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I'll strongly consider the HF trailer then, luggage rack kinda fucked up my paint on our Colorado trip a couple years back anyway. I'm cool with that, I think the only miata people I know up here aren't going anyway haha
Got some stuff yesterday, I picked up 2 feet of 6" stainless tube for the outer casing on the new muffler, I also got my 1.5" die for the tubing bender. A guy wanted me to build a bash bar for him and I had to buy it for my cage this year anyway. I went to work building the muffler yesterday, I'm shooting for a 20" case. The current burns muffler is an 8" long case and 5.5" wide. So obviously quite a bit bigger. I started out with the end that'll point out of the car because it's the simpler side. Basically took a 4" holesaw and cut out the inner circle. Next thing I did was trace the outer case and then cut it out with a grinder. Came out pretty much ******* perfect. That tip is currently pressed into the center hole and the outer edge lines up perfectly with the outer case. Currently waiting on the perforated tubing for the center, it's supposed to be here anywhere from tomorrow to next Thursday. You can also see the size differences between the current burns and the new muffler, it's pretty significant, now let's hope it does something.
Oh, I also made this for my girlfriend for her birthday. That's one of my pistons out of the LS lol. Turned out to be harder than I had originally thought. I had a pretty large heatsink on it which kept it from warping much but it also would suck a lot of the heat out of the welds which made it difficult to maintain the bead in certain areas. I was also pretty pissed cause the front piston to sheet weld came out a little cold while the other side was pretty much ******* perfect. But that's life, your best welds will always be the ones that are tucked away somewhere they won't be seen.
My best friend bought a miata today! We've been looking for a decent deal on one for a little while and one popped up yesterday that fit. It's a white 1997 with a torsen and 5 speed. After driving the 1.8 vs the 1.6 he decided he wanted a 1.8, which is obviously the better choice anyway and we were hoping to find one with a torsen.
This one popped up for $1500 and we jumped on it, has 161k miles with an extensive maintenance record. The lady that owned it basically did everything the shop told her to and gave us the maintenance record from the shop. She even printed off a carfax since she's been looking for cars and she has unlimited uses right now. She was super up front about everything, it has some small paint blemishes and some **** carpet seat covers. Oh and some ugly hubcaps but whatever. Needs a timing belt soon and valve cover gasket, so basically a timing belt. Overall it looks like a good deal on a nice little car and he's looking towards some autox and track days, which is sweet.
Today I wired most of the nb gauges in. I'm basically where I was at with the na gauges, my gas gauge works and my rpms still read double. But I'm gonna pick up a water temp sensor and factory oil pressure sensor to run the stock gauges. I know they're both dummy gauges but it's better than nothing. I also got the dakota digital speedo converter and my vss pigtail gets here tomorrow so hopefully, I can have a functioning speedometer by the end of the day tomorrow. That'd sure be nice!
I think I figured out how to get the rpm to read what they're actually supposed to. In the outputs of the ecu you can make it a function based on different parameters, one being the rpm. So I'm gonna try to play around with that and see if I can't get the correct rpm at the gauge. That and the speedometer would make a massive difference in street driving, and track driving in all honesty. Not knowing rpm is weird. If I'm successful with the tach I'll post how it works here, in case other holley users stumble on this thread, there seems to be somewhat of a lack of information on the subject which is annoying.
Well, things could have gone better over the last couple days lol. I don't think I'm gonna be able to get the tach to work which kinda blows, I think the holley just can't put out a signal that the tach can read, no matter what I tried it didn't work. So I'm just gonna move my shift light front and center and get it calibrated well, I think that's my best option at this point.
Then I got the vss pigtail, only to find out it's not the correct one. They sent the wrong pigtail so I ordered another one from a different company and I'll have to send that one back. I started doing the alignment on my car but my homemade turn plates were slipping a touch so I need to figure out a solution to that. On the other hand the digital level that comes with it is super ******* handy for measuring angle on tubing and stuff when bending them cause it has a zero option. I built a guy a bash bar today and that helped a ton.
And last my perforated tubing was supposed to show up today but there were some complications. Remember how I said my next door neighbor was a piece of ****? Well, he attacked his wife's mom and put a piece of a chair into her skull or something so the cops had the road blocked off all day since they were treating it like a murder scene. Hopefully she'll pull through the surgeries. ****'s fucked, that guy's on the run now apparently. Anyway, my perforated tubing didn't come, so hopefully tomorrow!
