Autocross is definitely a Miata/Silly Hat Club meet. I say that damn near every event, not that I'm mad about it.

I did a rough drawing in Fusion of the circlip based on specs from the forums. I was hoping SendCutSend would have some kind of machinery to make it but they said they couldn't. I'm still really interested to hear how the spot weld fix holds up. We need to get you into the 350+ WHP range so you can really stress test it for the rest of us

Sorry about the girlfriend, that's always a bummer.

 

Every few years the stars align and the organization I run with is able to get both the Firebird Main track and the Radford School track reserved at the same time. They then mash them together in an unholy amalgam known as Mondo. Seriously.

Mondo
Walls aplenty, decreasing radius turns, a long straight ending in a sharp corner with more walls and limited runoff...that's Mondo. During the course of the weekend more than one car met those walls and what was once a very spendy corvette left on a flatbed. Happily my little miata did none of those things.


This is the pits, man!

The guy who normally photographs these events was on site but wasn't actually shooting this one - he was doing prep work to shoot a different group. Through sheer coincidence I happened to come bombing around the corner leading to the main straight just as he was done setting up and he snapped a few pictures of my car; clearly because the miata is so badass looking. That's got to be it. >.> In any case, I have photographic evidence!

Hot-******* it onto the main straight at Mondo

The car was definitely peppier with the new turbo even with just the quick autotune. When I was autotuning it I bounced off of the overboost protection a few times so being the conservative fellow I am I just kicked the limit up from 16psi to 18 ;P. What's 2 psi between friends, right? AFRs had this weird habit of spiking tremendously under no-load conditions but it didn't seem like there was any noticeable detonation going on, and on a race track there weren't many low load conditions anyway. The stopping power was Fantastic - with the large number of walls around I decided to hold off finding the new braking limits but even with a relatively conservative approach it was obvious the car had all the stops I was after. If I had any complaints it would be that the car starts to shake pretty good at 100mph and above. I can look into getting the tires rebalanced and reviewing the alignment to try to address that - it's only 100mph for cryin' out loud.

Here's a video of the second session on the second day. It had my fastest lap of the weekend. My friend Jeff (a different Jeff than the shop owner) passes me in his new NB Miata around the 8:30 mark at which point I get a bit of an introduction into what Miatas are really capable of. I think chasing after that car was the most fun I've had on a race track, like, ever.


The new turbo definitely added power, but there was a much more significant lag before it kicked in, even with an 11+0 billet wheel. I shudder to think of how bad the lag would be with the stock wheel. A little oil made it into the passenger's side catch can; nothing in the driver's side one, but I started seeing puddles of oil under the car after sessions. Nothing extreme, but definitely messy and indicative of something leaking.

Oil Puddle Collection - end of Day 2

I looked under the hood when I noticed the first puddle
GM, "Roll a DC 18 perception check - add any proficiency bonus you have in Car Mechanic."
Me, "Oh great, a whole +1." Rattle "Ugh., 10."
GM, "You notice what appears to be a little oil in spots on both sides of the engine bay. You're not sure if it's fresh though."
Me, "No smoke? No obvious leaks?"
GM, "No, just a few oil spots."
Me, "Ok, I'll check on the engine after each session."

After the next session:
Me, "I check the engine bay again."
GM, "Roll another perception check - DC 18 again."
Rattle
Me, "15 this time"
GM, "The oil spots don't seem to be significantly worse, but this time you also see the oil return line on the new turbo appears to be wet with oil."
Me, "Ah, I was wondering if I needed to add an inline pressure regulator at the turbo - I wonder if that's the problem. I get a stubby screwdriver and make sure the hose clamp is tight."

Further checks throughout the day revealed nothing else. Everything seemed to be generally fine (if a bit messy) but on the second day in one of the earlier sessions I got behind a mustang and heard some loud backfires as we decelerated into some esses. "Man!" I thought, "That car is so noisy it almost sounds like it's my car!" As I traveled around the track I started hearing burbles and pops on deceleration and was going, "Is that me!?!"

I checked the engine after the session of course.
GM, "DC 15 Perception check, same proficiency bonus as yesterday."
Me, "What, still?" Rattle "Crap! 5! I need new dice!"
GM, "You don't see anything new."

The next few sessions were more of the same only with increasing burbles and pops and the occasional backfire when I got off of the throttle. The car seemed to be running perfectly fine, temps were fine, idiot lights were off, oil pressure was fine, etc etc, but it was getting a bit more vocal after each session. I opted for a somewhat conservative approach and loaded the car up on the trailer after the third session - I didn't want to chance screwing up my freshly rebuilt engine since it really seemed like it was making unusual noises.

Ran the car over to the shop the following day, described the symptoms, and since I only had two weeks before the next session I went ahead and asked them to install this bad boy:

Cool! Hopefully literally.

