Hello, everybody.

I'm Brian, and I've had my Miata since April 2004. It got me through school, the first few years of my career as a mechanical engineer, and a move from Seattle to Colorado. I've put 120k on it in that time. I've been dreaming for a while now, and watching the piggy bank fill. In the mean time, I've been doing the suspension up a little at a time and putting a lot of parts in the trash can in the name of speed. The time has come to start making my barely civilized ****-box worth the noisy commute.

Confession: I don't plan on turbo charging the torque-less wonder. I come for the MS knowledge and general tech. savvy nature of this forum.

That's enough talk for now, I think. Have some pictures of said ****-box!

 

Welcome. Good looking ride.

 

Welcome, noob. Car looks great with the hardtop.

Post some pics of your "added lightness".

 

Thanks for joining, SpeedBump!

 

Needs a rollbar and some boost. Haha, what are the plans? Just a megasquirt and NA power?

 

Howdy from down the road in Jesus Springs. +1 on more about the lightness adders.

 

Thanks for the kind words, guys.

I don't have many pictures of the weight savings. To be honest I haven't really done anything "new" to lose weight. Nothing in the trunk that was bolted down is there anymore, I removed the soft top, power windows, AC, PS, all of the crash protection behind both bumpers, gutted the interior and then put the carpet back in, pulled most of the climate control, ripped out most of the cabin wiring, lightweight flywheel... you know, the usual. I'm honestly at the point where I need to start cutting metal or spending money to loose more weight. I'm going to attack the doors in the very near future, but I'm loathe to spend my car budget to pull more weigh out at this point. I've been waiting a long damn time for this engine...

The only "special" stuff is my heater and the Chaser top that I got a screamin' good deal on at the end of last summer.

Here are a few crappy pictures of the heater bracket I made at the shop while I was in school. It's a super simple and light bracket that bolts to the fire wall. I made the ducting out of .025" Al sheet and rivited it together. The fan is a 4" blower motor from a marine store that is very light, moves a ton of air, and sounds like a damn jet is landing on my head... The small ducting goes to defroster vents.







This is the result of my berserk attack on the wiring harness:



Nothing that wasn't related to the gauges stayed. I even went so far as to depopulate the terminals in the fuse box and various dash connectors.

Finally, here is my interior as of lunch today...

 

More about the heater, or next time you are down this way lmk so you can splain it in person. Heater core is gone and replaced with ??? Or core is there and reboxed/reducted?

 

I don't get down that way very often, but I'll hit you up next time I'm heading down.

The heater core is still there in a bracket I made. I didn't really want to carry around the weight of a heater core full of water, but I couldn't find anything electric that would put out a worthwhile amount of heat. An electric heater pulling 10 amps is only 145 watts...