Our road laws, the government, and the police, are all pretty strict when it comes to speeding, vehicle modifications, any sort of 'hooning', etc. The likes of Mighty Car Mods are not indicative of the real world.

 

So I've been daily driving this car for the last week trying to rack up some miles and it's been a riot.

Some of you may have seen our post on Instagram, but we weighed the car. 2389 lbs. with a half tank. That's with a full interior, roll bar, beefy drivetrain, frame rails, 15x10s, K20 swap, and all the turbo parts. No A/C or P/S at the moment. So I'm really happy with that weight.

We re-did a portion of the exhaust and also recirculated the wastegate dump into the downpipe to make it more of a chill street car. We also swapped to an OEM E46 clutch, which holds the power just fine and it's super comfy on the street. Feels like a stock Miata or BMW clutch now. Shifting is buttery smooth through the ZF 6-speed with the heavy stainless ****.

I also datalogged some temps and was quite pleased. On an 80 degree day, I couldn't get the water temp past 180 degrees when doing WOT pulls in 3rd and 4th gear. Sitting in traffic the temp creeps up to 190 but as soon as you get moving it drops. IATs stayed in the 90s. So for a street car, the basic Mishimoto radiator and unvented hood is doing just fine. We don't plan on tracking this car heavily, but the plan is to pick up a spare beater hood for the louver install and only swap it on for the track. I'm curious to hear what ECTs you turbo BP guys see on the street and how the cooling compares to a turbo K.

Also, new license plate for this silly fast car. And the Hondata license plate frame just because.

 

What a crazy build. What it amazes me is that (from your description at least) it sounds you could daily this thing easily.

 

Oh yeah, you totally can, and I have been. I've left my regular daily in the shop all week and have been rolling around in this. If I were to make it a full-time daily I'd pick up a hard top and also put the A/C back in.

 

hmm, I wonder if anyone makes an Air Conditioning Kit for these K swaps?

 

I talked with you guys at the Gap, sick car. If I had not just built my BP I would be going this route.

 

joking, right?

(I can't sense sarcasm on interwebernet)

 

I think the company is called K something

special K?

 

Very much so. I was setting them up to be like

(Kmiata voice) Oh, now that you mention it. We offer this easy-to-install air conditioning kit for all NA and NB K swapped Miatas!

 

here's the most ridiculous question I'll probably ask about this build, but what are you seeing for MPG while commuting it around? I'd imagine its still pretty damn good?

 

<3

 

Haha thanks guys. Yeah, our A/C kit is definitely compatible. We just chose to delete it because any time we're driving it the top is down.

It's not bad for e85. Probably 20 mpg. When I filled up yesterday, e85 was $2.25 and 93 was $3.85, so it's a pretty cheap car to drive overall. If you stay out of boost it's still just a stock 2.0L in a light car.

 

Fixed.

 

You know me too well.

 

Aww psyber, you were so close too...

 

Got back from Laguna Seca at 3am last night, such a long drive. But I have to say, this little car was such a champ! We ended up running it in every single A and B group the entire weekend, 20 sessions total. We didn't push it super hard through the corners because it's still a way overpowered car on street tires with stock seat belts, but it blasted down every straight at full boost every session.

Zero issues whatsoever, it ran flawlessly. Water temps stayed pegged at 180 degrees the entire time. Oil at 240. It pulled hard on every car there, including cars with V8 power. We went through 100 gallons of e85 between the two cars.

Cooling mods include the basic Mishimoto radiator that was in the car when we bought it, and a custom undertray because the factory one didn't fit with the intercooler and K series oil pan. It doesn't even have hood louvers. Granted, we had cool weather all weekend, but overall I'm thrilled with this thing. Now that I'm home I'm going to daily it again every day. The car was dreamed up in the truck on the way back from Laguna Seca in 2016, down to the colors and the seats. So having it on track at the event was pretty cool for us.

 

Would love to see some on-board footage

 

This car was sexy. I thought the red interior was too much in pictures. But in person it's awesome.

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Red interiors are never too much. I stole a ride on Sunday afternoon after the crowds were gone. Wacky fast.

 

Thanks guys, yeah the car is really wild and not the ideal track car but it's still so much fun. This thing would need some really significant tire/aero/brake upgrades to put this power to good use.

Here's a video of John taking a couple laps. As you can tell, he is taking it pretty easy. At 1:55 you can see how hard the car pulls coming out of T11. He was seeing speeds over 120 before the top of the hill. As Andrew noticed when riding with me, the boost comes on very gradually so it's actually easier to drive on track than I thought it would be, and the throttle is easy to modulate.


The car has my old 11.75" Wilwood kit on the front, and in 1.5 days at these speeds we managed to put sveral huge cracks in new rotors.