I did Navy ROTC in college, and had intended a career in the Navy, but things changed and I found a different path so I was never active duty. I was fortunate enough to spend a couple weeks at sea on the Missouri (BB-63) when she was recommissioned in '86 as part of my summer training. I was even more fortunate that particular week was gunnery qualifications so I was aboard for shooting all of the big guns, including a 15 gun broadside. Impressive stuff... 16" guns fired a 2300lb shell with a range of ~26 miles. Think in terms of throwing high explosive Miatas way over the horizon. The gunners bragged they could hit a phone booth at that distance, but I always figured the accuracy was more "Circle K". Close enough.

The Iowa class ships were 40 years old then, and pretty outdated compared to the 'modern' ships. Battleship trivia: all of the outside hatches had to be shut when firing the 16" guns because the concussion would damage the computers inside the ship. Sailors, however, were expendable, and allowed to be topside...

 

Glad to hear it, man. I hadn't heard of them before speaking to said local dude about them, but the coilovers rode great and they seem to be receiving good reviews. Hands on support is great too, given I have only a vague idea of what I'm doing haha. I'll keep doing some research but they're high on my list, and the price tag is good compared to Xidas/Ohlins/other top tier suspension.

Dude I would kill to witness any one of those guns being lit off, let alone fifteen at once haha! That's awesome, man. Circle K radius for a 20+ mile-lobbed shell is still very impressive. Great trivia.

 

I promised everyone that it was going to be a busy couple weeks, and I hope not to disappoint.

I got home last night and almost immediately ordered a set of 17x10 Konig Hypergrams from GoodWin Racing, as well as an ECUtek dongle/license/tune for my car from Fab9. I know I should be taking this leisurely and enjoying the process, and I am enjoying it, but I also enjoy having a fire lit under my *** and want to see what I can make this car capable of. I'm already signed up to hit the track Saturday and Sunday in two weekends, might as well see what this thing can do with a proper wheel/tire setup.

In all seriousness, I kinda ran into a conundrum with the wheel/tire setup that prompted me to grab the 17x10s. I'm currently on a 17x8 wheel and 235/40/17 300TW tires. I wanted to get some 200TW tires for this thing before the track day. However, 235s aren't really optimized for 17x8 wheels, 225s only come as 225/45/17 and are almost 3/4" larger in diameter than the 235s, and 215s are tiny and lame. I'm planning on running 255s on this car once it's making sufficient power, and am going to need some 10" wheels anyways. I considered grabbing some 17x9s in the interim, but I don't want to be buying wheels twice. We've got a couple guys around here who have ran 225s on 10" wheels while on a budget for non-competitive track days and had no problem, including the car I drove yesterday. I'm not going to go that stretched, but am planning on running 235s on the 17x10s for now. This might be a little much wheel/tire for the power the car's making currently, and result in a little stretch, but we'll see. I'm pretty confident I'll be satisfied with the setup. Lots of guys running 225/235s on 17x9s with completely stock power.
Grabbing the 17x10s will also allow me to keep the current wheels and tires mounted together so I can run them as a commute-only setup.


Higher, but not too high.

Sooooo in preparation for that, I went into work early and raised the car a bit today. It was a little on the low side previously and I was getting some minor rub on the fender liners and front shock towers. Ride heights were 12 5/8" front and 12 3/4" rear and I raised them to 13 1/4" front and 13 3/8" rear. Then I went to work on the alignment. Got the rear set up right where I wanted it but ended up maxing out the front camber at 2.6*. I was aware offset bushings would be needed to get over 3* of camber in the front but figured I'd at least get the rear dialed in and zero out toe so I could drive home without feeling bad for my current tires. Hopefully 949 Racing has their offset bushings in stock and I can grab a pair of them tomorrow.



I also got the harness install finished up this evening. Feels good to have a five point in the car again.

What else, what else... I guess that's it for now. Ordered a set of 235 NT05s (I know they're not the greatest 200TWs out there but got them cheap through work and I didn't have any major qualms with them on my NA. They should work fine as starter tires.) and those and the wheels should arrive tomorrow. The oil filter perch should show up later this week and I'll be able to mount my oil cooler after that. Saturday's looking like I'll be installing the offset bushings, aligning the front end, and getting the oil cooler mounted. Maybe I'll mount the oil cooler and lines sometime this week in preparation for the perch showing up. I think I can pull all that off. If not, at least you guys can laugh at me!

 

Hmm NC's aren't too heavy then. I thought I read ~2600lbs, and I bet my NB after the turbo will probably be closer to 2400lbs. Regarding more tire, that makes a lot of sense. Tire makes all the difference when it comes to times, especially on tighter tracks. With a 2.5L I bet you have a fatter powerband, even if only 190whp peak. It'll be interesting to hear your thoughts going forward with the NC. With wide rubber very common these days, I bet the NC will be quick with some 265s. Riding in Mustangs and Camaros, the sheer grip is nuts with 305+ that it overcomes any weight issues.