Another fringe benefit of The Girlfriend moving out - acquisition of car parts as a coping mechanism!
I had planned to install the kit myself, but I really wanted to get the car in to the tuner to sort the backfires and pops before I damaged something in the engine or exhaust.
Happily the shop figured out where the oil was coming from - they had used a fel-pro valve cover gasket which was failing under boost and spraying oil. They did...something else - I forget what - and now it isn't leaking oil at the valve cover gasket any more. Getting a bit more blowby in the passenger's side catch can now but there's always a price for progress. Got the car back in record time (they fast-tracked the installation), reserved a time slot with the tuner, and Monday afternoon I started the long drive to tuner's shop the east valley.
GM, "DC 8 perception check,"
Me, "What, NOW? !? This is an important appointment! *Sigh*" Rattle "Hah! 18!"
GM, "You notice a little smoke leaking from the hood vents while stopped at the light."
Me, "Hmmm, well the engine bay did just get sprayed with oil from the valve cover. It could just be the oil burning off. I keep an eye on it."
GM, "You see a few wisps of smoke at the next light too."
Me, "Ugh. I really want to make this appointment but I have a Personal Rule where if my car is smoking I stop to check even if it should be nothing. I pull over at the next parking lot and check the engine compartment, just to be sure."
GM, "Make a DC 10 perception check please."
Rattle
Me, "There we go, a 12!"
GM, "You don't see any smoke or additional oil, but when you look at the new turbo you realize one of the bolts holding it to the exhaust manifold is completely gone, and the other two bolts are loose."
Me, "Well. I think I just found the source of the weird AFRs and backfiring."

I made a detour by the shop (which happily was on the way to the tuner's) who quite agreeably dropped everything to tighten down (and replace the missing) turbo bolts. Turns out the chinesium turbo came with a gasket for the exhaust manifold side which the mechanic obligingly had put on, even though the old turbo didn't have one. The gasket failed sometime during the track weekend, blew up, up, and away somewhere which created a gap so the bolts weren't tight any more, so the bolts had been getting progressively looser as the car was driven.
I had given myself some extra time to get to the tuner but not that much extra time - fortunately he had enough slack in his schedule to take me 30 minutes later than planned.

 

I got to the Tuner and Tuning Ensued. Unfortunately he wanted me to have the new AEM kit set up with a 50/50 mix of Methanol and Distilled Water rather than just water so it didn't get included in the session. He was perfectly willing to reschedule the session for after I got that sorted, but I really wanted to get a good tune before the next track weekend and I'd already taken the afternoon off from work and driven 45 minutes across town. As it turns out it was a good thing I had him go through the tune anyway.

Tuning Photo! Less fingers in front of the lens this time

I even took TWO pictures this time! Woo!

The result

The outcome:
+ 15 lbft torque
+ 31 HP

We ended up kicking the overboost protection up to 17 1/2psi (up from 16) and the entire power band shifted to the right a fair amount.
Those of you experienced at reading dyno sheets can apparently look at that top line in purple and somehow figure out that means there's a fueling issue running that timing and the car needs a higher-volume fuel pump. So I've got one on order and when I get that installed and the water/methanol mix tidied up then it'll be back to the tuner one more time to add in a lot more advance and pick up additional HP. Good thing the retunes are cheaper than the original tune. *Sigh*

Here's an old-school representation where I overlaid the old dyno sheet and the new one - the max values are a bit different so the vertical scale is off, but the RPMs are the same. The wiggly line in the middle is just the Manifold Pressure chart from the back of one of the dyno pages.

My power band just started watching Fox news...

Yeah, not a whole lot happening below 4kRPM at this point and the power band is a lot less linear than it was with the tiny turbo. On the other hand with a bit more care regarding RPMs the car is moving pretty darn good! It eats normal miatas alive on the straights and isn't nearly as much of a rolling chicane for the other cars.
So it was off to the track the next weekend.

Another track day

And here's a short video of my fastest lap of the weekend. As always there's a lot more time to pick up, but at least I'm progressing.


My post-session-paranoia-walkaround caught a bit of an issue after the second session:

Things you don't want coming loose...

During the second session I was trying to find the limits of the brakes. I was on them pretty hard when the car did this weird shimmy to the right. I backed off and took a good hard look at things after the session. It was a Very Good thing I did, because the the bleed screw on my passenger's front caliper had managed to loosen up and spit out about half of the contents of the reservoir! The wheel and rim looked like one of those paintings you (or at least I) made as a kid where you put a piece of paper on a spinning disk and then drip paint on it. Only less colorful.

Spin Art!

Happily I had the foresight to bring extra brake fluid so I refilled the reservoir and did a hasty bleed job before the next session with the help of this guy driving a bright blue S2000 a few pit spots over. That sorted the brakes well enough for the rest of the day but it still shimmied to the right under reasonably hard braking. Jeff at the shop thinks there's still some air in the lines so they'll bleed the brakes properly when the car is back there. That'll be pretty soon because Firebird East beat the snot out of my suspension - my steering wheel is off center again so it's alignment time. Again.

I'm pretty time-challenged trying to sort the house post-girlfriend-moveout, but I also need to find time to hit the car with this bad boy that I picked up for cheap from facebook marketplace.

FB Marketplact FTW!

 

Nice updates! Man you had me and some of my coworkers cracking up about your d20 dialogue. I'm not a DND guy but started playing BG3 with the coworkers which made that an hilarious read for me.

As for your oil puking, you need to upgrade your crankcase ventillation. Personally my car would fill up my entire catch can in less than a lap before I fixed mine. I added 2 huge 10AN to the can which resolved all of this. E.G. https://www.miataturbo.net/build-thr...9/#post1622624

 

Getting the house sorted post-GF has been pretty time consuming but I've still gotten a few things done on the car - I pulled the jet from the Water/Methanol injection kit...

WM Injection Jet
Future Me here; That's the check valve. The part I need to be concerned with is the pintle further inside the nozzle assembly.

