Brit with a Miata
 

Hi all,

I'm Tim and I am currently on my 4th Miata, (well technically 3rd Eunos and 1st MX5).

I bought a share of this one around 10 years ago at University, where a group of us clubbed together to buy and run it. It was my first time I'd ever driven on track and I've been hooked since. It was run pretty badly by MT.net standards, but we were students and being on track >>> not being on track.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...74a6c1a4e0.jpg
Come 2014, I missed the old Mazda, so went in with a couple of others from work on this lovely machine... £250 for a 1.8 with Torsen! How prices have moved up recently! It lasted all of 10 trackdays before it met it's demise at the hands of one of the other drivers. Bent frame rail repair decided to be beyond the scope of that project. Though it still racked up >2000 on track miles, and being the first car I'd driven with vbox data, as well as having data from other drivers, let all of us improve a lot. Though it was still pretty much a stock car, just semi-slicks, pads and a roll-over bar.
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...9b83c1336b.jpg

After the demise of the above in 2015, me and one of the owners of the previous set about to build a better one. This one would have coilovers and be an NB2 for chassis stiffness, big brakes, VVT and importantly in the UK, being much newer so less rotten.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...213f96a92b.jpg
While building the NB2, I'd discovered MT.net, and had my heart set of an Xida'd, 6UL'd, Trackspeed EFR'd, Blackbird caged, 245 shod car. Though I priced it up, and it came to a huge number by the time everything was imported and taxed (more expensive than a decent condition E92 M3, excluding the base miata!). Along with the fact that I live in an apartment with a garage little bigger than the car (and no power), I decided that the car I wanted was beyond what I could afford and achieve.

Step in this car. After taking ownership of a pre-modified car before, I'd sworn to never do it again. However, this NA (JDM '94) came up for sale with a recently built VVT, FM2 GTX2860 kit and seemingly this owner had read MT.net too, with properly ducted radiator, hood vents in a low pressure area, Rev Basic MS3 etc. I checked the build list and it was pretty much recommended parts from here, except the turbo kit (but built pre TSE days) and the dampers (Gaz Golds with comedy 350# springs!). Some friends had even ridden in this car on track before when they met the original owner in their own miata turbos and they vouched for the solidity of the car. I had wanted an NB2 but decided this was my opportunity to be able to afford a turbo Miata, and I was going to build it into a what would appear to be a very average California build circa 2015.

Long story short, it's not been the plug and play car I wanted it to be so far and it's basically taken me a year of weekends/evenings with my awful facilities to get it to the point where I took it on track, (though a lot of that time was spent doing non-essential for track stuff, eg stripping the entire undside and undersealing it in a garage with no power and without a lift....) so here it is during the first shakedown this week.
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...b154ede748.jpg

Welcome! That looks like a well sorted car now.