Doward's 94

[Doward]

B5 <3!!
Mid O is just a quick ~50 minutes from my house here on the northeast corner of Columbus. Very nice. I try to make it to Grattan, Putnam, or VIR once a year though. Mid O is just too easy, i get to drive home on sat night and sleep in my own bed


I got a new wheeel/tire setup for the wag last weekend. I got tired of the 18" ride quality.

17x8 +35 Audi A8 fat fives/ Conti DWS:

[JTninja]

Wagon Power!




(waiting on a full Votex kit)

[—Bryan—]

I pretty much consider them a wearable item and for $47 i'm not gonna complain too bad

You go through hubs a lot?

[friday]

The track puts a lot of pressure and heat on a wheel bearing. Once you start to see the grease getting pushed out you know it's only a matter of time.

[Doward]

Ready to rock and roll this weekend! Cant wait. I should have some in-car footage come next week.



Hubs on these cars are super easy. Car up, wheel off, caliper bracket off spindle with caliper attached holding rotor(key to quickness), dust cap off, hub nut off, hub off, clean spindle, re-grease spindle, reverse process.



@ Bryan
I dont necessarily go through them alot. But the car only sees hard use any more. Most of the time spent on 225s NT01/RS3, so high lateral load. The hubs i'm pulling off were OEM, around 120k. Started noticing play last season after about 23 track hours and countless autoXs. I plan to be needing to replace/repack/rebuild them, depending on how they hold up, every season from here on out.

[Doward]

Trackday was a blast this weekend! Kept it shiny side up, rubber side down. I had my 3rd student, an Air Force guy from Vegas, in a rented car. I think I enjoyed instructing this time more than driving! I have some video I need to edit after playing in hpde4 with a bunch of vettes and stuff. I was able to run right at the Spec Miata times most of the weekend in a carpeted street car on 225 NT01s! It's time to think full cage and safety gear...

We had a major storm come through Central Ohio on Friday night which knocked out my power. It came back on last night, so I'm just getting to start on uploading/editing. But here are some pics from the morning(s) of.





This is what the conditions looked like Saturday morning:



The black crx parked behind me ended up winning TTE, which is my target class someday soon, with a 1:43.9x. My best time was 1:44.5x. I'm fairly confident I can run with him on fresh tires. He also won PTE and ran H2 to qualify for nat's.

[Doward]

Quick lap around Mid Ohio in my buddy Adam's car. I get by him after turn 1 in this video. None of my incar footage turned out(bad camera angle) and im still working on the outside view footage.
The camera car is basically a gutted stock 97 with seats/harnesses and rollbar on 205 RA1s.

[Doward]

Well today I tried to drive the car to a local meet at Defined Autoworks. Had a pretty scary brake lockup. Turns out the rear caliper piston seals had melted at the trackday. They were not an item on my post race nut&bolt checklist and had not given me any issues on the 1.5hr drive home 2 weeks ago. The right rear caliper seized about halfway to the meet. It got hot enough to melt the wheel weights off the inside of my wheel!
Once it cooled down the Defined guys lent me a jack. I pulled the caliper and rotor as 1 piece and used their largest hammer to remove them from each other . Then I just threw the pads back into the caliper, zip tied the caliper all the way out on the slides and drove home with no rotor.






This is the kind of sweet stuff these guys do:



This 3 rotor made 475whp and is now in the s14. The FD will be getting the 4 rotor^ hopefully around 700whp.

[Doward]

So a while ago, my GF ran into my ratty old hardtop:





She wedged it between a garage cabinet and her car That incident shattered the glass and cracked the passenger b pillar. But, it gave me all the reasoning I ever needed to finally paint it to match:



I've put it to use at a bunch of trackdays since then with no window. But as the car keeps progressing farther and farther to the right of the streetcar.......racecar scale, I've gotten tired of having to dismount and store the hardtop whenever it rains. Which was kind of defeating the purpose anyways... It's also another opportunity the add lightness at the same time as coolness IMO. Just like the dash swap. My plan was simple if not very original; pull the softtop and bolt on the hardtop with a set of spec miata aluminum brackets. At the same time install a polycarbonate/lexan window instead of factory glass to save some a little extra weight.

[Doward]

I put this project off as long as could. Mostly because I lacked the balls/confidence that I could do a presentable job at all.
I scrounged up a scrap piece of 1/4" polycarbonate from a local sign shop. It came out of a remnant pile which meant $0.00! So I figured what the hell, can't mess up free...
It's pretty simple really, make template, cut plastic, rivet it in, right?

So I whipped up a template, then a second better one. I found, with trial and error, that I was more comfortable making a half-template and using it upside down/mirrored, for the opposing side of the window. This helped ensure symmetry.

Laid out on the plastic, tape laid to trace cut line onto:


After a test cut I realized that the jigsaw I was going to use lays down some serious scratches/gouges with both feat as it cuts. This stuff is really soft. So I laid another strip of tape to guard my material:


I got it cut out and laid it into the hole before I quit for the night:

[Doward]

Received a nicely wrapped package from Slowmotion Motorsports yesterday.



This is the current embodiment of all my internal goodies from the built motor that lost a thrust bearing earlier in the thread. That block, crank, oil and water pumps were trashed. New ACL Race bearings, new Cometic HG for the overbore, and a good used block and crank were put together with my rods, pistons and 99 head. I need to source an oil pump, either Boundary or OEM, and it is ready to go. This will get a dyno reclass and hopefully get me in tte or ttd with points left for aero. Aiming for ~150whp/tq With a broad 4500-8000 powerband. It made 142whp before break-in, last time.
Maybe someday I'll have the spare scratch for a Trackspeed Engineering turbo kit to put the internals to use...

[Doward]

Took the car out to the local Buckeye Miata Club autocross 2 weekends ago and got to drive a couple fun runs after the racing was over. We got 1st and 3rd in csp, with me setting overall ftd for the day in our black car!






I Also finished up the lexan window Thursday night in a rush to get the car ready for Friday's SCCA PDX:




Took a couple shots after the day started to wind down. It was a great trackday. SCCA PDX does 3 run groups, instructors have 2 students, usually requiring some lead/follow check off type stuff during the first and/or second advanced sessions. Then the rest of the day you Drive, rest, then Instruct, rinse and repeat. There is nobody else on track except PDX drivers, so you get a ton of seat time. I had an Intermediate student in an S2000 CR and an advanced guy in a 700hp CTS-v. Good times!








Just waiting out 2 more local autocross events and one more nasa weekend before I swap to the built motor again for a fall/winter/spring break-in. Also need to pick up the new Supermiata damper and maybe clutch if budget allows.

[Doward]

This video surfaced of the autocross 2 weeks ago. Dorifto fun runs ftw!:

[—atank—]

Lovin that dash!!!!!!!!

[Doward]

Thanks!

Took a quick snap of the racecar last night while we were installing megasquirt in my buddy's m45'd red '90.