mgeoffriau's build thread
 

I have no idea when the work itself will actually begin, but I figure why let that stop me from having my own build thread. We just moved so there's plenty of unpacking to be done first (and extra costs), but some of the easier stuff may get done once it warms up a little.

The car in question, as it sits. Completely stock except for: Refurbed stock radio w/ Sony CD and aux-in, Max-5 HR speakers and Infinity Kappa door speakers, Tokico HP springs/shocks (I know, I know), an NB Nardi wheel w/ Mazda 3 airbag, and a Voodoo textured black shift knob. Woot.

Oh yeah, no soft top currently either...original was jacked up so I yanked the whole frame until I can install a new top. Decided on a tan top with the red, we'll see how it looks.

Also, next to the Miata, you can see what I've been driving for the past couple weeks while we move...stupid fun. It is absolutely as badass as it looks.

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The Saab in my new carport. I was hoping for an enclosed garage, but the deal on this house made it worth it. Won't be too hard to enclose it down the road, but for now at least I'll have a covered and relatively clean place to work on the car. It beats the apartment parking lot by a long shot.

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One half of the storage room off the carport. In this shot, you can see:

Autozone jackstands
Harbor Freight jack I got for Christmas
4 boxes with Team Dynamics Pro Race Ones
4 boxes with OEM MB 190E 2.6 wheels...I can't give these things away
Exedy replacement clutch
R-speed economy soft top
and tucked away next to the bicycles.....a big box with the BEGi setup in it!

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And the other half of the storage room. In this shot, you can see:

Kirk Racing roll bar w/ door bars
The Tokico box with the original springs/shocks in it
H&R coilovers
and a very sweet chrome trunk bar that I'll trade for damn near anything.

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And somewhere in there are my NB tophats and Boundary Engineering frame rails too.

I'm planning on building a tall, shallow workbench to fit the storage room, so I'll have a work surface in there. Lots of pegboard should make for relatively easy storage. Still need to buy another set of jackstands, a rolling tool cabinet, and a few other odds and ends. Oh, and a lawnmower. :noob:

Awesome...congrats on the new house!

What are your goals with the S3...and what are you doing about engine management?

Also, Infinity Kappas rock. I had a set that I sold early this year and regret it. Most sound per watt I ever got with any head unit in the Miata. Completely unscientific...but they sound great, amplified or not.

I wanna know what you think about the door bars. Any chance of installing them before roll bar and frame rails in the name of science?

Thanks! It's pretty exciting after 6 years of apartment living.

200-220 WHP, eventually. Gonna have Braineack build me a standalone MS, still trying to decide if MS2 is worth the extra cost or not. :brain:

Still need a WBO2 and injectors.

Yeah, I'm pretty pleased with the sound given the limitations. Still doesn't get quite as loud as I'd like (mostly for talk radio/podcasts), but it's not bad.

I could install them with the roll bar before the frame rails go on, but not by themselves. These aren't like the HD bars that bolt in at both ends -- the rear mount on these attaches to the bottom of the roll bar. Actually, if you look at the pic with the roll bar, you can see near the bottom of the front leg, it has a 6" stem w/ a smaller diameter that the door bars slide on.

Yeah, home ownership is great. Despite taxes, neighbors, repairs and all that other jazz it's still nice to have a place to call home.




I forget what all the MS2 does, but I remember looking at it and almost wishing I had done it or contemplating an upgrade.

Either way getting Brainy to build it is the way to go. I'd probably build my own next time around...but only because I've got a working one already to copy, test with, or use as a backup.


I love my LC-1. I wired it up properly and it's never given me a single problem.

For your power range I don't know that I'd want to spring for high dollar injectors. My RX7 junkyarders work great, and I'm not close enough to the limit to need perfect matching flow, and not making enough power to need anything bigger than OEM stuff.



I think that would pretty much accomplish what I'm looking to see. My rollbar isn't coming out...and I'd like to know how much the door bars are better than the frame rails. Maybe install roll bar first and acclimate, then try door bars, then frame rails, then both. I have a feeling you would notice the frame rails by themselves, but hardly so in addition to the door bars. I'm basically asking you to help justify a purchase before I beg the wife for more car parts. :laugh:


Good luck with build...will be watchin'.

Snagged an MS2 daughterboard off m.net for $45 shipped. More shitty pics in the meantime.

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Also, the remains of the security lug nut I busted the hell out of trying to remove it.

