PS Duce NA-T Miata

Good 00s style. 2p miesters are undefeated

Silver is indeed the best color. Blessed.

this car came together really well, you painted the fuck out of it lol. nice work

I love this thing

56k warning

Got to taking the rest of the panels off of the car and bringing them to the shop. Got in there and started prepping them, I didnt really worry about all the small dings and what not because I wanted to get it done fast and I also knew it would stress me out if I had a perfectly straight car by the end of this. It turned out really good for the most part though.

Was really happy with the progress but it took longer than I had expected due to schedules not lining up and what not. At this point it wasn't even halfway done and it had been a month so I really wanted to do all I could. I took the parts I had and put them in storage and whenever I had time after work until sundown I would work on prepping the car. I had bought some supplies and an electric da just to do this.

Started off masking the interior off after the doors and top were off. Ended up kinda redoing the bottom because I covered the door jambs up lol.

Started one night on the jambs. This sucked just hitting it for so long by hand with a scotch brite pad.

Then on an off day I woke up and tackled the rest of the chassis. Quarters, rockers, a-pillars, trunk jamb and above the windshield.

This is how it was after a lot of work, then on the weekend I threw some taillights back in and drove it to the shop like this to get started.

Was ridiculous but fun to drive this again after over a month of not driving it ;(

Pulled the car into the booth, masked it off and gave it one last wipe down before applying sealer to it. This was the biggest part of the project and was a surreal moment for me.

Sealer down

Then base

Then finally clear!

The next day I went to go pick up the car from the shop after the clear dried. Got a little excited after I got home. Was so relieved that the biggest piece to this project was done.

Brought the doors and my old trunk home to put them on. Right before I went to sleep I found out it was going to pour the next day while at work so this wasn't a fun night trying to tackle this myself.

Eventually brought home the bumpers to put on. Slowly it was getting there.

During all of this I picked up a straighter trunk lid than the one I had that was hail damaged. Once I dug into it though I found a lot of uneven body filler so I got rid of all that. In the background was a straighter hood I picked up probably two years before this and it was rattlecanned badly and had a few problem areas. After trying again and again to fix it, I realized I'm not a body guy and didn't have the patience to get it straight. This just gave me an excuse to buy a vented fiberglass hood (which I wanted anyways) but I left the trunk lid to my buddy to fix.

He did a great job, got that put on along with my trunk spoiler and was loving it.

Decided to go with m2 1028 rep mirrors since I couldn't seem to get my hands on bomex mirrors for so long. Also got jass performance low profile headlights because I didn't wanna pay 1k plus for rs actives.

The skirts were actually the second pieces to get painted all that time ago. I had initially bought some starlight metal flake from tropical glitz and wanted to just have a dusting of it in the paint. We forgot about it when we painted the rear bumper, but I thought if we did it on the skirts and I liked it we would redo the bumper and do the rest of the car with it. I had another buddy at the shop and they both kept wanting to add more flake to it while I was sitting there sweating. He sprayed it and it came out as this mess, and we never touched it again for the rest of the car. Fast forward to now, the car was nearing completion so I had to bring them out just to see them on the car. I realized he probably wouldn't want to redo these and I also wanted the car to be done so I convinced myself they weren't too bad and added a bit of n style sorta flare to everything.

Put on some skirt decals and called it there. Even though the car was only missing a hood and the top to be painted I still couldn't visualize the completed look.

Took the top over, prepped it, masked it, wiped it down and got it sprayed.

Next day I took it home and put it on. I was insanely happy at this point, I could finally see it. After months of work and waiting and more working and waiting it finally had paid off. Never thought this would happen but was so happy to see this car transform into a totally different machine from a fresh color change.

Hood on. Still not painted to this day, hope that happens soon because it really bothers me to see this car not "complete" but still very happy with it.

Sorry for the long post, had a lot of pictures from this and wanted to knock it out haha.

Went out and drove another event, finally being able to drive 100% and enjoy it while being able to focus on getting better as a driver. Took way too long to get here, but was trying my best to keep good style in the car while being able to perform. I went and drove my heart out and had a blast trying new things and getting better.

As you can see, I drove without any aero this day. I had taken it off and it was just sitting at the house for a special reason. After this event, I had cut my season short due to something I'd been wanting to do for a very long time. It was finally time to address the big dent in the quarter, the peeling clear coat, fading paint, and raw gel coated aero. A buddy of mine was going to paint my car and help me out.

