I bought this 99 during the polar vortex in 2019, which only seems like a year ago with how crazy the world has been. I drove from Iowa to Florida to pick it up and nearly froze to death sleeping in my Excursion. I had been on the lookout for a while for a rust-free specimen that was solid, but not so nice that I would feel bad giving it a full send as a RallyCross car. This one fit the bill perfectly.



It almost immediately hailed on it. I was not pleased.



Luckily it survived with only a few minor dents that maybe I'll get around to fixing one day. You can't really see them when the car is fulfilling its purpose...



I do clean it up occasionally:




So far I've RallyCrossed it for a year in non-turbo form. The year end banquet is coming up in a week where I expect to take 1st in Prepared RWD for the year. Just don't tell anyone that I was the only one in my class ;). Once I turbo it I'll be in Modified RWD class and I'll actually have some competition.

Before I started racing it, I did a full engine-out refresh of all the maintenance stuff and upgraded some stuff along the way. It'll probably take me a few edits to get this list complete.

Suspension:
XIDA XL coilovers. Spring rates = 450 front, 300 rear
Bauer extended lower ball joints
Sway-bars deleted

Engine:
Supermiata sport clutch
Supermiata lightweight flywheel
Mazdaspeed "competition" engine mounts
Magnecor spark plug wires
Oil filter relocation
Carbon Miata silicone coolant hoses
Carbon Miata silicone vacuum hoses (don't buy this, none of them fit except for the PCV hose)
ARP Flywheel bolts
ARP water pump bolts
ARP crank pulley bolts

Chassis:
Jass hardtop brackets
Flyin' Miata door bushings
Paco Motorsports skid plate
Mazda front strut bar

Etc (stuff thats not really mods but I wanted to include them so I didn't forget that I did it or where I bought them from):
Gates timing kit
Supermiata water pump
Front and rear crankshaft seal
camshaft oil seals
transmission seals front and back
Jass "uprated" shifter dust boot
Moss leather shift boot
5Xracing bronze shifter bushing
Flyin' Miata Shifter rebuild kit
Replaced the devil's hose
Moss rubber floor mats

--------------------------------------------

All of the above is pretty much how I was racing it. Here's the stuff I'm working on now or in the near future:
Megasquirt MS3Pro PNP
Garrett GT2554R
Kraken low mount manifold
Kraken downpipe
Garrett intercooler
FlowForce 640cc injectors
AEM 50-1200 fuel pump
AEM X-series wideband
Honed brake booster delete
Energy Suspension poly bushings all around (except the diff for now)
New front upper control arms
New tie rod ends
MiataRoadster EGR block off plates

 

I'm waiting for a lot of my parts to come in the mail so I'm trying to knock out what I can while I wait.

Always fun setting fire to brand new parts right out of the box. I spent most of the weekend replacing bushings. Most of them came out really easy with just a few taps of a hammer. The only hard ones that I had to burn out were the rear lower inners and these new front uppers from Moog.



And what am I supposed to do with this pin that came with my Moog tie rod end? <<facepalm>>



Deleted the brake booster and removed the brake pedal while waiting for my booster delete to arrive from Australia. Hopefully its not just sitting on one of those cargo ships because now I can't drive the car until it arrives. Removing both of these things was one of the most frustrating things I've ever done. There is ZERO room get those bolts out.



It clicked in my head that the Kraken manifold doesn't have an EGR port so I ordered up some EGR delete plates from MiataRoadster. I could have just made them myself but the price was right and I didn't have thick enough aluminum stock on hand. For now I just deleted the EGR and left the crossover pipe until the manifold gets replaced so the car remains drivable (other than my non-existent brakes)



And lastly I got the Megasquirt installed. The car fired right up with whatever base tune DIYAutoTune put on there but it definitely needs some work on the idle. I installed the MS in the stock location, which is AWFUL. I drilled and tapped the case to accept the OEM upper mount but the lower mount is just zip tied and I'm not satisfied with that. I'm going to have to fab up a custom bracket or something. Here you can also see the worst of my hail damage. A hit right on the crease in the hood. I doubt that's repairable.

 

Now that is an interesting build! How do you like the Xidas in terms of performance and travel at these conditions?

 

I love the Xidas. They've so far taken the abuse and they feel great sliding in the dirt. They are XL's meant for stock height and they allow for a slight lift. I'm not exactly sure how much lift I have because I don't have anything to compare to. I'm definitely not maxed out. I got them dialed in for comfortable street driving and have been racing on them with those settings (mostly because I always forget to tweak them on race day). I could definitely use a little more travel to keep me off the bump stops more. However, I think I'd be saying that even more with other coilovers since most coilovers are made expecting you to want to go lower. I've considered playing with taller springs and different spring rates, but since they feel pretty good as is, I'm taking the 'it ain't broke, don't fix it' approach for now.

 

Youtube channel with in car video of this car?

Is this the car?

 

[QUOTE=emilio700;1613096]Youtube channel with in car video of this car?

Is this the car? /QUOTE]

Yup that's me. I have a ton more video but I never upload it because it gets pretty boring, lol. But I still have to record it out of superstition because the second you turn the camera off, something happens. The last time I turned the camera off while racing, this happened:

 

Yikes. You get out OK?

Shoot us an email info@949racing.com
We'd like to share your videos and IG on our pages.
Was the video with the Xida XL's on?

 

Lived to race another day!
I'll shoot you an email soon. And yeah, all my photos and videos of this car racing are on Xida XLs.

 

Some extra spicy tires showed up. Depending on how long it takes for my Kraken kit to arrive I may not even be ready in time for winter events, but I couldn't pass up this deal. On clearance for only $45 per tire! Drove 2 hours to my buddy's house to use his stud gun. That might seem like a waste of time unless you know how much a good stud guns costs.

 

Those look like ludicrously skinny tires, even for a Miata. In4whatever insanity you have planned

 

Those are actually the "wide" ones for the rear, lol! The fronts are 155/70R15 mounted on 15x5 Prius C wheels.

 

I love this thread so far. Keep the updates coming!

 

 

LOL this is hilarious.
After a bit of a break on this project I've started working on it again. I'll post some updates at some point.

 

It's a really cool thread, in for updates. An NA miata must be a handful on dirt, so I can imagine the turbo setup would be a riot.

 

I'm very jealous you have events closer than a 6 hour drive.

Car looks great.

 

Hey, long time no post. Life distracted me from making progress on the project, but I'm back at it.

I resumed work on it in the fall and I immediately ran into a problem. I had the car idling in my driveway to charge up the battery while I was cleaning out my garage to make room to start wrenching. I walked out to pull the car back in the garage and found that it had stalled and would not restart. This sent me down a rabbit hole trying to get it re-running again. I could hear the fuel pump priming and it would crank and occasionally try to fire up but would immediately stumble and stall. It has been in storage for a while and the gas smelled really old so I flushed it out and replaced with fresh gas and I replaced the fuel filter, but still no luck. Then I went down a different rabbit hole because I was seeing some oddities with the megasquirt and I thought I may have damaged it when I was trying to resuscitate the bad battery. It turned out that was a dead end. I had a mechanic friend suggest I make sure I was getting full fuel pressure and sure enough I was getting pressure but it would immediately bleed back to zero. That finally lead me to the actual issue:



The fuel line at the fuel pump had blown out. I was pretty annoyed because the fuel line was only about a year old. It looked like it may not have been 'submersible' grade line even though it was supposed to be.

So now its up and running (with actual submersible grade fuel line at the pump). Which means its time to tear it back apart and get this project moving forward again!