AntiGravity battery rigged up and installed. 23lb weight savings over the 390cca flooded Motorcraft battery it replaced. Pretty solid weight savings for $260.

Set it up with a pair of M6 threaded battery post adapters and used some big ol washers to sandwich the terminals onto the post adapters. For mounting, I just clamped it to the trunk floor using a piece of strap metal I had laying around. Used the female threads in the body to clamp one side of the strap and drilled another hole a few inches away and dropped a bolt and nut to clamp the other side. The battery is in there pretty tight and with only three pounds of inertia, I don’t foresee the battery successfully making a break for it.


Excuse the wiring mess.

3.6 Torsen is arriving on Monday. With any luck, I’ll get it installed next week and have the car ready for WSIR the weekend after that.

 

Nice work all around. I'll be looking for 3.6 reactions. That is an upgrade that I'm seriously considering as well.

 

Thanks Sim! I’ll post up impressions and results once it’s in and I have a solid track day on it. Can’t wait.

In completely unrelated news, I received an early birthday present in the mail today.




I hope it’s a dog.

 

Probably not, just judging by the shape it looks a bit diff

 

Man you never sit still with your car.. Nice work man! I haven't looked into a Lithium ion battery but man that thing is light! I'm curious if there are any noticeable drawbacks over an oem battery.. I'd guess as long as you don't listen to the stereo with the car off or drive in very cold weather it should be comparable..? Do you remember how many turns you have on your wilwood proportioning valve from fully open?

 

Love this. Love this so much.

Thanks, Teg! I hadn't looked into them much either until I saw my buddy drop one in his Fiesta recently. I asked him if the thing had enough juice to crank the car over in cold conditions and he said he's never had an issue. He's got the exact same one in his 5.0 Mustang too and said he's never had an issue in two years with it. That sold me haha. Still gonna get myself a lightweight jumper box to carry with me on the street just in case, though. Antigravity claims its an 8AH battery, so not a ton of juice to spare with the engine off.

I just checked, my prop valve is six turns in from all the way counterclockwise. Are we running the exact same brake setup? Sport rears too? I'm sure that due to spring rates and weight distribution, our brake biases are going to have to be a little different. Worth a shot though, I guess. I'm sure it'll get you in the ballpark as least
.​

 

Cool beans. I probably need a new battery but may just throw in another lead acid. I'm running sport rear rotors with the non-sport calipers (just using a bracket for the caliper). Ya thx just curious what you were running as I'd bet it's at least going to be within a few turns of where you're at, so 6 sounds like a good starting point at least.

 

AntiGravity rep told me my track car would be fine with an ATX-20 but for a street Miata he recommended the ATX-20HD for the additional load of things like the stereo on lights.

 

Interested to see if my ATX-12 HD holds up well then. Thing cranks strong as any other battery I’ve had in the car. Maybe I oughtta leave my lights on and see how long it takes for the starter to no longer crank haha.




Got the 3.6 installed in the car today. Got tripped up at first because I thought the stub shafts on my ‘95 weren’t compatible with the new diff. It ended up not being an issue though, and they dropped right in. I ended up using my current housing since it’s got poly bushings installed already. Also, the housing that came with the 3.6 seemed to have a leak anyways, and one of the axle seals was pretty roughed up.


Stub shafts in original housing, with 3.6 torsen installed.

Holy crap, even just on the drive home, I’m already stoked with this thing. Gear spacing is substantially wider and I don’t even need to shift into 6th for surface street driving. I only did a quick 2nd to 3rd gear pull close to home but I can already tell I’ll be pulling far fewer shifts during aggressive driving. Can’t wait to get some more miles on it this weekend.

 

And suddenly I'm shopping for lightweight batteries and a 3.6. I gotta stay off these forums.

Glad to hear the new setup is looking promising.

 

Sick! Supper jelly of the 6 speed + 3.6, it's been my long term goals for my car for a while. Keep us posted how you like it, on street and on track.

 

Zak you were running a 4.3 diff prior to the 3.6 or a 4.1? Holy shifting batman.. I did some poking around on K power's site with their calculator.

With the 6 speed and 4.3 you only hit 72mph at 7500rpm?



With the 3.6 and 6 speed this looks much better. 3rd gear goes upto 85mph.



And here's the 5 sped with 4.3. The 5 speed gearing with the 4.3 isn't bad except for the high cruising rpm.



The 6 speed and 3.6 diff definitely go together well. A 4.3 and 6 speed is a whole lotta shifting..

 

Ill help you spend your money
Added more ANTIsavings parts

 

Yeah dude, I was running a 6 speed and 4.3 with a 7,000 rpm redline haha. I actually was under the impression I had a 4.1 until I did a top speed pull a few months ago and ran out of gear at 130mph.

I shift a freaking ton on track lol. Thinking the 3.6 should eliminate at least a few shifts per lap.

 

Alright, that thing is pretty trick. Antigrav should have kits you can buy that include the battery, a jump starter, and this little sucker lol.

 

Got some more work done on the car this week, and more importantly took it out for a successful canyon drive this evening!



