Another track day down and in the books! Yesterday I went to a TNiA event at Charlotte again. It was a HOT one. When the event started at 4pm, it was 97* out. Thankfully, RSX Friend got there right as the gates opened and snagged us a garage spot.

As mentioned earlier, since the last event I've realigned the car with slightly more front camber, pretty much dead on the recommended 0.5* more front than rear. I could feel the difference on the street, so I backed off on the RARB from my 14mm on the softest setting to a 12mm unit. Funny how I tried to carve my own path and wound up exactly where the professionals told me I would be at my ride height and spring rate. I've also got no hardtop this time and ran with the soft top up, back window zipped down, and no front spats.

On the drive there I had the AC blasting on max and my oil temps were pushing 240 on the highway. Seeing as I normally run 250 on track, I was a bit concerned about how things would go.



Parked up in the garage.

After the first session it was the usual check pressures, oil level, and generally just make sure everything held up. On one wheel of the RSX, we found some kind of liquid flung out from the wheel onto the tire. Looking at the caliper, there was a white residue on it coming from the bleeders. Crap. The Wilwood NPT bleeders were leaking! We quickly got it in the air and cranked them down. Some of them were just slightly more than finger tight.

These are racing brakes that came with some kind of thread sealant installed, they shouldn't need to be tightened up after the first high heat cycle! That's the intended use case! Either ship them dry or uninstalled, or torqued tight enough to avoid coming loose on track!



Queued up for a run. The advanced group was packed full of Mustangs and Corvettes. Two BMWs, one other Miata, and the RSX were it. Pretty small run group all things considered.



My last session was the best, unsurprisingly. Slightly cooler weather and cloud cover plus more time on track will do that. I'm pretty happy with my time all things considered. I'm only a half a second off what I ran last time when it was 75* instead of 95* with worse aero. Of course, the increased camber didn't hurt either. But those last three laps were really consistent!

Like last time, my main takeaway is that I need to focus more on getting the most out of my braking. Straightening out my braking zones has helped, and I feel like I'm harder on the brake pedal than before, but I still need to focus more on eliminating distractions like downshifting and trailbraking as much as possible to get consistently at the limit of the tires in a straight line.

The car itself handled the heat fine. Oil temps stayed around 250, the suspension was well balanced and I didn't make any adjustments throughout the event. I did notice however that my rear brake rotors were running much hotter than the fronts. Using a temp gun (unreliable on shiny metal) after the cooldown lap, my fronts showed 190* and the rears 350*. I may want to remove the rear dust shields and add some kind of air vane to cool these down just for pad life.




We had a nice sunset leaving the the track.

During the parade laps, we swapped cars and I took the RSX for a spin. Man, what a different experience! His seat is far more vertical, the steering wheel is closer, and of course it's a FWD K24. Honestly, I think the go-kart description everyone loves to give a Miata fits his car better. I couldn't go to the limit of course, but I got a few WOTs in and maybe 75% of the cornering limit. I couldn't believe how the combo of a helical diff and FWD just pulled you wherever the front wheels were pointed. The new ball joints didn't make for a harsh ride either. The K24 is just such a flexible engine with torque everywhere. I can see why people love putting these in Miatas.

I'm really not sure what's next for the car other than paint. It just goes and goes with no issues at all. Maybe I need to jump back onto that Mk60E5 swap.

 

Oh, I forgot to include the fastest lap video!

 

Nice, dude! Glad to hear it went swimmingly (aside from maybe swimming in your own sweat).

Those last three laps are tight, congrats on that. 0.3s spread is awesome for three laps in a row.

All in all, it seems like you probably drove faster overall than your last time out. Looser chassis with no hardtop and 20* hotter ambient temps would amount notably to higher lap times, I'd think, even considering your improvements with the camber.

Your brake temps seem awfully strange, though. I wonder if the readings were accurate. I remember reading even Emilio saying once that they've never found a need for more than sport rear brakes on the SuperMiata rigs, and have never ducted the rears either.

