Honestly I went back to grab a photo and realized I barely took any! I just threw the skis in the passenger seat. The tips wedged pretty well between the rollbar and the B pillar area, with just a 6-12 inches of the tips sticking out the side of the car. Poles and boots took the rest of the passenger area and the rest of my gear went in the trunk. I thought about trying to strap them to the rollbar or something funnier, maybe next year.

Haven't heard much back from Mishimoto yet. They're pretty slow to respond, but they did ask me to confirm it was just the cap that was bad. My guess is they'll want $15 or so for shipping and I'll essentially break even.

 

In other news, I got bored and finally pulled the drivers seat out of the car. This has been on my list for a while, but I recently was handed a couple brackets and sliders for an FRS, and purchased a used bracket on here, so I figured I had enough material on hand to make something work.

When I first installed this bucket seat I was either too cheap, or too naive to do it properly. I don't hate the method, which I found in a ~10 year old thread on GRM by @calteg Seat Mounting Thread, but my execution was lacking.

I used aluminum and not steel, likely because it was cheaper and easier to work with, and who knows what grade the hardware was. No washers in places where the nuts didn't have much material to grab on. I've pushed and pulled on the seat hard and it wasn't terribly insecure, but in an accident I'm not sure it would've held up very well.




So with my assortment of seat mounting hardware I spent an evening mounting, unmouting, adjusting, hammering, etc... to try and get some combination of parts to work. And... well it took a lot longer than I expected or wanted and honestly the result is a lateral move. I don't remember exactly what I tried, but trust me that it was almost every combination of parts I could think up.

I ended up using the FRS brackets and sliders, which were given to me by a friend who wasn't going to use them and couldn't find anyone who wanted to buy them. I believe they're a Corbeau set fwiw. I had to hammer the mounting holes a bit to get them to line up with the stock mounting holes in the Miata, but honestly they were pretty close from the start. I had to cut the slider handle since the rails mount much closer together on the Miata than they would in the FRS. I cut a section out and opened/bent the removed section to splint the remaining 2 handles into 1, which was then slazzed up with JB Weld.


I bent this to wrap around a bit further after this photo. JB weld was liberally applied after

The seat was side mounted to the Corbeau Brackets with some class 10.9 hardware.

Unfortunately the seat won't hit the bottom mounting holes because it bottoms out on the bend of the brackets.

Originally I thought this wasn't going to work, as the brackets were too narrow for the seat. I'm guessing the seat mounting brackets were rotated into the opposite orientation at first, which does cut down width a good deal. I tried the planted bracket as well, but I couldn't find any configuration that I liked. I was either too far forward, or sat back over the cross bar which I could feel through the bottom of the seat. I wanted to keep the sliders as well, so that was another point against them. Side note, I realized I've probably been sitting on the aluminum cross bar since I made that original adapter. It didn't bother me, but I think the seat is more comfortable now. Could be placebo though.

So, why is this a lateral move? This new setup does seem safer and stronger, and I'm more confident in it. I wouldn't mind finding some class 12.9 hardware, but I think the 10.9 is adequate. However, the seating position seems much worse. It could be that I just need to give it a couple days for myself to adjust, but I feel like I'm sitting higher up and further from the center of the car. I can't really heel-toe properly anymore because my thighs are basically hitting the steering wheel. I might play around with the pitch of the seat, but I'm not expecting much.

Also, I think this was the same issue my buddy had with this setup and the reason he got rid of it, the sliders are nearly impossible to use. I have to throw myself in the direction I want the seat to move and maybe it'll move a half inch. I actually pulled the seat back out and adjusted the brackets to make sure they were as parallel as possible and they still barely move.

Note to self - Measuring and thinking about things before grabbing a hammer and slapping things together will usually result in a better product and less frustration.

I suppose this is another lesson about buying the right parts. I've got a PCA event on Saturday, so I'll probably run this setup there and see how it feels. What I might end up doing is getting some Sparco sliders for the planted bracket, cutting the rear cross bar and running that. I'm also considering redoing the bracket I built for the OEM sliders but with some thicker steel and better hardware. Oh well, I can still drive the car in the meantime which is always the goal.

 

Love the resort pics, always wanted to take my miata up but those parking lots are the worst. So I always take the ski beater. Idk how people bring their nice cars there (and there are plenty of them), people are always bumping into your car with skis and ****.

Damn! I hate when you dive into a project, burn a bunch of hours, and immediately want to re do it. We've all been there.

I'm shopping seats and brackets now, and leaning towards the new PCI mounts with slider. I'm also slightly afraid I'll drop big bucks on it and not be low enough or in the right position, but I think I'll just have to dive in and see where things go. Seats in general are hard to shop for, especially on a miata where fitment options are limited in the first place

 

I definitely wouldn't take mine up in the winter unless I had snow tires, and even then I'd be uncomfortable the whole time. My friend I drove up with (the black Miata in that photo) did his whole first season when the Miata was his only car. He's stock and had good snow tires, but he didn't have any issues that I remember. He did borrow my Subaru for a couple out of town trips though.

I was just looking at the PCI brackets, but I think I'll try to make what I have work. I might try mounting the seat straight to the Planted bracket again and run that for a while. I doubt it would be very comfortable, but I have padding I throw in for longer trips anyway.

 

How funny, I actually ended up giving away the Sparcos that are in that original thread last year.
I had replaced them a long while ago when they got pretty grungy, put them up in the attic and forgot about them.
Only thing I really disliked about them was it seemed like they really retained heat...not optimal in a track car with no a/c in Texas Summer.

 

Well, Calteg, those seats might have moved on but their legacy remains. Mines getting close to the end of its life as well, but it'll survive a bit longer.

So after thinking about the seat I decided it simply wouldn't do. Having struggled through the job 1.5 times now I figured I could give it another go with a level head and come up with something better.

I pulled the seat and ended up going back to the planted bracket with the side mounts.
[img alt="Paint penning all the things because there's just too many options to get confused with
"]https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.miataturbo.net-vbulletin/2000x1504/pxl_20250423_213617932_b8f3b02121613a419060ad57227 0f830b6f709fb.jpg[/img]
Paint penning all the things because there's just too many options to get confused with

Still took me longer than expected and I really don't want to pull that seat back out anytime soon. It's a much larger process now since the seat has to be removed from the bracket before the bracket is removed from the car and all the work is in pretty tight spaces.

Having said that, the seat position is pretty similar to what I had before I started this whole fiasco. I was able to get it pretty close to the firewall and far enough back to comfortably actuate all the pedals, including heel toeing. I'd say it's arguably a bit better than before.

I checked another task off the list as well. When I went to the Link one of the selling points over the Speeduino was that Link has built in knock control and a DSP to handle the audio signal. I didn't realize that this meant I couldn't pass the output from the knock gauge I had to a generic input and use that for knock detection. Because the Link has specific hardware to process the knock signal, you have to use a specific pin on the board which is wired into the stock harness.

Long story short, I cut some wires and added some connectors and am now getting the knock sensor signal into the ECU with the option to reconnect the knock gauge if I want to listen to the sensor when tuning.

Stock knock harness wiring

After separating the wires

Connector added to the engine harness and the knock sensor wires

I don't love these connectors, but they're what I had on hand and they work well enough with a bit of tape to secure the connection. More importantly, the signal looks decent enough to use.


So now it's a bit of setup in the ECU and we should be good to go. There are a lot of tables related to knock control for the Link, so some research will be happening, but I think it's mostly good to go out of the box.


I adjusted the Knock Threshold table based on the Normalized Level I saw on my test drive, which put me at about 1.6 across the rev range. I'll keep playing with this, but it seems like a good ballpark.
​​​​​​​

 

My least favorite part about building a Miata... installing and dialing in a bucket seat Glad to hear you managed to make a positive impact after all that work. Every half inch counts haha.

