Just Dan

Another fellow e46 owner! Although mine is relegated to street duty.

What do you have done to it for those numbers? Seems pretty stout!

Dan

codrus

The E46? Just bolt-ons, really. Header, intake, cat delete, bimmerworld exhaust, and an Epic tune.

--Ian

codrus

Vaguely Miata-related post, because I'll be bringing it to Miatas@MRLS in October. Earlier this year, after a couple warm track days at Thunderhill in April/May, I decided my trailer needed air conditioning. Ordered a Dometic Brisk Air II, 13,500 BTU. The unit itself is around $600, plus another $100 for so for the "air director" that goes on the inside. The power requirements on it are such that it can just barely fit on a 2kw generator in steady state, although the startup inrush current won't. A $300 "soft start" electrical box can fix that (basically a bunch of capacitors, I think), but I haven't gone for that yet. I don't actually have a generator in the trailer yet -- a friend has a Honda 3000 that I'm probably going to buy off him, but for the short term I'll just run it off the RV power that's available in the paddock at Thunderhill.

So, the installation. All the writeups online call for reinforcing the roof to mount AC on a trailer, but mine is a TPD which is a somewhat unusual construction. Instead of a wood-framed roof with seal cloth on it, TPDs are a steel box frame with gelcoated plywood on all sides. It's considerably stiffer than most trailers (you can walk on the roof without any issues), and also thinner. I elected to mount the AC where most of the weight was sitting on an existing cross-beam (1.5" square tubing), with the hole just in front of it. That places it further forwards on the trailer roof than is common, but meant that the vents underneath are right at the front of the trailer, which is where I tend to sit when I'm hanging out in the trailer at the track.

The AC needs a 14" square hole so, measure very carefully, then drop a circular saw through the roof a few times:



Trim the corners with a jigsaw and boom:


Perfect size and perfect location. Yay for measuring.

The way the AC mounts is that it sits over the hole and has a gasket to seal around it. You then attach a bracket/frame on the inside and bolt them together. It's held on by tension on these bolts, sandwiching the roof between the two pieces -- except there's a problem. Remember how I said that the TPD roof is thinner than most trailer roofs? It's only about 3/4 inch thick, which isn't enough clearance for the bits on top of the frame to fit clear the bottom of the AC once the bolts are tightened. The electrical box sticks up, which is why the frame is bowing at the sides.



So I needed to space it down. Some 1x4 was enough -- it's kinda ugly, but it works.



Now it needs power. The trailer has an AC breaker box mounted up in the nose that the previous owner had installed. It originally had 4 circuits in it, 2 for outlets, and 2 for AC lights. I ripped out the AC lights when I bought it and went DC (LED) instead, looks like it's time to put one back in for the AC. I wasn't going to try to run the wires through the tubes though, it may look cleaner, but the tubes have sharp edges on them and I really didn't want to rip insulation off while pulling wire. It's also a giant PITA. So I ran conduit on the inside of the trailer instead.

New conduit is the gray stuff at the top of the box. Most of the wires are either DC (batteries, solar, lights), or for the camera system.



Long extensions make great wire spool holders when pulling wire through conduit!



Don't try it without lube though.



Conduit comes out of the cabinet at the corner and routes up to the AC:



Hook the wires up and install the "air director" (basically the controls and some vents):



AC works!





You can't leave the doors open if you want the trailer to stay cool though. Closing the ramp door after unloading the car is easy enough, but opening & closing the side door every time you want to get in and out of the trailer is a PITA so I picked up a PVC air curtain intended for walk-in freezers from Amazon. It's got 5 curved PVC strips that get sandwiched between two brackets at the top and bolted down. Each strip curves into the one next to it (3 forwards, 2 backwards) and it seals really well.





It mounts on the door frame over the side door, it's another steel square tube so I drilled holes and tapped them for bolts. I'm planning on replacing the bolts with studs and wingnuts so that I can take the curtain down when I'm not using the AC.







The PVC panels are manufactured a few inches long so you can trim them to fit, I haven't gotten around to doing that yet. You need to let them hang for a while to stretch.

Ran the AC at Laguna off a generator that a friend of mine brought along this summer and it works great!



--Ian

Scaxx

Your trailer has more AC than my house

codrus

Are you planning on towing your house to Thunderhill some time?

--Ian

Scaxx

Such a dad response

Maybe we'll do an unofficial west coast miataturbo trackday out there one of these days. I know Aidan and I have talked about bombing down there for a weekend trackday sometime.

