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Wrap turned out great. Trip looks awesome as well, gotta love those last minute jobs and just sending it with no testing haha, so have a cat.
Off topic a bit... I was looking into picking up a CTS V2 as a cool weekend/fun car (no track use whatsoever). 6MT Sedan and do the usual bolt ons, cooling mods, porting, pulleys, and cam/springs, maybe 650whp? Any input or opinions I might find useful coming from another Miata owner? Feel free to PM if you don't want to derail the thread anymore.
Off topic a bit... I was looking into picking up a CTS V2 as a cool weekend/fun car. 6MT Sedan and do the usual bolt ons, cooling mods, porting, pulleys, and cam/springs, maybe 650whp? Any input or opinions I might find useful coming from another Miata owner? Feel free to PM if you don't want to derail the thread anymore.
I'm all for a good thread de-rail
The 6MT's already come with 500whp out the gate, so if you do the right research and combine the right parts, hitting 650whp is quite literally one of the easiest things to do in the history of automotive modifications. Get a chaos port job from Jokerz performance, a smaller (2.45" Griptec) upper pulley, a reinforced intercooler brick from DMS, and fuel system (injectors if you stick to gasoline and the additional secondary pump system / flex sensor if you want E) and you are at or above that 650whp goal without blinking much of an eye, but your clutch could be on limited time up there so be warned. Just a port job and injectors on 93 octane will get you to 600whp in many cases as an FYI. That relatively small list of parts won't come lightly to your wallet, but its super basic stuff mechanically. My second CTSV that I owned had the kitchen sink of mods thrown at it (I had $30k in engine receipts from the previous owner, which I do not support doing), and it made 830whp on e85 with quite a bit more headroom to go if I tossed more airflow into it.
As far as how I feel about both of them. I'm glad I owned my "dream car" from back when I was a 16yo kid. Always wanted one and am proud to say I owned two of them now as irony would have it, but I can now say that I wouldn't want one again. It's not that there's anything wrong with them per say, but I learned that owning the big, heavy, high horsepower car isn't for me. There is no hiding what they are good at. They are comfortable for multiple people to ride in, get all sorts of looks w/ their pretty sharp design, sound nice, and are plenty fast right out of the box.
There is a decent amount of covering up what they aren't so good at though in the community (in my opinion). Focusing on the V2 specifically:
the mag ride shocks were a pretty frequent maintenance item. I did at least one per year and at $350/pop, that kinda sucks
OE fluid filled engine mounts fail somewhat frequently (more often as you increase power). Any poly mount upgrade increases NVH which sucks for a "luxury car".
Front alignment bolts slip more often than any car I've ever owned (including my miata which I track). I tried all sorts of various methods of keeping those bolts torqued down, but make it a note to check these frequently or you'll chew through expensive front tires much faster than you'd like
The touchscreen that pops up is out dated and occasionally glitchy in my experiences. Forget about ever wanting to use the OE navigation offering, you just end up using your phone.
The sunroof drains need to be cleaned regularly or you'll find yourself with water in your interior and/or soaked through your headliner. Finding a car w/o a sunroof and with the desirable options you want (black recaros, 6MT, etc) is harder than you think.
Tire costs. You're making 500+whp minimum. It'll eat tires as long as you let it. Plan for it. Assuming you are enjoying your drive, you're probably looking at doing a set of rear tires every 10k which is a nice $1k bill. If you do any twisty roads / tracks with it, add another $700 for front tire replacement to that 10k interval.
Brake costs. Not really a subject to worry about if you aren't road coursing your car, but if you do, expect it to not be cheap. Do your research. It'll eat through a set of pads (and tires for that matter) in a single day event.
Competitiveness.... This is subjective here, but I learned that if you are buying a CTSV to try and be competitive in a class, just don't unless you want to go broke trying to come out on top. The car is heavy and its weight shows. If you are drag racing, you'll find that it isn't hard to be faster than a CTSV for half the money spent. This is why "heavyweight" classes are becoming a thing all around the country, because otherwise the hellcats and CTSV's of the world have no chance against their relatively lightweight v8 sportscar brethren (camaro's, mustangs, corvettes, etc). If you are into road course stuff, you're well north of $1k per day to run it as far as consumables go (see brakes and tire comments above) and ironically not that quick in the grand scheme of things because heavy sedan to lug around corners w/ garbage corners speeds overall. I guess what I'm getting at here is, there's no cheap way to be competitive in these things. Throw enough money at a pig and you can make it fly, but why not just start with owning a bird?
