I spent a lot of Mid-Ohio weekend running for my life with probably the slowest car on track operating at full power. Post weekend maintenance discovered severe front brake pad drag that I've likely had around for multiple weekends, like wheel only free spins half a rotation, but it's nice to identify at least one culprit of straight line handling being off. That's currently being resolved along with front bumper air dam/undertray revisions and removing the roof scoop (RIP). Road America coming up in a few weeks and hoping to punch a little higher despite being a terrible lightweight/low power track. Overall felt fantastic about my driving at Mid-Ohio, braking much improved and starting to put things together that I know from a couple decades worth of sim racing at a high level, just gotta keep connecting dots and let the hyper nerd lizard brain take over.

 

As far as actual updates, stayed busy over the weekend building new undertray/air dam setup. I moved the center cables a bit more outboard on the undertray as they were gonna get in the way of ducting, but this is pretty much the setup for now. The undertray is now only 2" off the ground (ie it should actually work) vs the KBD bumpe as-is which sits a solid 5" or so off the ground. That's a lot of air it lets under the car and very little ability to produce downforce. I yoinked the roof scoop off last week, need to figure out a decent way to patch up my fastback since I've already proven to myself I'm awful with fiberglass. Finally, the aforementioned brake drag. I did a whole lot of adjusting my BX11 box mount kit and the right side elminated almost all drag simply from torquing the rotor on, loosening the other bolts (box mount adapter/caliper), then torquing things back down with pads installed. Left side needed shim combinations that I messed with for an hour and half and had it dialed, but when torquing things down one location only had about half thread engagement and hit me with the ole "righty-loosey", so I either need to threadsert/helicoil that location or get new box mount adapters.

Also threw together a moroso catch can setup on summit that I plan to drain back to oil pain. That should show up this week and go together pretty easy, because I have MSM motor the oil pan already has a location on hot side I'm not using to drain back to pan. Right now the driver side of my engine bay is covered in oil because simply running a filter off the VC wasn't cutting it, this motor ain't that tight.

 

Maybe I missed it, but why are you removing the roof scoop? Did it get damaged, or just wasn't making a noticeable difference?

 

On the quest for less drag, it's also not hooked up to anything since I moved intercooler up front. I'll A/B test it later on, but going into Road America I'm just trying to make the car more slippery (but still not willing to do OE bumper with trash can air dam haha). Hoping it also at least marginally increases wing efficiency/downforce, but not expecting much since I mounted it a bit low and the windshield of miata absolutely wrecks the air behind it.

 

That side-profile shot from Mid-Ohio is so sick. The car looks friggin' great. I suspect it'll look even better with the new lower undertray setup. RIP to the roof scoop but your reasoning makes sense.

On a related note, what side skirts are you running?

 

Def think lower undertray will help not just aero, but looks. The bumper being higher than side skirts looks a bit weird. Bumper and sideskirts are KBD.

 

The curse of Road America continues! Race 1 FCY, Race 2 red flag (a homies car caught on fire, but he's ok and safety crew got to it fast!), then Race 3 I ran out of *wait for it* rear pads. What the heck. Been running my bias absurdly too far rearward apparently and roasted them down to the backing plates. I've never even taken off completely worn rears before b/c they last so long, caught me completely out, I feel like a dingus and didn't have spares. Just happy I wasn't in the pack when the pedal went to the floor and still had handbrake for slowing down at T8. Oh well, still had fun and Deadmau5 was incredible. My spitball flat tune was also pretty on the money. Unfortunately it overboost for almost 1000rpm by a little over half a pound on dyno, BUT nails its target on track. So my hp is legal yet I'll blow dyno if I get complianced, so need to sort out boost control on colder exhaust.

Was claiming 200whp this weekend, so have a good dyno buffer once i sort out the dyno overboost.




Race 3 until my pedal hits the floor. At ~7:35 into Canada I overshoot a bit because that's first instance of pedal going soft, thought it was just knock back (I was habitually left foot checking)...it was not.

 

Hell yeah hell yeah hell yeah! Stoked to get the race recap so soon after the weekend. Will have to watch the whole vid when I get home tonight.

Wild how you had that issue with your rear pads running out right after @RASKAR had the same thing happen to him. I'd imagine you should be able to get some additional braking power over the current setup by setting the bias up more frontward, though, so that's a win! You never noticed your rears locking up before the fronts?

Also glad to see you didn't get caught up in the pileup that took out Austin Hertel and Eric Kutil's cars (and a whole bunch of other guys). Seems like a good weekend overall aside from the brake scare! I'll be off to grab a spare set of rear pads now...

 

Glad to see a quick update! I saw your video this morning, but got scared to comment . Glad you were able to pull in safely after that brake failure, good job sir.

****, that sucks! I hope they're all ok.

 

Dunno if this link will work or not. Don't think anybody was injured, just a lot of bodywork and a few radiators munched. Eric was able to get his car back up and running the next day.

//threadjack over, sorry

 

Nice racing, sorry about the brake pads. My boss was there sorting out 161 and 162 BMWs, they were heavy, have way too much aero, and underpowered to be competitive, for now. If you can find him at the next race, chat with him about pads, he owns Cobalt Racing Brakes, and is always happy to chat bias/pads/etc with a fellow racer. He'll be at Limerock, dunno if you'll be there. I've almost never seen Miatas run low on rear pads, that's a new one for sure, unless the pads are a couple years of use old.

 

Nice, always love talking with people that actually know what they're doing (ie not me). I'm likely done for the season, time to recoup costs and do mainteneance/collect parts. And yeah I've never run out of rear pads, I normally just change them at beginning of year with plenty of meat left, these were only on their third event (NOLA, MidO, Road America).

 

At least in my case I never had rear lock up at all. Not sure if it was the same for @cabowabo , but for me the pedal just got softer and lower until it was almost on the floor and then ta-da no more rear pads haha

 

Same here. I was too far rearward, but never so far that threshold was locking rears up creating scary moments. Was loose on release so kept pushing it forward, but they were too far gone from previous events already I presume.

 

Comment away, I ain't nobody just some guy that likes turbos and miatas and racing turbo miatas

Won't lie though, seriously considering picking up a $500 RX8, 2.0 MZR swapping it and slappin' this 2860R on it...

 

That would be sick honestly. I finally drove an NC for the first time recently and was really impressed how fun it was. Add in a cool looking coupe chassis and a turbo and that thing would be a blast I bet. Plus the 2.0 MZR motors are stupid cheap if anything happens...

 

Oh.... oh f*ck

That would be a crazy build. I'm sure the swap would cost some $$$ but with that low of a buy-in, you'd still be at a pretty low total cost at the end of the day. It makes sense but I'm still kinda awestruck at how the MZR/Duratec engines are cheaper than BPs nowadays.