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Parts continue to roll in. Got a braided steel clutch line from Advance Autosports in the mail yesterday, since I'm tired of the half-assed clutch bleeding process with the damned loop-de-loop in the line. And today I pulled the trigger on a set of 195500-2010 RX-7 460cc injectors on eBay for $84 shipped.

Dam, I suck... still have to send out you the Flywheel! NICE miata Mark! A lot better than the Saab! Also, congrats on the house. I talked with the guy who built the Kirk bar and he said he doesn't think the side lock-down latches will work on the hard top. My bad, when you came and got it, I didn't even realize that there were lock down latches!? Still learning... time to start my uild thread now! See ya sometime.. you might have to visit for a Barber's weekend, my wife really enjoyed meeting your wife... they can hang out while we tearup the asphalt!

Thanks for hand-delivering the flywheel and for the 1.8 brakes...I owe you one.

What's wrong with the Saab? It's a fine example of Swedish American German cobbled-together engineering.

Hoping that tomorrow I'll be buying a pickup, which means the work on the Miata can start....

i sold my saab about a year and a half ago.....i still have a set of oe wheels. the same vikings that yours is pictured with. they could probably use a refinishing (and couple need straightening). PM me if you are interested in them. i'll give you a hell of a deal since they are taking up precious garage space right now.

Nah, I'll sell this car before I ever have to replace the wheels. And I've still got an old set of OEM Mercedes wheels that I can't give away taking up space.

I will say, however, that these are the best damn wheels when it comes time to wash the car. Never had a set of alloys, OEM or aftermarket, that cleaned off as easily as this design.

qft

Last night I drove to Monroe, LA and bought a 1997 Toyota Tacoma with some jacked up paint and 220k miles. Extended cab, 2wd, 3.4l V6, stick shift, and mechanically it's still pretty tight. 190 hp in a 2wd compact pickup reminded me how frickin' anemic my Miata is. Gas mileage will suffer a little over the 4-cyl Toyota's, but the plus side is that I have enough power to tow a Miata on a dolly (or possibly even a trailer).

Now, if the weather will just ease over 50 degrees for a day or two, I'll be able to start working on the Miata. Gonna start with the soft-top first so it'll be ready for sunny weather, then roll bar.

Accomplished a few things this weekend. I got a head start on the soft top install earlier this week, wife let me use the (old) kitchen table to do the swap. How every good project starts:

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And what your back window will look like if you leave it uncovered underneath the hardtop window for 10+ years.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...SOFTTOP002.jpg

Saturday started with my wife driving me to my workplace so I could retrieve the Tacoma which stranded me Friday evening after work. Damned alarm system went off...I didn't get a clicker when I bought it, didn't even know I could arm the system without the clicker. Somehow it was armed, killed the ignition, then started blaring the horn when I reopened the door. I disconnected the battery and had my wife pick me up. Went back Saturday morning, traced the wire from the red LED back to an alarm brain underneath the driver's side kick panel. Pulled the brain, reconnected the battery, and it started right up.

Went home, finished installing the soft top on the frame. Had a brief moment of "oh shit" when I realized that I had just drilled through a hole to fit my rivets....and it wasn't a riveted piece -- it used screws. Thought a moment, riveted it anyway, and it worked out fine. Some pics just after putting the frame back in (but before reinstalling the carpet and trim). Car is really, really dirty.

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Wanted to wash the car, but started losing the light so I just decided to clean out the front fender wells. HOLY SMOKES there was a bunch of crap in there. It was like an archeological dig. Loose top layer of pine needles and leaves, then a middle layer of crushed dry leaves, then a bottom layer of solid, compacted dirt and organic material. Got almost all of it out with the shop vac.

Going to figure out where to strip and paint the roll bar this week, then tackle that next Saturday I hope. In-laws are visiting us for 2 weeks (!), so projects might go on a brief hiatus.

EDIT: Just remembered that I also swapped in my Bosch headlights from the FM group buy on Saturday. Huge difference in light output. Well worth it, if you don't have them yet, do it.

2 weeks with the in-laws...didn't get much done on the car. I did manage to replace the CAS o-ring last weekend. Holy crap, do people really do that job without removing the valve cover? I tried for 15 minutes to realign the CAS rotor and decided that was a waste of time. I yanked the valve cover, put the CAS back on, cleaned out the inside of the valve cover, and reinstalled it in another 15 minutes (minus the time I took to drive the truck over to O'Reilly's for a tube of RTV sealant since I couldn't find my tube).

