"21 Flavors"

[Doward]

This thread will serve as a separate place to document the fun that I have been having with a close friend of mine, Darren, on a project we call "21 Flavors."
The original goal was to show up at our local club autocrosses with the cheapest, shittiest, most beat up looking car possible. That evolved into winning our class as cheap as possible in 2013. This year, 2014, we tried to set FTD for as cheap as possible and did just so at every event the car made it to. You will see some money spent on bolt-on parts that get shared on multiple cars, but very little money spent ANYWHERE else

In 2011 we picked up all the leftover pieces from a guy building a Locost Lotus Seven clone from a 1992 black and tan Miata donor. This was pretty much just a tub and interior parts.

The Beginning:


Like any other batch of crap, we slowing sold bits and pieces here and there, but that tub sat outside for a year or so. Locost guy kept the title, so we couldnt even scrap the shell.
Up to that time we had been trailer-ing another (registered and totally streetable)car to autocross. If we were already using a truck and trailer, why did we need such a nice "racecar"? Why not build something that is trailer-only, and if it's going to be trailer only, why does it need a title?

That's how the idea started. The 'other' car mentioned above was a hodge podge as well. It was a rolling chassis with a junkyard motor that had been picked through for parts but we raced it in 2011 on all the suspension goodies from my green 94 M while I decided what to do about a(nother) blown motor.






Once I got my personal car back on the road, we had to buy new wheels and suspension stuff for the black car. In 2012 we raced it on Flyin Miata Vmaxx Extreme Track pack coilovers, 949 endlinks, Flyin' Miata swaybars. Darren also picked up a set of TR Motorsports 15x9 w/ 225/45/15 Hankook RS3s. This suspension package is what ultimately ended up under 21 Flavors.

Dont let the subframes and control arms fool you, thats just a couple cans of Walmart's cheapest Chrome spraypaint. No prep work involved.









It now rolls around on stock shocks, stock wheels, H&R springs and Darren's kid drives it as a campus beater.

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Back to 21F

The name "21 Flavors" is sort of inspired by Baskin Robbins and frozen yogurt places that advertise their large varieties of flavors, but MOSTLY inspired by the fact that nearly every body panel on the car came from a different parted out miata. The rear bumper is chameleon flip-flop and the rear finish panel is actually two different broken rear finish panels. I cut them near the middle and hid the seam behind the vanity plate.

We briefly played with the idea of this bolt in cage as we amassed body panels to fit on this thing.


Why replace the broken windshield when you can just cut it off? More cutting was done to gut the doors:







In this state was when I first test drove it. From here on out we only started adding weight with the rollbar, passenger seat, aero additions, bigger wheels/tires, etc. This was a pretty amazing first drive:





In my parts-gathering, I ended up with Ryan(ThePass)'s DiY rear spoiler:


The exhaust is classic junkyard stuff; an oldschool Bosal header with the flange missing off the end, slip fit and crush bent exhaust piping back to an 18" cherry bomb. The first few races we just had a turn-down at the rear diff, no muffler. That was pretty ridiculous, so we ended up adding a Pace Setter muffler.








After those early test drives, it was very apparent that we needed some sort of wind blocker. So I quickly bent some ABS over the front:




..and this is how it looked when it made it's debut: