ngiardina

Sup everyone. My name is Nick and I just bought my first Miata. Isn't she a beaut????
A little bit of backstory on me. I've been a car lover/modifier/aggressive New Jersey driver since well before I was legally allowed to drive a car. My first car was an '89 Mustang LX 5.0. I loved that damned car, but it got me into too much trouble, so my mom made me get rid of it. I got myself a nice, safe, slow, Honda Civic. Within a year, it was gutted, had an LS/VTEC motor swap, nitrous, and ran 12's. I'm not going to give my whole car history, but let's get to early 2016 when I ordered my current daily driver:

uh...mah...gawd....
I am the proud owner of a 2017 Roush-supercharged Ford Mustang GT. It really is an incredible car, and unlike every other American car I've owned, goes around corners really well. So I took it to my local road course and ripped it around for an open track day. I was fully hooked within two seconds of my first lap. I also realized that it was WAAAAAYYYY too much car for my novice level of roadcoursery. (I know, not a word.) I saw a bunch of guys at the track that day in beater Miatas that seemed to be having more fun than me. They were driving at 10/10ths the entire time, and my car was at 4/10ths all day because it was too fast for the track.

So I bought a Miata.

The goal from minute one was to find a car that wasn't rusted to **** that could be ripped apart and turned into a track day special. The best part of the whole deal was that it would be a project that my 11-year-old son and I would share, which to date, it has been.

The first thing we did was add a Harddog roll bar. It was mostly uneventful, and we didn't take any pics. The next step was racing seats and harnesses, so we purchased some Takata 4-pt drift harnesses and some no-name seats from Amazon. Pics of how well that went:

Tall seats FTW
Anyway, since we got that resolved, we have added the following:

• Knockoff Bride seats
• Tein MonoSport coilovers
• eibach sway bars, racing beat sway bar blocks, improved racing adjustable sway bar end links
• Depowered the steering rack (for real, disassembled)
• removed the AC
• half gutted the interior
• wrapped it in Matte finish 3M blue
• plastidipped some parts orange (going for the Gulf Oil Livery look)
• Installed MegaSquirt 3PNP
• Deatschwerks 450cc Injectors
• Skunk 2 TB and match-ported the intake manifold
• Bumper cut
• Manzo Exhaust (temporary)
• Mishimoto Radiator/Fan shroud/Thermostat/hoses
• Mazdaspeed Motor Mounts
• Mishimoto Oil Cooler
• Moroso Oil Separator
• NRG Quick release and hub
• AEM UEGO
• Emissions delete
• Aerocatch hood pins
• Suzuki Cappuchino washer bottle
• Garage Star Cooling panel/door bushings/seat rails/brake lines/sandwich plate
• LRBSpeed Door cards

And here are some pics of the car now:












I've got an MKTurbo kit on order and will be installing it this winter after I get some miles on the track.

So anyway, thanks for having me!