I hate to call it a build, because it's not like this car is an active project. I'm still driving it around, I just make changes when I can. That said, the car does need to be "built". So whatever works.
This is my 1991 Miata. Picked it up relatively cheap, but as with all cheap cars there was a catch. Or catches rather. It's high mileage, and looks like someone actively kicked the crap out of it every day. There wasn't a single surface that didn't have something wrong with it.
Here it is when I picked it up. Kicked in bumper, faded paint.
Shortly after that I had a Hard Dog single diagonal roll bar installed. I had planned to autocross it, and I just wanted the extra peace of mind (even though it's unlikely it would ever flip).
The previous owner thought it'd be awesome to tint the windows. And then tear half of it off and leave the glue there. So I steamed it all off and scraped off the glue.
And that's about all I had done.
UNTIL TODAY.
I was getting sick of looking at this every single day. I couldn't see out the back, so I had to drive with the top down everywhere. Bugs were getting in my car, as well as dust and such.
It was torn, faded, smelly and awful. I had attempted to tape it together to stop things from going in, but you can see that didn't work.
While tearing it down we found the parcel shelf to be disgusting. Dirt, mold and you name it. All there.
So we cleaned it up. It still doesn't look awesome, but it's definitely 100x better then how we found it.
Since I was redoing the top, I decided to take out the visors. I still have them (any takers?), but I'm a tall guy. They were more of a pain, then any actual use. I'll probably make a plug to fill in that hole later.
Mid work, if anyone does this swap themselves, put all the pieces somewhere in order so you can keep track of them. We also bagged/labeled all the hardware. Really saved us some trouble on the rebuild end.
And finished! Took 6.5 hours today, but the results were well worth it. I can see out the back, it doesn't smell in the car anymore, and the biggest plus is everything is actually sealed from the elements.
Makes the whole car look a million times better.
So in regards to the title, I have a goal to drift this car. It's a bit of an obsession of mine, probably not helped by seeing this in person this year.
But that means getting the drive train/etc. all working better and later sorting out the suspension and so on. Admittedly I probably shouldn't be drifting my daily, but you do what you have to. I rather drive my car into the ground then baby it. That said my future plans include doing something with the differential, doing a 1.8 swap, and getting some proper coilovers thrown in there. I'm also just waiting to install a Sparco Sprint 5 I have sitting around. I'm not sure I can have the best of both worlds (relatively comfortable daily/decent drifter) but I'll give it a shot. And if at any point I can get another car to daily, this thing is going full track mode
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Originally Posted by tsingson
I also drift it too.
