Project Yui
 

I'm bring this over from CR so please ignore the fact that the first few posts will represent the last couple of weeks.

I was woken up from a nap a couple of weeks ago by my phone buzzing. I was tagged in a friend's facebook post listing up a '91 miata shell for sale for $250 to the first person who could pick it up. Body was straight and other than the missing drive train and diff it was complete so why not. I made a call to hold it within a minute of the post and beat out at least four other people by no more than a couple of minutes.

The trip to pick up the car turned into an adventure of its own. I grabbed a tow dolly from uhaul and thought about packing along my usual assortment of straps and what not but figured, "nah, just a car, no need for the extras". I should know better by now, "rolling shell" never just means nothing else. Showed up at the shop and Derrick pointed in the back and said "car is over there, oh yeah, and there's an entire '93LE interior and some other parts over there. Take whatever you want from that pile".

Two hours of packing later I came back with a new shell, a set of tuckin99 flares, a complete '93LE interior, a modified rear subframe for ford 8.8 diff, at least half of another spare miata interor, a spare hood, a spare front bumper cover, and three extra headlight buckets. I would have brought back some doors as well but I was flat out of room in the truck bed. I might still go back for them.

The only picture I have for now is this, The new car is the black one on the right:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1395378773

You can see an awful lot of the stuff I mentioned there.

Now on to the new car. For starters, I need a name. I started naming my projects years ago when I had seven 240SX's at the same time and needed a way to refer to them and never got out of the habit. I'm a big anime nerd and usually use female Japanese names from series I like. My other car is Kimiko (megatokyo) and I've decided that the new car will be Yui (Sword Art Online).

Since I know everyone likes pics not text, here's a better shot of Yui.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1395378813

Sorry for all the boxes and crap everywhere. My garage organization went all to hell when I brought another car in to the mix.

Interior is not quite as good as the exterior but I have all the missing parts and nothing is beyond help.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1395378813

Now as for powertrain... I hit the jackpot today. A '90 popped up on craigslist for $1k with a non-defrost hardtop. I managed to scramble out and was the first to the car ahead of the other 10 people who had called. Drove it 40 miles home without any issues at all.

It was wrecked in the ice storm we had back in December. I can't tell if its just panels or if there's actual damage to the unibody under there but frankly I don't care. It runs perfectly and drives straight.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1395378813

I have what some people might consider a problem...

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1395378813

Here's the fun part. I sold the '93LE interior and BBS wheels that came along with the black car as spare parts for $500 today and I've already made arrangements to sell the hardtop from the red car for $750. That means that as of right now I'm sitting at a whopping $0 invested in both cars... and I still have a whole pile of spares to sell off. I'll be in some money for parts at some point in the project but the red shell and other spares are worth something so I may be able to get this whole thing done without going out of pocket at all.

As an added bonus the red car was a stripper car so it has all the right features. Crank windows, non-power rack, and non-power mirrors, but was optioned with OEM mudflaps and AC. Not only do I get the power train, I also get the non-power stuff I kind of wanted for my other car. Score!

So I had some wisdom laid on me by a friend while visiting his shop to pick up some spare doors he was going to scrap. I was mentioning how my ultimate plans were for my motego blue miata to be a dual purpose track car "ultimate" build and Yui was going to be a little toy for me to play around with in the mean time. He looked at me and went "you know you're going to build that beautiful car and be pissed on the road when its too hard core and pissed on the track every time you put a little ding or rock chip on it". Damn I hate it when people give me the same advice I give others...

After a little soul searching I think that the only appropriate thing to do is to set up a street car and a track car. Kimiko, my montego blue car, means an awful lot to me and I don't really want to see it dinged up any more. I'd also like to have a car that I could take a date in and not be embarrassed about asking a girl to duck under the roll cage... As such, I'm going to back off a few all out track items for that build and set her up as a nice high power street car with good creature comforts.

Yui on the other hand will take over track duties. Initially I'm thinking that the setup will be mostly used parts. Stock 1.6, borla 2.5" exhaust, BC racing coils, hard dog bolt in cage, torsen diff, racing seat and modified knuckles for steering angle. at some point down the line I'll put together an inexpensive low boost turbo setup using spare parts to push horsepower up to right around 200. That ought to be a fun number that won't break parts but will spin the tires nicely. I'm still trying to put together a deal for a 1.8 so I start with as much of an advantage as I can get when it comes time to add boost.

Where are you from? 200whp will be fun...gut that car and make it sub 2000lbs with you sitting in it. I'm not a fan of NA body type...but if you gut it and make them into barely street legal fast as shitness, I dig it.

Thanks for the reminder that I need to add some details to my profile! More information added.

I'm actually not a big fan of gutted cars. Back when I was big into drifting a had a couple of completely stripped out rattle traps that I hated. My intention with this car is actually to keep most of the "comforts of home" in place. Carpet, blower motor, AC/heat, etc. I like being able to sit in grid and kick on the AC on a hot day.

I think 200 is a nice number to shoot for. If I go 1.8 I might set the car up with a switchable boost controller so I can bump from 200 to 250hp on demand but that remains to be seen. I think 200 is about as far as I want to push the 1.6, and maybe not even that. Track days and drifting in particular is hard on cars so lower HP numbers and better reliability is always a good idea.

I'd say. I mean how many dents can you pull before you decide it's time to just scrap the car?

Shh.....

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1395386501

/\ LOL Truth.

You were doing pretty decent until you mentioned the drifting. We were even willing to forgive the fact that you came over from the site that shall not be mentioned.

Hush, sweet prince. We don't want to know about any of your past lovers.

Huh, I guess I really don't get the hate on drifting. I get the hate on the whole "hur dur I'm a mad sick drifter so I've got to slam my car, get a bubble dildo shift knob and put sparkly stickers on everything" attitude. I can't stand how most drift cars are built and treated, but the actual act of stepping a car sideways at 70 is a lot of fun.

Putting all that aside, things are going well on the parts front. I think I have a deal worked out to trade a rear subframe modded for ford 8.8 for a complete 1.8 rear end swap with driveshaft and axles. That'll leave me in good shape to pick up torsen internals and output shafts off ebay. I also may have a deal in the works for a pile of parts that would add up to a complete 1.8 and transmission. Yui already has 1.8 front brakes so that added to the differential would completely upgrade the car to 1.8 spec parts. Of course boost will be added along with the 1.8 :D

99% of "drifters"

1% of drifters. There are a few people here who are parts of that 1%. There was a guy on here recently, kipcandrift, who got some hate, then posted some videos of skilled drift antics and got respect.

We respect people who have genuine skill, not people who missile their cars into walls.

It's also really fun to make fun of "drifters." :party:

Tell me about it. I help out a lot with local events and I have to sigh at the condition most of these cars arrive in. Then I sigh harder when they think that slapping on more power adders to their horribly unreliable heaps will help them. "I keep blowing up SR20's so I'm going swap a 2JZ in" SIGH.

You have to excuse the amount of vinyl on my other car. I used to own a graphics business and sold a lot of that sparkly crap to drifters. If it kept me in car parts I wasn't complaining and the best advertising I could get was running my own car with my own work. Its all coming back off since I no longer own that business.


Wish I had some videos to prove that for myself but I don't. I'll have to fix that when I get Yui turning a wheel in anger.

This.