Function>Everything

[Pyr0monk3y]

I got a new sticker today!



I enjoy the fact that I don't take my car very seriously. If someone walks past my car and says "Wow, this dude doesn't give a f about anything." I'll die happy.

[Pyr0monk3y]

It's about time I updated. I've been focused and fully enveloped by school, so not much has happened with the miata. I've just been DDing this racecar around NCSU's campus, bursting everyone's eardrums with my sqeally-ass brakes. I've enjoyed every second of it.

Towards the end of October I picked up a new set of tires to replace my old Fuzion ZRi's that came with the car. The tires I opted for were Yokahama S.drives in 205/50/15, mounted on my TRM C1's.



A few weeks later it was time for our annual Tail of the Dragon trip. We planned to go the Friday before Thanksgiving so we could make the VIR Grand Course track day the next weekend. Unfortunately, there was too much going on in my world the week before Thanksgiving. I had an economics exam Wednesday, and two exams that Friday for math and chemistry. As if I wasn't busy enough, there was also an economics paper due the next Monday. I was slammed. I told my brother and our friends to leave without me on Friday morning, and they did.

On Friday, with my big-boy pants belted on tight, I handled my exams, drove home, changed the miata's 7,000 mile oil, swapped brake pads, wrote my econ paper, packed up, and rolled out. I presented a bold middle finger to the University and a mile wide grin on my face as I arrived at the Tail of the Dragon at 12:00 am November 22nd. I was exhausted, but hwy 28 was between me and the hotel. After one hell of a day and an agonizing road trip, it was time to unwind.



When I made it to the hotel, my friends were like "daaaamn." I slept like a college student.

Good times were had throughout the weekend. My brother was driving his E30 this year rather than the LS1 swapped 240sx. My friends and I had a chance to keep up. We didn't spend too much time on the dragon this year, we explored a lot on the surrounding roads. We found a road that hosts an SCCA sanctioned hill climb even every year. We gained so much elevation on the way up that we started seeing snow. The road was great, and the view was not bad either.





We checked out Fontanna Dam this year, it was my first time seeing it. It's a really interesting place with a good view.



Towards the end of the day we made our way back to the Dragon and ran through it until it got dark.



When it got dark, we kept running. On the first night run, my Brother was in front in his E30 and I followed. Since it was my first night run ever, I took it easy and the E30 disappeared pretty quick. As I got deeper in the run, I started getting comfortable and remembered the road pretty well. I started pushing and getting in a rhythm. By the time I reached the overlook, I was running the same pace as I was during the day.

On the way back through the dragon, my brother lead again. The E30 didn't disappear this time. About 2 miles into the run, the right blinker of the E30 lit up as my brother pulled over and pointed me by. I passed him. The E30 just doesn't have the power that the 240sx does, and I was quick enough to make it show. To be clear, I'm not half the driver my brother is, the point is that Miatas are faster than E30's on mountain roads. Last year, the 240sx beat a friend's miata through the dragon by minutes, this year, miatas ruled the mountain.

When we returned to Raleigh, I was hit with the reality of going back to work and school. I had to buckle down for the end of the semester. This was my first semester in college and I was nervous for final exams. I crushed the exams I took before I left town, A's on both, but the pressure was mounting for the famous 100 question, 6 hour Chemistry 101 exam. I'm extremely grateful for being fortunate enough to go to college and I don't take it for granted. Since I'm here, I'm going to make it count. I skipped the VIR track day the weekend after Thanksgiving and I sat out of the Chump car race in December. I studied hard to prepare for final exams.

My 6 hour chemistry final was the last exam, on the last day of finals week. When it was over, I hopped off of an empty bus and walked through an empty parking lot to my little miata.



I was the last student to leave.