In summary, I think most of my personal complaints on the car are surrounded by the fact that it's just an expensive car to truly enjoy for how it was intended to be driven. Same can be said for all the big HP heavyweight cars in its class. I don't feel as though the enjoyment of driving it outweighed the costs of doing so, and that's something I learned about myself from owning 2 of them. The costs took away from the enjoyment. My kmiata is far from the fastest thing out there, but I enjoy the fact it costs me essentially nothing (relatively speaking) to drive at its limit like it was intended to be now that I've spent the money building it that way. The money I save on consumables with my "slow car", I can spend going to more events (or family vacations) which I get more enjoyment out of than having a luxury car sitting in my garage. You get the idea. Your mileage may vary on this experience, but its just my take. For the heavyweight class of car, I still think its one of the better ones out there (and one of the few offered with manual transmissions if that's what you are searching for).
If you have any specific questions, feel free to reach out.
As long as I'm in a thread derail, this is also probably a cool time to mention that early last month we upgraded my fiance's 2015 Ford Explorer to a 2018 Tesla Model 3 Performance. No car is perfect at everything (and this car is no exception), but I'll be damned if the instant electric motor torque isn't a new found addiction of mine. Its more powerful, faster, and more feature packed than my stock CTSV was and honestly, I'm having a lot more fun with it than I recall having with either of them overall. It's ironically about the same weight as the V2's were (~4200lbs), but the center of gravity being so low with the battery packs in the floor completely changes the handling dynamics of this when pushed hard. You feel the weight in the braking zones but much less in the corner. That said, we don't have any intentions to compete with this in any manner other than an occasional on-ramp sprint or fun run down 28 at MATG like we did. The primary reason we picked one up was for a fun commuter that would actually save us money, and it's doing that job incredibly well. Maintenance so far has been nothing. Just charge and go. Electric is so cheap compared to dinosaur juice. From just an operating/maintenance cost standpoint, we are on track to saving $5k per year on this over the Explorer and to be able to say that with a car that still makes you smile when you "get on it" is something really notable for us both.
I think the only real gripes you brought up are things that I won't be worried about or that have been since been solved by the aftermarket. I won't be tracking it or doing any type of DE/autocross what have you. Even if I do hit some nice canyon roads I wouldn't be pushing the car hard enough to worry about consumables like in a track environment. Main desires are just something that has that cool car factor, is fast, makes the right noises (headers/catted x/stock mufflers and cutouts would be the plan), can take it to some shows, comfortable enough to take a weekend trip up north with the girlfriend etc.
The center nav unit now has an aftermarket replacement touchscreen surface that improves accuracy and sensitivity, and then Grom also makes a box that you can put in line with it and it takes over the touchscreen and basically turns it into a modern infotainment system with wireless android auto and apple carplay, and operates in an Android environment where you can use all the car specific apps and the whole 9 yards. It brings it right up to current standards and all the steering wheel and radio buttons still work and everything, looks real slick.
If you know of any 6mt sedans that become available with black interior, recaros, and pano sunroof shoot me a PM lol. The toughest part is going to be finding a decent one nowadays like you said.
Main desires are just something that has that cool car factor, is fast, makes the right noises (headers/catted x/stock mufflers and cutouts would be the plan), can take it to some shows, comfortable enough to take a weekend trip up north with the girlfriend etc.
If this is the expectation, then I think its a great car for that. Not really a whole lot to be worried on the LS powertrain. The reasons you listed are the main reason I bought mine initially, but then the mod bug and desire to do more with it hit me, I wanted to be competitive, and then yeah... my story of the car not making sense anymore makes more sense from there on out haha
You are correct that the aftermarket does fix a majority of the issues, but its a matter of how far down the rabbit hole of aftermarket you want to go to fix those issues. We all know how those rabbit holes end up.... this miata build thread being prime example...
The threads that go from stock to full race car over several years - those are the best! This thing looks rad these days. I like the wrap a lot. I need to find some sound clips of that engine swap too.
^famous last words for sure. Now I just admit that I know myself better.
just based on personal experiences, I don't know of too many people that are both "track/hpde junkies" and "car show cruisers". You are either one or the other and based on your build thread (and without even knowing you), I have my doubts you are the cruiser type haha.
Continuing with off topic posts... this is partially your fault lmao.
Flew to Chicago and then drove a rental to northern Indiana to pick this up. Taped up the front end and I'm in the middle of the 1800 mile drive home right now. 2012 M6 Sedan Slicktop, Ebony Recaros. Already modded pretty much exactly how I would do it if I had a massive budget for the car so I only have a handful of changes I'm going to make. 92k miles on chassis and only 3k miles on the fully built engine.
08-15-2022, 12:53 PM
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