Adventures in Miatadom

In reply to Swank Force One:

There's stuff I would love to do to this car (Mmmm flares) but I have a pretty narrow budget. I think the biggest ticket item in one shot was the header. I hate spending more than $500 in one shot and usually end up waiting a few checks to get my finances back in order. Things were better this summer when I was consistently turning 45-55 hours (flat rate) but they ditched the dispatcher and the service manage seems to think I'm hourly or something, because I just get warranty oil change or warranty work day in and day out.

And with this, the thread hits 5 pages. Whoo, in the big leagues now.

NickD wrote: In reply to Harvey: I appreciate the advice you have given, but it's just that financially I really can't toss the car and start all over again (Not just mods but maintenance and correcting issues that are always present on used cars). It took me a year of saving and 2 years to get to where it is, it's a bit hard to just start all over again. And like I said before, honestly, if I were to sell the Miata, I'd probably want to move up further than just another (albeit better) Miata.

I know the feeling. I nickel and dimed my way around my Miata for a while and ended up doing a lot of stuff that was initially cheap, but later when I had more money ended up being a waste. Like that Greddy kit. Sure, it was like $750 for the thing used at the time, but it was garbage. I would have been better off just putting that money aside and saving it for a better motor or even a better turbo setup.

I'm just saying it's probably better to put some money into the suspension as that will give you the most bang for your buck with the car. It will make the car faster around the corners and more fun.

The turbo and supercharger stuff on a 1.6 is underwhelming and despite it being relatively cheap will still get you into the car for more than $1000 to put something together, probably closer to $1500. Or you'll buy some used cheap kit for $650-700 and then find out there are all these weak points that need another $500 to solve. Been there, done that.

If only I had a place to keep this

It'd be a great source for engine, trans, rear diff and a rollbar. But seriously, I got nowhere to put it. If I brought home another vehicle, that'd be the end of me.

Wow that would be a fantastic parts car.

Yeah, too bad I have nowhere to put it. I doubt I could convince the guy to just yank the drivetrain and rollbar for me either

I'd be finding a cheap storage unit for that if i were you...

Rent a van and go rip everything out with a friend? Have the remaining shell towed to salvage. Talk about a money saver.

Post in the GRM forum and see if anyone will help out with breaking it down if you have no friends available?

Swank Force One wrote: I'd be finding a cheap storage unit for that if i were you...

Or this. Seriously, if the diff didn't break an arm off and it has a Torsen that thing is worth $1500 in parts

Swank Force One wrote: I'd be finding a cheap storage unit for that if i were you...

Not an awful idea. I figure, seeing as I'm not concerned about the rest of the shell, I should be able to cut/torch/mutilate with reasonable impunity and do it in a weekend.

I have a co-worker who'd big into scrapping stuff. Maybe I can convince him to go pick it up with me and help me strip it down and then in payment I'll give him the hull to scrap. Then sneak the drivetrain over to my sister's and hide it in the big empty barn over there until winter

Yeah, you and a friend should be able to tear a Miata down to nothing in a day or two with enough beer as fuel.

That rollbar is almost worth the price of admission alone.

Swank Force One wrote: Yeah, you and a friend should be able to tear a Miata down to nothing in a day or two with enough beer as fuel. That rollbar is almost worth the price of admission alone.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. There is a storage unit literally across the road from the junkyard. Jam it over there and strip it down over the winter, then cart it across the road and get some money back in the spring. Sell the top and interior goods off over the winter as well.

Harvey wrote:

Swank Force One wrote: I'd be finding a cheap storage unit for that if i were you...

Or this. Seriously, if the diff didn't break an arm off and it has a Torsen that thing is worth $1500 in parts

Seeing as how the damage is confined to the front corner, I'm betting the rear diff is okay.

This is either a bad idea in a good way or a good idea in a bad way. Having a hard time telling.

For $500 investment which you can recoup to some degree by parting out the car I'd say it's a good idea.

In reply to Harvey:

Yeah, I have a friend who wants the seats already. Also, the friend who has the matching Miata wants the 1.6L header off me if this does go through.

Called the guy last night. No response. Left a message and have yet to hear back. Going to try again.

The craigslist ad for the wrecked car is gone and I'm not responsible (directly at least. I may have called 2 or 3 times a day for 4 days and left a message, so that might've had something to do with it).

Sadly I couldn't get my hands on the car. That would have been an amazing parts vehicle for the price. Guess I'll just have to keep my eyes out and check daily.

May have a new driveline donor source. Sadly no differential or roll bar with this one, but still not awful.

Sunday Oct. 11th was the last event of the CNY SCCA chapter and we were back at Cherry Valley Motorsports park. I was curious to see what kind of time improvements I had made since the last 2-lap event here, which was way back in May, not just through modifications (the only real change I had made was the sway bars) but also as a driver, especially because at the previous event, I had finally found my driving aggression I had been missing.