I took the car home after the event and started tearing stuff off of it making it super ugly haha. I went to my buddys shop that night and picked out a color and brought my rear bumper over just to start.

The color on the left is what I ended up picking after going through fan books of colors for way longer than I should have. Nissan KR4 sierra silver metallic is what I came up with, and after seeing the bumper done I got really excited.

At this point the biggest spacer I could run with these wheels was a 5mm and anything more I would rub the tab where the bumper and fender join. I had already shaved it down as much as I could and figured I did my best to fit these up front, so I gave up. Really bummed me out since they looked so gangster in the front. I searched for more wheels and eventually found a pair of work meister s1 2p in 15x7.5 +4 for cheap on yaj. I picked them up, although not being an ideal spec since I really love deep looking wheels. They actually didn't turn out too bad. I ended up throwing arp extended wheel studs on the front so I could use my bolt on spacers as slip ons so I wouldn't have to cut any studs. I ended up using these with a 20mm spacer effectively making them a 15x7.5 -16, giving me an extra 30mm of clearance over the goocars.

Now I went out to test these and finally, nothing hit. I was so happy that I finally found my solution, although not ideally how I wanted to.

Also around this time, I got rid of my resonator and muffler on my exhaust and put on a uras d1 slant tail effectively making it straight piped. It looked so much cooler and sounded much better, I like to call it my wannabe sr car. With the muffler and resonator on, it didnt sound cool, was very drony because of the can muffler and wasn't very loud at all.

So now at this point I had caved into buying some destroy or die adjustable fucas. I figured the added adjustability for camber would really help but mainly got them due to you guessed it, more clearance. I put these on once I got them in and aligned the car. Now I was really ready...

Driving this on almost a daily basis on about a tenth of a degree toe out on the front was not a good idea haha

I went to another track thats local to me for the first time. Its really just a downhill into a skidpad. Drove to test to see if everything worked.

Aaaand no, it didnt really. Car felt weird but again I thought maybe its because i've never driven here. Checked my wheels and they were hitting the new fucas now. Wasn't as bad as before, so I drove the rest of the day just trying with less angle but that wasn't easy.

Thinking now that I had solved all my issues before the season really started kicking into full gear, including swapping ecus, giving the car a bit of a refresh and style up, putting on new flcas with tons more clearance and getting my handbrake to work, I packed up to hit my first event of the year probably around springtime.

Feeling confident about everything this time, I went out there and gave it all I got. But something was terribly wrong. I couldn't even do one lap. I gave myself the benefit of the doubt and thought maybe I'm just rusty from not driving for a couple months. I took it a little slower and drove less aggressive, was a little better but kept spinning and something just didnt feel right. I went back to pits to find the goocars rubbing the fucas now, a lot. I was so sick of this and spent the rest of the day in pits thinking and trying to use different spacers, etc.

After I got home, I drove my car to the shop the next day and had the smart idea that I would just notch my ucas, because that would really fix it wouldn't it :P

Real smart idea I know. Just cut out the structural integrity of the control arm, and it wasn't pretty. On my way home, decided to try and throw the car into lock to put a lot of load on it. Coming out of it, the car just kinda bogged down and I straightened out to drive away. Felt weird. Got home and checked it out, and here's what I saw.

After the previous main issue being that my wheels were hitting my lcas, I decided to put on some destroy or die adjustable lcas mainly for the amount of clearance they would give me. Now that I thought the problem was fixed, I had gone out to test and see if the Goocars would clear up front. Found a spot and only drove for about 10 minutes before some unexpected company came to visit. Was feeling good with how the car was looking and after that session it had looked like the wheels cleared! or not... but I discovered that later on.

I dont know why I have this picture of the destroy or die flcas next to stock flcas since I was running extended stock flcas before this but here they are

I had also just gotten my new seat in. I wanted to get a zeta 2 but shirtstuckedin came out with their driving force v2 seats that I thought were really cool earlier the previous year. Zeta style shape with a kevlar backed shell looked pretty cool to me. The seat came in and I loved it, except it didnt fit in my garagestar bracket well. The seat sat very high and very far forward.

I ordered a bride type fo seat rail and that solved as much of the problem as it could. The nature of the seat is that it sits very high/shallow. Although I have it working for now, its not the most comfortable but looks cool and gets the job done. I plan on doing a foamectomy to the bottom cushion when I have some free time in the near future.

Oh and I also bought some project mu d1 spec pads for the rear since my handbrake never worked no matter what. These are indeed the sauce, they work at all speeds and lock up so good.