I started out this week with trying to find a solution to my stock shifter woes. I've money shifted at least 4 times due to the stock shifter and am completely over it. I put out a thread on here and a blast on social media and got a few bites. One of my acquaintances told me he had a early 6 speed short throw shifter that I could just have, so I picked that up off him. Honorable mention to Curly, who let me know his coworker has a MR tall angled shifter for sale for $250. Somebody go buy it off him and don't get into a silly debacle like I did.

Went to install the shifter Thursday night. Everything looks good, all the parts I need are in the box. Oh, no good, it's a 5 speed shifter. It's 7 o'clock, nobody's home, and I'm feeling stubborn, so I decide I'm gonna try to make the damn thing work. Luckily, I had my other shifters and all the spare parts in a box from my garage. The 5 speed shifter is almost the exact same as an early 6 speed, with the lower rod being just a bit longer. I used a spare lower spacer from my other trans's short throw shifter and took some material off of it with a bench grinder to get the shift lever lower. Barbaric, but it worked. I took a pneumatic polishing wheel to it and got the finish to look passable. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of my glorious work, but I did get the shifter finished and installed.



All said and done, it came out well and feels f*cking great! I could've taken a miniscule less material off the spacer to make a tighter fit, but the shifter has minimal play and is super precise. I drove it around on Friday and it worked as desired, but the throw was super short and the shifter required a lot of effort to muscle into reverse. I overnighted a 2" extension from Amazon and installed it yesterday. Holy crap, it's perfect. Still a shorter and more precise throw than stock, but with plenty of leverage on tap. I ripped around the local mountains earlier and had no issue with 4-5 or 5-4 shifts like previously. 5th no longer requires going on a scavenger hunt to find. It's obviously no MR shifter, but I'm very happy with how it turned out.


Might need a new center console boot, though.

The other thing I wanted to tackle this week was making bigger end plates for the wing. I'm not sure if these will be the ticket, but I'd like to have them on my next track day in case the aero balance is thrown way off with the new 5" splitter.



Bought a 300x400mm sheet of carbon fiber from Amazon (had some gift cards from my B-day) and started cutting them up on Friday. I did a bunch of searching during the week and decided to shape 'em similar to my current endplates. I still need to round off the sharp edges, and would like to add a notch to the upper trailing edge, but they're off to a decent start. new dimensions are 12x7.75" compared to the standard little 10x6" endplates.



I also got a discounted Gridlife Willow Springs entry from a buddy who couldn't make it. That means I've got 3 definite track days between now and April. NASA Willow Springs on 3/23, Chuckwalla with my buddy's organization on 4/12, and Gridlife on 4/28. Heavily considering going to Big Willow this Saturday as well to see how the current setup works there before NASA in three weeks. My poor, poor tires...

 

Loving the updates! The car looks ready to party.

Hey, dumb question about that Wilwood M/C install. I noticed it came with different rod/plunger. Do I need to swap out the one that's in my brake booster for the one provided in the kit? I assume not, it seems to fit as expected with enough adjustment in the stock rod. But wanna make sure. No instructions with that kit so I'm kinda flyin by the seat for the install. Your pics were helpful.

 

Not a dumb question at all, I was also confused by the supplied plunger since it doesn’t seem to correlate with the Miata booster rod at all. I ended up going to the Wilwood site and finding the MC used in our kits on there. It looks like the rod is a generic Wilwood unit that ships with every one of these MC kits. I tossed mine in my toolbox and forgot about it haha.

 

Decided I’m gonna hit WSIR this weekend due to Extremespeed holding a track event there Saturday for just $155. Under $200 for a Big Willow track day? You’re basically losing money if you don’t go.

Went in early to work and mounted up my track tires (the ones that aren’t almost on cords) and brake pads to get the car ready. Ended up grabbing some new R10’s for the rear from 949Racing as my current track pads were smoked.




Last track day, my trans cooler was only pulling temps down 15* or so. It’s not in a super scientifically-placed location, but I figure it still has the potential to do more good if it gets more airflow. I bought a 6” fan last week and wired it up last night to see if it makes a difference in temps. Didn’t do anything fancy, just tapped into the preexisting power circuit for the trans cooler relay so both components are controlled by the same switch. If temps still don’t improve, I’ll cut the bumper more so the exhaust hole is a full “n” shape, then I’ll swap in my other Setrab 25-row cooler, then if that doesn’t work, I’ll pull everything out and light it on fire because I’ll be over it at that point. And then maybe I’ll try putting the cooler in a different location.




Was going to purchase a universal fan mounting kit but honestly the supplied pickup points on the fan for mounting line up so perfectly with the tanks on this cooler that I’m just gonna run it as is. You can’t see the zipties unless you get down on your hands and knees so the only **** I’ll catch is for the silly looking hole in my bumper.

 

Are you really still running the stock headunit and have you ever used a tape before?? Damn that thing has seen better days.. lol

I got this shift boot off etsy. https://www.etsy.com/listing/1234720...-mx5-new-black Fit well and looks nice.