Also installed a FIAMM Freeway Blaster low tone, but the damn thing isn't grounding properly and is squawking instead of blowing clearly. Got tired of fiddling with it, I've got to go back and scrape a good clear spot to ground it.

Tonight I decided to start preparing for the H&R coilover installation, so I unboxed the set of used NB tophats I bought and spread everything out. The perches themselves have some rust so I'm going to sand them and respray with some rustproofing primer. Also need to order a set of the shock mount gaskets from Rosenthal, possibly a set of the upper spring seats as well.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1.../nbtophats.jpg

Cleaned up the NB tophats today. Thought about just forging ahead with the suspension swap, but I'm waiting on some extra shock mount gaskets from Rosenthal. So instead I just took my time dremeling down the rusty spots on the tophats, then priming and respraying them. Prepped, primered, and then painted. In the last pic you can see all the crap that the wind blew across my driveway today while I was painting...I'll have to figure out a cleaner spot to paint when I do the rollbar.

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Got my suspension swap done today! Finally got everything lined up and ready to go, still had to make a couple trips out (one to Lowe's that turned into a combined trip with the wife to get soil, manure, rat traps, a bathroom grout repair kit...*sigh*, then another trip to Advance for a socket I was missing), but got everything done pretty quickly.

First step was the rinse the car off. If you live somewhere with no pin oaks, be thankful. Everything down here is coated in a layer of nasty yellow pollen right now:

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I rinsed the car off and was happy to find no leaks around the windows or rain rail after my soft top installation. We'll see what happens in the first hard rain.

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Started on the front passenger side, got the Tokico HP setup out and just about to start putting the H&R coilover in. I've never done a suspension swap before, and honestly getting that first shock/spring OUT took about as long as getting the rest of the 3 corners combined. Big thanks to gospeed81 for passing me his super-simple installation process. I had read waaaay too many suspension threads, all the debates about long-bolt vs. San Diego, the excess detail and "tips" from dozens of different people...he boiled it down the absolute basic, essential steps and it made a big difference.

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The H&R coilover, ready to go in. I never figured out what the little bracket on the bottom of the front shock body was. The Tokico's didn't have them, didn't see any use for them.

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And it's in! gospeed81's instructions followed the long-bolt method, and it couldn't have been easier.

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Contrary to most people's experience, I had a harder time with the rear corners than the fronts. For one thing, I could barely push the lower control arms down far enough to remove the old shocks and put the new coilovers in. I'm guessing the rubber suspension bushings were providing the resistance? The upper bolts on the spindles were stupid tight. Had to use my special high-torque ratchet to break them loose.

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Finished things up, decided to leave the car on the jackstands...thinking about tackling the Boundary Eng. frame rails tomorrow.

No pics at the moment, but the final parts are coming together. Brain's got my order for an MS2, I just picked up a used ACT HD clutch from Gospeed81, and I snagged an open 1.8 diff plus axles and driveshaft off the mx5atlanta forum for $275.

The H&R coilovers have made a huge difference in my driving enjoyment. I can't compare them to the high dollar setups (or even to the mid-budget known setups like Illuminas + FM springs, etc), but I can definitely say they are a massive difference over the old Tokico HP combos that were previously on the car. No longer do I feel the need to scan ahead for every minor crack in the pavement so that I don't rattle to death. I'm hoping with the installation of the 6 point rollbar and frame rails, the ride and handling will improve even more.

On that note -- on Saturday, I sanded down the rusty spots and cracked paint, rustproofed/primed, and then repainted the roll bar and door bars. I realized yesterday when I pulled out the hardware that the backing plates were all quite rusty, so I scuffed them down to bare metal and primed them as well. Ran out of sunlight before I could spray the final coat, but I'll do that tonight and hopefully be ready for the install on Saturday. I might start the install one of these evenings if I get bored, but I still have to take the bolts/nuts to the hardware store to get some extras.

Nice progress.

The tab on the shock is for cars with ABS.

A little progress with the roll bar. Interior is partially stripped, rear deck is cut (more than needed, but oh well), and roll bar is mocked up. Fingers crossed to get it done this weekend.

Door bars will go in once the roll bar is solidly in place. Am I being stupid for thinking about drilling straight through the carpet and just bolting them in on top? I can't decide if it would look worse to have the base of the door bars exposed, or to have lumpy, possibly poorly trimmed carpet around the base.

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I didn't know I was still subscribed to this paint drying competition, let me go fix that...

