Back from a really fun weekend at CMP!




Got everything buttoned up over the past two weeks. Thursday night I was hunting coolant leaks, the first one was easy just needed some teflon on the big plug on the waterneck plate. Second leak was coming from the actual housing, so I figured I didn't use the correct amount of sealant between the two pieces. Redid it, still leaking. So then I felt under the temp sensor and yup, it was leaking.

This cooper washer got mangled up at some point, it's kinda big actually


So I looked through my spare parts and found a properly sized oil plug washer to use instead. Put it on, no more leaks!



CMP event was good, especially considering it was the shake-down event after the engine replacement. I had two issues during the weekend, both my fault but caused no harm and I didn't miss any sessions.
1. My throttle cable came off the bracket, I didn't tighten it properly. It popped off at the end of the warm-up session. I pull off race-line thinking it was completely disconnected, but thankfully I saw the checkered flag and tried the throttle and it worked! Just barely, limped it back into the pits to get a qualifying time.
2. The accessory belt stopped spinning, the alt got tilted all the way towards the engine, I didn't tighten the tensioner properly. I noticed it when I was in grid and walked around the car to tighten the gopro mount. Heard the squeak, popped the engine, saw the alt and waterpump pulleys not moving, puttered it back to my paddock spot, tightened it, went out 1 lap down.


My previous best was 1:51.9, but I've always been there when it's HOT. This time it was ******* COLD low of 37 high of 50, so the afternoon sessions turned out to be optimal.

First timed session got down to a 1:51.6xx, sweet new PB! But Luke did a 1:52.2 on old tires, too close must go faster!

Second timed session is when my alt belt went to ****, but still got out there in the middle of TT1/2/3 Vette traffic, trying to get out of their way, but managed to get a semi-clean lap on the last one, down to a 1:50.8xx even better! But Luke is down to a 1:51.6 and I notice an unknown entry down to a 1:51.4, who is this?! I go snooping around paddock and find the car is a SM being driven by a 13yr old kid....made me feel real old, lol. Found out he did a 1:50.7xx in SM qualifying, holy **** must go faster!!

Third timed session and the kid is behind me, Luke behind him. I get red mist "I WILL NOT LET THE KID PASS ME!!!" Thankfully it worked and I got down to a 1:50.3xx, Luke and the kid in the SM car both actually slowed down. I felt really good about that lap because the standing record is 1:49.8xx. Right before this session I started putting fuel in my car, I was at around 1/4-1/3 tank after the last session and I figured they would weigh us soon. I put about 2.5gallons in the car then hear my friend say "wait! I already put in 5 gallons!" So now the fuel tank is FULL and I'm over weight ~60lbs, whatever..... send itttt?




In all seriousness, that kid in SM has some great talent. He beat the standing NASA SM record there by 1.2 seconds and was legitimately running in TTE with RRs. His dad told me he has 10,000 track miles in the SM car, which is way longer than my last engine lasted It seems like he pushed the rest of the NASA-SE SM group too, because a few that are usually 1.5-2 second back from me were running low-mid 1:51s by Sunday. Goes to show that competition is great and will encourage people push the envelope, which I enjoy a lot myself.

So with a new SM time of 1:50.7xx, I wanted to see if my car was way off pace or not. I could have put on fresher tires and gone out there to hopefully run mid 49s, but I already won and it's easier for me to just stick my alien driver friend in the car to see what happens. As expected, by his 2nd lap he turned a 1:49.7xx, 3rd lap he messed up the fastest section of the track, but on the 4th lap he managed a 1:48.5xx. This resets the record and makes me feel real slow . Either way it was good to see him benchmark the car and he noted some of the recent changes really helped. The properly depowered steering rack allowed him to slip around much easier, the prop-valve let him brake deeper, and the car had more power/torque since the last time he drove it(which was pre-stahl header/pre-fresher engine). This also matched all my thoughts about the changes as well, yay.

Here's his 1:48.5xx lap!



On Sunday we mounted up purple crack to this happy mug @black bandit :

 

Excellent.

 

Look at the excitement on that kids face! Hahaha, thanks again for letting me thrash around with some real tires. Too bad my spring rates are garbage and couldn't hang.

 

Back from Road Atlanta, fun event and several things went down!