...and using the highly scientific "it says 26 which is pretty close to 25 so I'm thinking it's the smallest jet that would have come with the kit (was supposed to come with a 25, 50, and 100 something-or-other jet)" method I've more-or-less confirmed I've got the right jet installed. Plus the level hardly drops at all when I drive the car, so we're really not talking about a lot of flow here. Very small-jet-like. Yup yup yup.
Future Me here again; as it turns out the pintle was correct but I didn't find that out until later. Also once the engine was operating under higher boost levels (10-18psi) the mix level dropped like crazy and a lot of adjustment was required.

The next challenge was digging up the 50/50 water/methanol mix the tuner wants. Distilled water? No problem. I can get that anywhere. Got a few gallons here at the house currently. Pure methanol? Well, it's readily available, but the places in Phoenix that sell it all seem to be at least 30-40 minutes away from my house and are only open during business hours. Or less than business hours. So I either make the drive at peak rush hour in downtown Phoenix or take the day off of work to save a few bucks a gallon for a few gallons of go-juice.
Or pay a couple of bucks more and have a few gallons of VP's 50/50 mix shipped to my door.
FedEx of course was determined to screw things up by smashing the box and delivering it three days late...

Nice try Fedex...
...but I'd ordered extra just in case (turns out it all made it intact anyway) and I had built in a week + buffer since the tuner wasn't available until next Monday the 24th anyway.

Boom Baby! Got the Sauce!
Sometimes it just makes sense to pay for the convenience. Makes my employer happy too since I'm not running off on yet another personal errand.

I've also been experimenting with a little lightweight noise-reduction - When I'm wearing a helmet on the track the sound isn't bad, but on the street it's a different story. Thanks to the two small resonators and a Dynomax Ultra Flo muffler it just sounds like an angry sewing machine outside the car, but it's still so loud inside that it's hard to have a conversation, or hear navigation prompts, or hear anything for that matter. Reportedly stuffing something in the two tunnels on each side of the trunk can make a big difference in cabin noise, so I figured I'd start with that. I had planned to use mineral wool insulation because it's fireproof and light. Unfortunately it's also $75 for some stupidly large bundle of the stuff at Home Depot. So I shoved a few of the ugliest towels I could find in there instead.

Passenger's Side Tunnel

Driver's Side Tunnel (behind the plate-thingy of course.)

Took the car for a test drive, and yeah, it sounds a bit quieter. I can almost hear the navigation prompts. Almost. I suspect putting carpeting back in would make a pretty big difference too - something like this: https://www.stockinteriors.com/autocarpet/2847
I'm just not sure if I want to spend $300 and add however much weight it was - I can't find it now but it was like 15 or 25 pounds - just to potentially reduce the noise levels in the cabin a bit. The jury is still out on that one.

Since I needed to run the car for a bit anyway I took it across town last night to Ottowa University where I'm taking a class. When I came back to the car after class someone had left a note under the windshield wiper. I got a big smile because there was another time at Ottowa with a different car where someone left a note asking if I wanted to sell the car. So I pull out the note and read it...

Wow...just...Wow.
I'm not joking here - this was seriously on my car. Some young collegiate-type was so offended by the Street **** on my Miata that they went through the trouble to leave a note. As if I'd care about their opinion? As if their opinion was sufficiently important that they had to communicate it to the owner of the offending vehicle? And it was the Street **** they took issue with? Not the dented up, bare aluminum hood with hood vents and stupidly large gurney flaps? Not the staggeringly bad rattle-can paint job?

Not exactly a fashion plate here...

The numbers aren't on it at the moment since I'm switching to a simple livery from spinnywhoosh (another post-GF splurge) but I would have thought it would be obvious to even the most casual of observers that I'm not trying to win any awards with the car's appearance. Heck, the wing is one of the better looking pieces on the car.
Now I just need to get the splitter made and installed so I have an excuse to put on a full size wing!
*Cough*
Well, anyway, I had a good laugh and was all like, "I have GOT to tell the gang at MiataTurbo about this!"

Which I just have.

Future Me here yet again; shortly after I posted this, Fireindc removed the Street **** from his Miata and went with a Blackbird Fabworx-esque spoiler instead. Coincidence? I certainly hope so because you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you. *Cough* I mean, you can't just revise your car's aero solution just because some parking lot idiot left a note under your windshield wiper. Well, unless the parking lot idiot was Dan Gurney. He passed away in 2018 though, so I don't expect him to be leaving many notes at this point. RIP Mr. Gurney. The Racing World owes you a Tremendous Debt...

 

Lol about the wing. The fact that someone took the time to write that down and leave it on your car is wild.

Interesting experiment with the towels. I've actually been thinking about trying to find some insulation to throw in there as well to quiet things down. I figure there must be something out there like rockwool (?) that's designed for this purpose. I get a lot of noise from poor seals on my top as well, so that's hopefully being replaced this winter.

 

Enough has happened that it's a bit daunting to try to write it all down. I'll give it a go with pictures though.
Post GF-splurge - I bought a turbo blanket on black friday sale. Researched them first of course and it seems there are mixed thoughts about them but folks seem to agree that they do keep heat in at least a little and somehow that helps the turbo spool faster. Since I'm working hard to keep under hood temperatures down it was worth it to me:

Widdle VF39 in a widdle bwankie. How Cute!