Got there early and it was a beautiful day, sunny, not a cloud in the sky and 70 degrees. Great racing weather.

The car was running strong and sounding great. Last time we were here. my best run time was a 76.761. This time I ran a 73.399, which is a huge improvement. I'm going to say it was largely driver improvement because, as the photos show, the sway bars didn't seem to do a whole lot to control body roll. Whatever springs this car has, quite plainly suck.

Unfortunately competition in the Novice class was stiff, and despite the improvement, I could only manage 6th out of 8 in class and 22nd out of 32 overall. Still, I walked away with 2nd out of 42 in my class for the season and 28th out of 178 overall cars for the season. Not bad for my first attempt at competitively racing, and in a car that's less than optimal to boot.

Some of the other competition highlights:

Brian Ciarlei shook down the Sharlay Machine/Pennon Composite Red Devil F440. This car was actually a Solo Nationals F-Mod winner back in '08. In '09 the car got badly wrecked and sat for a few years before getting rebuilt. The car is currently up for sale to fund an engine for his father's '68 Camaro but Brian says he hopes to get back in racing. The car had a few teething issues but did put down FTD

John Breazzano was still in the process of breaking in his '15 Z51. He showed up at the Enduro with only 61 miles on it and was hoping to get past the 500 mile break-in period before this event. The weather didn't cooperate though, so the car was still hobbled by being able to only run to 4500rpm. It still laid down some fast runs and hopefully next year John will get to hit it's true potential.

It wasn't just that the owner of this Challenger SRT 392 hadn't raced this particular car before, he had never raced before in his life. He still hustled the big Mopar to 2nd place in the Novice class and had a grand time doing it. He assured us he'll be back next year.

We had a '66 Corvair running with us. It had a 350 Chevy swap that was based off a Crown kit. It had been converted in 1971 and the owner has been tweaking it ever since. Despite the 50 year old chassis design, it was brutally fast, finishing in the top 3on raw times.

Ted wants me to put sway bars on his Miata this winter, and this shot shows why. Frustratingly for him, the car spent most of the season getting repainted, only making it for the last 3 events, where it showed real potential, despite being largely stock.

Yuriy Yatsishin was all thumbs-up. And with good reason, he did win the hotly-contested H/Street overall and come in 3rd in the points chase. Of course, there were the usual grumblings of an 8th-gen Civic Si really being a G/Street car

The Fiat brigade was down to one car, shared between both Jay Cartini (The owner of the black Abarth) and Scott Newton (owner of a white Abarth that was sidelined with a delaminating tire). Scott ended up running the fastest time in the car and had the most points in G/S, but Jay won G/Street because he actually met minimum attendance, unlike Scott.

The infamous Tom Celica was back doing it's best tricycle impression. Gerrit was shooting for H/Street win but couldn't overcome Yuriy's Si. I went for a ride in this car after timed runs were over and it is a truly terrifying ride.

Simon Robinson's Accord sedan may look crusty and kind of beat on the outside, but it's full of home-brewed tech and it took the STS class by a huge margin. He says it's getting boost over the winter and going into SSM class, which should be interesting

Davey Thai ended up taking the Novice event win and the season win, beating me by 9 points.

Coming into the last event, Chris Gifford and his blisteringly fast S2000 were tied with Karl Hughes for the points lead. Karl skipped this event, meaning Chris won just by showing up. But that fact, and the fact that his S2000's rear differential was making ugly noises, didn't mean that Chris took it easy. He drove like his usual madman self and finished 1st in PAX and won the chapter.

Well, no major updates, the car has been sitting since mid-November, due to the state coating the roads with a ton of salt over the chance of a light dusting of snow and I've been busy whipping my new-to-me Grand Cherokee into DD condition. But we got a ton of rain which washed all the salt off the road, so today I fired it up and took it for a quick spin to scrub the rust off the rotors and work the flat spots out of the tires. If this summer someone had told me that I was going to be driving the Miata on Christmas Day with the top down, I would have called them a liar.

In other news, I finally managed to acquire an M-Edition e-brake handle to round out my Nardi steering wheel and shift knob, which has been quite an ordeal finding. Also, after Christmas and my birthday (Jan. 6th) I'm going to finally order some coilovers and toss my Tokico blues and mystery springs in the scrap heap.

Also, for Christmas, I told my dad that I'd pay his entry fee and let him co-drive the Miata at an autocross, which oughta be pretty fun. He says that I "just want to see him make a fool of himself". I pointed out that everyone has made a fool of themselves at an autocross before. After all, I somehow managed to miss 2nd gear once and tossed away an otherwise solid run.