Harsh. By now you'd have installed, removed, reinstalled, removed again, sold, purchased more, installed, removed, and sold again my whole pile of parts, but not everyone moves at your pace. :fawk:

Boundary Engineering frame rails are installed...just have to bend the fuel/brake line brackets. Roll bar is mocked up and drilled, so that'll get bolted down next once I have the frame rails finished. Going from basically no bracing to roll bar/door bars/frame rails, I'm expecting a pretty dramatic increase in stiffness and decrease in NVH.

Pics to follow.

Pics as promised, though they are fuzzier than I realized. It's so frickin' hot and humid that when I take the camera outside, the lens fogs up. I was too impatient to let it warm up since I was getting fricking eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Getting the roll bar mocked up after cutting the rear deck:

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Kind of typical for how I work. Messy.

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Paused the roll bar installation and decided to do the frame rails at the same time. Swiss cheese floorboards.

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Reassembling the interior, ran out of light tonight but it should be done by this weekend. Have to recharge the battery too, forgot the driver's side interior lamp and drained it while I did the install. Whoops.

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The bar turned out great! Maybe I shoulda done that before selling it to you... easily $50 more!

Been driving a few days now with the roll bar, door bars, and frame rails in place. I have to admit, I'm a little underwhelmed. It's definitely an improvement, but I think my expectations were too high after reading all the threads on frame rails and door bars ("...it's a solid as a brand-new BMW now!").

The Miata structure is just kind of shuddery, no matter how much you brace it. It definitely feels stiffer, but sharp bumps still crash through the suspension. Now that the structure is stiffer, I feel like the H&R coilover set (which I was very happy with before) is probably a little undersprung. I know that no rear-sway is the hot setup, but I'm wondering if a thicker front-sway might keep the car from rolling quite as much in the corners.

Ordered my roll bar padding yesterday (Longacre Mini HD sticks), it is a definite necessity with this bar. I'm 5'10" and I have to keep the seat a little more upright than I prefer to keep my head off the bar. Anyone taller than me would have a hard time driving the car comfortably right now. A foamectomy or maybe even race seats may be on the list in the near future. Since it's a daily driver, I'd prefer to keep the stock seat belts and avoid a harness. I'm going no-wrap on the padding, just going to zip-tie it in place with something under the zip-ties so they don't gouge into the rollbar paint.

The seats were a pain in the ass to put back in with the door bars in the way. Specifically, the door bars don't allow the seats to move all the way forward -- the plastic housing on the left side of the driver's seat makes contact, so it's really, really difficult to get the 2 rear bolts started. I finally used a screwdriver as a lever in one of the rear slider holes to keep the seat lined up while I started the other bolt.

Overall, I'm still happy with the improvement, even if it's not quite as dramatic as I had anticipated. The car definitely seems to move as one structure now, and while it's awfully hard to be sure given how long between when I drove it pre-rollbar/doorbar/framerails and when I drove it post-rollbar/doorbar/framerails, it feels like it's slightly more tail-happy now -- very sharp turn-in, and the tail gets a little light feeling just a bit earlier and at lower speeds than it used to.

Next up on the list is the switch to my Team Dynamics Pro Race One's, and bolting on the R-package front lip. The first little hassle is that 3 of my wheels have white lettering around the rim of the wheel, so I've got to spend an evening with some decal remover trying to get the letters off without scratching the wheels.

Didn't get as much done today as I wanted but it was too hot and humid to spend all day outside, and anyway I had something else to occupy my attention:

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Oooh! A red box!

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5-drawer, 29" width, ball-bearing slides....and I got it on sale for $165. Not bad.

Besides cutting drawer liners and playing around with the new tool cabinet, I did manage to get a few interior things done. I cut my seatbelt tower panels to fit around the roll bar, readjusted the seatbelts to retract better, drilled a spot in the center console to thread my 1/8" minijack aux-in for MP3 players. I also got my Longacre rollbar padding in the mail and picked up some bigass zipties from the hardware store...padding will be a good thing:

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And you can also see how the door bars interfere with the seats being pulled all the way forward. Won't matter for me, but it might keep my wife from driving the car.

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No pics of the last task of the day, but I pulled out the Team Dynamics and started cleaning up the 3 used wheels...removing the old "Team Dynamics Racing" lettering around the rim and pulling off the old adhesive lead weights.

Just snagged an LC-1/DB gauge kit with a new sensor. I'm running out of excuses now for why my build hasn't started...I think all I'm missing is the GM IAT, and a drill/tap kit for my oil pan.

What brand of door bar is that? Doesn't look to go as high as the Bethania ones.

