16's don't look too bad. I think the black color and the R-package lip help a lot, too often they just look too big on NA's.

If the car wasn't black and didn't have the lip they'd look hideous.

I look at it sometimes and really don't like them. It's not so much the size of the car, but the CURVES. 16" worth of flat plane on the side of a completely rounded body that cuts off 3/4s of the way down the wheel just doesn't work.

I'm working on some adjustable collars (second set I've made) to see how ride height affects the look...but I may get desperate and buy a Racing Beat bumper to make the car look lower and wider.


215 rubber kicks ass though. 1st is no longer useless...and you have to be a hooligan to get in trouble in second now (or floor it while turning).

Well, a lot of changes over the past season.

I sold the 16" OEM wheels and tires to a local guy. I let him drive the car around the block and I think he's sold on the turbo idea, might swing in here sometime.

I replaced the wheels with Panasports from miata_racer, and the new Falken Ziex. All-seasons were nice during the cold weather, and I like the look a lot better. Traction's lower, but it keeps me from pushing it on the street. I've been down on power anyways.

Most of you probably caught the thread where my motor started smoking...but here's the motor swap that followed:

Attachment 199623
Old motor out of the car


Attachment 199624
New motor going in


Attachment 199625
Looks like my brother had some bright idea...

Cory not only drove to Dallas to pick up this motor, but worked like a demon with me all weekend to finish the swap. It was a lot more work than I thought, but we really tried to do everything right, and I hadn't done any prep work to the motor going in, or disconnecting the old one. This cost us some time, but it was easier to make sure we didn't forget things on the new motor, like rear main seal, with two of us watching out. He did forget to tighten the oil feed fitting on top of the turbo.


Attachment 199626
New motor in, few connections left to be made.



I also had fun on Tuesday for the first test drive. I got in the car, and had all 5 gears on the spare tranny I decided to test out. A few miles down the road I only had 1st and 3rd. So I wiggled the shifter around, and got 2nd, 4th, and reverse.

So now I had two forward gears for the 75mile drive to school. I ended up getting the car towed back due to a dead CAS that left me stranded down the road, but I still wondered what was the deal with that tranny.

I took the shifter off again, wicked up the turret oil, and started fishing around....and found a SOCKET. Not one of my Craftsman, but a cheap Chinese piece, that came out of the bucket of old tools I let my 3yr old "wrench" with when she's out in the garage with me.

Good thing she's cute.

Looks good man! How does it run now? How is that hustler hand me down motor treating yah?

I've got to work on my tune. Unfortunately I've been mega busy.

Motor is solid. Great compression, idles like a top. I've got some kind of ignition timing issue, and need to run some datalogs to lean out my pig-rich interim map, but MLV gave me some kind of error the other day.

Should be good once it's all sorted out.

A few things went in along with the motor:

-full 3" ARTech exhaust (vids to come)
-adjustable intake cam gear

I haven't been able to really wind it out yet, so don't know how these two mods affect top end. With that little bitty turbo you see strapped on the side torque usually drops off hard above 5500rpm. I'm hoping to offset that until I can do the compressor upgrade.