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For those that find words are hard, this post probably isn’t for you. Although, this is shorter than the post originally was, since I'm an idiot and typed it up on mt.net originally and it deleted it. That's also why this post is like a month after the event
Laguna Seca, the most wonderful time of the year. Also the last time Miata Reunion will be held there. I told myself I wouldn’t stay up until 2:00 am the night before, but well, I lied. The night before I decided to try to change my tranny fluid since my 2nd gear grinds pretty well in the truck. Thankfully I tried to loosen the fill before the drain cause that bitch wouldn’t move.
I made some ramps for the scales, finished my brake ducts, and packed some tools. In the morning I scrambled to get everything together and as usual failed, to leave for Aidan’s at the time I said I would. I think I got there around 7? I played Stewart's Interstate Delivery Service and picked up a Volvo door for Albert on the way down as well.
When I got to Aidan’s he busted out the Milwaukee impact on my fill plug and promptly blew apart his HF impact ½” to 3/8” drive. So we tried an old school craftsman non-impact one I had in my bag and that did the trick. Woo for old tools.
Next up was the 40/20/40 seat that Aidan had picked up. Aidan worked on getting those installed while I filled my tranny and did my engine oil as well. More on the engine oil later lol. Katy and I crashed on the couch and I remember my last thoughts being, “Is Aidan’s couch really that comfortable, or do I always sleep on it when I’ve only had 3-4 hours of sleep the night before.” These seats were probably the best investment so far. No back pains the entire trip, even with the extended driving we did. For reference, longer than 3 hours in the bench seats and my back would start to hurt.
We departed around 8 am the next morning after Aidan picked up Hailey from work. Our first fuel stop I saw something like 10mpg which Aidan and I both figured was bullshit. It was also at that point that we noticed my trailer was ******* covered in oil. Now up until this point, my truck had barely leaked which is pretty rare for a 460. Looking at the dipstick, it seemed like it was a bit overfull which seemed right since I couldn’t nail down a super accurate number in my 5 mins of google searching of how much oil my truck took. I had poured about an extra ¾-1 quart of oil in because the high was 6 and low was 5 quarts for what I saw online.
Since it seemed like the oil was fine, we went on our way and figured we’d check it at the next rest stop. About 10 mins later I realized that I had been working with 5-quart jugs, not 4-quart jugs. So my dumb *** in my tired state put in 2 quarts extra. I was just blowing all the extra oil out. Oops lol.
Midway through the day, we met up with Bobby (I don’t think he’s on the forum?) and we traveled together for a while. The next gas stop we calculated my mpg at 11mpg. Waaaay higher than I expected out of the truck towing. Looked like that 10mpg wasn’t a fluke.
We got to Gordon’s (our stop for the night) at around 5-6 that night. We all went to dinner and Aidan reminded me how ******* fast and how much he can eat. Seriously, dude is an animal. After dinner, Aidan and Gordon finished up Gordon’s car and I washed mine. Katy hung out inside and played cat whisperer with his kitties. Once again, thank you for your hospitality two years in a row, Gordon!
The next morning we headed out for Laguna Seca. I don’t remember much of the drive. We got to Laguna Seca around 4, maybe? Dinner wasn’t until 8:30. Katy was very hungry and while I can survive off candy, she can’t. We got my Averagemiata banner on since I put in the Lexan windshield this year and my car was ready to roll.
We moved our normal big group dinner to Friday night and we had about 30 people attend this year, which was awesome. It was great to catch up with everyone and there were some new faces as well. We went back, had a fire, and ate ice cream. Aidan and Hailey downed their pint of Ben and Jerry’s in sub 3 minutes of course. Katy left me hanging and I had to finish the pint myself after she helped me with the first quarter of it or so.
Saturday morning rolled around and Gordon got his loaner wheels/tires on while I packed **** into my car and then we drove down to the track. This year I was in B which meant open passing which was nice. The first session was a little bit of a congo line, but that’s better than people crashing. I took Katy out for the second session and she puked after she got out of the car. Oops! I don’t remember much about the other sessions of Saturday, although we did go three wide into a corner at one point which was rather fun. Gave some other people rides in the last two sessions. I also spent some time walking around and seeking out some friends like Kendall and Bryan. It was great to catch up with everyone and see how their cars/life have been coming along. I finished the day off with a 1:45 which was a solid start to the weekend.
That night was the BBQ. The line was stupid long and they cooked for like 1200 people but only 600 showed up or something. Probably because it took a ******* hour and a half of standing in line to get food. And then when we finally got there and Katy asked for a tiny bit extra chicken, they gave her the death glare. They eventually said we could get seconds, but they had so much leftover food, they had to pass it out in containers at the end of the day Sunday.
Sunday the first session I got passed by @Savington , or whoever was driving Andrew’s car, so I decided it’d be fun to try to keep up. We blasted through traffic together for a while and I managed to turn a 1:43 while chasing him. I’m sure if it had been an open track and whoever was driving had been at full tilt with no passenger, they probably would have left me in the dust. But hey, it was fun either way.
In the next session, I took @BEAVIS out for a ride. We took a bit of an interesting line through the corkscrew when I tried to brake a little later for the corner than I had been before. I tried to get the car to rotate so we’d come down a little sideways and I could catch it as we went down, but instead we just went straight through the drain cover route. I felt a bit bad about that as well as flustered and forgot to pump my brakes on the straight between 9&10. I get a bit of pad knockback coming through 8/9 so if I don’t pump the pedal 75% down, I don’t have much brake coming into 10. I dialed it back for about half a lap to let the tires cool off a little and collect myself. We didn’t do anything too fast, I think only a 1:45 that session.