Has it made a noticeable difference? Not that I can tell, but I'm dealing with a new, bigger turbo than before and I won't really run into heat issues until next summer. I'm just going to assume things are better until proven otherwise.
Now, dear reader, cast your eyes upwards from the pictured blanket and what do you see?
Anyone? I'm sure there are eagle-eyed readers who have already noticed. The V-Band on the wastegate exhaust...isn't. It was there in every engine picture I had from the previous track day, but at some point it clearly decided to leave. And it didn't just loosen and slip down the pipe, no. It left. Adios. Hasta la Bye-Bye. Gone. Jeff at the shop noticed it right when I was headed out to the tuner's for the new fuel pump and fully operational water/methanol injection kit tuning. They ordered a selection of V-Bands from the local suppliers who normally deliver in a few minutes. 30+ minutes later...nothing. Then the tuner messaged asking if I could come early because he was double-booked. So on goes a hose clamp with the edges hammered down. "It's just the wastegate exhaust" they said, "So it's not that big a deal if it falls off." All true statements considering some folks just vent the wastegate exhaust directly to the atmosphere.
Then it was off to the tuner's. He worked his tuner magic. He said he had to completely redo the fueling because of how much more I was getting from the new fuel pump. I definitely noticed after the tune because now the idling afrs are around 10-11. Huge difference. The engine temps appear to have dropped significantly with the AEM kit too - like 10-20 degrees cooler. Very noticeable and that's going to be extremely helpful next summer.
Aaaand...that's it.

Tuning in action!

More fuel, new Water/Methanol injection kit running a 50/50 mix
Tim played with the timing, added in a bunch, and ultimately dropped it back down a fair amount because...the engine wouldn't put out more power no matter what he did. In fact when all was said and done it's putting out around 10 less foot-pounds of torque and 4 less HP than it was on the old, slightly overwhelmed fuel pump and no water/meth mix. Admittedly that was a different day with different ambient temperatures, but it looks like I'll need to be happy with friendlier AFRs and lower engine temperatures. Since the whole point of putting the kit in was to help keep the engine temperatures down it's still a win, just not as much of a win as we had hoped. Oh well.

I also had him create a dyno sheet for wastegate only - that way I can run in a lower time trial class if I choose to. I do quite enjoy the extra 80-ish foot pounds of torque and 90-ish horsepower, but this way I've got options.

A wastegate-only dyno sheet.

Brought the car home and moved on to the next little project. I've been running a set of 225/45R-15 Kumho Ecsta V730 SL tires so far, chosen because they're a long-lasting and reasonably good summer tire. Far from the stickiest, but they're decent enough and they don't heat cycle out at the rate the best performing tires do. However they're known to be absolutely terrible in water. We're talking the if-there's-a-puddle-on-the-track-just-pull-in-to-the-pits-or-you're-going-to-be-spinning kind of terrible which makes perfect sense when you look at the "tread" (using that term loosely in this case) on the tires:

Tread? We don't need no stinkin' tread!

They also are lousy in cold weather. And of course they were predicting cold weather all weekend and rain on the last track day. Fortunately I had this other set of rims I got from Sean and I'd picked up a set of 225/45R-15 Continental ExtremeContact Force SL tires - they're another long-lasting good performing tire reportedly made for endurance racing. They're also out of production now and I wanted to pick up a set while I still could. Here they are in the garage. They're the ones on the right. The ones on the left are a set of really old Kumho Ecsta XS' on skinny wheels. The old Kumhos are probably good for something, I just don't know what.

Fresh Conti's on the right. Rasty, really old Kumhos on the left.

Best of all the Conti's have tread! Sort of. More than the Kumhos at least. So they were declared cold/wet weather tires. They aren't really, of course, but they're a small step closer than the Kumhos are.

And!

Since I was pulling the tires off anyway, I figured I should break out that fender roller!

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'...

...Get Those Fenders Rollin'...
The paint was already completely trashed on all of the fenders from the rubbing anyway so I just watched a few videos of how to roll fenders, took measurements from a fixed position to see what kind of progress I could make, and then rolled the snot out of the fenders while I was switching out the tires. I was able to pick up an additional 1/2" on every fender but the driver's rear one - that one would only come out another 1/4". They aren't the prettiest. At all. But there's more room at least. I also got to use a set of plastic hubcentric rings I had lying around. Happily they haven't melted yet. Yet.

Loaded up the car and race stuffs...

Reference shot so I can hopefully remember how wide to set the ramps

All loaded up!

...and after a tasty Thanksgiving lunch of indian food it was off to drop off the car for three fun-filled days of driving at Podium Club.

Just dropped off

All set up!

There's more to tell, but this'll do for now.

 

Day 1, Session 1 went well enough. I got back to the pits and started on my post-session-paranoia-inspection and found this...

This is after ONE SESSION. It was within an inch or two of the top when I started!
I distinctly remember the tuner saying, "You'll be suprised at how little gets used!" Something is Not Right here.


Driver's side catch can is almost overflowing!

Clearly the Water/Meth Injection kit is not functioning as expected. I adjusted the settings on the controller repeatedly throughout the day.
Another issue is when I first left grid for the track the car would bog down and sputter, blow gouts of smoke out of the exhaust, and then would perk up and run normally for the rest of the session. Made pulling onto the track rather nerve-wracking though.

After a few sessions I got the quantity of mix used to drop to only stupidly large as opposed to insanely large.

