2017 Ascutney 1 Hillclimb
I don't know how many of you are interested in hillclimbs, but it's my bread and butter. When it was obvious that my epic Datsun-shaped build wasn't going to be ready for the first event, I did what any sane person would do.
I bought a Miata 4 days before the race.
It needed a roll bar, so I ordered a cage kit from MiataCage.com (very impressed so far). I only installed the back half of it, which took a long evening with two people. The person helping me out happened to be the only other person competing in my class. Fitment on the main hoop couldn't possibly be better, and the instructions were top-notch. The footings and bottoms of all the tubes took minimal trimming (an inch or so on each), and it went pretty quickly.
https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4270/3...af4b0c49_b.jpg
With that done, all I needed was a fire extinguisher and air horn, and I was ready to drive up the hill.
https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4200/3...ece74772_b.jpg
At the event, everything went great. The car ran flawlessly, nothing rattled loose (although the other Miata that was there nearly lost a caliper coming down the hill).
I had two real complaints:
The first was the hardtop rear latches. Those silly little phillips screws are made of silly putty and just suck to deal with. I ended up having to drill one of them out in order to tighten the retaining bolts under the latches. A couple zip ties held them in place throughout the weekend.
https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4271/3...be3ba1c1_b.jpg
The second complaint was with my tires. They're some older RA1's that I ran on my last Miata, and handle beautifully. They're just WAY too tall. OEM tires are 22.7" diameter, and these are 22.9" diameter. That caused rubbing all over the place, especially on the rear-side of the front bumper and the rear-side of the rear fenders. None of it was a danger to the tires, but it was pretty annoying to have to listen to all the time. I'm looking at a set of 245-40R15 tires to replace them, which are stock diameter but still provide me with the width that I like.
rear rubbing:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4179/3...331cfb33_b.jpg
front rubbing:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4203/3...b4f92c46_b.jpg
Overall, it was a great event. The extra grunt of the 1.8 over the 1.6 is immediately obvious in hillclimbs. It actually pulled up the hill, rather than having a constant dance between 2nd and 3rd all the time. With some shorter tires, I imagine it'll just get better.
I'll put together a video of one of my runs (maybe even with a little interview footage to go with it), but in the meantime here's a launch where I was trying to determine if I had a limited slip or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQpUSYHyaGU
I still can't quite tell if that left wheel is rolling with the car, or spinning with the engine.