18psi

iTrader: (76)

mmmm that M looks good

codrus

Once again it's been months since I updated this. Ah well.

Back in August it was time to take the car apart again for the usual reason. Again it was a PITA, stuff had warped just like in 2017. It had a lot fewer track days on it this time, though, due to tons of breakage in 2018 and the arrival of the M3.

Eventually it came apart though, and went back together with some resurfaced parts again. Manifold:

Turbo...

Poof:

Drove it to work:

And then got it all sorted out in track shape, tucked away in the spot that's usually occupied by an M3 now. Wow this car feels small in the trailer.

Got to the track mid afternoon on Friday, the trackmasters pre-MRLS day is running. Parked over on the side while waiting for the TMR attendees to clear out. I found Gordon's and Stewart's cars, but where are they?

Turned out they'd gone to the campsite, so I hung out with other friends who'd come to the TMR day. Then they showed up and we had a Friday miataturbo hangout at the track.

Finally the other folks left and I could bring my trailer over. Got the Miata out.

Went off to check in to my hotel, then to dinner with the other folks. See photo in Ed's post.

Next morning, yay, the Miata is still there.

Random picture from lunch:


And that's the end of the pictures I took, not really sure why.

So, driving the Miata at the track again after a year of driving the BMW was interesting. It did actually hold together, although I was worried about it the whole time. Weird noises, weird brake feel (the brake booster is still broken and intermittent), and an unfamiliarity with the car. I have to say, the Miata feels way less solid on-track than the BMW does. I guess that's not really surprising -- it was built by an amateur race car builder (me) and is full of compromises to keep it semi-streetable, whereas the M3 was built by a pro race car builder and has no compromises at all. Jack of all trades vs master of one thing. It's backed up my previous decision not to drive the Miata on the track any more.

Saturday night I skipped the BBQ -- the line was huge, so I walked up to the front to see just HOW big it was and what was waiting at the end of it. Nothing worth that much standing in line, that's for sure. So I went back to the hotel, had dinner there, thought about the car, and came to the conclusion above. So I decided to sell my Sunday spot to a friend of mine, and instead spent the day walking around looking at stuff.

So now the question is what to do with the Miata if it's not a track car any more? I bought it brand new in 1998 and have owned it over 21 years now. There are very few things in my life that have been around longer than this car, it's older than my kids, and I bought it before my wife and I met. We dated in it and took it on our honeymoon. So no, I'm not selling it. I guess that means it needs to be a street car again, but it's not really very good at doing that right now and I rarely drive it.

So what would make it a good street car? At the time I put the turbo on they were pretty uncommon and it was neat. That's changed now, turbos are all over the place and I own a bunch of them. The Audi has a pair of turbos, so does the FD. The truck is a turbo diesel, and even my wife's CX-9 is a turbo. I don't want a naturally aspirated BP though -- F that. K swaps are basically impossible to make legal in California. Paradoxically, though, V8 swaps aren't. The rules are arcane, but there's a guy in San Diego who's done a BAR-legal swap of an LS2 out of a GTO into a NB and gotten it approved by the referee. He was at MRLS, so I spent a half an hour or so looking at his car. I also spent a bunch of time looking at Zandr's car (the blue-with-white-stripes 95 with the EO'd e-rod motor) and talking to Keith about various options for legal swaps.

Long story short, I'm now hunting for a donor car -- probably a 4th gen LS3 Camaro.

--Ian

codrus

And since I'm in the mood for updating my build thread, here's a bunch of non-Miata stuff that's happened in the mean time.

Drove the FD in the mountains, took it to Alice's to meet some friends for breakfast:



Took the M3 to some track days at Laguna:



Managed a new personal best there of a 1:42.7 with a heavily compromised start to it (traffic in turn 11 meant a very slow entrance to the main straight). I'm still driving the car way slower into corners than I should be, but I'm getting better!


Lost a kidney grille in the Corkscrew. Apparently they get loose with track use, so this isn't unusual. The corner workers recovered it for me, but it was kinda beat-up and (obviously) had a bunch of broken clips on it so I ordered some new ones. They haven't shown up yet, though.



Took it to a BMWCCA event at Thunderhill. Man, when I first got started doing track days back in the dotcom timeframe, this is the track I went to all the time. Now I spend most of time at Laguna (it's closer) and boy am I rusty at Thunderhill. I need to get here more often.



The M3 is getting some aero -- wing and a splitter. The splitter means it's going to be harder to get into the trailer, I tested with a friend's car that's set up very similarly and it's going to scrape. Time for some race ramps:



That should do it. Looked for a place to store them and the cut out slot for the trailer door slots in perfectly behind the folding table that the previous owner installed in the trailer. It's almost like it was made for it.