Oh, also mad respect to the guy tracking his Cobra R. Don't see many of those around, much less at the track.

 

Sadly it's just a replica, it was there last time too! He built it from a bare shell with a 351 Windsor in place of the stock modular.

I don't really NEED more rear brake cooling, but I do like keeping them as cool as possible so I can continue to run less aggressive pads. I saw a post somewhere on here where a guy said that removing the dust shields and directing air at the inside of the solid rotor dropped his temps by 100C! When I ran stock Sport package brakes front and rear, they were pretty much the same visually. I don't really trust the infrared thermometer, but the difference between front and rear with the new BBK is visible to the naked eye. I could practically hold on to my front caliper.

In contrast, the RSX is running Gloc R10s in his Superlites (or the Cobalt equivalent) and he can't brake below 30mph on the street without waking up the whole block. It's really cut back on how often he street drives it. I told him to look into the GS1 pads so he can switch back and forth.

The speaking of Mustangs though, the coolest car I saw there was definitely this SN95. I'm not sure which engine this is and TNIAs are so fast paced I often don't get to talk to as many people as I'd like, so I didn't even get to meet the guy. I actually saved the first picture on my phone from a Facebook post on a national group like Professional Awesome Technical Forum or something, so seeing it in person was sweet!






Is this an early 4V like out of a 90's Lincoln?

 

As soon as I posted my reply, I thought to myself "It's probably a replica" hahaha. Still a good looking car, though!

Totally forgot about the rotor shields lol. I removed mine so long ago that I forgot they were ever there. Would be very interested to see how much of a difference removing them makes. I assumed the difference was somewhat negligible but maybe I'm wrong! In reference to your buddy's setup, I run GS1s on the street and an R12/R10 F/R combo for the track. R10s and above on the street are brutal (and make me feel bad for my rotors).

That SN95 is sick as hell, though! Yeah, that's an early 4.6L 4v, albeit decked out with lots of shiny things. They put those motors in the Navigators and Marauders as well. The 4v equivalent makes the heads on the 2v and 3v modular motors look tiny as hell haha. Damn that's a sick looking car. Funny enough, the only guy I've ever seen track a decked out SN95 was at our TNIA events last year.

 

Sometimes there's nothin' like a big 'ole stompin' V8 baby

 

Nice driving! Glad you had fun out there.

That SN95 does seem really cool. Would like to hear it if you have a video.

 

The SN95 is Ricky_Roadracer on Instagram. The car has a pretty cool story behind it. The motor is a built 4v modular motor that would have come in a 96+ Cobra and the Lincoln Mark VIII

 

Oh yeah! That thing sounds proper!

Also, your signature is legendary

 

Yesterday I signed up for another Track Night at Charlotte. I gave the car a quick once over when I changed the tires last night.



That black thing in the top two rotor vanes? It's a chunk of tire clag!

The Afcos are looking good otherwise. I'm not sure what to think of the pad wear on these chonky boys - On one hand, it's more than I would have expected for only 7,000 miles. On the other, these are street pads and I've gone to the rough equivalent of 7 track days, including some sessions of up to one hour of continuous use on track.

Lastly, I've had another thought on the brake bleeders weeping. Since they only do it after a bleed, it's probably not a leak. My current theory is that the bleeders aren't weeping, they simply have a bit of brake fluid hanging out in the much larger internal space of the Earls speed bleeders.




The other day I hit a big heave in the road on my commute faster than usual and heard a big scrape. It was a big enough hit to tear every single fender liner pin and actually scrape the chassis. Look like I need to change something, be it ride height, spring rate, or add some bump stop spacers. I'll probably do the latter.



I never shared this, but I also got a CarbonMiata spoiler.



It's not sitting flush due to the Mazda badge on the trunk. Unfortunately this one will cover my third brake light. I may add a light strip under the trunk lip to compensate.

__________________________________________________ ____________________________

"This build is boring"

No kidding. I miss working on my car and wish I could make daily progress posts like some people. Instead I've been working on my house. Houses are bullshit.

