Ha bet I dragged you in with that title. Anyway, I figured it was time I made a build thread for my lovely little car Amy but first some background story! It all started in 1996 when my father purchased his Miata. For the next ten or so years I would love this car, had great memories driving with my Dad in this car and hoped one day I could own one. It was a sad day when my Dad had to sell it to help pay bills during a bad time in our lives. I had always wanted one since and it has been one of my dream cars. After getting my first car I had still wanted a Miata but never thought I could afford one, so I kept dreaming. Eventually I got tired of driving other cars, cars with seats for friends, more "reliable" to people and hard topped cars. I finally wanted a Miata. So my search began. I joined a lot of Miata sites to start reading up on things and asking for opinions, I also joined tampabaymiatas.net which also helped when looking for my future car. Well in Florida all NAs are really high priced. I kept finding crappy car after crappy car and was losing hope. I needed to find something fast because people wanted to buy my car. Well I thought I had found one, it was a 97 M, low miles, decent paint, a very huge maintenance history and I loved it.


They let me drive the car for the weekend. The mans reasoning was if I drove it for a weekend I could find out if I really wanted it and if something went wrong I couldn't come back and blame him. This Miata was great but something didn't feel right. It didn't have that pep, the zest of a Miata so I looked at its huge file of maintenance records and I found the people had turned down some services offered by shops. It made me feel uncomfortable and uneasy. Took it to a shop and they believed something in the block was bad and for 3500 bucks for the price of the car , I didn't want to find out. At this point I was heartbroken. I thought I had found my car but to no avail it had failed.

So I started my search again and I called a local Mazda shop by the name of Maztech to see if the owner knew anyone selling a Miata. When I called Jeff the owner told me he didn't know anyone, but before I said bye he told me he just bought a Miata. It was a 1990 that a customer sold him on the cheap because he didn't want to fix the water pump, timing belt, and clutch. He explained he did all the maintenance on it but it needed a lot of work cosmetically. He didn't make it sound like a good car and I didn't even want to go. But, I did and I had found my car. When I pulled up she was under a tree, she was seven shades of red, had a dilapidated top, crappy wheels and a dirty inside. But when I drove her I feel in love. This car felt like no other Miata and I needed to have it. While driving I came across a few problems. Brakes were stiff, rough idle and I think something else but I forgot. I was preparing myself for a very high price so when I got back I asked. He explained he wanted 1500. It was the cost of the parts and work, plus the body of the car. He also explained he would fix the other things before selling it. My friend Javier told me I needed to buy that car, and I did. I took her home about a week later after selling my car and I couldn't be happier. Everywhere I drove I had a smile on my face because I finally owned my dream car. This is what it looked like after I got it home.

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Thus began the journey of me losing my mind on this car.