After 5 years of living in the desert you tend to get over things getting dirty fast. Key thing is upkeep and maintenance. You'll wash your car out here and it will be covered in a fine layer of silt 6 hours later.

I really need to find a place with a 2 car garage for a decent price.

 

The master and clutch slaves are so cheap, just throw new ones on. Like under 20 bucks cheap.

 

^so true. It's going to be a brand new car. Amazing.

Are you keeping track of how much you're spending on this?

 

I have the receipts . It still isn't a lot, though, even if it looks so. Personal labor invested and what not.

 

I'm glad to see you taking some time off for your niece. Very cool.

 

I can't imagine it's a ton. Most of it is your insomniacal labor.

 

I am going to surpass Vlad for most props given, primarily based off of this thread.

Jeff - I have to assume you won't, but just in case your desire for completion overwhelms your aesthetics... Please make sure to paint/powdercoat that valve cover before final installation.

 

Wow

That front subframe assembly looks as good, if not better than new.

I feel so inferior and insufficient right now.

2014 Build of the Year (and 2013 tear down of the year...) !

 

She is awesome. I am always playing a movie in the background and last night I had Hercules on and so she bundled up in a blanket and watched while I worked, a lot of fun.

If I keep surfing the classifieds it will be a ton!

Yeah that is on the list, I might just wrinkle coat it like the valve cover for complete matching aesthetics, we'll see.

Thanks! I really never thought I'd go this far, but again I had the mentality of "while the car is in pieces..." and so of course like every other project I do it has gone to 11.

It would be fun to submit it to a couple websites "miata of the month" competitions.

No updates yet. Currently fighting some pretty smashed up threads on the ball joints with a "die" since my tap set doesn't have a wide enough diameter for the 1.25 threads. Slow, curse worthy work.

 

Last update for the day.

Found this awesome needle grease gun attachment which makes it so you don't need to worry about removing the boot to get new grease in.



Found out I was being stupid with the ball joints and needed to tension the control arms to the spindle/hub to compress the ball joint enough that it would stop spinning when tightening the castle nuts.

Used a 3" inch C-clamp with a condom on it to prevent paint damage.



Tension the ball joints just enough so you can get the ball joints torqued down to +/- 25 ft lbs.



Steering rack refinished. Waiting on the new bushings from flyin' miata since I accidentally ordered the manual steering rack version.



brakes all finished up. Going to wait on the lines until I get everything hooked up and ready to bleed.





Put the wheels on for fun.

 

Prop for using condom while GF is out of town!

 

Wow man, this thing is going to fly back together before you even know it at this rate.

Are you getting some stainless braided brake/clutch lines? You should

 

Also, just had a thought. You should implement some extra hidden kill switches under the dash or somewhere super secret, considering how your last miata ended.

I could not imagine having the same thing happen to this one when it is completed. I'd probably lose all will to wrench again after all that effort.

 

I can't wait to see this car in about a year when it's finally on the road and you drive it through a muddy pothole.

 

He's alluded to driving it through winter ... which leaves me wondering "why bother?"

Not that I do not support OCD builds, but rather, I do not support spending time/money on a car which sees salt.


Regardless, this build continues to deliver.

 

Already had stainless lines when I bought the original car, luckily!

I've thought about that but haven't found a solution that I'd like yet. That was part if the reason I bought the NRG quick release steering wheel hub.

I'm really not that insane when it comes to cleanliness. It just seems that way due to the extent of this build. Protecting the parts is way easier then when they are all in the car. I'd rather give it a good head start. I'm a mountain biker, climber, and used to dirt bike for several years, a little dirt won't send me into frenetic clean mode. Cars are meant to be driven, not put in a garage and stared at.

The car will stay south in St George during the winter. I actually found out that they, unlike Cedar City, don't use salt or even have snow plows. Then again, snow 45 minutes south is pretty rare so I can't blame them.

So yes I will drive it down South, And maybe occasionally north during the winter. The "why bother" mentality is what makes a car rust faster since you ignore the issues.

Saying that I CAN see your point of view, just not too worried about it. I never had plans to go this far, it just has had a domino effect as I progressed.

 

amazing build and attention to detail. I don't have anything to add but I would recommend painting the non swept area of those brake rotors black. If you don't they will surface rust and seeing how OCD you are about that stuff might as well get r done.

 

What's your MTB rig? Not a climber myself, but I have plenty of friends. Crazy sport that one is.

My rig (i love this thing, and love to ***** it out).

 

Sweet trail and bike! I love Titus frames.

I ride and Ellsworth Truth that I've managed to whittle down to 23 lbs over the years. It is my scalpel, but after riding a couple of my fathers 29ers, I've been looking at upgrading soon.

 

Wicked nice bike. For those of you who don't know, that's like the lotus of the MTB world. They are a smaller company that hand builds bikes with a great reputation for excellence. Nice man. My rig is sub 30#, but it's a 5" bike and I put some pretty beefy parts on it for all mountain riding. It's a do it all kind of bike, you can actually convert the Titus from 5" to 4" travel by changing the pivot point of the shock, although due to the terrain I ride I've never done so

I'm a big lanky guy myself and I've been considering going 29", but instead ended up with a large Titus, which is a damn HUGE frame (24.25" tt). Love the way this bike feel now. REALLY interested to ride a 27.5 bike now that they are standard.

If you end up parting out that ellsworth let me know, i'd make you an offer on the frame assuming it's a large. I think i'd really like an epiphiany though