In the third session, I took Gordon out for some fun. We took a somewhat aggressive line through the corkscrew following Aidan. ****’s fun. We also got some sweet pictures of the crew together.
In the last session of the day, Katy came out again. I had been hanging the car in 4th through turn 1 the whole weekend which is only like 120. Midway through the session, I tried shifting to fifth. The car was way better composed than I thought it would be (woo xidas) and I wish I had tried it sooner. That lap I also did a 1:41:76. I was pretty happy with that time. Watching the videos, I hesitated to shift to fifth for a second and it’s rather apparent how much more time is on the table, the car could be fast in the right hands.
We packed up the car and trailer and headed back up to the campsite for the night. We had originally planned on having a fire, but it was rather cold, so we ended up hanging out in Ed’s RV and eating a **** ton of meat that was leftover from the dinner the night before.
We got up around 5:30 the next morning and got on the road by 6 am. We made our way up to Aidan’s, I got tired at one point and Katy took over. I was a little nervous having her drive since 2nd gear is finicky and she’s never driven a truck and trailer, but as always, she did fine and I never should have doubted her. Getting a nap was definitely helpful for the rest of the drive.
We stopped at Aidan’s and loaded up my old vinyl front seat and my new to me (Aidan’s old front) rear cloth seat. Katy picked up her car and we headed towards the final leg of our journey. We made it home around 1:00 am and unloaded the car. I took the trailer back to Uhaul and we called it a night. I definitely wouldn’t recommend the straight shot route, but it was nice to have both Tuesday and Wednesday off.
Overall this event was amazing. Not only did the car and truck survive, but everyone’s car survived. I did a time that I was happy with, I know there’s more in the car, but most importantly, I finally felt happy with the car. For a couple of years now, I’ve felt that I made a mistake putting the v8 in the car. I felt that it was the wrong engine and that it was just plain the wrong choice to make all this power with so little experience. This event I finally felt happy with the car. I mean, ****’s wild sometimes, but **** it’s fun. And I still have so much to learn about driving the car and so much to learn in general as a driver. But I finally felt like I was driving it, not holding on for dear life. And that felt good. Really good.
This is a picture dump. First picture is me not in the car, second is with me in the car. There's some easy weight to take out still (trans, battery, trans mount) but I'm pretty happy with where it sits as I figured I'd be somewhere in the 2200-2300 range after the cage and top.
Congrats on making it through the weekend, and thanks for taking me for a spin. My first time in an LS powered Miata, the noise and the power delivery are superb.
Oh and she's a little fat at 2250+ lbs, time for a diet!
Yeah, unfortunately, at the end of the day, the LS does add a bit of weight between everything. I've got some plans for the future to help reduce it another 100lb or so, but it'll probably be at least another year. I'll probably just swap out the massive battery I have back there right now this year though, It's like a 30lb unit hahahaha
Enjoyed reading the writeup. Pretty bummed this is the last year for this event, we definitely have to put something else together for next fall. Great to see you guys.
Also: My car is 100 lbs heavier than yours, it has no cage, still no PS or AC, and still has the BP.... so don't feel too bad, ha.
I know, it felt weird saying that I don't know when I'll be back at Laguna Seca :( I'll probably be there with LD sooner than I will be with the miata, which is also weird to think about.
Finally got some footage on track! Thankfully @BEAVIS took some while he was riding with me that wasn't washed out. He also gave me some tips on how to prevent it in the future. It's painfully obvious how much time is on the table in areas, but I did manage to knock about 4 seconds off my time from this session at the end of sunday Either way, here are some noises!
So something I didn't mention in my post above is that my t56 has started making crunchy noises going into 4th. As the transmission currently sits, I think I could still get decent money out of it while still telling the buyer of the problem (I'm not gonna be a dick and sell it as 100% good) but the trans is still functional and it doesn't always make nasty noises. However, I have a feeling if I run it another year, I'll have to sell it as a core only.
I was 100% going to do a dry-sump this year and I've been saving up some money for it. I've also come to the conclusion that a 4-speed dogbox is going in it and I'll run 3rd gear as an overdrive. I will have to swap in a 3.23 as well to get the gearing right, but I'll probably grab one from a junkyard. All this means, $$$, and I don't have enough to do it all this year.
So I'm contemplating putting the car down for the year while I save to bullet proof the engine/trans. The thought of that really sucks because I was starting to get a handle on the car, but I'm also getting pretty nervous about the engine/trans which isn't fun. I was also planning on taking the car to GTA when it comes to The Ridge this year, but just found out it's on the same day as Katy's graduation ceremony....so yeah, that's not happening.
I'm not 100% sure what the point of this post is, I think I'm trying to come to terms with not getting to drive the car for a year? Maybe I'm looking for other people's opinions. Idk.
You've had your car out of commission for a long period of time before to turn it into a monster, you can do it again so it reliably can stay a monster. Buy once, cry once, and enjoy it when it's "done" is my hot take.
I'm not 100% sure what the point of this post is, I think I'm trying to come to terms with not getting to drive the car for a year? Maybe I'm looking for other people's opinions. Idk.
Well it seems like the decision to pull the trans is the favorable option. So I guess, back down the rabbit hole we go lol.
It would be fun to put an actual fast driver in the car and see what they could do with it lol. I just wish I had had another day at LS, I'm fairly confident I could have broken into the 30s.
Well it seems like the decision to pull the trans is the favorable option. So I guess, back down the rabbit hole we go lol.
It would be fun to put an actual fast driver in the car and see what they could do with it lol. I just wish I had had another day at LS, I'm fairly confident I could have broken into the 30s.
and don't come back until you can rip clutchless upshifts with a satisfying clunk of engagement....damnit now I'm off on another tangent...
11-17-2019, 12:26 PM
8
Either way, here are some noises!
