I've been meaning to ask where other Miata drivers mount their cameras. I have 6 1080p action cameras, a video-rigged DSLR, and a couple of dedicated audio devices. The goal is to document the entire season and put it together into a web series at the end of the season. There are a bunch of awesome people in our hillclimb group, and I'd love to share some of their awesomeness along with the challenges of joining a motorsport from 0, without having friends/family who are already involved.Originally Posted by WASABI
I'm incredibly anxious about it, but as long as I pass tech I think I'm going to have a blast. I still have a lot to do, and have had some issues sourcing an sa2010 helmet locally (and I don't know when to expect the delivery from saferacer). I'm taking Friday off to make sure I have all my hammock camping gear together, and can focus all my efforts on preparing for Saturday and Sunday. The weather looks perfect wet on Saturday (slow & smooth to get used to the hill) then dry and sunny on Sunday (so I'll be able to pick up the pace a bit on my timed runs). I think there's a novice orientation 'thing' on Fridays, but I'm not sure what the details are for that so I'm waiting to hear back from the organizer.
Rankings
It looks like I'm going to be the 'slowest' car on the hill, based on classification. That's good, because it means I'll probably be able to win U6 class. Based on the results from last year http://www.hillclimb.org/events/resu...1_saturday.pdf, I think 4:45.0 is a pretty good time to aim for. We may have a couple other Miatas on the hill, and I'm excited to pick their brains during the post-race fireside chats. Right now, the car that's ranked the most closely to me is a stock Saab 900 - https://www.motorsportreg.com/index....65E77DE7E454A2 ... and I'm two classes below him.
Steering Wheel
I am not a tall man. I'm 5'6" - which seems to be about the right size for the NA's design. However, it seems to be very badly laid out for heel-toe braking. It's not an issue on the hill, because a stock 100k-mile NA 1.6 isn't exactly a speed demon on a ~19-degree grade, and I'll rarely (if ever) use the brakes going up, but it's pretty annoying to smack my knee against the steering wheel whenever I slow down on the street. I think this car would actually benefit from a quick-release hub and a dished wheel, but I'm wondering how others have solved this problem.
Local Sighting
I drove over to my Mom's house on Mother's Day, which seemed like the thing to do. I was lucky enough to follow another little blue Miata for most of the drive on Route 27/43, which was perfect for me because it gave me a chance to study his roll bar bracing a bit, and allowed me to flesh out exactly how I wanted to accomplish my goals. He also waved when we parted, which surprised me a bit. My car doesn't look like something any enthusiast would own, with paint literally falling off of it and a very sad lol bar at the time.
Reinforcement
I still have some DOM left over, and after this event might add some diagonal bracing or even bolt-in door bars with it. I still need to put a cage in the Datsun, but I don't think the NA is the safest car to get t-boned in and it's going to be my daily driver from here on out. I don't like the hydra-effect of making 'one more modification' because every time I do, I see 2 more things I should do.
Now that I have a roll bar, I should add door bars.
Well, I have door bars, I may as well connect them to the firewall.
Well, I have all this upper reinforcement, I may as well tie that in to subframe connectors under the car.
Everything's already connected, I may as well cage this.
Well, that's all pretty good, I may as well add a turbo.
At some point, I need to stop myself and say 'this is just a daily driver' ... but that's a very fuzzy line to draw.
LOL bar to Roll bar
Do you think there's any interest in putting together a howto and some measurements on turning a 'lol bar' into a proper roll bar? I documented the whole process, but it's certainly not for the feint of heart. The right solution is absolutely to buy a braced Hard Dog bar, they're a great value for the price. It would have a fairly limited audience, only people who already have a Hard Dog Hard Bar would be able to use my measurements, and to put it together you would need some trustworthy welding skills (I wonder how many hobbyist welders would really trust their life to their welds?). There was a lot of time dedicated to fitment and re-fitment, and I'd hate to make others go through that same work if I could just send them measurements that would work as starting points.
TONS of this:
and this:
and this:
then making sure that worked with this:
and then finally this:
which resulted in this:
I'm just realizing now that I don't have photos of the final product. I threw it in the car at 11pm and spent around a half hour wrestling the soft top closed (I HATE soft tops, for the record),. and don't want to go through that ordeal again. If you really want to know what it looks like, try to imagine a roll bar that looks like every other Miata roll bar without a harness bar and without diagonal supports (yet). Then imagine it with paint in some places and not in others, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what this looks like. I need to order some POR15 or similar to cover it - or maybe I'll go with rubberized underbody coating or truck bed liner to soften that hard surface a little bit.
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