First, new TTE record, my alien driver friend James driving my car:



I never put together a decent session, mainly because of this:


I've never heard of this happening, so I sent Dan a msg when I first saw it. Apparently it's semi-common on SM7'd SM cars or cars that see lots of r-comp load, like T25 cars? I'm not 100% on when this failure started, but you'll notice in the video above James is having to compensate for some pull and darting under brakes. I do know the car felt fine session 1 in warmup and I was VERY surprised to run a low 1:45, James did two sessions, then I did the 4th session and it was super sketch. Honestly sub-frame cracks aren't something I check for, but I guess it's going on the list haha.

Anyways, I'll be putting together a letter to make front sub-frame reinforcement legal for OEM miatas in ST4/5 and PTE/F. It's allowed in SM in SCCA & NASA, it's only like $17.70 for the part, and I don't see any performance advantage behind it. I also could really use this community's help in getting it passed as well

I was guna hop out in the golden session Sunday morning, but I about blew chunks as I was getting ready for it after riding with my student Told James to hop in and go run 41s, this was before I found out the sub-frame issue. Unfortunately he ran into traffic and didn't get any clean laps and complained about the alignment being "kinda" off.

My normal competition, Rensel, ran a 1:43.0xx that session. I'm pretty confident I can hit 1:42s in similar weather, which puts James at mid 1:41s. I imagine more time is to be had with a better alignment and a functioning torsen.


In other news, I got dyno complianced on Saturday as well. Unfortunately, I wasn't at the dyno when they ran my car, I was out with my student. So I wasn't there to supervise them to not yank up the e-brake, because the right-rear sometimes gets hung up. They attempted some pulls, but ending up catching my RR caliper on fire . I replaced the caliper/rotor that night, thankfully the pads looked fine. (Thanks to black bandit for offer parts on that) Went back to the guys at the dyno on Sunday after lunch and they said they could get numbers. When they were backing my car up towards the dyno my friend and I noticed my FR was SLAMMED. This is when we discovered my cracked front sub-frame.... with the car already half-way up on the dyno I told them to just go ahead and get some numbers.

Three pulls as usual, same dyno from early last year, those numbers were 130hp/117tq. Since then I have added the Stahl long-tube header, 2.5" "cat-back" exhaust with a 2.5" Borla pro XS muffler, swapped in a good-running short-block(140k) with good wet/dry compression numbers, replaced my valve stem seals on my head, and added a SPM qmax reroute.

I'll have a better pic of the graph in the next few days, but this will due until then:



These numbers were very encouraging and aligns with why my car is faster at CMP and RA now. All my engine swap work was worth it! On the other hand, I'm not tempted to add a MS3, square-top, intake cam, and maybe have my head worked over to make enough power for ST5/TT5



So the car is planned to go down for a cage in Jan/Feb, also adding front sub-frame swap to that obviously, lol. If everything goes according to plan I'll be back out at Road Atlanta in March, then comp-school at Roebling in April which will also be my first event in PTE!

 

Great power numbers! And that's an awesome lap from James.

Sorry you had to deal with the brake and subframe issues. But should feel good to have that record in your car!

 

I see lots of places where I lose time when I study that video. He's flying. And the car definitely grips well.

 

R.I.P!








My e-bolts were also trashed.... I replaced these last Jan/Feb. It seems like I can't get anymore than a season before they start slipping, the "V" on the washers get smushed in. This pic is actually from last year:



I pulled my roll-bar out and sold it finally, no turning back now for the cage! It should be getting installed end of Feb til beginning of March. I don't think I'll have it ready for Road Atlanta on March 10/11, but I'll give it a try. I'll be at that event either way, though. I'll be hard pressed to make competition school at Roebling in April, funds for the car budget are running thin between the cage, required safety equipment, and entry fee. Logic says to just hold off on w2w until later in the season and continue to do TT, but the urge is strong to get into w2w sooner rather than later. No promises.... but we'll see


New garage setup with 90civichhb!



