Hello everyone, my name is Jake, and I have finally been convinced to start a build thread by the wonderful GreaseMonkey (thanks Chad). So I guess a few things to start off, since I'm starting this thread after almost 3 years of ownership (IM SORRY!! i was nervous to start). But alas, I am currently in college, so I definitely have a tight budget of sorts. I also purchased the car completely bone stock, aside from having a Sebring supercharger. The car had 77,500 miles when I bought it, and the supercharger was put on before the car hit 5,000 miles. I am also the 4th owner of the car. The original owner installed the supercharger, then sold the car to a guy, who sold the car to his brother, who I bought it from. The gentleman I bought it from was roughly 60 years old and used the car solely as a weekend car, but had to sell it when his wife decided to downsize their fleet. (Lucky Me!) The car has never seen salt or snow, as evident by the underside being super clean, and no rust (other than a little surface rust on typical places), which meant this car was a great platform.
Picture from about 10 minutes after buying the car! You can clearly see how excited I was about purchasing the car.
The engine bay when I purchased the car. Some definite cleaning was in order!
So this is where my photo library of modifications starts to slim, so I will just explain what mods I did, and throw some pictures in along the way.
So my first mod was installing an ISR exhaust. I enjoy the sound, but I had issues of blowing out the baffling about a year after installing, but ISR warrantied it no problem. Unfortunately, I believe my exhaust has started to blow out again, so I think this summer I will be going the custom route.
I drove the car stock for around 3 months with just the supercharger and exhaust, and then put the car away for winter (gotta love that Wisconsin snow and salt, NOT). This is where the fun began.
The first winter with the car I decided I wanted to focus solely on aesthetics. Bear with me here, because I'm not proud of what I did either, but it looked pretty decent and I did a good job of making sure there was minimal damage to the car.
So I installed Yonaka coilovers, which I still have on the car today, and I happen to really enjoy. I put garagestar two inch top hats on the coilovers for all the lows. I bought 15x8 Advanti Storm 1s to put on the car, and 195/45/r15 toyo proxes t1r tires. I also purchased a cold air intake from ddmworks for my m45 supercharger. In addition, I picked up garagestar frame rail braces to a) protect the frame rails from road damage and b) make the car sturdier. The r package rep lip was also added to make the car look better. And a kg works rep spoiler because I like the look. I know theres a lot of debate on rep lips/spoilers vs real ones, but I personally feel like running ebay parts for these don't make much difference because its just plastic. I also put on a skid plate to protect my oil pan. And i painted my valve cover red, but I don't have any good pictures on hand.
This was how the car sat after the long winter. It was very low, even if it doesnt look it in the picture. The frame rail braces were dragging almost the entire time. It was awful to drive in all honesty, and after a few short months, I decided something had to be done.
So once I decided I wasnt about the low life, I pulled the top hats off, and put on the ones that came with the coilovers. I raised the car to a respectable height, and began to really enjoy driving the car. I also threw on toyo r888r's because I wanted grip. This would prove to be a mistake, because they lasted all of about 5-6000 miles on the street. Oh well, live and learn.
This is how it then sat. Also I love this picture because, well, I think its awesome having the huge truck and my tiny little miata. Not much was done in the way of modifications that summer... Come September, I put a raceland header on, which I very much enjoy, and have had no issues with whatsoever. Then in november I picked up a hardtop for $700. It was white, had no defroster, and needed a little bit of work done to it. It was perfect.
I promptly put it on my car, drove with it two or three times, and parked the car for the winter. This is when the fun was about to begin...
I decided that, as most people do, my hardtop should match my car. After discussing it with my dad, and one of his friends, we decided that it would be pretty easy to just repaint my whole car while doing the hardtop, as the paint was not in the best condition. The car had also suffered from some damage earlier in its life on the passenger side, and the respray was not the best. So I got to work. I started just before January of 2018 and worked every night after school for around 3 hours. Weekends I would work all day saturday, and come back after work to sand some more. My friend helped me to shave the antenna hole, as well as the windshield washer fluid squirter holes. The car was starting to look more like a pile of parts than a real car.
But that changed pretty quickly. I decided to use House of kolor orion silver, as it matched the OEM silverstone pretty close, but it had more flake in the paint. (Sidenote: the reason I decided to keep the car silver was because 1. Everyone in the local car scene knew me as the kid with the Silver Supercharged Miata, and 2. I had only ever seen 2 other silver NA's up to that point. As of now I've only ever seen 3 others i person. But I digress...) I also decided to lay Roth Metal Flake rainbow flake over the paint to give it a little more pop, and to make my car stand out. The black stripe under the door was done with House of Kolor jet black, along with the spoiler and the front lip. So the car got painted in April, and as soon as it got home, I had a slew of parts to install that I had been sitting on.
This included a ZerekFab X-brace roll bar with gussets and a harness bar, as well as door bar from Zerek. I also traded a friend my skid plate for some underglow, so that went on too. I believe I also installed some other little odds and ends, like engine bay beauty washers, and relocated the coolant overflow to the wheel well at this time. Once the car was all assembled, I began to drive it and really enjoy it. And i put on hankook ventus rs4's on. So far I've liked these tires, but they dont last quite as long as I would like, and the grip is okay... If you have any ideas for what tires I should run for good grip and decent treadlife, let me know. I'm open to anything really. I plan on doing a few autocross events this coming summer, but its mainly a weekend driver that I love pushing hard. I suppose you could call it a "canyon car" but Wisconsin sort of lacks the whole "canyon" part. Anywho....
Here was me and some friends having fun at his graduation party. I also really enjoy this shot because the shadows and lighting makes our cars look neat. You can also see my underglow in this picture. So for my graduation present, my friends all pitched in and got my Nardi Deep Corn 330mm leather steering wheel. I already had an NRG 2.8 quick release, along with a short hub, so I put that in right away. (Sorry no pictures, I didnt have plans of doing a build thread then, so thats why my pictures are lacking for now ) But alas, I got to enjoying the feel of steering, and me being able to fit in the car better, as I am 6'2".
Fourth of july fun, thanks to my mom for the picture. So i kept driving the car, and didnt do much over summer either... I'm sorry i lack a lot of description and parts I've put in, but I cant exactly remember what I put on and when, because it has all sort of blended together. This summer was mainly just about enjoying the car and having fun.
Just a little roller with the hardtop off
So this is where the car sat roughly 2 months ago. No i didnt drive the car in the winter, I just pulled it out of the garage to take some pictures in the side driveway I have at my house. I thought some pictures in the snow would be good. Also I made sure there was no salt in the driveway (i'm kind of anal about not ruining my car lol). And for anyone wondering, yes my car got stuck on the ice so my mom had to pull me out. But this past winter I swapped in a 5 speed from a 99 nb, because my 1.6 5 speed started grinding second gear, and I got a great deal on the trans from a friend who blew up his miata.
I also got a GV style lip, and Feed side skirts, which are currently in paint. Once they come back, I plan on building a splitter for the car for all the downforces and to make it look neat. I also picked up some Aerowolf canards for the splitter & sideskirts, and i'm excited to see how they look. So I think that I'm pretty much up to date on the car. Now I can start making regular updates as I go along, and again, I apologize for lack of pictures and most likely forgetting a bunch of things that I did to the car. When i get back home from college, I'll be sure to take more pictures of how my car looks so I can update you all. I hope you all enjoyed this so far, and see you soon!
P.s. feel free to ask any questions. I'll try my best to remember/ answer them