When I was in highschool I bought a Miata.
When I was in college I bought another Miata.
At graduation I bought, you guessed it, another Miata. Sometimes a mf do not learn from previous mistakes. I consider it all to be a continuation of the same vision I had when I bought my first car in 2013.
I like these chassis and had a small stockpile of parts from the previous iterations of the car. They're fun to work on and dead simple, parts are still kinda cheap in 2023 and frankly I just like small cars.
At the time of purchasing the car I had some wheels being rebuilt by Wheelflip in California. In between the purchase date and those wheels being completed/shipped to me, I took care of a bunch of engine maintenance and suspension work to sorta baseline the car. So timing belt, seals, ball joints, tie rods, blah blah blah. The car was 90% original and came with one mismatched tire so it pulled hard to the right. The soft top was destroyed so the inside was super moldy. Cleaned it up and took the soft top frame entirely out of the car and slapped a hardtop on. It started and ran well and since this was my third miata I know where to look for rust, which is the primary reason I got rid of the first two chassis. This chassis is gloriously rust-free. Also this one was an a-package car so it came with a Torsen, the last two chassis were open-diff. Some grossness:
Refurbed the calipers too:
I had a hardtop and bride zeta leftover from my black car, I purchased the hardtop for $900 and seeing them for $2200 makes my stomach turn but I will end my rant before I begin. Look at how fuckin stupid this car looked:
Anyways my wheels finally showed up (took like 10 months) and I test fit them and they looked tight:
I was planning on just running a big lip ala corolla styling, so I got a Nue lip which is just a knockoff mazdaspeed a spec lip without the holes. It fits like dogshit which I was not expecting for a $500 piece but oh well:
Got tires on and popped on an r-lip I had laying around as an interim look until the car got painted. Looked stupid but cool and I rolled around like this for a while:
Eventually I rattlecanned the NUE lip and installed a Joyfast exhaust, Racing Bead header, 10lb flywheel, and a bunch of other shit. Light flywheel is the best thing you can do for a Miata IMO. Also rattlecanned red looked super shitty next to the faded oem paint but we will pretend like it doesnt for now:
I also had these laying around for a while but couldnt put them on my 96 chassis because of obd2. My 94 chassis tho....
Fast forward a bunch, I broke some things and fixed some things but the car remained pretty much as-is for a year. Sooooo mo aero mo problems?
Fuck unpainted multicolored cars, all my homies hate unpainted multicolored cars. So I learned how to paint a car and painted my car. It was a horrifying thing to attempt but I am soooo glad that I did.
Sanded:
Painting:
Painted:
Back on the road, just one day after my birthday:
SO I enjoyed that spec of the car for a while. And now that it was painted I wasn't ashamed to drift it, if I am going to be driving shitty I better at least have a decent looking car lol. So I started visiting my local skidpad in summer 2022 and boy I sure did suck. The car performed decently, the ride was a bit soft and I didn't realize how much PSI you really need to run on stock miata power (I was at 45 psi, I wasn't able to link any turns until I bumped it up to 60psi.
Sooooooooooooooooooo back to my ITBs. I installed those over winter, theyre from an AE111 Corolla using a now-discontinued adapter. I am currently running megasquit 2 but I wish I had gone for Link. Oh well! They sound fuckin sick in conjunction with the joyfast exhaust, I am proud to say it is a really really good sounding car. I got it remote-tuned early in the spring, and it runs okay. There are defeintely some off-throttle spot that need smoothing but overall I cannot complain.
Around this time I also put some tires (165/60r14 lol) on the 6.5j +15 TE37s (god size) I bought earlier in the year:
AAAAAAAAAAANNNND that just about catches us up to present day. I'll probably make another lessons-learned post about the four throttle install later when I'm not at work.
Since I already have my flickr up here are a couple other things I've been doing. Got myself a barn find FC. N/A, M/T, 20k miles, got it mostly-baselined and running. I'd like to restore it but it doesn't really need much lol. It was all complete and original down to the tires.
Been helping another homie with his drift na6:
Also painted another homie's aero for his ap1:
ttyl drift club
got a garage vary wing from a friend, it is cool in theory, however it looks odd from most angles. the endplates push too much visual weight to the back (will design new ones) and seeing as it is not colormatched to my car it looks very ebay, very ricer. painting season is well passed in the midwest, but I still felt obligated to put the Correct wheels on and take a picture. did my best to park within the lines for this one:
one of the last skidpad days of the season for me, someone got a bunch of clips of my mediocre driving. I went again a couple days later and checked my tire psi, front was at 40 for some reason, dropped it down to 30 and the car was 100% better lol
went drifting last weekend - two days in a row on two different layouts which was fun. made my homie shit his pants when I decided to understeer directly off track into the rocks 😎. a lot of media came out of the weekend but the only pictures of me on the skidpad were after i punted a cone and had my riding buddy put it back lol. I gotta get better at driving, but for reference I am still on the same pair of spares that I started drifting on in 2022, they probably have 1 more skidpad day left in them before I can say hi to the belts. low power drifting sucks sometimes but not eating tires all the time is awesome imo.
looking at the pictures from the weekend made me realize how unhappy I am with the car's overall appearance, my biggest gripes being ride height/bodyroll, lack of aero on the rear bumper, terrible front lip fitment, and the paint. I don't want to lower the car much more as I am already dragging the frame on a lot of the roads in my city, but I think I could get away with maybe 1/8" or so in conjunction with stiffer springs so the car looks cooler and more "planted" in drift. as for the lip fitment and rear aero - it looks like I need to learn how to fiberglass. The paint is an easy fix, it just needs a cut/buff, maybe some wetsanding on a couple panels. I would also like to get a pair of spares in 15x8ish so I can run the gramlights up front without looking stupid.
