Dragula

Hi, I'm Paul. I've been here since around spring but I've mostly been gathering parts and info up until now so I never got around to doing an intro thread.

I've had a fairly varied history with cars. Started out with an 88 Mustang 5.0 which I still have and have done alot of work to over the years. I picked up a 65 mustang 289 years later and then started getting into imports a little with an 88 nissan 200sx s12 that I bought as a winter beater and later decided to swap a ka24e 240sx motor into.
I got big into subarus and bought a 2005 wrx which I modded fairly heavily until I decided to move up and traded for a 2007 STi which I currently own.



Which brings me to why I'm here.

I picked up this 94 miata M-edition in spring of this year. I had been wanting a miata since I rode in my friends miata and finally came upon a decent deal.
I bought the car bone stock and picked up a megasquirt from Braineack soon after joining. The suspension was a little tired so I got a set of tein coilovers and a set of kosei k1's after talking to a friend who does spec miata about some good lightweight wheels.

This summer I decided to sell my 65 mustang to a friend and used the profits to pick up a used Begi S5 turbo kit with a t3super60.
So heres roughly how the car sits at the moment.




So, mods so far:
Kosei k1's
Tein basics with ISC tophats
Boss Frog Clearview rollbar
Megasquirt
Begi S5 turbo kit w/T3super60 turbo
rx-7 550cc injectors
Garage Vary front lip
Artech 3" resonated exhaust
S2000 seats

My stock seats were a bit rough as well so I picked up a set of s2000 seats. I basically had to make entirely new fixed mounts and weld them to the seat bottoms to keep the seats low.


So thats about it for now. Future plans are to raise the car a bit, its far too low right now, aluminum radiator, swaybars, depower the steering rack and delete the a/c.

Cliffs: Hi

seraph

iTrader: (4)

very nice and clean car! Welcome, what part of MA?

CPSmith

Welcome! Both of your cars are hawt. Loving the S2K seats. Stellar photography as well!

Dragula

West Springfield actually. Though I'm not around much during the week.

Thanks. The seats were a pain in the *** but well worth it.

seraph

iTrader: (4)

We'll need to meet up sometime, but my car is "winterized" right now.

xeros15

iTrader: (1)

****** nice clean cars dude.

ShaZam508

Welcome to the forum form a local MassHole!

Dragula

Could definitely do that. There's actually quite a few of us in the area now. One friend of mine is in Chicopee and has had his 91 (I think) miata for about 6 months now and is trying to get around to turboing it and another friend also in Chicopee just picked up a 96 this past weekend.

Disaster

iTrader: (1)

The seats look great. Did you end up at the same height as stock seats after the custom mounts?

lordrigamus

iTrader: (14)

Welcome aboard!

Dragula

Seat height is a little lower than stock, they're tall seats though so it looks higher. With my stock seats, if I sat up straight I could easily smack my head on the rollbar. With these seats I'm nowhere near. The base of the back of my head is right at the bottom of the hole in the headrest.

For the mounts I made, I cut off the front and rear mounting tabs and welded a piece of flat bar between them. Then I put the seat on top of them and tacked them directly to the seat pan as low as they would go. Then I pulled the tacked seats/brackets out of the car and welded a bunch of Standoffs and gussets from the brackets to the seat base. Bolting them in was the hardest part.

The only problem is, the seats dont fit flush to the back wall so with that and the lumbar support, I'm a little closer to the wheel than I was with the stock seats.

ShaZam508

Jw but how hard do you think it would be to replicate those seat rails?

Dragula

The rails themselves are nothing. Getting them lined up and tacked while in the car without melting anything is the tricky bit. That and snaking your arm around the back to bolt them in is a bit of a pain as well.

Here's some pics I took while I was making them. Its only cellphone quality though so nothing special. And I ran out of welding gas before finishing the last few welds and it was a friday night so I never took pics of the finished welds.

Unmodified rails.


Then I lopped the ends off and drilled out the rivets holding the upper channel onto the front end.


Took some thick metal bar and sized it up on the ends.


And welded everything together.


The s2k rails needed some modification as well. They keep the base connected to the seat back so they can't be eliminated. However they are too far to the outside to fit well between the side sill and the transmission tunnel so they need to be modified.


I drilled out the rivets and separated the sliders from the actual support section. I also had to take some metal out of the support to go over the various bumps in the miata floor.



Finally, I lightly bolted the modified rails to the car and placed the seat on top of them and got it into a suitable position.
The only accessible part at this point was a small amount of metal on the seat pan above the new rails. I tacked the bottom of the seat to the front of the rail while in the car and then removed the seat from the car and make some stronger welds and cut several gussets to connect the seat bottom to the rails and to the existing s2k rails.




And thats about it. No sliders so bolting the rears was a huge pain.

drftma

Why do I NEVER see anyone from MA out and about?........clearly lurking lol

drftma

BTW I'm from Plymouth, driving a 1990 NA white wheels