At least it isn't most of the gallon this time...

And the driver's catch can started showing only a little frothy water/oil mix.

Muuuuch better

The next challenge was I had only brought three gallons of mix thinking that would be tremendous overkill. Which it should have been! But wasn't. >.< So for the third day I went to my local Love's Truck Stop and picked up that lower methanol/water ratio substance known as...

-20' Windshield Washer Fluid

That's what got me through the third day. There was still some 50/50 mix in the tank so with the 28% methanol/water mix added it was still pretty good.

For whatever reason the driver's side catch can would really fill up after the first session each day...

Lots of fluid in the catch can, but only after the first session each day!

...and then would be back to a more reasonable amount after each subsequent session

That's more like it

There was a viper parked next to me for the first day - in the second or third session he had a mechanical failure and had to be towed in. He did some exploratory surgery and discovered the, well, it's kinda like a spindle but different - it's a viper-specific part. Anyway, the one for the passenger's front wheel had broken. The only reason he didn't lose the entire wheel assembly was because the brake caliper more-or-less held everything in place long enough for him to stop. He came back two days later with the part temporarily welded together so he could load his viper in the trailer and at least get home while he sources a replacement part. Another viper came over to visit while he was reassembling the wheel, so I got a cool picture of my car.

Chillin' with the VIPs

On the next-to-last session on the last day I was doing my post-session-check and found this...

Moar Spin Art!

Vanishing Brake Fluid! Again!

It looked like my problematic passenger's front brake caliper was up to shenanigans again. I called it good, loaded the car on the trailer, and went home.

Oh, had a new batch of oil leaks too because Of Course I did.

This week's batch of oil leaks

And finally, for those who like videos, here's the fastest CounterClockwise lap of the weekend. I am ashamed to report I completely forgot to close my visor for that session. >.< I have an excuse, but there's really no good excuse for that.

 

Dropped the Miata off at the shop shortly after returning home, and there it stayed until the day before the next track day. I ended up just driving the trailer to the shop and loading the Miata directly on it there - saved me from having to get a ride to the shop, and it meant I didn't have to load it in the dark once I got home too. Win!

On the trailer and home just before dark. Woot!

During its visit they pulled all of the bleed screws off of the passenger's front caliper, cleaned all of the threads, and threw loctite on all of them. Then re-bled the brakes. They also swapped out the passenger's side catch can that Sean had put in for another higher-capacity (and much MUCH easier to unscrew) Evil Energy one. The PCV valve went away as part of that swap. This time the oil leak was apparently from the oil feeder lines to/from the Turbo - That got sorted too. They also finally found a v-band to replace the hose clamp! Woot! Gotta admit, though, that hose clamp held up surprisingly well...
One thing I hadn't mentioned previously was the oil cap looked a little schmutzy so Jeff checked out the oil and found that gunky glop indicative of oil/water mix in there. No Bueno! There's some check they can do at the radiator to see if there's intermix going on and...nope, no intermix. Everything seems to be tight so the consensus is when the water/meth injection was dumping stupidly large amounts of water in the intake, the water found its way places that it shouldn't including the oil. I mean, seriously, it was using waaaaay too much mix. Based on its behavior in the mornings and after sitting, I strongly suspected water was siphoning through the nozzle while the car was sitting. I had made a big deal out of the fact that the pump needed to be lower than the nozzle for the installation. Jeff double-checked when I brought the car in and based on his measurements...the mechanic appeared to have put the pump higher than the nozzle. >.<
AEM makes a solenoid that hooks to the controller to prevent siphoning in situations like that, and it was even on sale for the holidays. Despite the USPS' attempts to the contrary it arrived in time to be installed before the next track day but was one of the contributing factors for not getting the car back until the last minute.
Anyway, they ended up changing the oil three times to flush things out - it finally started coming out clean and at least at this point doesn't seem to have caused any significant issues. *Knock Wood*
I visited the car on a Saturday as is my wont and raided the shop's castoff hoses bucket for appropriately sized ones I could chop up to protect these guys from that braided line again, since the old chopped up hose used to protect them seemed to have disappeared...

New cover for the braided line...

...covered all the way down to near the block

Clunky big hose shielding the rubber lines too

It was off to the old Bondurant (now Radford) track the next morning...

Lovely Sunrise at the track

...for four sessions of well-behaved car. No leaking brake calipers, no significant oil leaks, the water/meth mix disappeared at a much more normal rate, the passenger's side catch can stayed completely dry for the entire day, and the driver's side catch can just got a bit of watery froth after each session - all perfectly normal for once!

After the first session - the bottom of the painter's tape shows what it was filled to

After the second session - didn't refill, just let it keep dropping

After the third session - no refills of course

After the fourth session - still no refill.

The last picture there shows how much the level dropped after four 20 minute session of thrashing on the car. That seems to be a much more reasonable amount of mixture used than before! I'm thinking the siphoning issue is completely sorted. Still working on the settings at the controller though - the car was showing lots of water vapor in the exhaust when idling on grid, but per my digital dash the manifold pressure was only around 4psi, and the controller wasn't set to start adding mix until 6psi. Not sure what's up with that, but at least much more reasonable quantities of mix are being consumed. Engine temperatures were absolutely stellar the entire day - ambient did get up to 80' F or so, so it wasn't exactly cold for the last session but I won't know how well the cooling portion of the water/meth kit is doing until next summer. Looking good so far though!