Ha, don't jinx me! I hope so. My son's turning 9 next month and he loved his first time karting this year so I plan on keeping the Miata for a long time and doing some track days with him when he's older. With all the work I'm putting into my car I don't think I could ever sell it. That's good to hear you're having fun. At the end of the day that's all that matters.

That's a cool auto-x track at San Pedro. It's been years since I've been there but a cool spot to have an auto-x track.

 

NC published weights are weird, there's up to a 100lb range that can be found depending on where you're looking for them. I've seen stock soft top wet NC1 weights published anywhere from 2,425lb to 2500+. The power retracting hardtop option adds 70lb as well so some of the weights that can be found online get skewed by that detail. Now that I think of it, NASA will have scales at the event I'm going to next weekend. I'll get my car weighed there and report back.

That's killer about your son's first karting day! My dad got me a 50cc kart when I was 5 or 6 and we did that for a couple years before transitioning to dirt bikes. It surely started my love of aggressive driving haha. That'll be awesome getting to have him drive the Miata down the road as well!

 

I've been meaning to weigh our NC, and you motivated me to do it...

2011 PRHT GT, leather seats, pretty much as heavy as an NC gets. Completely stock (even tire size) with the exception of a Goodwin 'Super Q' muffler and mid-pipe, and brake pads/rotors and those should all be about a break-even with stock. 1/2 tank of fuel. So now you at least have a number for the high end: 2574lbs. Definitely in the Yacht Club.

 

I've seen it more than once in your build threads and I need to point it out.



I love that someone put this up in a shop, and how dusty it is.

 

A fitting vehicle for the ex-battleship resident! Good info, man. Given that, I hope mine's in the low 2,500 range then. I took some weight out of it with the battery and power steering delete but it's got a roll bar so the car is probably heavier than stock.

Hahaha that sign dates all the way back to when Covid first hit. We have a bunch of them all over the shop and they're all covered in dust.
I had another photo of one of our parts guys' computer monitor in the shop's the back counter. He got tired of techs bumping his dual monitors and put a sign up saying "DO NOT TOUCH". The next day, one tech sharpie'd his thumb up real good and left fingerprints all over the sign hahaha.

Wheels and tires showed up today and I got three of the four mounted and balanced. What do you guys think of the stretch? I forgot NT05s run a little narrow but they're not stretched to the point where I'm worried about them. Probably could've just gone 245s even at the current power level and called it a day, but I'm hoping the car will be quicker on the narrower tires for now.







One of our local guys, Mitchel, has been running 225 AO52s on 17x10 RPF1s on his 2.5L swap and is pulling some really quick times with them.




Offset bushings acquired as well. Shoutout to SuperMiata for having all the goods in stock, and to Ed for correcting my order after I failed to read that a quantity of "1" included a pair of bushings.

 

I've seen Mitchel around for years, he's been driving the **** off that NC for a while. Love it.

Have you looked into the 2.4 de-stroke kit for the 2.5? The entire kit with 2.3 crankshaft, rods, pistons, cams, and chassis swap parts comes out to $3,300 which is surprisingly affordable. Apparently these rev to 8k+, though I've yet to find any N/A dynos of them. Super interesting stuff!

 

Haha, it's funny, I've been seeing his videos for a couple years now but never paid that close of attention to them. Now that I've got the NC, though, I've combed through almost every single video he has for useful information

I have put eyes on that kit for the 2.5. The setup looks pretty kick ***! Fab9 is pretty active on the 2.5L NC Facebook groups and has posted a couple dyno charts of N/A motors built with that "Scalpel" kit. One user running a 2.4L with high comp pistons, Fab9's new intake manifold, aggressive cams and E85 made 233whp on the dyno. Most of the milder builds I've seen seem to be making closer to 210whp on the dyno. Can't for the life of me remember the redlines on the dyno charts I've seen, though.

That being said, one of my main goals with this build was to keep the engine (mostly) stock so I could just slam another cheap Duratec in the car if I grenaded one. I'm leaning more and more towards turbo'ing my current motor at minimal boost for the time being (~210whp or so if that's achievable without boost creep), and procuring a 2.5L to swap in and run boosted when my current motor gives up. There's a couple guys on the FB groups with this plan currently, although running way more power through the stock 2.0L (~270whp). I'm monitoring their experiences closely.
I'm fairly set on the 2.5L swap after boost almost solely because they're under half the cost of a replacement 2.0L, and the bottom end can support more power than the 2.0L can with boost. I think I want the balance shaft delete, and a Fluidampr as the only engine mods. Easily transferrable stuff if I need to swap engines.

This is still all a ways off, though. It'd be rad to build a 2.4L scalpel with boost way down the road and have the car running over 300whp on track!

 

The 2.0's are glass in my experience. Everyone I've known with a turbo 2.0 ventilated the block at some point. 2.5's seem to fair much, much better.

 

Thanks for the input, Wing. Yeah, I'm considering any time with the 2.0 turbo'd to be borrowed. I'm aware the responsible thing would be to do the 2.5 swap first. It's been two months and I'm still going back and forth on what decision to make haha.