Over Christmas break, I was all about my brother's Chump Car build:



Now it's time to settle down and focus on school, but this project is motivating me. Building roll cages is hard. A build thread for this car is on the Chump car Forum: http://forum.chumpcar.com/index.php?...ld-raleigh-nc/

[— kung fu jesus —]

Nice work, Andy. Glad to see you keeping your shit wired tight.

[Wood]

Nice write up, you following your brothers footsteps at school or doing something a little different?

[Pyr0monk3y]

Nice write up, you following your brothers footsteps at school or doing something a little different?

My brother is a mechanical engineer, I'm on the path to electrical or computer engineering. I haven't decided between those two disciplines yet, but NCSU offers a 5 year program to get both degrees so I might shoot for that.

[Pyr0monk3y]

I'm helping out at WCS nowadays, so we had a little impromptu track day. Who knew miatas were so fast on circle tracks? I was running 15's.

[JLBMX5]

Damn when was this miata day at WCS i have them on my facebook and never saw mention of it. You chould post that video on thier page i like it.

[Pyr0monk3y]

It wasn't really a track day, we only drove around enough to get footage of each car. The owner was interested in some aerial footage of the track, we told him we had some fpv gear. Next thing we knew, we were on the track, but for the sole purpose of putting a video together.

A professional will edit a promo video for their Facebook page. We might need more footage but it will probably be done by the time the season starts.

[Pyr0monk3y]

I've passed another anniversary with this car. It's gift to me was a massive slave cylinder leak. I have one on order and will be topping off the clutch fluid every morning until it arrives.

That didn't stop me from having fun though! I had some work to do at Wake County Speedway one morning, so me and my boss decided to cruise out there in our fun cars rather than the company vehicle. As we tried to leave Bojangles, the battery in his S2000 decided to quit. I thoroughly enjoyed my peaceful breakfast in the parking lot while we waited for some jumper cables.



Once we finally got rolling, we had an awesome morning cruise to the track. Unfortunately, we were not there to drive, but rather to set up the network for the timing system.

It's a cool place for pictures







Other than the slave cylinder, not much is going to happen to the miata for a while. I've been focused on school and our E30 build:



I probably wont be tracking the miata much this year. I've been thinking about getting the AC working and putting some less aggressive pads on it. ...heh, I don't even know who I am anymore.

[TimTim]

Congrats on another year with the car dude!

As far the a/c fix and brake pad change? I think of them as more "mods" you are making to optimize the car for your needs right now. I also think it demonstrates how good the car is for different things; track car -> daily commuter. Although, I think I maye have been pushing my luck trying to turn mine into the ultimate budget grand-tourer lol.

[Pyr0monk3y]

Time for another update


I'm done with school now so I've had much more time to sink into fun stuff. Mostly this, which we cranked and drove for the first time last weekend:



The race is August 8th, so time is tight, but I think we're going to make it.

Ive been enjoying the hell out of my summer. I've been working full time, but I don't have homework. It feels so nice to be able to go home and relax at 5pm. Every other week I head out to wake county speedway on Friday night to do the timing and scoring. It's a stressful job, but it's fantastic racing and always an adventure. hehe...



Miata:

For the past year I've been chasing an intermittent issue with poor throttle response, poor gas mileage, rough idle, loss of power, and a horrendous stumble when throttle is applied under load. The problem slowly got worse and was intermittent depending on conditions. Over the winter the car ran great about 90% of the time. This summer, it ran ok about 50% of the time. I've been spending some serious time trouble shooting with a multimeter, timing light, and stethoscope.

The first improvement I saw was from the recommendation of JLBMX5 to check ignition timing. It was set at 16 degrees before TDC, 6 degrees out of spec from 10 degrees before TDC. I chose a Saturday to mess with this so I had plenty of time to find the right setting. After a few test drives, the car seems happiest at around 12 degrees before TDC. Unfortunately, this did not fix the hesitation, stumble, etc. However, the car idled smoother and the power curve felt a little different; maybe a little more torque in the 2-4k RPM range. So thank you JLBMX5!

