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Well, we have been officially moved in for a couple of weeks now but tonight it feels like home. The weather cooperated and I was able to transport the Miata from my dad's place to our house. This area is for Miatas and Miata related activities. If I'm lucky I can get a lift in here before next winter.
Ugh... I much prefer driving it to working on it. If I had the money I'd pay someone to do all the work. Although that being said I probably wouldn't have a Miata if I had that kinda money. To each their own I suppose.
While we're in the neighborhood however, does welding up the seams/pinches really make that much difference? I mean, it must because I see a good number of people doing it but I see a lot of people doing stuff I wouldn't do...
Don't get me wrong, I love driving the car. I just love working on it too, especially doing something that might improve the performance ever so slightly. I just like to learn, and putting myself in a situation by cutting or removing something forces me to fix it/improve it/learn. That's what I love. I love being able to say I made this. Even if it is ****, the goal is to make it slightly less **** the next time around.
I honestly have no idea if seam welding will make a noticeable difference. I have noticed a lot of the most experienced and smartest people on here do it. It helps that I have a welder, the space to do it now, and time. I'll post here if I notice a difference. Other things on the car are going to change so it won't be a apples to apples test. Speaking of which, I made a crash bar with the intention of cutting out the section in front of the radiator that I have seen a lot of people on here do.
Wanted to make a new manifold that solves a lot of the problems I had with my first one. Tried to make it a bit better flowing. Easier access to bolts. Fit under a trimmed down stock heat shield.
Cut out the center section in front of the radiator. I plan on keeping the tow hooks and hood latch support. Gonna box in the tow hook areas so they will hopefully still be strong enough to use and I plan on having a much thinner bar across the front to tie in the hood latch.
2019 has been wild so far. After we moving into the new house we found out we are expecting. Due Nov 14. We have been planning for this since we got married so we are not too shocked but it will definitely be interesting. I also got a pretty significant promotion at my current workplace that I wasn't expecting so that will make life easier from a financial standpoint.
Thanks, that's why I am doing all this work now rather than next winter lol
I picked up a cheap gas diffuser and clear cup for my TIG and there was a noticeable difference. I wish I would have picked one up sooner. Definitely getting better and more comfortable behind the torch. Still very green though.
My solution for removing the big OEM bar across the radiator. I wanted to retain tow hooks and hook latch support bracket. So I boxed int he ears off the frame rails and welded in a thin square tube. Intercooler bracket is also tied in.
My new downpipe is also seen here. Aceraceparts.com had the flex section on clearance so I'm giving it a shot. Looks nicer and I have seen the woven one fail.
I had a junk T25 exhaust housing laying around and noticed how much larger the waste gate flap was over my china t25/28 is. Decided to cut out both and put the real garret one in my churbo. After some slight modifications and hogging out the port, it ended up fitting really nicely. We will see if I still get any boost creep. Photo is halfway through hogging out. A lot of material was removed.
Cut out the center section in front of the radiator. I plan on keeping the tow hooks and hood latch support. Gonna box in the tow hook areas so they will hopefully still be strong enough to use and I plan on having a much thinner bar across the front to tie in the hood latch.
I cut out a bit more for my front bar. I have 2 bolts in my driver side tow hook only. Towed the half mile home with a tow strap with zero issues.
I debated for a while about doing what you just described. I never had overheating issues but just wanted to do it just because I can and its good practice. I'm always an angle grinder away though!
Photos of final setup for now. Really pleased with all the heat shielding and how well it is working. There is also a heat shield following the downpipe down. Can grab any of the brake lines after running hard without fear of being too hot. No rattles and everything is packed in tight but still able to get wrenches on pretty much everything after the heat shields are removed. The response of the turbo is noticeably better. Still looking for a nice flat section of pavement to datalog on. Still learning the area after moving here. Front end seems more solid after some seam welding. More time will tell.
I have always been fighting with crushing the hear core lines into the firewall since one goes to my turbo. I found a washer that was close in size and drilled it out. I don't know if this was clever or really dump but it doesn't leak and doesn't appear to be crushing the pipe.
I also picked up a silly cheap 95 Miata that is hard to get running. Thread is here, and I have no idea why it doesn't start: https://www.miataturbo.net/general-m...ck-ecu-100536/
I need help.
It was too cheap not to buy to at least part it out but I would really like to get it running.
Little life update. We finally sold our old house. With a kid on the way, we decided replaced my wife's rusty 2007 fusion with a loaded 2018 CX-9. We really like this vehicle.
Long time no update. The car went untouched pretty much all winter due to this:
Now that I am finally starting to get some free time I decided to sign up for the local autocross rookie driver school. I am really looking forward to it and its something I have wanted to start doing for a while. I knew the car needed a catch can so I decided to try to make one with some scraps I had. I may have made the crappiest catch can ever put on a Miata. It's most likely undersized but I didn't care enough to modify the valve cover. Black paint hides a lot of sin.
Also picked up a Conquer helmet. Pretty nice for the prices. Photobombed by cat.
After a couple of delays, my local autocross club was able to get in their test n tune. I had an absolute blast, I was expecting to have fun and it exceeded all expectations. I was really worried about the car surviving since I did all the tuning and this was easily the hardest I have ever pushed it. I believe each group got 4-5 runs and you got back in line as soon as you were done to go again. Looking at my data log before my first run the AIT was ~57 and by the end of the first session, it never went above 90. Coolant max was 202 and I hit a max of 12 PSI.
The two main areas I was worried about were AFR's through all the throttle transitions and my boost controller duty cycle settings would be too aggressive for part throttle/transitions. Thankfully both of these looked good through the event.
I do need to improve my rev limit settings. Soft set to 6800 and hard at 7000. Spark + Fuel cut and cutting 9 sparks for 10 events. The MS2 would try to slow down the RPM before the hard cut but I did hit it a few times. Feels like hitting a wall. I had a max RPM of 7002 according to the log.
I was running on 6-year-old Star spec II tires. I need to replace those ASAP as they were hurting me big time. I could be a real drifty boi on these things.
I also plan on upgrading to coil-overs. My Tokico Illumina kit from FM just isn't going to cut it long term autocrossing. I bought them before I found MT.net. My first go netted me a time of 70.x seconds and my best time was 63.2. I was very happy with my improvement throughout the day. For reference, the brand new C8 was putting down times of 53 seconds! Photo time:
Finally fixed my leaking front main seal. It was a bitch to get off and I ended up buying a new one because I beat the **** out of the old one. I also dropped one of my spark plugs, picked it back up and put it in without thinking about it. So I start it up and ran like ****, not realizing it was a plug I started troubleshooting. I was confident in my timing so I thought a coil wasn't seated. Nope, not it. I decided to pull plugs just to be safe and then I noticed my mistake. I will be putting new ones in as they are over 2 years old now.
I also picked up a set of RE71Rs to replace my cooked star spec II.
03-27-2019, 10:07 PM
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