Session 1 Driver's Side Catch Can - cleaned out after the picture was taken

Session 2 Driver's Side Catch Can - cleaned out after the picture was taken

Session 3 Driver's Side Catch Can - cleaned out after the picture was taken

The first three sessions were pretty reasonable - knocked time off of each lap, trying to find speed where I could, which was pretty challenging since it was a short (1.6 mi) track with 30+ cars on it in pretty much every group!
Things changed for the last session though - some folks left early and Rich (one of the organization's coaches) very kindly agreed to ride along and give me some coaching.
Rich is Awesome at finding speed, and this ride along was no exception. The problem is I was now carrying so much speed after the straights that I didn't always handle the following corners the way I needed to. It makes for some interesting videos though.

Here's my fastest lap of the day - we picked up about a second over my pre-Rich best:



Here's a lap where I start having challenges fielding the extra speed at the next corner. Nice little two wheel off at the 28-ish second mark:



Here's the whole session. I think most folks will find the last 20 seconds of the video the most entertaining...


And yes, when my "pull out of grid" routine gets disrupted I forget to close my visor. *Sigh* When I'm alone and don't have to worry about weird sequencing I'm pretty good about remembering. Change stuff around like add a coach and I completely forget. Race control gets all cranky when folks run with their visors open too - I do flag work for them so I hear it.

So in that last set of offs I managed to lose one of the vacuum caps on the valve cover which meant the Miata wanted to idle at 4,000rpm. Once we figured out it wasn't a stuck throttle cable I went ahead and clutch-bumped the car into the pits, plugged the huge vacuum leak, and loaded the car on the trailer since that was my last session for the day anyway.
Jeff and crew have already checked the car out and I didn't break anything in my little adventures through the dirt - just jacked up the alignment. It'll reportely be sorted by Monday so I can get the car back and start in on the huge backlog of things I need to do to the car!

Oh, in the whole day I had my Miata in my possession I managed to get it on a set of race scales.

No one in the car, passenger's seat in the car, probably 1/3 of a tank of gas...

...assuming that's a 1/3rd tank of gas. I dunno.

So 2,247lbs, 52.5/%47.5% front to rear, 50%/50% side to side. It'll all get screwed up when I'm actually sitting in the car, but it looks nice now.

 

While I waited for my car to come back I threw a few coats of sealant on Supplemental Ramps V1.5. They're working well enough currently that I figure it's worth trying to preserve them. Plus the sealant was free and just showed up at my house - it was left over from my sons treating a wood bench of my mother's. I figure it can't hurt.

Side Yard Paint Area - not as prone to getting soggy from sprinklers as my Back Yard Paint Area

Visited the car at the shop to install...a new dipstick! Woo! Such Mechanical Skillz! I got tired of going through gyrations reaching the dipstick behind the heat shield so I figured it was worth giving my local mazda dealership a little business. At this point Matt (the guy who works at their service desk) knows me by name and recognizes my voice on the phone. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not.

I think the shop should just mark this as a dedicated spot for the car...

It seems like it's always parked here anyway...

We scheduled a time on Tuesday Morning (before my work) to pick up the car. When I got dropped off Tuesday Morning...

Not quite done yet
...it was still on the alignment rack. I should have taken a picture of the alignment screen too - apparently I knocked one of the wheels seriously out of whack in that offroad excursion. Fortunately I threw it on the trailer immediately afterward so I didn't chew up the tire particularly by driving it when it was majorly out of alignment.
I got to work about 30 minutes late with a happy, very nicely aligned car. It's driving and running great right now.

What with trying to maintain a household at Christmas I haven't exactly had an abundance of time to do car stuffs, but I did manage to trace the front lip of the car in preparation for cutting out a splitter. Not exactly sure how I'm going to dimension things but it'll be dictated in part by the size of the board since I had to have them cut the plywood down to 3x8 so it would fit cleanly in my flex.
I know the splitter is going to project at least 4" in front of the lip, and since the outer edge of my tires is 6" outside the lip I'm considering making the whole splitter project out that much as well - I understand there's diminishing returns for anything above 4" but it's not like I have any ruleset to worry about (well, unless I try to run the car in SCCA autocross but I'm not really interested in being competitive there anyway so I could just leave the splitter off entirely.)
That's as far as I've gotten though, since it was rainy and I didn't have room to set up the sawhorses and start playing around with the plywood sheet.
I'm more than open for recommendations on how to shape the back side of the splitter - I plan on rounding the leading edge ala Occam's (and now 9Lives) suggestions, maybe tapering the back edge if I can come up with a clever way to do so, maybe adding dive planes, maybe adding splitter ramps...we'll see what I manage to pull off. I definitely need a splitter though.

Start of a template

I did end up with a little time on Christmas day so my Miata got a Christmas Present too...

New Gauge Faces!

Parts removed while working on the gauge cluster

Hood Intact! Woot!
...I finally took the time to install my new revlimiter gauge faces. The most critical one was the speedometer - since I was never able to track down the correct speedometer gear for the 3.636 rear end I had put in, I just got a rescaled speedometer from Adam at revlimiter instead! He's Brilliant. The Gauges look Brilliant. My Speedometer is actually accurate now. I went for a drive today with my digital dash on and waze running on my phone for comparison. The speedometer now shows within 1mph of true speed. The Temp gauge still does that silly slow-down in the middle temperature thing but I set the needle to be accurate at 190'F and that part is spot on at least. The fuel gauge is reasonably close, the tach reads about 200rpm high which is acceptable and the oil pressure...is completely inaccurate. It reads waaaay too high. I've got an oil pressure warning light so I actually have a passable idea of what the actual pressure is at times, but I don't feel like going through the trouble of tearing everything apart to adjust the oil pressure needle. If I have to get in there for other things then I'll adjust it then. If I remember. In the meantime it at least shows me if my oil pressure is up or down. That's sufficient in conjunction with the warning light.