Luckily, I'm still a bit of a ways off from either.

 

thanks for the good read - i ended up looking at classifieds for used NCs, but will stick with my NA for now

 

Thanks man! Glad I’m not the only one getting some sort of enjoyment out of this thread haha.

Was going to wait until later to make another post. Gonna be working on the car more this evening but figured it’d still take a decent number of pics and paragraphs to get to where the car’s at now.

I got the offset bushings installed the day of my last post. Luckily the old ones weren’t seized in and I was able to pop them out with a 19mm socket and hammer. On that same topic, none of the suspension components so far have been frozen together. All of the rear arms, both axles, wheel knuckles, etc. popped out easily the first time around. I haven’t had to pull out a ball joint separator or pickle fork at all yet. I’m incredibly thankful for that.

Following the offset bushing install, I realigned the front end. Current specs here. Gonna have to reevaluate after this track weekend because I’ve only baselined the car on canyon runs and a handful of AutoX runs last weekend. I need to get a tire pyrometer and actually use it with this car.




The oil filter perch shipped from ARHindrichs last Friday but was delayed due to bad weather, and ended up arriving today. I started mocking up the oil cooler on Wednesday to get a leg up on it. Ended up just bolting it into the radiator support with two L-brackets. Lines are run to where the filter perch will be but still need to be cut.




Unfortunately the way I routed the lines placed them right in front of the horn outlet and now it’s super muted I’ll have to go back and fix that.



I test-fitted the wheels yesterday and found that the fronts don’t clear my brakes, so I’m gonna need to run em with spacers. Kinda takes away the point of running these +43 offset GWR-spec wheels (as opposed to most 17x10 wheels with a +38 offset) but whatever. Spacers should arrive today. I put the rears on for the time being and they look sick as far as I’m concerned. Got myself a fender roller too and flat-rolled the rears, then gave them a bit of a flare as well. I’ve never used a roller before so I figured I might as well get some practice in.






Then yesterday, I got a call from my buddy Chase, who works at a speed shop down in San Diego. He was doing a suspension swap and setup on a customer’s NC cup car, and told me the owner was willing to let the old Progress Technologies (GoodWin Racing) adjustable sways and end links go for cheap. Needless to say, I made a trip down to SD this morning.





And when I got home, my ECUtek dongle and the MFW oil filter perch were both sitting at the door. More work to be done tonight…

 

It may or may not be too late for fender rolling advice, but for anyone else reading here... A heat gun is your best friend with fender rolling (especially if getting aggressive). Getting the paint nice and hot (to the point where you can touch it with your hand for a second or two but is uncomfortable) is just about the right temp to prevent paint/clear from cracking while working them back and forth. I used this strategy on my car to roll the fender lips flat and pull the fenders out and they have held up great for 5 years running.

 

Muchos gracias, Pad! Forgot to mention I did heat the fenders up before rolling them. That being said, the paint on this thing is hammered and it's probably going to end up getting flares (265s on 18s anyone?) eventually so I'm not going to be TOO heartbroken if the paint does chip at some point haha.

Got the sway bars installed yesterday along with the wheels and spacers. Front sway is a 3-way adjustable 30mm tubular and the rear is a 2-way adjustable solid 18mm. My original bars were... whatever stock RX8 spec is.

The car's actually starting to look pretty mean! No issue with the fenders clearing the 235s on 10s even with the 5mm spacers. Stoked on that. I took it out to the canyons today and couldn't be more stoked on how it handles now. The additional bar rates feel like they actually make these 7k/5k spring rates useable for now. Previously, the car had some noticeable body roll in corners even with the 300TWs. It seems to corner much flatter now even with the grippier tires. Bias shifted towards the understeer side a bit so I may soften the front bar or stiffen the rear. I'll wait until hitting the track next weekend to decide.




Woooo! So stoked on how the car looks from this angle.



Couple things to get ironed out. I tried to install the ECUtek application onto my computer last night, but couldn't get past the first step because the drivers to read the license key (supplied on a USB stick) wouldn't install correctly. Might or might not have that sorted by the weekend but it's not super high on the priority list. I noted today that even with the stickier 200tw tires putting more weight over the front end while braking, the front brakes are still pretty easy to lock up. I think the bias could still be shifted rearward quite a bit. I ordered some Hawk DTC60 front and rear pads a week ago, but due to an error by the vendor, I was shipped DTC30 fronts and DTC60 rears. I might not have a choice but to just run these due to the timeframe I'm running on, and they might just work due to my current brake bias(?). We'll see. I'm going to have to finish the oil cooler install and swap the pads before Thursday, but I don't think that's too tall of an order.

 

For your first track day in it, maybe just install the DTC-30s in the front, it might be safer with stock pads in the rear if you're still trying to sort out the car.

 

Yeah, good advice Curly. I've been known to bite off more than I can chew on many occasions. I'll likely do that and bring all my pads to the track just in case.

 

looks good in the pics - needs a rear diffuser i reckon #becauseracecar

 

The car looks awesome. Visually for me it needs a front lip (or bumper) next.