Well, Brown Santa came to work today and dropped off my FM/VMAXX Classic coilovers. Mmmmmm. Can't wait to get these on the car.

Next part ordered is probably going to be a clutch kit. I have no idea how old the clutch is in the car and at the end of last season I started hitting it at 4,000RPM off the line. Probably not a bad idea to put a new one in and maybe make a move to a lighter flywheel while I'm at it.

Went ahead and ordered up everything I'm going to need for a clutch job. Upper and lower turret gaskets, rear main seal, transmission input shaft seal, braided stainless clutch line, slave cylinder and a Stage 1 Happy Meal from Flyin' Miata with the 10lb flywheel. A bit of uncertainty on the lightweight flywheel but I'm hoping the pros outweigh the cons.

Hopefully I'll be able to start working on it soon, as the weather is already starting to get nice enough to drive it pretty soon and the race season is getting ever closer. But first, I have to look at the Grand Prix and see what called it quits in the front end of that and put intake gaskets in the duallie.

Well, the Miata has finally entered the garage and the teardown has begun. The Grand Prix got condemned after finding that the Torrington bearing that acts as a thrush washer behind the front differential carrier had disintegrated. This ran the carrier into the park pawl and chewed that all up and broke the spring, which would require splitting the transaxle case. Looking at the rear control arms convinced us it was not a good move to go any further.

So, took the Miata for another drive to burn more rust off the rotor and then got to work. I was under the car yanking the driveshaft, catalytic converter, speedometer cable and electrical connectors while my father pulled the console, turret gasket, shifter and coil pack.

Yeah, that's a trashed upper turret gasket.

Lower turret gasket looked just as bad and the turret itself was absolutely dry. I am curious how whoever worked on this before managed to berk the tunnel up at the 5 o'clock position that bad.

So, picked at the Miata some more last night and got the transmission out last night. And was greeted with the nice surprise of dismantler's numbers on top. The VIN tag also does not match the rest of the car. Wonderful. Must have gotten damaged during whatever accident it suffered at some point in it's life. Checking the VIN, it's a very early transmission, pre-July 1989. Which means the new late 1.6L slave I ordered is incorrect. Doing a little looking tho, I'm fairly certain that swapping the pushrod should make everything jive.

The inside of the bellhousing looks nice and clean too, right? Looks like the pan gasket is leaking on the engine but that'll have to wait for next winter.

The pressure plate certainly doesn't look particularly happy. Good thing it's getting replaced.

The clutch was a DK (Donkey Kong? )clutch. Not in awful shape but it was getting near the rivets in a few places.

No photo of it, but the previous butcher that hacked on this thing also managed to booger up the hardline to the slave cylinder and the fitting, so, gotta make a new hard line. Fortunately I have a bunch of that ssweet copper-nickel brake line and a Mastercool hydraulic flare tool, so no biggie.

Kind of stuck waiting at this point until my new clutch fork seal arrives and I test my theory on the slave cylinder. I can bolt up the new flywheel/clutch/pressure plate assembly and clean the bellhousing out but that's about it. Maybe start working on the coilover swap if the delay is too long.

So, first things first, I took both slave cylinders and did a little comparison.

The actual body of the cylinder appears exactly the same

The pistons are a little deeper, with the newer style having a deeper and wider opening. But the old pushrod fit in it just fine. During the process of comparing the stroke, I learned the slave cylinder on the car wasn't traveling the last 1/2" of stroke, I'm amazed that I didn't have more issues.

The only major difference seemed to be the design and length of the pushrods. Swapping the old style pushrod into the new-style slave cylinder seemed to make everything kosher, so we're going to give it a shot and hope for the best.

Also, whatever butcher worked on this car previously had kinked the hard line to the slave cylinder, so that the nut actually didn't turn on the line and I had to spin the cylinder off the nut.

So, my father busted out his impressive line-forming skills and Mastercool hydraulic flaring tool and made a new line out of that copper-nickel alloy line. The new line ended up a near-exact replica, just not as berked.

Also discovered that, once again, a previous mechanic had screwed more stuff up. Seriously, who was this clown working on it? The pilot bearing was only half installed in the flyweel, which had made the bearings start coming apart (note the rusty particulate all over)

Got the new flywheel out, cleaned the oil off of it, installed the new pilot bearing and then realized that I was out of Loc-Tite, so had to put off installing the new assembly until the next day.

So, in the meantime I set the transmission up over a pan made from a cut-down 55-gallon drum and cleaned it up with mineral spirits and some brushes. Mmmmm, nice and shiney.

So, called it a night. Really can't do much more until I get some Loc-Tite and the new clutch fork boot arrives. If that shows up today, should easily be able to button the car up this weekend and start on the coilovers.

Edit: Ugh, stupid Photobucket is being trash and won't show some of the photos. Have to fix that when I get home.