Props for using and enjoying your car!

 

Thanks! I've been daily driving it too, over 4,500 miles on the new motor.

Also.. fixed the oil leak. I, as usual, was overthinking things.. It was a leaky valve cover and re-snugging all of the bolts fixed it.

I also put on FM/Goodwin Racing BBK, from circa 2007 or so as far as I can tell. I got it from the FM bargain bin for $100 and they work great. I'll throw up some pics. I did a 1.8 rear caliper upgrade as well with new rotors while I was at it.

Got some more goodies on the way too..

 

These brakes are pretty awesome. Got a wilwood prop valve coming so I can dial in the bias, but so far really digging 'em. Worth the $100 for sure. Will likely repaint the calipers at some point but just threw 'em on for now.

 

So much more has been done on the car. I installed my Pi dash, which is ******* awesome. It auto-boots into tunerstudio and goes into full screen dash mode for gauges. Works flawlessly. I also got FM front and rear sways and FM endlinks, which really brought the car together. The chassis is so dialed right now, I'm so happy with the car. Boost was set around 8-10psi, or about 200whp.

Anyways, I just drove the car 150 miles to the track, tracked it ALL DAY, then drove it back 150 miles without a hitch. We both got in 40+ laps and had tons of fun with the cars. I had to re-adjust my power steering belt, as it jumped off slightly, and the wastegate c-clip popped off on one hotlap and I had to fix that, but otherwise perfection. Temps were only hitting about ~210 after 6 hot laps, then I'd generally pull in and let the car cool down after that. We went to Sandia Speedway here outside of Albuquerque and there was not one other person there lapping. We had a private track day, and it only cost us $60 each. My buddy brought his 2009 NC club, pretty much 100% stock except for tires. It did very well but had problems munching tires because of the stock alignment, some mods are in his future so that he can keep doing track days without wiping out tires.



And the only video I was able to get, was when I let my buddy take the car out for a couple of laps.


I fully plan on going to another track day next month and want to have a better camera setup and some way of timing my laps before I go back out.

TL;DR: DId my first trackday, now I'm hooked and can't wait to get back.

 

Jeebus... What cooling mods have you done slash what was the ambient temp that you were only seeing 210. That sounds awesome!

 

I also forgot to mention that I just recently ditched my older dw800 injectors for some id1000 ev14's. Just swapped those in and retuned the car last weekend, it's far from perfect but the new injectors definitely idle better and allow me to run much leaner afrs at idle and cruise.

I have a coolant reroute, a mishimoto radiator, A/C delete, and lots of ducting. I made the ducting from super thin cutting boards from wally, some zip ties, and some metal tape. It works super well, and it's holding up OK. I'll probably re-do it better next year, but it completely fixed my overheating issues. Ambient temps were 90-95 all day and I was super happy with how the cooling system held up!

Another note: I was seeing about 122* IAT's after about 5 consecutive hotlaps as well. I bet a bigger intercooler would be a good upgrade for the car as well eventually.

I'd also like to mention that i haven't had to add a drop of oil since my last oil change. 1500 miles and a trackday on the oil so far. Pretty excited about that, even though I still get the smell of oil under hard decel down long hills, so I'm sure it's using *some* oil. Just not much!

 

AC delete will do it!

 

Awesome track day report! I love Sandia that track is the perfect Miata track. So cool that you had it all to yourselves too.

What tires are you on?

 

We had so much fun out there. Already scheming on when to get back out there. Should be able to make at least one more track day this year. Although I'm considering going north to Pikes Peak raceway in Co Spgs.

Currently 205/50/15 Federal 595 RS-R. They are about 6 years old and have gotten pretty hard, but they are surprisingly grippy still! It's hard to tell with my buddy driving in that video, but the front end traction on my car is very good, and the balance of the car is fantastic. I actually just finished wearing them down past the wear bars at that trackday and ordered some new Federal 595 RS-RR's to try this time around. $350 shipped for the set!

I am so proud to be able to say I wore out those tires finally. Haha!

 

Sweet! The Federals are tempting indeed. Hell yeah let me know when you want to come to the Springs we'll have to have a Miata meet up.

 

Your car sounds great

 

Cool build! I also like finding miatas that are in the same state as me (Las Cruces).

 

Thanks! I love the way it sounds. With this turbo setup on 10psi it's just so linear and powerful (virtual dyno said 215whp). It's great for the track at my skill level right now with plenty of room to turn it up. I'll have to get some more videos for you guys.

Awesome! Do you ever go to any Track/Auto-x events? Would love to meetup.

100% agree. I really want to check out your car, it looks like it's probably pretty amazing at this point.

 

Got some new tires, then promptly took the car back to the racetrack.



These are the federal 595 rs-rr's, replacing the 595 rs-r's I had previously. At $340 a set shipped to my door they are kinda hard to beat.. especially if i want to keep driving this thing the way I have been recently. The rs-rr's are LOUD. Pretty much annoyingly loud on the street, to be honest, but hey.. racecar. I wear earplugs when I drive it on the highway anyways (not really because of the exhaust note, it's actually not that loud, but the wind noise is a killer for hours at a time since I have no AC and keep the windows down 24/7!).

Did another event this weekend, it was an Auto-X setup using part of the track, with a cone slalom on the back straight. I got 2nd, just beaten by a miata cart! It was nice to drive 300+ miles round trip, beat up some nice new cars (Focus RS, Golf GTI, STI, and a buncha miatas), and not have any issues whatsoever.




I again failed to take anything resembling decent video footage, but some kid took this video when I was playing around on the skidpad and sent it to me. The video is basically garbage but at leas you can hear my car! Note: I'm no drifter, I wanted to practice more on the skidpad but tires are expensive and I just put on a new set.

 

Proof the old girl runs! Dialed in just a wee bit more boost, this is about 175kpa or so, ~13psi or so (at 7,000 altitude!)

 

SOO

I've been dailying this bad boy, even now that it's gotten cold. This morning was a 15* cold start. I started the car, went inside, and came back to a smokescreen from my exhaust. This really freaked me out.

Turns out the ******* catch can had completely frozen over from condensation, 100% blocking the vent line, and both valve cover ports were effectively blocked off. This pushed oil out of the turbo into the exhaust.

I fixed the issue and smoke appears to have stopped. Hopefully I didn't **** anything up too much. Jesus christ.

 

It was 32* this morning down here, what did you wake up to up there?

 

It was ~17* on my IAT reading when I started the car. I've been working on my cold start settings and got it to startup pretty easily. The low was 14* according to my weather station.

 

88* here