 

Quoted for truth

 

Mishimoto is still a PITA to work with. We've sent probably 10 emails back and forth with no real resolution. They said I'd only be eligible for a discount, not a refund, because I hadn't provided an invoice, although I had already given them one a few emails back. I'll avoid them in the future.

Anyway, the local PCA hosted their usual trackcross event last weekend. I only ran Saturday and that was enough for me. I'm glad they let us come out to run but the way they run their events is frustrating. Super slow paced, more expensive and most of the people in charge are a bit uptight. They also make a big deal about "changing" the course layout, but that's only ever one or two cones that are moved, and this time they made the approach to one of the corners worse. There is another group starting to do time attack nights at the same venue for about the same cost per day. I'm hoping to get out to one of those soon. They're on Monday evenings and it's about 45 minutes each way without traffic (probably 1-1.25 hours with traffic), so it's a little bit of a hassle, but nothing too bad.

Pretty standard event out there. Most notable for me was taking 3rd place raw and 6th PAX. Pretty stoked on that, my best finish out there by far.

This badass mini hillclimb car came out. Apparently this guy's been running this car for years and years at the local hillclimbs.




Unfortunately I forgot to turn my camera off after my morning runs, so I didn't capture my fastest of the day. The run in this video was about 1.1 seconds slower than my fastest of the day.

For whatever reason grabbing third felt better this time. I've always just sat on limiter for a second or two in the past. I nailed the 2-3 shift in the video above, but I missed it about 50% of the time due to the drivetrain sloshing around. We're pretty rarely hitting 3rd so I haven't encountered that up to this point. The new diff has poly bushings and I went to the IL motor mounts (30% stiffer than stock?). I figured that would be fine, but I guess I'll have to check everything over next time I'm under the car. I was also glad that I changed that seat mounting, because the intermediate setup I had wouldn't have allowed me to heel toe there.

This was the first event where I had the Link processing the knock sensor signal, which gave me some interesting data.



I've already pulled some timing out of my table this season based on the knock sensor data I had from the old setup, but it looks like I might be pulling more. I'm still learning about the knock control on the Link, but as far as I can tell that looks pretty obvious like knock.

It was a warm day (~20 C, 70 F), but certainly not hot. I didn't spray the intercooler or radiator since I didn't bring my sprayer (I thought it would be a cooler day). I ran the fan override all day during my runs (forcing both the rad fans on regardless of temp) which kept the coolant temps at 80 C in grid. I was surprised to see my temps hitting ~97C by the end of a run. When I was diagnosing the coolant leak a week or so ago, I did rebleed the system at one point, but didn't do a very thorough job since I wasn't sure if it would leak again. I rebled the system today and got a good amount of air out of the system, so hopefully that makes a difference going forward.


I also still have that insulation wrap around the IAT sensor. I'm not sure if that's hurting or helping. I think I'll pull it off now that I'm more familiar with how the sensor reacts with it on and see what happens.

After watching those videos from the event I was finally motivated to get back under the car to try realigning the PPF. The gear grinding noise is pretty wild at high RPM and I figure that's about all I can do short of swapping the transmission. I had to get a little creative since my exhaust hangs a bit lower than the frame rails, but I managed to get something working with a level and some calipers.


As best as I can tell I started around 60mm which is the minimum of the spec (60-72mm), so I adjusted it to ~67/68mm. I drove around the block and it seems a bit quieter, but it's hard to tell for sure. I might try going closer to 72 if it seems like this helped after I put a few more miles on it.

I'll leave this here too. I used some paint pen on my impact sockets and they're way easier to identify now. Highly recommend.

 

Congratulations on the results! That’s solid.

wowzah on that knock spike. I usually get spooked by seeing anything near the threshold, and here you’re “hold my boost”. Did it happen more than once?

