas break.

    At this point it was time to start getting ready for the 2013 track day season.
    Last edited by Pyr0monk3y; 03-06-2014 at 02:03 AM.

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  15. #12
    6,000 rpm - mere mortals would shift JamieH's Avatar
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    Heh, I bet you could've made sailors blush that day.

    And hey, your diff failure could have been worse and happened in a worse location. I grenaded the diff and axles in my Camaro when I was living in Nashville, TN. Woke up on a Saturday morning and immediately thought I'd go for a quick spin. Left with only my keys and wallet, which was a mistake. Got a wild hair up my ass and thought I'd do a quick clutch drop burnout before heading back. Snapped both axles and completely destroyed the spider gears. Needless to say, I found the weak link of my drivetrain that day, the 35 year old stock diff & axles. Had a nice 3 hour walk of shame back to my apartment since I didn't have my phone with me. I wasn't about to go knocking on anyone's door to use their phone in the neighborhood I was making a racket in early Sat. morning. But, like you, that meant upgrade time.

    I sometimes think it's good when things break. Just means we get to fix them, make them better. "We can rebuild him... we have the technology." And there are fewer motivators as good as necessity.

    Also, steering wheels seem to be one of the biggest driving experience changes one can make. Maybe it has everything to do with it's how we hold hands and communicate with our cars.

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  17. #13
    Ninja Messiah kung fu jesus's Avatar
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    Hilarious post Andy! The trick to those aluminum bushes on the PPF and diff... Back out the bolts about a half inch, place socket on the bolt head, hammer socket with a 3# hammer. Pops them up out of the PPF everytime.

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  19. #14
    3,000 rpm - starting to feel the power Pyr0monk3y's Avatar
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    History: Winter and spring of 2013

    At the end of the previous season I was starting to get fast enough to dance around the limit in some of my better corners. I've always loved turn 3 and turn 17 at VIR. They are the two corners that I have never been told that I am doing something wrong. Me and the car were starting to understand each other. I felt like the car was too oversteer biased after having to catch the car several times on corner entry. All winter I played around with tire pressures and shock adjustment. I could never tune the excessive lift off oversteer out of the car. One day I had my car on the lift doing an oil change, my brother walked around the car and drooled over my suspension and then said "dude, where are your bumpstops?"

    I walked over and looked, looked some more... it was a good question.

    The bump stops were there, but not really. The previous owner that installed my suspension just sliced the OEM bump stops. I wasn't liking the looks of this setup so I emailed Fat Cat Motorsports for a recommendation. Shaikh @ FCM told me to order some 76mm "reds" and cut them down to 30mm for a more neutral car. I took the opportunity to refresh the front suspension a bit. I cleaned up the control arms and replaced the boots on the outer tie rods and upper ball joints.





    I used the "long bolt method" and it only took me a couple hours. The job went smoothly from start to finish thanks to good tools. I happened to have the right combination of ratchets and extensions to gain access to the long bolt on the upper control arms, I had a makita impact gun for the shock nuts, and a 5 foot long pry bar to manipulate the rear suspension.

    After the suspension was sorted I looked at my crushed frame rails. This is my thread in the DIY section:

    Quote Originally Posted by Pyr0monk3y View Post
    When I bought my Miata the frame rails were absolutely crushed. They were so badly crushed that the floor pan was bent and bulging inside the passenger compartment. It looked like someone just threw a floor jack under the car and didn't even look before they picked the car up. It's a miracle the fuel and brake lines weren't crushed.

    These frame rails are paper thin. They are not jack points and they add barely any strength to the car. Really, the only thing I can figure they are strong enough to do is reinforce the floor pan. It appears like 2 engineers had an argument. One wanted a light chassis and the other wanted a stiff chassis. They compromised.

    Luckily, several companies sell a solution/upgrade to fix this problem. I went with Flyin' Miata's rails however there are a number of other companies that sell similar products. I went with Flyin' Miata because they routinely have "group buys" where they sell 30 or so sets of rails at one time at a lower price. Also they offer a butterfly brace that offers even more reinforcement to those whose cars are compatible.

    I'll apologize in advance for the bad photos, it's hard to get good lighting on the underside of a car.

    Here's what I had to work with:





    Start by arranging the fuel lines in a way that you wont bend or break them. They're kind of in the way, but they're flexible so it's not too bad.



    Tools: Big hammers, pry bars, chisels, pliers, and a 10mm wrench (for the fuel line brackets). The steel bar is there to assist the pry bar.



    Use the chisel or pry bar to get the flattened rail away from the floor pan. Then grab it with the pliers. Were just bending the old rails out of the way. You could cut them off if you really wanted, but bending them is easier.



    Once you've bent the rails away from the floor pan, use a ball peen hammer to deal with any bulges.





    Things should be looking a little better now.



    If you're worried about rust, hit any bare metal with some paint.



    Now repeat on the other side, then apply whatever aftermarket frame rail solution you opted for.



    Done.

    The car is a lot stiffer now. I immediately noticed the difference when I left my driveway. The ride is smoother and there is less vibration. Even if your Miata isn't a track car, this is a worthwhile upgrade.
    After driving the car for a year with the frame rails installed, I appreciate them more as a comfort upgrade than a performance upgrade. Bumpy roads are far more tolerable now.

    My Fuzion ZRi street tires probably had 50 track heat cycles on them at this point in addition to many spirited daily commutes. They had tread but there was little grip and even less predictability. The M-edition wheels I got with the car had been sitting under my house for a year, so I decided to put them to use. In hind sight, I should have sold them and bought spec wheels, but I didn't think about it at the time. I planned on buying s-drives or DZ-101's, but I splurged on the Dunlop ZII in 195/50/15:



    After getting all this stuff done there was only one thing left to do:

    March 7th, 2013:







    I was on VIR's north course that day. I love the north course because of one turn nicknamed "Stevie Wonder." It's a blind uphill right that drops off just after apex. It's a long sweeper that if done correctly results in some badass 4 wheel drifting. I had an instructor this time who happened to be VIR grand course lap record holder, Bill Foster. He drives a miata too and pointed out a couple places where I had been taking a "corvette line." Most notable is turns 4, 5 and 6. In a miata, you trail brake into 4, stay left to setup for 5, and don't lift for anything until it's time to brake for turn 7. From the apex of turn 4 to the brake zone for turn 7, you need to be full throttle.

    The car ran great and I continued to learn. I got signed off to run solo so from this point on I have not had an instructor. The only problem I had this day was oil consumption. The front main seal leaked profusely. I had to add a half quart or so between runs... maybe that's why the track was slippery. The bump stops, tires and frame rails helped. Throwing the car into turn 1 and sliding through Stevie Wonder turn 13 felt like home, I was completely comfortable because I knew where the limits were.

    After this track day I had to sit out almost the whole track day season of 2013. There will be more on that later.

    Thanks for reading!
    Last edited by WASABI; 03-17-2014 at 06:11 PM.

  20. #15
    3,000 rpm - starting to feel the power Pyr0monk3y's Avatar
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    Current Event: March 15, 2014

    I'm still chasing a bad gas mileage and rough idle issue. After plugs and wires, things are better, but not fixed. I pulled the O2 sensor and found this:



    So I replaced it. I'm hoping to see an improvement from the 20 mpg I'm getting lately.

    An O2 socket and a 1/2" square to hex adapter make O2 sensor changes too easy on this car.


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