And now, building for something a little different...

[SigmaX]

Two weeks ago:
Finally (?), an update! Work's been hard, guys. In the past 10 weeks I've had three weekends to myself.

A bunch of parts came in. Including my new-for-2019 Penske Spec Miata suspenion.


This weekend, I finally made the time to work on getting it on. I used a modified long-bolt method for the swap.

With the wheels off and the car in the air, which is where it's been since the last update:


Front side with the rollbar uninstalled, upper control arm bolt coming out:


Bolt out, unit removed. The eagle-eyed reader may notice that I've already pulled the other side:


Not awful condition, for a nearly-20-year-old car:



Nearly all the way back in. So smooth, so sexy:


Front axle complete:



The passenger's side rear is also complete, which I didn't get any pictures of. Unfortunately, other duties called me away before I could complete the driver's side rear.

I've missed the first event of this year and have been getting worried I wasn't going to be able to find the time to get the car ready before the April event. Saturday's work has helped me feel better, but at this point there's still plenty to do to get the car ready.

After getting up under there a little more, the ball joints and tie rod ends are a MUST.


Last weekend: Working on the race car, two weekends in a row? It's like I got off my ass, or something. A little bit.

I didn't get a lot of pictures for the work I did. My neighbor came over and helped, and I didn't want to waste his time by stopping every 5 min to snap a photo.

The first thing I started working on was the passenger seat mount.

Sparco NA/NB seat mount, aluminum side mounts, and a Sparco Sprint.

Unfortunately, even at the lowest mount point (above), the seat doesn't fit my neighbor (who is not a very tall guy) with a helmet on. Helmet is ON the fiberglass roof, so I have to get it lower. I figured, easy - I'll just bottom-mount the seat onto the seat mount, gain an extra inch and a half, and there'll be some wiggle room at the top.

WRONG.

The bottom mount bolt positions on a Sparco Sprint don't meet up with the bottom mount holes on a Sparco NA/NB seat mount. Brilliant. I'm going to have to buy or borrow some punches (because I wrecked the only one I had) so I can drill new front bolt holes on the base, 10.4 inches from the rear holes (as opposed to the 12-inch default distance).

Some of you may have noticed I didn't show the rear suspension in in my post from last weekend. That's because I only got the passenger side in. Because of

This


Mother


Fucker


Right here.

Even with all the stuff stripped away, this is still a huge pain in the ass to get to unless you drop the fuel filler neck. It took about 20 minutes of constant, millimeter-turns wrenching, to get the driver's side rear out.

The passenger's side was easy:


The driver's side, what a pain in the ass.

But, with both of us slowly turning it (mostly my neighbor), we finally got it in.

Bolted everything back up, attached the new ARB and adjustable endlinks (we'll come back to that), and stepped back to admire our work when I noticed I MOUNTED THE GODDAMN THING BACKWARDS.

So. On to fixing other stuff, I'll come back to the rear driver's suspension when I have regained patience.

I finally got around to addressing the brakes. Teflon tape was obtained from Lowes; they had a Spring Black Friday sale this weekend and some pretty good deals. Not on teflon tape, though.

Turns out, it wasn't the bleed screws. The new calipers came with new banjo bolt crush washers, and I torqued them to Mazda spec. Turns out, Mazda spec is not Generic Brake Caliper brand spec, and every time I was pumping the brakes from inside the car by myself, the banjo bolts were leaking at about 19 psi. With my neighbor in the car I was able to see the damn leak. After-retoruqeing them to "quite tight, like really very", the leak stopped and bleeding them was quick and easy.

Now, back to the endlinks. The front endlinks didn't quite fit when matching them up to the install instructions. The instructions for the rear assumed you had two ears for the bolt to pass through on the lower control arm. I'm not sure what Miata it was that had two ARB endlink ears on each control arm, but mine sure does. Following the instructions (and figuring out what clearances I needed in the assembly) I got left with this slightly-scary contraption:



I am NOT comfortable with that. Having the mount point of the endlink so far down the shaft of the bolt makes me wonder how long it's going to be until that bolt shears. Anyone ever run a endlink attachment setup like this? That is Bolt, washer, ear, three washers, endlink, three washers, nut