Oh, you will note that in order to scale the speedometer appropriately it now shows a top speed of 180MPH. Adam and I had a good laugh about that one.

One weird thing going on currently - my brake warning light is always on now. It gets brighter when I have the emergency brake set, but it's lit at all other times too. A quick search on teh intarwebz suggests a stuck something-or-other switch by the brake pedal or in some float-thingy or something. I'll do some more digging when I get a chance. Happily the brakes are working nicely, regardless of what the light says.

 

Got as far as setting up the sawhorses, laying the 1/2" sheet on top and pushing the template around. My current plan is to go ahead with the previously proposed 6" lip all the way across, make the splitter as wide as the tire footprint, and extend it back as far as I have wood (aka 3'). I'll just need to determine how much to cut out for the wheels, but I figure drawing a line across at the back of the bumper will be a good spot for the first cut, and once I get the car in the air I should be able to identify how far in to cut. That's as far as I've gotten on the splitter though because...

Pondering/Planning

...I ended up switching over to (mostly) gutting the interior in preparation for a cage.

It goes like this:
A few months ago I bought a set of sim pedals on facebook marketplace. When I went to pick them up I got to talking with the guy and found out he runs a fab shop. They were in the process of moving, but he said once that's done he could put a cage in the Miata. The other day I was talking with Jeff at the shop and he pointed out that a lot of the cleanup/punchlist work I was planning to do to the interior would be heavily impacted once the cage went in, and I might consider moving that up in the list of priorities. Which was, of course, a very intelligent suggestion. So I reached out to the fab guy (Nick) and scheduled a drop-off date of the 3rd. Since he doesn't charge as much if the interior is already gutted, my (admittedly very limited) new year's time off was spent pulling out everything I could while still leaving the car drivable.

Tombstone, visors, passenger carpet...
Since I was back in there anyway I pulled the gauge cluster apart again and adjusted the oil pressure needle. It's spot on now.
I also figured out why the brake light was staying on - I had foolishly put in the two LEDs intended for the heater control in the gauge cluster instead, and for whatever reason the LED liked to stay on all the time. I switched the light back to the original bulb and then the brake light only came on when the emergency brake was engaged, just the way it had worked before. Go figure. *Shrug* I put the LED bulbs in the heater control panel while I had everything apart and made sure they were oriented properly to light up when it was plugged in - got them both right on the first try! (Unlike the gauge cluster where I got everything wrong on the first try. My luck is really weird sometimes.) Now that I've got LEDs on everything I can actually see both the heater controls and the gauges at night! Woot! Too bad the heater controls are out of the car now, but I still plan to keep the heater even with the cage - I was so gutted (har har) about losing the heater with the cage install, that I finally said, "Screw it! I can always pull it out later" and opted to keep the heater. We're gutting the doors (doing the window clips so I can drop the windows in to seal the car up when I want) but I'm keeping that heater, darnit. Future Me can go Full RaceCar when he wants.


Vapor barrier and the tar. Yuck.
I'd encountered the Tar of Doom previously when lubricating the window tracks but now it was time to remove it entirely. It's impressive just how sticky and effective that stuff was after 35 years! Happily it's a bit colder than the last time I was in the doors, so the tar was a bit more solid. Changed into clothes I didn't mind trashing, scraped off what I could with a putty knife, and then went to town with WD-40 and paper towels. Hours later...clean doors. That was Not Fun.


Bulkhead and Rear Trim

I went ahead and pulled the access panels since they were right there - it would have been nice to clean up a bit under there but I ran out of time. >.<


As stripped as it can be and still be drivable


Access panels back on though.

All that was left was to unbolt the rollbar (all bolts were exposed), drop the steering column, and pull the 9 screws holding the dash on. I'd removed everything I could while still leaving the car drivable. I kinda wanted to leave the rollbar in place anyway so Nick could see how Sean had attached the seat back brace and routed the seatbelts. Removing the rollbar afterwards should be pretty simple with everything else removed.

Then it was time to load the Miata up (a task made Much Easier since it was still drivable)...

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'...

...and drop it off across town because Of Course Nick is nearly an hour away in the East Valley like practically every other person I need to work with is.


Dropped Off
It's at Nick's house currently - he can move it wherever he needs to since, as I've mentioned many times before, the car is still drivable.

 

The car isn't done yet, of course. I did get a picture of the car after they pulled the dash out. That was last week so hopefully more things have happened. I dunno. It's kind of how things seem to go with my car - maybe the universe is trying to teach me something. I dunno about that either, which might explain why it keeps happening - I'm still not learning the lesson.