Here' my long and slightly optimistic list for this year

• Custom 6-point cage w/ ~200* viewing inboard mirror setup
• OMP HTE-R 400 seat
• PCI seat mounts
• OEM mazda rear hubs w/ new bearings and ARP studs
• Torsen type 2 rebuild
• SadFab delrin diff bushing install
• TrackSpeed Engineering oil kit install
• Oil temp and water temp gauges with my stock BP4W ECU
• Removeable front air-dam (for SuperMiata S2, https://www.facebook.com/groups/SupermiataEast/ )
• Blackbird Fabworx spoiler (or something similar)
• Lexan windows front/rear
• SadFab delrin NASA package install(no sphericals).

I should be able to do a few of those, at least.....


Still awaiting official confirmation on the technical bulletin on the reinforcement plates. I did receive a "likely to get approved" so that's encouraging, but still want it official before I go welding plates onto my sub-frame.

 

Trust me...you want to w2w ASAP.

 

I giggled a lot at this, maybe too much actually.

 

I learned that after one event. When the highlight of my Grid Life South TT weekend was pulling a pass on a Mustang through turn 1, I knew W2W was for me.

 

This is when I knew I definitely wanted to do w2w

 

I feel like I've done a bunch of work and don't have much to show for it yet, lol. The cage build got pushed back another month, it'll be finished out at the end of March. So in the mean time I've been gutting the car!





I went a little cut crazy on this door, lol.



I also put on the Mazda front-subframe reinforcement plates.


Reinstalled new reinforced subframe along with new e-bolts for the entire car. The plates look like they should have been OEM.



Got myself a new in-date halo seat. I'm extremely pumped about this thing.


Along with some awesome Jerfspeed seat mounts to make life easy!




Next weekend I'm heading down to Road Atlanta to hang out with the NASA-SE and do some test and tuning with Lars in his MKTurbo time-attack street-mod car

 

Those seat mounts look pretty nice. Do you happen to have a link?

 

JerfSpeed! @jpreston

 

Yep. Dan Howard got the first set a couple weeks ago and now Marcus is tester number 2. I wasn't super serious about selling them but there's already been a lot of interest. Not sure if I'll become a forum vendor or what yet, but anyone interested can PM me for now.

 

Progress! I'm excited now!!!










Picking up the car this Saturday so I can get more pics of the cage then. It's a very straight forward design, built to regulations for the most part. I asked the builder to carry the harness bar over to the passenger side and had the same nascar door bars for that side as well. This is in anticipation of instructing potentially requiring student ride alongs and no right-seat instruction.

I also had the builder remove my rear seat humps on the driver side, fix a bigass hole in my floorboard, weld in the harness eyelet bolts, and mount my seat down. Since the builder does some body work as well, I had him pull out that annoying dent on my driver's rear quarter panel. No more golf-ball aero going on with the car


In other news, I was beta tester for SadFab's MR-S rear hubs.





I was the one that discovered some unfortunate dimensions while assembling, you're all welcome!!!




I 100% thought Genesplicer already had a set mounted so I figured I messed something up when it didn't fit while I was reassembling everything.


I've some things to tidy up on the car, reassemble, add convex mirrors, align it, and it should be good to go.

Upcoming events I'm planning on:
May 19/20 ViR - TTE
May 26/27 Mid-O - TTE
June 16/17 RA - TTE (and maybe aero testing, budget pending)
July 28/29 Barber - TTE
Aug 2 AMP Miata event before MATG
Aug 3-5 MATG
Aug 24-26 Grid.Life RA
Sept 21-23 Roebling - Comp School & PTE!!
Sept 29/30 NOLA SPM
Oct 5/6 ViR - PTE (yeah 3 weekends in a row )
Oct 27/28 NCM - PTE

 

Those seat mounts already have 3 ST5 race wins, 2 TT5 wins, 4 track records. There's now a set in Sonny's car too, watch out world, Jerfspeed picked up a #sonnymod.
They rock, I've never been so comfortable (seated low and perfectly centered on the wheel) in my racecar before.

 

Those require rear hump removal only?

 

They don't require it, but it makes it easier getting the seat lower. The OMP HTE-R has a pretty deep section in relation to its side mounting points. So ditching the rear humps is almost a requirement with it.

​​​​​​
The Jerfspeed mounts will clear the oem humps with a rear bolting point behind them.

 

Come to CMP! I'm hoping to get out there by the end of the year and could use an instructor. Although, Roebling's not too much further for me...

Car's coming along nicely. You gonna keep it tagged so you can still go on some mountain runs?