AndyHollis

Motor fired right up first time on 1/13/15.

http://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=...type=2&theater

We were the third known running KMiata in the country (David's prototype, Jason Lumpkin in DFW (he made his own header) and ours.

AndyHollis

Intake/filter mostly made of stuff laying around the garage. Includes IAT and support brackets.

Also, various other misc plumbing.

AndyHollis

<<placeholder post for cooling system specifics>>

AndyHollis

Four days later...wheels down and test drive.

Top down, 'natch.

AndyHollis

Did a quick garage alignment on the front end (max camber, reset toe to zero) due to the crossmember/steering rack swap, and the raised ride height. Also mounted up the 6UL's. Look how high the car sits in the nose with the lighter Honda motor (and deleted a/c & ps). It's so high, the maxxed camber was still a little positive.




And here's a nice one of the swap itself...

AndyHollis

At this point, I'd have loved to have simply driven this thing the way it was as a street car for awhile. What a hoot. Even the stock TSX motor at about 230hp (with bolt-ons and tune) feels like what a Miata always should have been. Big fat flat torque pushing the car along (not V8 torque, but plenty). None of this rev to the moon stuff just to get it moving. It does sound a little odd, though, probably due to the header design.

But there's deadlines to meet and places to be...so track prep was next. Nice to meet the first major milestone, though.

curly

iTrader: (25)

Price of freshness for us not in the know? Same with the new charge harness, how much for these and what is your source?

AndyHollis

Each year, we head to Daytona for the Rolex 24. It's a great way to kick off the racing season. We always learn a few new tricks from talking with friends on various teams, and its always a great set of races (Conti series and Tudor).

Grassroots Motorsports always does a big shindig there, with displays, car corral, party, tours and massive quantities of free donuts each morning. GRM also sponsors One Lap of America and we are the magazine entry in the event, covering the story from the road. Seemed like a great time to debut the car as a work in progress, so we loaded up and headed to Florida.

AndyHollis

We took a small detour to visit Treasure Coast Miata just south of Daytona to have them install one of their lightweight fiberglass race hardtops, with the weatherproof street kit. Great product from great people.

Bare top is 10 lbs...with "street kit" lexan window and seals, it's 20 lbs. It allows for a higher roll cage because it lacks the OE top's inner panels. Also got one of their glass trunk lids (6 lbs)...did not install yet.

AndyHollis

And this is us getting our "waxer" on at the GRM compound at the Rolex.

Car attracted tons of attention when the hood was up....not so much otherwise.

Pictures were shot and an article is forthcoming in GRM on the early stages of the build. Once done, there will be a follow-up, probably after One Lap itself.

AndyHollis

Car is now at Winding Road Racing to be caged by Juliann Pokorny (ex Team MER, CJ Wilson Racing, Gilfus Racing Enterprises, etc.). She's done quite a few Miata cages over the years. We'll be doing a hybrid of ideas from MiataCage and the work she did with Gilfus. Most of this is driven by the need for unhelmeted transit safety on both sides of the car, streetable ingress-egress, while not compromising on-track safety for the helmeted/harnessed/HANS'd driver in a time-trial style environment. All that with an overriding goal of being light and keeping the stock dash skin and HVAC parts.

Main hoop will be floor-mounted on fabbed boxes just above the OE ones tying in the rockers, floor pan and rear vertical. Doing this, instead of cutting out the OE box and going to the floor, allows the main hoop to be more vertical and creates space behind the unhelmeted passenger. The actual bar top ends up in the same place as a MiataCage. The vertical sections will have tabs that through-bolt to the boxed sections where the inertia reels and soft-top typically mount.

Front down tubes will have kicks along the top to keep them flush to the hardtop and away from unhelmeted occupants. We'll also gusset them to the A-pillar with dimple-died panels...for strength and because it looks cool.

Windshield has been removed so as to move the eyebrow as far forward as possible and still get 360-degree welds. Eyebrow also gets a kick-out.