The basement flooded earlier this year because the people who sold us their deceased mothers house did a crap job of moving the gutter drains underground, which got broken/clogged and pushed a ton of water into the basement, destroying the carpet and wall paneling.



When I took the water damaged wood paneling off, I found a lot of termite damage. This wall between my garage and basement got torn down and rebuilt.


No more bullshit interior door a 5 year old could punch through after drinking a Monster. We doubled up on studs next to the door, tied this non-structural wall to the floor joist above with multiple deck Strong Ties, then used plywood on the garage side instead of drywall. Much stronger for shelving and hanging tools off of without any worry of damage.



I had to redo a ton of the furring strips on the block wall due to termite damage. I added a bit of insulation before doing drywall. I need to finish mudding, sanding, paint, and clean up the carpet glue residue on the floor. Then I can move on from house work for a bit!



This thing is supposed to get a manual swap, and that'll likely be my first project once the basement is done. I took it on a 2,000 mile road trip to see family in northern Quebec a few weeks back.

The next projects/changes on the Miata are:

1. Get my hardtop back. The painter is taking his time, but the price was right and I'm enjoying top down season.
2. Paint spoiler and the front tire wickers
3. Mk60E5 - This is a doozy. Bench testing, pump mounting bracket design, tone ring and sensor install, wiring, and running new hydraulic lines are all pretty decent projects on their own. I'm going to try to make this as clean and OEM+ as I can.

 

Holy heck, big updates! Even considering the majority of it was house work That's brutal, but looks like the repairs came out well so far!

Honestly, that pad wear looks pretty good to me for 7k miles and ~7 track days, especially being that they're street pads. A new pair of those things will be nearly gone after 7 track days once you bolt the turbo on! Lol.

Stoked to see the project(s) moving along. You've got a lot of ***** in motion right now!

 

Good job on the housework, that's so much work.

Agree with Zak, pads seem to be holding up really well.

Love that XJ. I have a soft spot for those things and that one looks pretty damn clean.

These can be used for solving the rub in the front, though you can also just pull the fender liners and enjoy that sweet, sweet bump travel.

https://www.949racing.com/product/5-...r-90-05-miata/

We also have these, if they fit your shock shaft and you don't already have a solution. https://www.949racing.com/product/xida-travel-limiters/

Just sharing in case it helps

 

Project houses are cool, although they certainly detract from project car time.

Really interested to see how the ABS install goes, that's something I've had rolling around in the back of my head for a bit.

 

Damn, I should've grabbed a set of those top hat spacers for my NA. That's really smart. I couldn't get the car lower than a 4.75" pinch weld height on 245s without substantial rubbing in the front, and didn't know such an item existed. +1 for the education.

 

Good brake ducting made a huge difference in front pad wear for me. Huge difference. I didn't look to see what you were doing in that department.

 

I guess that settles my pad life questions! I have no ducting, I've removed the backing plates and that's it. It will happen at some point because I'm dead set on running the most streetable pads as I can get away with on track. A full replacement set of the Stoptech Sport 309 pads would cost me about $175 before shipping. That might cover a single axle of real race pads.

Thanks for the kind words on the house you guys. It feels like we're the first people to live in or work on this house that are trying to do anything beyond the bare minimum. Its a good location, great neighbors, a nice lot, but it's got so many foundational (literally) flaws in the structure and layout that there's no way I want to be committed to it long term. Options were pretty limited in May 2021! We're just looking to make this a nicer place to live for a few years.

Those slip on shock shaft spacers are exactly what I was thinking of! the Foxes come with some spacers, but they're not notched to be installed after the shock is assembled. Hmmm... decisions decisions. I'll have to do some measuring.

Last night was another TNiA event at Charlotte. I snuck out of work early and made the 1 hour trek just in time for the drivers meeting.


Oh look, a stock Miata! I kept the packing pretty minimal.

A little too minimal... I didn't check the GoPro for a memory card before I left!

Some cool cars made it out.


I haven't seen a 1G Eclipse/Talon/Laser in years! Much less at the track.


