Tetanus: A Miata Rat Rod Pickup Truck #2000Challenge

Three years ago Steve (m1sandman) bought a 95 Miata with a salvage title for the price of the go-fast parts on it- which he wanted for his NA street Miata. Afterwards, he started a part-out and arrived at a running/driving 95 Miata (with 99 engine swap) for $0. We were already considering a GRM Challenge build, looking for something other than a Miata since we'd built several before. But this 95 was the undeniably simple answer. We started throwing out ideas of what we could do to make it as non-Miata as possible. Ultimately we arrived at rat rod pickup truck. I put together some drawings to start the process after some discussion - including a decision to use a wagon for the radiator surround.

Next came stripping it of everything body-wise that identified it as a Miata. We’d planning to reskin the doors with something else, but later decided to leave them as the one original body part and work within their design on the rest of the panels we created.

I built an ecu for it to run FreeEMS (open source engine management). It was the 42nd car world-wide to start/run on FreeEMS.

I stuck in the stock Miata ecu case to use the stock wiring and connector.

We decided to use a pony keg as a fuel tank in the spirit of rat-rodiness. In hindsight that wasn’t time well spent since it would only gain some concours points and took a huge amount of time- including the build of a gravity fed fuel surge tank. In the end the car was quite ugly and dangerous. Since there were still a lot of sharp edges it earned it the name Tetanus.



How relaxed is this build? We showed up for the 2016 challenge and the car had yet to drive under its own power. 
Fortunately no issues and at just over 1600lbs it was quick and fun.

https://youtu.be/e9VmdZX_AVs

https://youtu.be/CpCIA_2gu9Y

Our goal for 2017 was to build a proper NHRA roll bar per the rules, finish the quarter panels and pickup bed. We found a place in Clearwater, FL that sells a Miata rollbar kit with extended legs on the main hoop. This allows a “cut to fit” Miata roll bar for $250 and we took advantage of the long main hoop lags to give us some added roll bar height. We also picked up a set of used drag slicks to better our quarter mile and a 5 gallon baffled fuel cell for $20.

Our autocross performance improved while our drag times worsened from 2016. Our drag slicks were just to large and rubbed on the big end of the track as they grew.

Since the drags were canceled for 2018 due to repaving, we focused on the presentation. We cleaned up the interior, gave it some paint and built a center console.

Also built a dash.

Picked up some super cheap eBay gauges and added custom faces.

Designed and built a configurable tailgate that works as a normal gate flat/up, spoiler or is removable.

 

Created a Tetanus logo. Carved a block cut of the logo that was then stamped as a pattern on the diy denim scrap door cards. Added a shifter boot made from camo scraps.

We created a ficticious sponsor "Aunt Patty’s Opossum Parts" for our concours presentation. Played that out on tshirts, decals, temporary tattoos and a custom gauge housing for the tacho.

Painted up some free honda steelies and “whitewalled” street tires from a Ford Ranger pickup for concours.

Performance enhancements for 2018 included some semi-solid bolt-through motor mounts, no-name 15x8 wheels, a bed cover from renovation scrap and some old Hoosier take-offs.

The current shirt art is the last thing I’ve created. It will serve as our team shirt for 2019.

Boost is next for 2019. I have a crate of stock exhaust manifolds to use for the the build. We have an eBay “evo” turbo sitting on the shelf and a proper set of drag slicks and wheels. 

Too cool , I love the old wagen for the grill shell......

Probably needs some fuzzy dice and maybe a bouncing head opposum doll on the back panel.......

Great job

Plus one for the bouncing head opposum doll. I have never seen one, but will be on the lookout!

Following along :D

How cum  ‘y’all are spellin “possum” astartin wif an “O”??

I love this car, and this team!  Great guys!!

We originally had an opossum on the radiator surround, but the smell become overwhelming, so we moved to an American Anole carcass. We'll revisit the opossum at a later date, though it looks far less like a opossum now.

As members of the National Opossum Society we are obliged to that spelling. 

I like this build a lot.  I dare you to register it for street use too.

FE3tMX5 said:

I built an ecu for it to run FreeEMS (open source engine management). It was the 42nd car world-wide to start/run on FreeEMS.

I'm sorry, what?  You built that? I can barely get the radio in the Jeep to work!

TurnerX19 said:

Plus one for the bouncing head opposum doll. I have never seen one, but will be on the lookout!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/OTEY-THE-POSSUM-ARKANSAS-TRAVELERS-MASCOT-BOBBLEHEAD-NIB-/153196099526

In reply to MulletTruck :

that didn't take long...

I'm torn on this car. My initial reaction is to hate it. Then I look at it in detail and so much of it is thought out and well done that it's hard to hate it. Then it drives well and you guys are nice and fun and then I start to like it. That makes me start to dislike you for making me like something that I hate and I end up very conflicted. 

Your shirt design is on point though. No hate. Well done. 

The level of skill and beauty in this thing is awesome.  Can you get it to be street legal?  You are spurring me on to learn to weld, and making me regret selling my 90 NA.  Well done!

This thing is on so many levels of awesome!

Tell us more about the homebuilt EMS, is there ay way to do this without building a board from scratch?

I'm currently sitting front of my computer with my mouth open in disbelief... this is amazing!

In reply to AnthonyGS & thedoc : re: Street legal terror - Working on it. Because f l o r i d a 

In reply to pinchvalve : re: ECU - This was the second one, so easier than the first. It's not in my nature to do this kind of thing, but I'm deeply intrigued by it and therefore inspired to learn.

In reply to MulletTruck : re: bobblehead: So now I need to make one from scrap so it doesn't hit the budget! ;)

 mazdeuce - Seth said:

I'm torn on this car... very conflicted.  Your shirt design is on point though. No hate. Well done. 

I get it. It's just how I feel about my uncontrollable lust for hideous obscure cars. When you look at it and the conflict is gone, we'll know we've done it right. That's what we're working towards. We just have a very long list to go through. Thanks @ the shirt. It is available - though I'm unsure of the rules here for selling.

In reply to thedoc: Welders are fun! and useful. :D

In reply to spacecadet : Thanks!

BirgerBuilder said:

Tell us more about the homebuilt EMS, is there ay way to do this without building a board from scratch?

The hardware is a kit that you buy on various levels from a bare board to everything you need to assembled. Of course the price goes up with the level of completion. NOW there is a complete SMD board that needs only minor board/hardware changes to operate with each specific application. And it's ~$150. I have one and plan to complete it to swap with the current board (pictured) to save some budget $.

Now that I've said all that. This is not the easy way to go for engine management. Because it is opensource and only in an alpha state with a very limited number of installations, support is also limited. I did this not because of the challenge car but because I wanted to be part of the opensource engine management project (FreeEMS) and learn. For far less time spent and similar $ you can pick up an old Megasquirt, get similar resutls and have a very large knowledge base to pull from. I used an old Link Electro EMS on a turbo Miata for many years- which is very similar to a MS1. I've picked up both for ~$125-150. They'll do everything a challenge car "needs".