His ND is a 2021 and just sneaking in under warranty, so hopefully he will be taken care of. I'm not sure exactly when the worst of the ND trans issues were fixed, but clearly it's not all of them. He's a talented and mechanically sympathetic driver, but at the end of the day he was limited by reasonable street tire grip and factory brakes overheating. The transmission not being able to handle that on a 17k mile well maintained car doing HPDE is a pretty massive fail for a company with as much racing support as Mazda. The transmission was clearly designed to be as efficient as possible (read:marginally sized) for the 1.5L engine available elsewhere, with the 2.0 being a late addition to the program.

He's aware of the NC transmission swap possibility, but it's a pretty big expense and workload when the appeal of an ND was a reliable sporty car with new car levels of maintenance. I'm trying to convince him that if he wants to continue modifying and tracking a car, an NC is the right ticket. If I was starting over in Miatadom, that's what I would buy.

 

Ahh, gotcha Nate. That's kinda what I figured. I've never had a plug that was properly torqued seize and it seems to me like there's way more potential downsides of anti seizing them vs running em in dry. With that outta the way...

Yooo, congrats on the successful track day with the new ("new") motor! Well-deserved after the recent struggles. I'm sure it was properly gratifying to be back out on track even having to deal with traffic like that. All said and done, you got the thing back up and running quick! Love to see it.

Big bummer on the ND trans failure. I think that's the lowest mileage failure I've heard of with one of those. We had one or two guys over here kill their transmissions around 40 or 50k miles. Don't remember if they were ND1's or ND2's, though. I should know this: is there a difference with those transmissions between model years?

 

AIUI, there were something like five different versions of that box. It's a gearbox serial number thing as described to me, though obviously the current cars should have the latest (strongest? most reliable?) box.

 

Thanks guys! It really was a great feeling to get back out on track and feel confident about it. This engine deserves much love and care. I might have to start keeping an eye out for any additional ones like it at this price point. These aren't as common as 2.5 MZRs, and the ones I see in the U-Pull yards are generally thrashed but uncrashed - so they're there for a mechanical issue.

I checked out the ND over lunch and the sound is obvious even in neutral. There's a constant whine when in neutral with the clutch pedal all the way out. Push the clutch pedal down and it goes away. It's not crazy ridiculous loud, but it is obvious and very different from before. Apparently it's there in every gear, but I have not ridden along. He took it to a Mazda dealer and the tech "couldn't hear it". Maybe said tech has got the air impact running too often without ear protection.

 

Last spring just before pulling the engine, when I went to engage the A/C, nada. Nothing. I ignored it for obvious reasons. Today I went on a diagnostic adventure.

First step was getting on the stretch belt I'm running in place of the unicorn manual steering idler pulley. I hate these things, but it saves 3lbs and I have since lost (thrown out) the belt for the unicorn pulley so it had to be done.



The engine idled up and the A/C light came on the HVAC controls when I pushed the button, so clearly the ECU wants to have the compressor engage. So I ruled out low refrigerant.

I checked for 12v at the clutch. Nothing. So the clutch may not be failed. I grabbed a length of wire and connected it directly from the fuse box to the clutch. Success! The AC hard lines changed temperature and freon was moving through the inspection window. I also moved further upstream and checked that it was not the thermoswitch at the compressor that had failed. Plugging in behind that had no issue.



Alright, no big deal let's just go on to rockauto annnd...



Have I ever mentioned that I love standard format maintenance parts? I might need to convert this one over to the Bosch cube style relay like I did for the fuel pump relay.

 

Unfortunately, the AC fix was not that simple. More multimeter work is needed, I think I have a wiring issue. I'm not reading 12v at the relay either on the signal side, or the power feed side, and yet both of those circuits have other power draws related to the AC system working just fine.

I wanna celebrate my Miatas return to form, and the finally installed spoiler, with a professional picture. I'm trying to decide between these two.

 

I'd vote for the top photo. Not sure why, maybe because the stripes in the background are a bit more interesting visually?

The car looks good in both though.

 

Seconded!

 

Thirdid! (?)

 

Fourthed!

Going back a few pages, did you ever complete/finalize the 3d model for the fusebox and OBD port mount?

 

Life is short, buy all the track pics.

 

^^^ Wot he said.

 

Good bit of wisdom ^^ Numero uno for me as well. Car looks sharp in both, though! You'd never know it's had three different engines in the last year lol