I've been frustrated with the cars behavior for so long that I can only stomach to work on it a little at a time. With my first progress in some time, I got excited and decided to pull the hardtop off and cruise around for the rest of the weekend.



Finally, finally some progress!

Last weekend, when taking a break from working on the racecar, I decided to finally spend some more time chasing the hesitation issue. I cleaned every ground point I could find and cleaned the contacts on the coil packs and the MAF. While I had the coil pack off, I replaced the coolant temp sensor. When I removed the connector, the contacts were seriously corroded. I guess the seal on the connector was compromised somehow, because they were bad. The connector is the female and the sensor is the male, so it's quite hard to clean the contacts because you have to lean over the car. After using a contact brush and spraying the connector with contact cleaner, I felt confident enough to install the new sensor and put the car back together.



It's not perfect, but the car certainly runs a whole lot better. There is more power and no stumble on shifts! The only symptom that remains is a slight idle drop when you tap the gas at idle. The car coughs a bit before it revs. That sounds pretty indicative of a vacuum leak to me, but I can't find it. I've checked all the hoses around the intake, the plug on the back of the intake, and the hoses to the brake booster, but nothing shows any indication of having a leak. Are there any vacuum lines under the dash in these cars? Is it possible there's a leak inside the brake booster or some other component?

Great success

PS. During exam week, I fixed the AC, so now I cruise around with slightly chilled palms and no BO upon arrival.

[Pyr0monk3y]

Update Time

I had a pretty great summer with the Miata. This summer it saw no track time, just spirited driving around town and a couple parade laps at VIR. All of my track time has been in E30's this season. I've learned a lot from driving that chassis this year, mostly that the Miata handles better in almost every way. There's just so much more feedback and agility in a Maita.

Because the Miata is unlikely to see track time until next year, I've settled it down a bit. I did some interior mods to make the commute more enjoyable. I added some USB ports, a volt meter and a new head unit. The USB ports and volt meter came in a kit from amazon, they also came with an extra 12v power port but I have yet to wire that up. I am trying to find a good way to wire it straight to the battery without it looking ghetto or catching on fire.

To mount the new stuff I fabbed up a little bracket out of sheet metal. It ended up below my new head unit.



For the tunes, I upgraded to a Sony MEX-N5000bt. It has a USB port, aux jack, and blue tooth. My old head unit had none of these. I was listening to the radio or CD's.



I was previously running a pretty worn set of Hawk HT-10 brake pads. I'm not sure what it is about track pads, maybe they heat cycle out, but after 5,000 street miles these behaved nothing like fresh HT-10's. I even tried rebedding them, but nothing brought back the initial bite and modulation that I liked about HT-10's. Since this is a street car for now, I swapped the HT-10's for stop-tech street performance pads and new rotors all around.





I noticed something kinda cool when I was pulling the old pads off. There was an insane buildup of brake dust. It covered the hole on the back of this caliper bracket.



Before I started this I noticed a few unusual squeaks from the brakes, and it wasn't just the compound, the squeaks were coming from the calipers. I cleaned and lubed everything meticulously before putting it back together, and everything is dandy now.

One word of caution, I used Sil-Glyde from NAPA to lube everything, and when I bedded in the new pads it smoked like crazy. I've seen this before and I have come to expect it, but I don't see it mentioned in any pad swap guides so I figured I'd throw it out there. Everything seems fine now, but I'm sure those slider pins are not as well lubed as they were before the brakes got super hot. This is the specific reason that I always clean and relube the slider pins before a long road trip or track day.

Thank you for reading.

[—tsingson—]

Gauge panel looks good. You down for a mountain run at the end of Oct?

[Pyr0monk3y]

Gauge panel looks good. You down for a mountain run at the end of Oct?

I definitely want to, but I'll have to see what the school load is like. Any idea which specific date?

[—tsingson—]

Towards the end of Oct is what it's looking like.