During this time it had become the offseason so I took advantage as much as I could with what I could do. I ordered a kit, a new seat to replace my rep vios, some defi gauges, a nardi classic and some other items. I also resealed the front of the engine, did some more maitenence and waited. Eventually I had put the gauges in, new to me steering wheel and then the kit finally came in.

I had to do some trimming to the bumper so it would fit with my intercooler. PS Duce changed the design of the front bumper recently to have a duct from the front center opening back.

After I had put it on I fell in love. Completely changed the look of the car within a few months in the right direction and I was very happy with where it was heading so far.

P.S. Mastermind NA is the shit if you need anything as quick as possible since we're all impatient as fuck :P

Towards the end of 2022 marked the end of the small wheel style era. Although I love old school small wheel cars it wasn't my first love. What caught my eye with drifting was all the big kit big wheel flashy cars I had seen in final bout and D1GP videos. I had decided to do what really would make me happy and start trying to piece together a machine much like the ones that got me into this.

I had started with getting back onto 15s. 16s are cool but there were some specific wheels that I could only get in 15s that I like, and I already experienced enough trouble that 16s just wouldn't work for me. I had picked up a pair of 15x9 +0 work goocars from upgarage and put my old enkei pf05s back on the rear.

I also had another issue at this time. When I boosted the car I initially went with a speedyefi standalone ecu. At this point it had been over a year since I put that in, and it was issue after issue. I had 3 people look at it because I thought I couldnt figure it out since I was self tuning. Car still started, and drove awful. It felt like a chore to drive it, and I couldn't drive it without tweaking stuff every single time. I switched to a MSPNP2 and it made the biggest difference. Tuned it for a day and since have been able to enjoy a turn key ready to drive car ever since.

Started spectating more drift events when I couldnt drive, loved meeting new friends and getting a lot of help from people. I had driven a couple more events now all on 14s with the more aggressive wheels up front, but the same issue I had hitting my lcas persisted. Being not as bad as before, I left the setup for now, enjoyed driving and getting better.

Early 2022 I had driven my first drift event. The night before I had picked up a ps duce front bumper and threw it on to drive the event. Driving was slow but did better than I thought I would do and loved every bit of it. Except for one big issue, my front wheels kept hitting my LCAs while in drift. I had to figure this out so I needed a more aggressive wheel setup up front.

Car was ugly, was running a reverse stagger setup, vastly mismatched panels and peeling clearcoat. It was all over the place. Eventually on my quest to find more cool 14s in good specs I decided to get some placeholders so the car could be on all 14s.

I enjoyed the car like this for just a few months, then I came across a 1 owner mx83 cressida. I bought it, plan was to keep the miata this fun street car, and make the mx83 into a cool drift car. Since I was on a limited budget with the miata already, I don't know what I expected. I ended up selling the cressida a few months later and shifting focus to what I had already started.

As indecisive as I am, I decided to try and pull off an old school small wheel setup. I picked

up a pair of SSR mk2s and a half na half nb bumper from a buddy.

Threw those on and some duraflex skirts for the time being.

I had bought a full NA8 driveline swap, and got the 4.1 open diff I had welded. Put in some poly diff bushings and put it in the car. I also bought some fablab cut knuckles, extended stock FLCAs and extended front brake lines. This is where my tie rod issues started, but thats covered in another thread here.

very rad miata

Despite drifting being the reason that really hooked me into cars like watching final bout 1 and 2 videos, watching team animal style, building drift cars in forza, playing need for speed etc, I went a different path at first. I wanted to "build" a stance car, throwing away everything I had learned up to this point. Boring stuff, don't need to talk about it. After that I wanted to turbo the car, so I started gathering parts and taking the car in a little different direction to be a basic street car.

I had put a new clutch in and installed all the turbo parts I had stocked up in a weekend. This car was still my daily driver at this point.

Gonna try to start this off in hopes of updating it when I have time. I really wanted a s or r chassis to get into a first car. Was young and couldn’t afford it without trying to get someone to co sign a loan for me. In hindsight it was probably best that I didn’t import a car because I had no idea what I was looking at and probably would’ve ended up with a piece of junk. Anyways in april of 2020 I picked up this bone stock 92 NA6 and this is where it all started.

Was very happy with this purchase, hardtop and rust free clean chassis except for the respray and had seen some hail.

All this thing had was a steering wheel and a mishimoto radiator.

2p meisters best miata wheel ever

can confirm cool machine