These two guys thundered around the track, one of them even spun out into T1. Glad to see classic iron get used properly instead of another cookie cutter restomod.

I know it's not the fast setup, but meat BFGoodrich T/A Radials just make a classic muscle car look so, so mean.



My personal favorite of the day though was this K20 swapped MR2. He easily walked me in the straights.


The owner previously had a Lotus and wanted to bring some of the feel into his MR2.

I sat in the thing to get a feel and I was pretty disappointed in these widely praised seats. Maybe the foam had collapsed, but there was no padding in the lower back region and my belt would have caused immense pain in a short amount of actual drive time. Everything else though just felt so right. The clear view all around. The 80's wing gauge cluster with all the buttons right at hand. The aluminum radio delete panels. All of it, so good!



It was my first time seeing an Emira in person. What a beautiful car!



I set a new personal best! It was during my last session and I was really going for it, hence the lower consistency as I made several mistakes along the way. This is my third time at this track (in the dry) and I feel like I'm getting much more confident.

I'm much more frequently riding the edge of lockup under braking. Seems to be all in the rear despite having backed off even more on the prop valve. I'm considering downsizing the caliper itself to the 1.8 version, which has a smaller piston but will still fit on the Sport rear bracket I have.

After 27,000 miles and several years of track days, the FLCA-F poly/bronze bushings have begun to succumb to their inevitable fate.



The tophat flange is getting crushed. I see a few options here.

1. Replace with another Energy suspension bushing and start treating it as a service item.
2. Raid my parts pile and use the Supermiata bushing. I have the revised, tighter tolerance bushings that were made to address this problem. I'd like to keep my kit complete for future use though, these are discontinued and I have another Miata I want to tinker with.
3. Delrin. Not seeing much downside to this path, other than machining work. This is my most likely route.
4. Spherical bearing. Cool racecar stuff, but I have some concerns.

Some time back, I came across this info on the Trackable Miatas Facebook page. It piqued my interest for sure, I love OEM parts swaps.

Source:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/MiataRacePrep/permalink/844572062977062/?paipv=0&eav=AfYVTV59LXHCQ5xY2xaDjzk1xFaEVyW64maRZ6rj59AwRHgKRhbXVBgy8QVW6CPTM7E
I bought one soon after, just to take a look at it.



While an OEM spherical would be super cool, I am a bit hesitant on this one. It would likely end up taking the entire braking load just on this one bearing, and that would be putting force through its least strong axis. These are designed for radial loads, not longitudinal.

I reached out to the guy that posted this info to see how they were holding up. Bronson too, as he said he was experimenting with them. Fingers crossed I get good feedback!

 

That looks like it could be a really cool solution. I feel like a spherical there would work just fine even with those loads.

If you want to try another poly, we do sell the bits individually on our site. Type in "863 spare parts" in our site search, all individual components of the kit are still available, we just won't sell anyone a whole kit.

 

Great work on the new PB, and also on the house project. Nice to see a picture of your XJ too. It seems like a clean OEM+ example.

Hell yeah. A DSM out and about and boosting! Those muscle cars are super cool too.

Sucks about the bushing failure, and that has me sweating a bit as I'm running bronze bearings with Energy Suspension bushings too . Is this a common or expected failure for them? Granted that's some decent mileage and use, and I usually have unrealistic expectations.

 

The whole cookie cutter issue is really bizarre. I'm guessing it'll happen to every car eventually, but some cars slice the bushings right away - this was the primary motivation for changing from our original orange bushings to the firmer, much more durable black bushings for our now-discontinued 863 kit. Really don't know why some cars do it immediately, and some take 30k miles.

 

Not bad for a Wednesday night, man! Agreed with you on the ol' Detroit Muscle™ with radials. Those cars just look so good shod with those tires.

Congrats on the PB as well! Nice consistency in that session. Looks like you might have a tiny bit more to give too, seeing that your 9th lap time was almost identical to lap 2, and the car was obviously much hotter at that point.