Debating long and hard about replacing the OE dash bar with a custom tube, we ended up deciding to use just the OE piece, cutting off the unnecessary bracketry for airbag and center console mounts...and putting plates on the ends to better attach it to the down tubes (matching through-bolted plates go on down tubes). This allows the dash to be unbolted and removed, while giving similar levels of strength to a custom straight bar welded to the down tubes. I'll post pics as we begin that part. Suffice it to say that it should give the best of both worlds. No cutting of the OE box section strength, yet light and bolt-in.

Overhead, we'll do a fore-aft H tube in the middle of the roof, instead of the usual MiataCage style Z diagonal. I prefer the diagonal for strength at the rollover-critical windshield top, but I'm really worried about proximity unhelmeted. I sit fairly upright in the seat and close to the controls. A diagonal overhead bar would be a massive target for my forehead.

At this point, door bars are going to be simple, old-school rockers only (we'll leave the OE in-door bars. That's what I have in the CRX. I might eventually add a low "Y" to the driver's side, but I'm going with this for now.

I did all the prep work...along with Mr Freeze.



Tar mats gone, interior stripped:



Test refit of the OE dash bar...we'll be cutting away a fair bit of bracketry. Its 16 lbs as it sits, while bare tube of the same length is about 6 lbs. The stock tube is very similar in OD and gauge to 1.5" OD x .095 wall.

AndyHollis

Progress shot from a week ago.

AndyHollis

Two days later the rear section was complete and tacked in (main hoop, rear downtubes and diagonal). Front down tube was bent and we tested it for helmeted and unhelmeted clearance. Looks like the seat will have to offset about 1" to the right of the steering wheel to gain enough margin to the side bar, even with the seat on the floorboards.

Also set the harness bar height with the HANS on.

Coming together fast now.




Note the use of a cut-down NA dash bar for 8 lb weight savings. Will be cutting the NA dash plastic in half a la Targa Miata (Keith Tanner).



Every day I pull about 5 more lbs out of the car. Getting harder now. Curious to see how heavy the cage will be. I predict 80 lbs.

AndyHollis

And now for some weighty discussion...

Here's the weight before stripping the interior for cage install. Note the HVAC under dash components were all missing from the car at this point. Approximately 20 lbs worth. Fuel was at about two gallons.



After stripping seats, dash and carpet (door panels still in).



Target is 2050 with cage and seat (CRX was 1950), but looking more like 2100 as a first pass.

NiklasFalk

iTrader: (1)

Convenient to be a little smaller when caging a Miata, that harness bar would pass trough my spine

Nice writeup, keep it coming

AndyHollis

I typically buy through HPD (Honda Performance Development) which is their version of Mazdaspeed. Once you sign up for the program (Google Honda Racing Line), you can order stuff online at below dealer cost, though you will end up paying sales tax and shipping. And you have to be careful with the latter, since stuff can come from more than one warehouse and you get hit with higher charges. But they contact you with the order total before it commits, so you can pull parts off if needed.

I also have a shop account with a local dealership that is at 15% off full retail. There is a warehouse in Dallas, and a truck runs to Austin every night, so when I need something small and NOW, I go that route.

You can also order from a whole bevy of online dealership storefronts. I Like HondaAcuraOnline since they carry both Honda and Acura parts.

AFHKparts.com is another great resource, as the sales guys are all Honda K-series fanatics, so they keep all the important stuff in stock (including some Euro-spec stuff like RRC manifolds), and can tell you exactly which part you need for your combination.

As for the specific question, engine harness is $265 from HPD and charge harness is $110...plus tax and ship. Used parts are maybe half that.

Note that the pigtails are all available from Honda, so you can easily make your own and eliminate excess wire. I'll probably go that route eventually.

Satisaii

Thanks for posting this here. Will give us some helpful insights on our build.

revlimiter

iTrader: (1)

This thread is eating into my work time this morning. Amazing build Andy!

troy9472

Awesome write up. This will make mine so much easier.

underdog

iTrader: (6)

Fantastic! Thank you for documenting the process and good luck with it!