So, I finally took some of my own advice, and am buying a completed race car instead of building another one from a street car.

I have a "hand shake" agreement to buy a 99 ITS prepped miata, as pictured below. The car will be delivered sometime late next week (May 25th 2017).











Here are some details from the ad:

• 1999 low mileage chassis
• Miatacage with some customization for taller driver installed by e-Speed
• Offest control arm bushings
* Jason Owensby race transmission with 4 races
• ACT clutch and pressure plate with 4 races
• 4.3 differential
• OPM front hubs
* Mizumoto radiator
• Driven steering wheel with PTT for radio and Sparaco quick release
• Allview rearview mirror
• Kirkey Intermediate seat
• Helmet/steering wheel hook
• Fuel sample port (nice Schrader valve one by Panic Motorsports)
• Spek oil pressure gauge
• Spek water temp gauge
• AEM air fuel gauge
• Mazda hardtop and steel brackets
• Shift light
• Depowered steering rack (media blasted and new boots and tie rods 2016)
• 2 sets of wheels (black)
• Megasquirt PNP
• Mizumoto oil cooler
• Spek oil temp gauge
• Racing beat header
• Springfield Dyno exhaust
• ISC cold air intake
• ISC air dam/splitter


I am buying the car with two engines, both "ITS" prep level. One is an NB1 engine, and one is a VVT engine. The VVT engine is currently installed in the car but has a nasty miss when cold, likely has a bent valve or some other issue with the head, so it will require some R&R. Plan is to re-install the '99 engine for the time being. VVT engine will likely be freshened up for enduro use. ECU is an early MSPNP2 from DIY with a piggy back VVT tuner.

Car has custom valved bilsteins with ground control coilovers and ISC top hats. I believe it has the SM sway bar set-up.

My initial plan for the car is to freshen it up and get it TTE/PTE ready. That means removing the header and installing an oem 99 exhaust manifold, as well as installing OEM sway-bars and removing the ISC air dam and putting an OEM front bumper.

This car has run 1:48s at CMP in ITS trim on SM7s (with 15x7 wheels). TTE track record is 1:49.8 for reference. I'm hoping the car can run similar times, or at least within a second, in PTE/TTE trim. The main differences would be 205 R7s vs. SM7s, 15x9 wheels, OEM sway bars, OEM header, but adding E85, and no air dam. Power output will hopefully be fairly equivalent in PTE trim to how the car was in ITS. ITS allows a header but requires the stock MAF remain in the intake tract, and no E85 is allowed. Hopefully the better intake and E85 make up for the loss of the racing beat header.


Next NASA even nearby is in ~5 weeks at Road Atlanta. I plan on being there! We'll see how the year goes but the end-game is East Coast NASA Nationals at Sebring in PTE and TTE. Might as well have a go at PTE/TTE in it's last year of existence?


Will update this thread when I actually have the car in my possession, and as we begin to race the living sh*t out of it.

 

Are you going to come run PTE at Summit in June?

 

Hell. Yes.

 

No plans for Summit in June. Road Atlanta is the week after that in June, planning to do that instead (can't do both).

I'd rather tow 3 hours to Road Atlanta then 6 hours to Summit...

 

Fair enough, as long as you make Octoberfast.

 

Did Chump Car ever lower the starting value on NB's? Last I recall it was really high. Which is stupid because we just did a 50pt BP4W swap into our car and still had points for our R&P, aero front and rear, and front coilovers.

 

I believe the NB1 is currently 500pts.

NA miatas are much better fit for ChumpCar, since, as you mentioned, you can just swap in a NB1 motor for 50 points and then have plenty of points left over for other go fast bits.

 

I have sort of given up on the chump "points" system. There is some team posting on /r/miata about having a chump car with a FM2 turbo setup and it only costing them 90 points. That blows my mind how thats all it "costs". From the few pictures it really looked like they wrote FM a 5grand check and called it a day.

 

The base point value for the NA is 375. 100 for the turbo setup, but that doesn't include an intercooler (or so we interpreted the rules). So an FMII kit is 500 points. Anything above an beyond that is laps. We debated doing a rear mount turbo setup and forgoing the intercooler. However, once we ran the fuel consumption numbers, we scrapped the idea. We currently can go over 2 hours on fuel with a stock tank and without a surge tank (which we are adding this year). Rough numbers show'd only about 1-1.5 hours worth of fuel even if we stuffed a big fuel cell in the car. So we went NA (375pts), BP4W swap (50pts), ECU (0pts), diff swap (25pts), engine mount (10pts), coilovers, front only (20 pts), and aero front and rear (10 pts each end). We are taking points for the motor mount because we have a chain to prevent the motor from shifting during an impact.

 

If we run my new car in Chump we'll either run in EC class, or we'll run with coilovers and take laps.

We'd being doing Chump races purely for fun, we wouldn't be making a bunch of changes to the car to make it "competitive" and worry about trying to finish on the podium.

 

Awesome, hope you get everything replaced and prepped for Road Atlanta, looking forward to seeing this there.

 

Car is being delivered tomorrow at 7pm.

Which means I have until 6:45 tomorrow to clean the garage and make a space for this little guy.

I have way too many cars now...time to thin the herd.

 

If you don't have room you could just tell the truck driver to come a few hundred miles South

 

Deal is done.

 

Sweet!

Will you be in TTE at Road Atlanta in a couple of weeks? Should have ~5 entries if you run.

 

Haven't registered yet, but that is the plan. I guess I should re-up my NASA membership and racing license...

 

So I just looked at a calendar, I mean really looked at one, and realized I have like 15 days to get this car TTE ready. Carp!!!

Luckily I bought a finished, running, prepped race car, should make things easy.

Nope!


Just whipped up a to-do list...only 39 items! Including pulling and installing an engine!


Time to get to work




I suck at this

 

Good news! Annual tech isn't required. You can actually do regular HPDE tech, just print off the HPDE tech form and check it off - https://nasa-assets.s3.amazonaws.com..._hpde_tech.pdf . If you do want annual tech you can talk to Lee Brown who drives a black #85 TT4 fox body mustang. Log book also isn't required.

If you've never ever ran TT/W2W with NASA they might require a check-ride on Saturday. So John or Danny (TT directors) can ride with you on the first DE4 session, then you can run TT the rest of the weekend. Or maybe your experience will get you in no problem, just email Julie to confirm - juliepantas@nasa-se.com

 

Oh,


I've raced with NASA before... (also this OG mt.net activity: https://www.miataturbo.net/insert-bs...t-today-61946/)


I also currently hold an SCCA National Competition license so it shouldn't be too hard to get a NASA comp license (I hope)? For the time being I just coughed up the $20 for the TT license since that's all I'll be running at this event. Will double dip in PTE later in the year (wish there were some PTE racers down here...).

And thanks for the heads up on the tech stuff, it's been a while since I've run a NASA event.

 

Will be interesting to see how ST5/6 lands and where everyone ends up going. I'm just excited that maybe the NA will be on a level playing field with the NB now.

Good luck, have fun, don't die.