 

Out of curiosity, where do you have your threshold set? Mine is at 1.7 currently.

Yes, quite a few spikes like this, this was just one of the logs I pulled. I setup the table based on what I heard through the knock ears, but I might have flown too close to the sun. My IATs are considerably higher than when I tuned the spark map, and admittedly I didn't really step through many different boost levels, I mainly tuned around 200 KPA and did some interpolation.

I pulled another log (I think from driving home) and you can see that there were even some spikes there, but just from cruising around and only to about 2.25. Cylinder 3 seems to be the worst, but I'm not sure that's not just a setting I failed to setup properly.



Here's another one from last weekend that peaked around 10... I should probably just stick a spike down the spark plug tube and start hitting my pistons with a hammer to speed up the process.





Keep in mind I'm limited to 91 octane here. I guess this is just more of a reason to setup flex fuel.

 

A lot of those spikes could depend on the other knock settings, but certainly seems like knock to me. It's a large enough discrepancy to raise eyebrows. Compared to Nate's map that was tuned on a dyno to MBT you're 1-2 degrees more advanced on boost on 91 octane (us too). That could matter on a warm day. Are you retarding timing when IATs are hot?

I have my threshold set at 2, 7kHz narrowband with the stock sensor. I also used the wideband mode and saw similar knock levels throughout, maybe even quieter overall. Curly may have better input regarding the Bosch sensor, and knock too.

At WOT, 81kPa, 28* BTDC I see about 1.5 to 1.7 knock level. After the reading I've done on the forum and playing a little bit, it seems knock would be a large spike as you're seeing and that's why I chose 2 as threshold. The most I've seen are tiny spikes on transients, up to around 2.3 or so. Similarly with a turbo NB2 I tuned last weekend which on spoolup was hitting 2.2 knock level in a piece of the spark map I had left too advanced.

These are my current knock settings:

 

I do have my tables set up to retard when IAT's get high, but I don't think IATs were hot enough to trigger that.

I figured this might happen when it got warmer out. I knew I was close to knock when I setup that table, and I did retard it a bit after I originally tuned it, but obviously not enough. On my old knock sensor signal (which wasn't even close to this advanced), I'd see spikes mostly on backfires. I did see some at my first autocross of the season so I pulled some timing, but I guess not enough.

I pulled a good 1-1.5 degrees out of the map up top and flattened the majority of the boosted cells so they don't ramp as much with RPM. Next event for the car will be our regional in Winnemucca, so I'll make sure to check logs at lunch and see how things are doing.

Thanks for posting all of those settings. Mine are pretty much all at default, so I'll pick through those and read up. I agree, I don't think a rogue setting would cause such a severe spike in the sensor reading. I'm glad I finally got this setup, because I've been wanting to feel confident in my ignition table (or know that I shouldn't be confident) for a while and now I think I'll actually be able to get there.

 

I don't run a knock sensor and barely use overboost protection, Ricardo hates me for it. But I'm on corn and have forged rods so I tell myself it doesn't matter.

For your 3rd gear issue, I had similar even on the mazdacomp mounts(which are similar stiffness to yours). I went with the supermiata hybrid poly mount, which basically is 1 mazdacomp mount on the dr side and 1 of their poly mounts on the pass. NVH isn't too bad at all and it fixed all my complaints, especially on the track. I'd recommend it 👍

 

@SimBa You're welcome. Just note that you will likely want to setup something more realistic for MAP delta threshold. I disabled it in my car since my MAP is near useless most of the time. I suggest you download the pclx from this post and go through it as well. Adamw is a professional tuner and works for Link ECU: https://forums.linkecu.com/topic/147...dComment-95617

And yes, Nate's approach to "full send, I'm on E85" does give me anxiety haha. That's a good thing, I can overthink too much sometimes and he changes that.