the car also has a couple functional problems; the horn stopped working suddenly and there is a clunk up front that I cannot pinpoint. the tune could use some work and I am certain my motor mounts are toast at this point despite having no tangible issue from them. all of this will be fixed in due time, it is still just a fun and cute car which is all that really matters to me.
put the old torsen from this car into my friend's na6 last week and adjusted the bumpstops up front on my car. car drove way better. previously the tires were functioning as my bumpstop, so under load it would "brake" that one corner and I would spin. turns out drifting is much easier when the wheels roll.
also my horn stopped working as I found out when some kid in his mom's Tiguan tried to merge into me, so I gotta fix that. learning how to drive in a miata taught me to be very liberal with my horn usage since people just do not/cannot see you.
went drifting and parked next to the weinermobile last weekend:
fixed nothing, got new wheels
Did you get to try 3rd gear? I struggled to hold a drift in 3rd with a stock 1.6, welded and 4.30. I've been considering 4.44 or even the Kia Sportage 4.778 for that reason
finally had a chance to shakedown the car. 2-way is sweet, 4.44 was probably unnecessary, and 7+ deg of caster is waaay too much for manual steering and a tiny steering wheel. also my front wheels keep trying to eat suspension components/wheel wells so that attributed to a handful of sketchy spins. overall it was just nice to get out and drive. sometime this weekend i will get the car back up on stands and try to dial in my bumpstops and shave whatever is hitting whatever else. ttyl drift club
so i fixed the leaning-out issue from last time by buying a new wideband. actually two widebands because the first one didn't work.
today I finally had some time to work on the car in an effort to make it to a skidpad day tomorrow. my brake lines are rubbing the fucas in a very annoying way, and I haven't come up with a good solution that doesn't involve grinding down the part of the fuca that rubs. The metal fitting can't be clocked much in the other direction because it would pull the wheel and/or be under tension at full lock. I also noticed the alignment guy clocked one of the eccentrics wrong which would surely slip out of alignment if I tried to drift it. There was also a mystery puddle of coolant under the car that I wiped up and could not recreate.
rubbing:
poorly clocked eccentric:
super frustrating stuff but I hope that I can get it resolved in the coming weekend while everyone else is having fun up at final bout. I've been tooting around in the car and it is super hard to not drive like a jackass with the 2-way lol.
also been driving the fc a bunch
been trying to buy a house for the last month so the car has not gotten any attention. started up the car and drove it a whopping 4 blocks to see if it still works and... it does not. the wideband is reading lean even though I haven't changed shit to the car since the tune. however it is in one piece and can limp to my new house, hopefully I can figure out why it's reading lean (seems to run fine tho) and take it in for an alignment.
maybe even drift it perhaps, seeing as i spent my winter putting in a diff and redoing 90% of my suspension. cars are dumb
pic of car from this year's "first drive"
Exciting to see a Miata with that like, classic early 90s flare without dipping into dorky territory. I adore this thing
so fresh, so clean
Wisconsin had some warm weather this weekend and did some stuff to the car. the most time consuming and stupid of the things I did was push rubber bushings into the suspension arms. horrible job without a press, I shouldve gotten poly bushings anyways but it is done. I dry-fitted the suspension arms to make sure they were pushed in straight enough to work and with some persuasion they fit. Genuinely a horrible task. I also installed my depowered rack, equipped with rack risers and angle spacers. I opted to leave the tie rods and boots on the p/s rack in case I choose to go back to hydraulic power steering in the future. Hoping the additional angle doesnt provide too many clearance issues. The old alternator looked really shitty and was charging low so I replaced it with a rockauto jawn. I also ordered some extended ball joints so I can dial in more caster in the front. Oh and I finally pulled out the remaining A/C shit so there is a bunch of room in the bay now which I value.
Earlier this year I found a diff being sold for $50. The seller was under the impression that it was a 1.6 diff but I could easily tell it was a 1.8 unit so I picked that up to build rather than disassemble my perfectly functional torsen. I just need to find a guy to build it lol
This is how you miata. What blue is that? Or custom mix. Looks kinda like Laguna Seca Blue, which i love.
Rad transformation on the Miata dude, and kudos to grabbing a paint gun and giving it hell. I hate painting and have huge respect for those who do it. And that crispy FC is an awesome score 😎
feeling very online today so allow me to make a list of the shit i have to do to this car before spring:
-install maruha rubber suspension bushings/new eccentrics, i'm like 75% done with bushing removal at the moment
-depower steering rack and add tie rod spacers
-fix my front brake lines, they are rubbing on the fuca
-install maruha 2-way and 4.44 rear end, new diff bushings
-put an actual filter on my intake after reviewing how much rubber gets in my engine bay
-new engine mounts
-some interior work, i want to rebuild the whole dash but man i do not work fast so that probably wont happen. I want to work on my seat position because it feels a touch cramped despite being a 155lb 5'10" baby man
-fix my janky mkiii spares so theyre not disgusting
i hope everyone has a pleasant holiday
yes! blue car thread!
Just wanna let you know that your car is my favorite miata and my main inspo for the exterior of my car. Well done!