Kirk Racing, they are integrated with the roll bar.

Minor update, swapped the H&R's out to try a Bilstein MSM coilover set I got from jacob300zx.

Took me a few days to get this set ready to install -- Jake swapped the collars at my request but they didn't really fit the front springs. The rear springs were fine, but the front springs just wouldn't fully seat. So, I took the collars over to a machine shop near my house and them turned down just enough to fit into the springs. The guy charged me $20 and they were done by the next morning.

New turned-down collar on left, original diameter collar on right:

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You can see how much material was removed:

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Spent yesterday afternoon swapping the suspension. Fronts:

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And rears:

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And finished:

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Took it for a test drive last night...mixed feelings on the Bilsteins. Definitely firmer than the H&R setup, but not punishing. Surprisingly controlled over bumps and rough pavement. Downsides so far is that it seems to have introduced a clunking noise in the rear suspension, and it also seems to have exacerbated the 65 mph vibration. Wheels were balanced about a month ago, though I haven't had a good alignment so I need to have that done soon. All I can guess is that the softer spring rates of the H&R setup were soaking up some of the vibrations while this setup with its firmer springs is transmitting more of the vibration to the body.

All in all, though, I'm pleased. Gonna try to get the R lip sanded and sprayed today, and installed tomorrow. Maybe the rollbar padding as well.

Finished up the alternator swap on Saturday, pleased to fire it up with no squealing belts or whining bearings, so I guess I was pretty close on the belt tension. Will check it again in a week or so to see if I need to reset it.

Also worked on the roll bar padding -- these are Longacre HD mini 36" sticks. I used 3 sticks (9 ft total) with just a few inches left over at the end. I bought some bigass zipties to hold the padding in place. I'm fairly pleased with the fit of the padding, and I think it'll look better once I cut the neoprene Rapz stuff to cover it.

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Beefy. Price for the padding? The zip tie picture is awesome. I've wanted to do this with full wrap around padding, purely for looks, although that doesn't look too bad. It gets expensive though.

Roll bar is ~$400 with only a remote possibility of using it, but in the mean time it both looks good and stiffens up the chassis.

Roll bar padding looks to be about $145 for SFI rated wrap around padding, and it's nothing but looks until you use it.

This is what I used:

http://www.racerpartswholesale.com/p...ollbar_Padding

Came out to $40 total with shipping for 3 sticks.

A lot cheaper than SFI full wrap, and (hopefully) better than pipe insulation. It's definitely much firmer than pipe insulation, anyway. For a track car, though, you probably want the SFI stuff.

you like your gangster lean, far back sitting style haha... im as tall as you and my recaro sits about 2" forward of the lowest part of the parcel shelf...

try it, you will like it... spirited driving becomes more fun.

Hmm? My seats are not as far back as you think.

Have you got the sway bars installed? Did you fix the shimmy? Impressions?

Nah, haven't even unpacked them yet...got tied up with the alternator swap and then decided to take care of the rollbar padding before I did anything else. Spent last night playing around with home audio stuff, snagged a nice CL deal on a Denon receiver and some Klipsch speakers.

Wow, 6 months since the last update.

I think I'm going to UrbanSoot this shit and start over with a 1.8l car. NB if I can find one I can afford, NA otherwise. Pondering a Rotrex build.



EDIT:

Anyone interested in a 1992 NA with < 100k miles, Boundary Engineering frame rails, Kirk Racing roll bar + door bars, and a 3-spoke NB steering wheel? Will have the stock daisey's on it, and probably a set of NB GR2's with stock NB springs and tophats. New soft top last year, and matching hardtop.

Will also be selling off the BEGi system, MS2, ACT HD, and a few other things too most likely.

I'd be interested in the frame rails if you part anything.

If I remove them I'd be keeping them.

Sold it tonight. Sad to see it go. Now the search for a new Miata begins.

awhhh, you still have the coolest signature though.

You're messing with my Zen thing, man - why don't you buy the turboed NB in the classifieds from teh guy in Auburn - that ways you can get your bike too! do you still have that suspension setup?

cjernigan's car? I wish...it's out of my budget.

Yepper - very nice. So what kinda condition NB you looking for? I have a buddy who often sees some come through savage auctions - but you'd have to do the salvage title thing to register it - that is if Tom with PartGroup doesn't snatch them up....

NB would be nice but even the right 1.8 NA would do. Probably not interested in salvage titles...gonna be primarily a fun car/occasional daily driver. No red paint. Blue and silver preferred.