Dashless

I'm sufficiently lost without my Miata that I've finally started doing other things on the "when I get around to it" list including sorting out shoes. Pretty sad, I know, but I'll include this as a PSA:
I've got an old pair of Simpson Race Shoes. I'm quite fond of them - they're comfy enough to wear when racing and when walking back and forth collecting timeslips, not too terribly hot, compact enough to fit in the Miata's pedal box, etc. etc. Swell shoes.
But...
One of the insoles developed a crease right behind the toes and it adamantly refuses to go flat again. It's sufficiently annoying/distracting that I've stopped wearing the shoes. (No, I'm not racing barefoot. I bought a pair of Zamp SFI-rated shoes that were on clearance at a local shop and although they're really comfortable and easy to put on they don't breathe worth a darn so they're HOT. No Bueno for Phoenix, at least much of the time.)
I had asked one of the local Simpson resellers if Simpson sold replacement insoles; she said she'd get back to me...and hasn't. It's been months now.
So today I called Simpson directly, talked to a nice lady who's name I couldn't make out on the call (maybe Gail? I know it doesn't really matter but still) and found out that Simpson doesn't sell replacement insoles, but only the outer layers of the shoe are fire-resistant so it's Ok to buy whatever insoles you want and shove them in there.
I've got a pair of thin insoles on order from Amazon now so hopefully in the next few days I'll be willing to wear my Simpson shoes again.

I like my Simpson race shoes

I have to admit that I feel like something of an idiot getting all fussy about driving shoes, mostly because of this video of Senna's Footwork:


Every time I see the video I wonder stuff like, is that real? Is it a joke video? Was that the height of Brazilian fashion? Are those socks fireproof? If the video is real did Senna know they were going to be filming his feet? Was he all like, "My dogs are going to be on camera so Imma grabbin' this hot pair of loafers and white socks, yeah baby!"

I wish he was still around - he'd probably be setting lap records while wearing Crocs...

For Real

 

Makes me think of Stefan Roser driving the RUF Yellowbird on the Nurburgring in jeans, white socks, and loafers in 1987. He had no harnesses, no cage, no helmet, no abs, or traction control. The car had "low profile" tires in the newly developed 16in wheel and tire size. Did it in 8:05.00 with traffic and a wreck blocking progress.


Watch him sawing that steering wheel!

 

this is me DDing my 911 to the gym and back...

 

We're not worthy!

 

Nick said the dash didn't survive the extraction process well so an aluminum one from LRB is inbound.
The drop floor is going in. One of the resonators is hitting the floor. He can finish the installation but that resonator is going to have to be relocated or removed entirely...

Drop Floor with Resonator

Drop Floor with Resonator too

Drop Floor with Hidden Resonator

I gave nick the link to one of the door-gutting threads here on the forum. Here's what the doors are going to end up like:

Initial cuts and guts

Keeping the door top rails

Prepping to cut the abs cards to fit

The final door. Really, really clean look!

 

If it's not too late, you can cut quite a bit more if you're willing to lose the factory door latch. You want lots of room to get the side intrusion bars out and away from you as far as possible.

 

Howdy Roda! Good point! I know Nick waited to get the drop floor in and the seat positioned before proceeding with the rest of the cage - that may have dictated slightly lower side intrusion bars than on a miata without the drop floor. I had showed him this thread from the forum How did you gut your door so the examples provided had more of the inner door removed, and the only thing I asked regarding the doors was the ability to drop the glass windows back in place to help seal the car up during transport/storage. Retaining the door latches was something he opted to do and honestly I'm perfectly happy keeping them, to your point, as long as there's room. If I was out to cut every ounce of weight possible then they'd be gone along with the OEM intrusion beams (or I'd have just gotten fiberglass doors like Maplewood's abso-freaking-lutely gorgeous miata) but he already knew I was opting to keep a few creature comforts like the heater.

All that being said, after reading your post I looked at a bunch of pictures of miata cages and it seems like some of them do have side intrusion bars low enough to fit in the space he's created. He said he can barely see over the dash with the car's current configuration, so I'm thinking we're good with how things are shaping up. And hey, if they end up disappearing by the time he's done, that's cool too.

Bonus Picture! Check out the interior on Maplewood's car!!!

Soooo Gooood!!!!!

 

"Why no updates?" you might be asking?

I still don't have the car back. I did make the trek over to that side of town 10 days ago to drop off a few parts and pick up a bunch of parts that won't be going back on the car - here's what the car looked like then:

Then...

...and here's what it looks like as of last Sunday per this picture Nick sent:

...and recently.

Nick hadn't ordered the replacement dash from LRB yet so he asked me to do it - I placed the order immediately but we're looking at a potential 3 week lead time plus shipping from Florida. I'm already planning to take my Plan B car to Podium Club this weekend - Starting to wonder if I'm going to end up taking it to Chuckwalla at the end of March too. Maybe I should have waited to campaign seriously for Time Trial points until next year. >.>

My trusty Ford Flex Tow Vehicle just started throwing a new error too:

Poor tired Flex...

When this triggers the power steering goes out which is Not Fun on a vehicle this big. Some Flexes had a recall for this error but mine didn't. Fortunately it only has been happening on startup and I'll get it sorted as soon as I can.
Unfortunately this involves Ford's Electric Power Assisted Steering (EPAS) system which runs over $2k. Here's hoping it's just a wiring issue but I figure it's probably the motor finally going out after upwards of 200k miles.

 

That cage is looking HAWT. Nice!!!!!!!!!!!

My most recent order through LRB for some RX7 parts was great. They under promised and over-delivered. I think it was less than 2 weeks from ordering till it showed up at my door.