All these track days wore out the rotors on the M3. It's got massive Brembos on it that cost a whole bunch more than Miata brakes but are actually cheaper because they last so much longer. Still, even those wear out. So time to install some new ones.

Yup, definitely done:



BMW brake ducts are made of much thicker-gauge aluminum than the Miata ones. There's also enough room to actually duct the air into the hub, rather than half overlapping with the rotor.



The Brembos are a floating rotor design and use slider pins between the hat and the rotor with little teeny bolts securing them. Half the bolts have little spring clips on them, it's an interesting design.



The new rotors come in a pizza box. Seriously, it's about right for a medium pizza (and also almost exactly the same dimensions as a SparcStation 1...) Fancy foam insert.



New hardware. Long bolts are for the spring clips (and the square washers go underneath them). They only got to 62 inch pounds:



Definitely time to get rid of these:



Plain hat:



All assembled:



Shiny!



While I've got it out of the trailer, might as well fill it up with gas.



--Ian

portabull

geez, that fd is so beautiful.

turbofan

iTrader: (1)

I wholeheartedly approve of the Miata getting an LS.

Beautiful FD.

Love the M3.

Those brakes are huge that hardware packaging is really satisfying.

Those brake ducts don't look like they're made of aluminum.

Likecats awarded.

*random thoughts by Ed*

BBro

Excited to see the miata transform back into more of a street car. Sound like you will have much more fun with it that way.

codrus

Went to the Shelby Club "turkey bowl" track day at Laguna Seca on Black Friday. 103db day, not that the M3 needs it, but I had a bunch of friends going.

We got lucky with the weather, it was the only day it hasn't rained in the last week. Cold and damp in the morning though (had rained the previous night), first session was very low-grip, I was doing 1:55s. Second session was warming up and starting to look good when someone dropped oil in the brake zone for the Corkscrew and I was one of the first to encounter it. An exciting ride followed:


Fortunately no attention was needed to car, driver, or laundry, just the track surface. We lost an hour or so while the track workers cleaned it up. I took it easy a couple more sessions in the afternoon -- still low-ish grip and I need to do a good check-over on the car after sliding it sideways over the berms.

--Ian

Scaxx

DOOOOOOOOOORIFTOOOOOOO

codrus

Pretty sure that wouldn't get any drift style points, the rear wheels are supposed to be turning and you're not supposed to go off track.

--Ian

boileralum

iTrader: (8)

Yikes!

sonofthehill

iTrader: (1)

Glad you and your vehicle are ok.

turbofan

iTrader: (1)

Bit of an unconventional line but it worked out

Glad you gathered that up.

codrus

The M3 is somewhat less stealthy now:







Hoping for a clear/dry day at Laguna Seca on the 30th to try it out!

--Ian

codrus

No news on the Miata front. I spent a while searching copart for donors this winter, saw a few possible candidates but didn't get any of them. Then covid-19 happened and I kind of stopped paying attention. A few weeks ago I was looking through some old photos, scanned some, and figured I'd share them here.

The summer of 1998 when the car was brand new and completely stock, in a pullout area up on highway 9. Looks like a jacked-up offroad Miata.



The first ever dyno run for my car, it put down a whopping 108 at the wheel. I probably still have the dyno chart somewhere.



The first track day I took it to, the Miata school at Thunderhill in 1999. Note the lack of rollbar! Unheard of today, this was one of very few events that allowed it even then. It was kinda nice -- let you dip your toe in the pool before drilling holes in a $25K car. The first thing I did when I got home was order the HD bar that's still on the car today.





Before "Miatas@MRLS", there was another, unrelated sequence of events called "Miatas at Laguna Seca". These were more typical track days without all the hoopla that's attached to the current ones, although it was not unusual for a bunch of us to descend on Tarpy's Roadhouse afterwards. I found a few photos from one of those events, I think this is the first one I ever took my tire trailer to. BFG Comp T/A R1 tires, 205s on a 14x5.5" wheel. Roll bar, sway bars, trailer hitch, the car is otherwise stock. I think this is early Y2K, the spot I'm parked in is a building now.

ITR in the background belongs to a friend of mine (probably the one who took the photo).



(E30 M3 in the background -- in 1999/2000 those were just 10-year-old cars that people commonly brought to track days)



Looking down the pit lane -- this view hasn't changed all that much. I'm not sure they let you stand where I took this photo any more, though.



--Ian