Alright, massive update time. I haven't updated the thread in a while because I was really busy with MRLS prep and other stuff so here goes. One of the big projects was the muffler and getting the car a little quieter. Spoiler: It was still ******* loud on the drive down. Anyway, I decided to go with a 3" perforated core down from the 4" because I really didn't want to blow sound and if I lost a few hp, whatever, not like I can drive the car to its limits anyway. Doing this meant I had to make my own perforated tube because I was running out of time and couldn't get one shipped in time. So I welded one edge of a perforated sheet to a piece of 3" tube and used it as a die, it was a real pita but it actually came out pretty nice. Welding stainless perforated sheet sucks though. The last picture shows the tube going to the outlet, it was later welded on.
Next up was the case and the packing. Many of these types of mufflers (including my burns) use fiberglass. This is great but it also wears out. One option is using stainless scrubble instead. While it's heavier it doesn't wear out like the fiberglass does. Since weight wasn't a concern with this muffler, stainless scrubble it was. I also needed to clearance the muffler for the gas tank since it was much longer and wider than the previous one, I cut about an inch out near the end.
Next up was weld it all back together. Pretty simple, and voila! Came out pretty nice, got my groove back on with stainless after a little bit. It's crazy how quickly you get out of rhythm if you don't weld a material for a little while.
Another thing I was worried about for the trip was gauges. I needed oil pressure and coolant as a minimum. So while I was doing some reading I came across a thread explaining how to linearize the coolant temp gauge. Great decision. While it doesn't show the actual temps, it serves as a warning if you get out of your normal operating temp. For the LS that's 190*. I can distinctly remember twice where I forgot to turn on the fans and when I looked down I saw that the temp was climbing past its normal spot and I turned them on right away. Normally it wouldn't start moving until 240*. It was also helpful on track, I'd guess the car got up to around 205-210* on one of my sessions where I found a bit of open space. Either way, it let me keep an eye on things for the price of a few resistors. Later down the road I'll buy a legit one. I also got an oil pressure gauge and got the dakota digital hooked up so that I could have my speedo.
More things on my to-do list included flipping my projectors the right side up so that the cut off line was on top since I installed them wrong. I was really impressed with the light output once they were facing the right direction, never had a problem seeing the road. I also added some audio, I stole the 6.5's and amp out of my daily and then threw a 10" sub at it, definitely added some depth but it was a little much at first until we dialed the bass back. I think an 8" sub would have been better suited for the setup, I'm not really a booming bass person. Then I bought a phone charger, ripped it apart and wired it up (Aligator clips in picture were just for testing). Also a good decision since I had taken out the cig lighter and not having a phone charger blows.
Last up was adding doors with windows and sound deadening. First picture is how my car sat at 4:00am the morning before I was supposed to leave. I tore off the doors from Brad and slapped them on Audrey in the morning. I also added the trailer hitch. Apparently HF had a recall on all of their trailers so I wasn't able to buy one, fortunately, a couple in Oregon was selling the exact one I wanted so I picked it up on the way to Aidans. Also a great decision, going without a trailer would have sucked. And that ends my post for MRLS prep. I'll make another for how the trip went.
So Tuesday, with three hours of sleep and working 26 of the previous 29 hours I headed to Aidans. Katy and I picked up a trailer on the way and crashed on his couch. We headed out sometime around 10:30 or 11.
We headed down through Oregon on some twisty roads and then over to the coast. Eventually we made it to the Redwoods area and camped out overnight. It was way colder than we expected but it wasn't horrible. In the morning I blasted Aidan's car with carbon and **** from my exhaust lol.
We cruised some really sweet roads in California, it's crazy how quick you can go around corners even with the trailers. We stopped on the coast for a picture perfect view as well. I realized, while I've grown up next to the ocean my entire life, I've never really been to the actual coast. The Puget Sound is technically the ocean, but it's nothing like the coast. A while after we split as Aidan went to hang out with some friends and Katy and I headed to Laguna Seca to stay overnight Thursday. We crossed the golden gate bridge and then stole Aidan's 139xl spot at the end for Thursday.
Friday morning I hung out and just had a chill morning. I dropped Katy off at a starbucks to work on homework and then sat and ate some breakfast while watching cars run the track. Took a shower and eventually headed down to the paddock.