 

Fire, I already had my eyes on the SM mounts, maybe I'll pair those with their crossflow radiators I'm also thankful for my forged internals. They're like training wheels, if I make a mistake I know they'll support me lol

I'll look at that PCLX at some point. Still learning the Link platform, but I'm getting pretty comfortable with it now. I've definitely read some of Adam's posts on the Link forums, pretty confident I've actually glanced over that post a couple times already, but obviously there's more for me to get out of it.

 

Cat given for everything, but most notably the paint pen'd impact sockets. That's brilliant haha.

Annoying to hear about the PCA organizers. I almost went to one of their AutoX events near where I live last year, but didn't end up doing it because they wouldn't budge on requiring a full year membership. I tried explaining that they were only doing one event near me all year, and I would love to join for the one event and pay for a day license or equivalent. The guy I was emailing just kept sending back: "But if you buy the yearly membership, you can sign up for all our other events!" Yeah, but there's no other PCA events happening near me aside from car shows and wine tastings! And I don't own a Porsche! Lol. It was gonna be like $400-ish to sign up for the one AutoX including the membership. Anyways, sorry for the tangent. Congrats on the result! Seems like you're continuing to improve at every one of these events. And glad to see nothing's currently keeping the car from being driven at full bore. Since you didn't mention it, I'm gonna assume that temps stayed in check?

Re: drivetrain slop and motor mounts, I ran the SuperMiata hybrid motor mounts similar to Nate, and poly diff bushings in my car for a long time. Drivetrain slop felt pretty minimal with the hybrid setup, but then I switched to dual poly mounts and was like "Holy sh*t, this is where it's at". Lots more NVH with the dual poly mount setup than the hybrid, though. When I went from Mazdacomp mounts to the hybrid setup, the NVH increase was minimal. YMMV, but like Nate said, poly on one side should take care of your issue without going too far!

 

...And we're back! Spent the past ~2 weeks in Peru traveling and hiking around. Busy and tiring, but rewarding.

Lots of wild fitment on the little cars around here. Most running tiny wheels and tires with a good amount of poke. The Tuk Tuk scene in the smaller towns is also really interesting. Lots of neon's, decals, mud flaps, etc...




Streets like these are one way, although the direction changes based on who's driving down the road. If two cars meet in the middle going different direction then there's usually some honking and debating about who's going to back out.



DZ Racing and URD Wheels?




One of the viewpoints from our trek. Machu Picchu is somewhere off in the distance.




During the trip I was able to get a few more emails in with Mishimoto, who finally sent out a new radiator cap. They wanted to charge me $15 for shipping on a radiator cap that was being covered under warranty I ended up only having to pay $10, but still am annoyed with the whole process overall. I'm definitely making this a bigger deal than it needs to be. Regardless, the new cap showed up quickly and seems to be working, so all's good.



It's a quick turnaround, as we have our Winnemucca event this weekend. I need to get tires moved and probably do a bolt check on the car. I did find and tighten some loose bolts around the turbo an event or two ago, so those should be good, but I'll probably touch them all again just to be safe. @Ironhydroxide will be racing in the same class, so I'm excited to see how we compare. Rain is in the forecast, but I've got my fingers crossed that it'll be mostly dry.

One other thing I noticed recently was what appeared to be a leak at my muffle V band, so I'll get that pulled and reseated before we hit the road.

 

Cats given for five car pics and one pic of the Peruvian scenery. Good ratio, good ratio. I bet it was a killer trip dude! It's still a goal of mine to make it down to South America one year for a mountain bike trip. A couple of my buddies went down to Chile and rode with some of the locals a few years back. They had nothing but good things to say about every aspect of the trip. Sh*t sounds awesome down there haha.

What elevation was that photo of the mountains taken at? Looks, uhhh.... high.

 

I'd definitely do that trip if you can make it happen. Really neat to see a different part of the world, nice people and great food.

I think that was only around 9,000 ft. The highest we reached in the trip was just over 15k when hiking over one of the mountain passes.