I realized I didn't actually take many pictures over the weekend. But you know what, Katy and I were enjoying ourselves, live in the moment, right? Saturday I got on track and had some fun, took passengers each time, and despite my lack of driving ability I think they had a good time. One thing that this weekend really made me realize is how low of confidence I have through the corners. Next year I'm gonna try to beat the **** out of Brad a bit and just try to learn how to drive a car well. I have a fast car, there's no doubt in that, but my abilities are far from matching it. That's not to say I'm not going to track Audrey as well, but I really wanna play around with Brad a bit more and work on myself as a driver.
First ride along I got was with Ed. Super fun, fast car and fast driver. Went with a few other people including Andrew, ******* hell that dude can drive. My last session of the day the car started getting pretty squirrely, and I got the car pretty sideways but was able to keep it on track and not totally spin it. maybe like 45* of rotation. I thought I was just pushing a little too hard and got too much heat into the tires. Turned out my upper long bolt on the passenger side had come out as well as probably giving it a little too much throttle. Anyway, I had dynamic camber which isn't really optimal. I later realized the "looks like a large washer" that Katy thought she saw fell off when Aidan and I pulled off for him to check his oil was the nut and washer from the long bolt. Luckily it didn't cause too much damage, it cause a little damage to the threads on the lower part of the xida but I'd have to drop my car another couple inches to hit that part and I don't plan on slamming it so it shouldn't be a problem.
Apparently, I had added an extra small washer for some reason but it made it so that the last threads of the nut didn't actually engage and lock the nut in place. I realized this when I pulled the wheel off the other side and found that one loose but still attached. Saturday night dinner was a good time, I'm glad I was on the other side of the table from Stacy. You can check the MRLS thread for the story about her. Sunday I wasn't driving and just had a chill day. Hung around the mt.net paddock area, bullshitted with people, and went for some rides. Here's how my suspension looked.
Towards the end of sunday one of the cars next to our area brought up the fact that he was selling his fastback. I've followed the dude on instagram for a while but didn't realize it was him until I started talking to him. He said he'd be willing to let it go for 1500 to someone in the community. Anyway, I bought it. Had no plan on how to get it home, especially since I came down with my other hardtop on the car. @Bryan Z. and @MiataMan00 helped me put some of the suspension back together and then tried to get my hardtop onto miataman's car but we couldn't get it. So @2010 WRX Limited came to the rescue and shoved my hardtop into his jeep. Monday morning we headed home and hit put up tents in Aidan's backyard. When we got to my house James and I repaired his uhaul trailer fender that had a weld break when it got a little smashed.
Overall both Katy and I had an awesome weekend. Everyone was so helpful and so laid back. I really enjoyed meeting everyone and really appreciate all the people that helped with everything, I'm looking forward to seeing everyone down there again next year!
I found a cute little lizard at the campsite as well. When I went to release him my heart sank as he played dead and I thought I gave him a heart attack or something. Felt absolutely horrible for 10 seconds until he ran off. I was so relieved.
The hardtop isn't perfect, there's some decent gaps in areas and I want to re-do the paint this winter but for the price I just couldn't pass it up. Plus I could honestly make my money back in an instant if I wanted to. Oh and my umbrella stands finally got put out around the city of Edmonds! Kinda exciting! Really cool to have something I designed and built displayed around an entire city.
Well, I've been pretty busy the last few weeks. I finally got a solid job so I have some real money incoming. The plan is to save up a bit and then move closer to my job since my current commute is 45 mins in the morning and about 1.5 hours in the evening. ******* Seattle. Anyway, feels good to have a job again. I'm currently in charge of anything metal for them and then I'll be moving to half engineering and half fabrication later in the year when the busy season is over.
Put the car away in the garage back a couple weeks ago. Took it out for one last drive with my buddy and had a great time. ******* love this car. That's pretty much all for updates, just been focused on figuring out what I'm doing at the job the last couple weeks and getting settled in. Now that I have an actual job I got some plans for the winter, nothing crazy though. Main stuff is safety and some paint on stuff. I wanna cage the car, get decent seats for both the driver and passenger. And a fire suppression system. I've seen a couple of cars go up in flames now and honestly fire suppression systems don't cost a crazy amount for what you're protecting. I'm planning on doing a full interior and engine bay one.
Took some final pics of the car that day, a couple are from my buddy, here they are. Also, so glad I bought the fastback, I ******* love it lol.
I know he was having some problems with his car on Saturday so he might not have been around as much that day but he was actually right next to the mt.net area haha, and thanks!
09-01-2017, 09:42 PM
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