Minnesota volvo guy turned gay. (or, my automotive life story)
 

hi.

I'm 19 and have 4 cars. oops.

I've mostly been an old volvo guy, but I bought a miata last fall as a cheap car to not have to worry about for my 60-mile daily commute. listing price was $2000 for a '97 touring package with a salvage title from hail damage. I didn't care about hail damage, I just wanted a rwd commuter that wouldn't bore me to death.

drove 3 hours to the guy's house, took a quick look at it in the dark, drove it around the block, and was immediately sold. guy threw in a set of FM sway bars, RB endlinks, and a bunch of spare parts on the deal too, after dropping the sale price down to $1500, with no haggling at all on my side. gave me a stack of all maint. records from when he bought it off-lease. full poly bushings, mazdaspeed motor mounts, recent performance clutch, brand new timing belt, enthuza stainless steel exhaust, and 130k miles - the guy really took care of the car.

drove the ratty-looking roadster home on snow tires and seriously crusty steelies, 3 tires in the passenger seat and one in the trunk, top down. parking-lot fun happened immediately after.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...9d857c03_z-jpg

buffed it out, threw a few coats of wax on, bolted on the stock 7-spokes with nearly bald Azenis', and rocked out until the snow showed it's face. installed a crappy grant wheel and made a wood shift knob too. I dig the look of the grant wheel, but it's just too flexy.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...3cdb394d_z-jpg

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...f8be4fb2_z-jpg

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...hdsuo1_500-jpg

then, just mounted some new pizzacutter snows on ratty volkswagen teardrop wheels, and drove through the entire winter sideways. I have never and hope never to drive a minnesota winter with front wheel drive. I will be bored to tears.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...hdsuo1_500-jpg

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...vaq9o1_500-jpg

and that is where we are now. I bought this car as a car I wouldn't have to spend money on... oops.

plans for now are probably either a good deal on a used Bilstein/Koni setup with coilover sleeves or FM springs, /possibly/ racelands, and that's about it. wire up the seat speakers, do a bit of sound deadening, maybe replace the hood and trunklid to get rid of most of the hail damage, and just keep it maintained.

what's funny is that this is probably my most sensible car that I own, out of all my 4 cars. A quick-spooling td04 setup on megasquirt might happen in the future, but only if I get rid of one of my other cars. and that money will 95% likely go into my Amazon. speaking of which...

here is the rest of my stable.

'68 Volvo Amazon, my summer daily.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...hdsuo2_500-jpg

it will be around this height this summer (5 minute photoshop):

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8458/7...efa547d7_z.jpg

'83 Volvo 244 Turbo, first car and rusty unblow-up-able beast.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...bda4a8e1_z-jpg

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...hdsuo1_500-jpg

and another '85 244 Turbo from California, rescued from a shed with zero rust anywhere and no dents anywhere, and 12 years of dust accumulation on it. except for a wee bit of fire damage, from when it was joyridden and tried to be lit on fire to eliminate the evidence. (??) I will be building an engine for it and building the entire car back up within the next year or so.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...vaq9o1_500-jpg

I don't know why I wrote all that, but hello!

Pics don't work

Welcome to MT but yeah pics dont work, also the 'wont spend money on a miata' also never works

Welcome, iwannadrive!

So which cosmetology school do you attend?

oh, wow. does this site not allow image hotlinking? or does miataturbo.net just host hotlinked images locally?

when I clicked preview, after changing several photos, it kept all my previous photos from previous edits as attachments, so I just deleted all the attachments and was hoping they would re-attatch.

Your problem is Flickr. In order to Hotlink to images on Flickr, you need to select "Share" and then grab the BBCode. Flickr deliberately makes this difficult. Alternatives include Picoodle and Imgur.

Or you can upload images directly to this forum as attachments, and link to them that way.

I fixed a couple of them for you.

pictures up! finally. now you can ogle my golf-ball-dimpled miata. (apologies granted for anyone who needs to change their pants after viewing)

edit: or not. this is driving me nutso.

edit 2: think I got it. I have better things to be doing anyways.

one question I was wondering though, which probably isn't worthy of it's own thread, is this:

cold-start seems to be one of the really tricky things to tune in MS. but it is something very important to me, as if I turboed my car, I would probably still be dailying it in the winter.

how tricky would it be to achieve oem ecu-like cold starts? most megasquirted cars I've seen, even if they have well-tuned fuel/spark maps, seem to have trouble with cold starts, and require a lot of cranking, even in pretty mildly cold temperatures. that is a big no-no for me, as the miata has inherently weak starting capability in cold temps, due to the capacity of the stock battery.

(by cold-start, I mean /really/ cold starts. like -20*F. it gets cold up here.)

I understand that most people work on their fuel/spark maps rather than their cranking fuel, etc, as the miata is generally more a fair-weather car. I just need to know that it can be done.

We got cold starting to work on my friends 1.6 NA, in -5 centigrade, off a mobility scooter battery (once).

You can do it repeatedly with a proper battery.

I must say thats a steal for that thing. May i suggest the FM Vmaxx kit though. Keep your hands off the Ricelands.

I'd say it was a deal too but it looks like the rear sills are pretty rusted out. Being originally from Iowa and now living in Ohio, I hate the fact that it's damn near impossible to find a 10+ year old car without rust.

I will never buy a used car from the rust belt, never again...

Good luck with the project and welcome.

The parts installed alone make the car "free".

You can cold start with MS just like factory if you put in enough effort tuning in the values.

Also lol at taking a rust free car from cali and parking it in a field in MN where it will rust in two.

I have to agree, I was shocked to find out the car had all the parts on it that it does. Exhaust is droney on the highway but it's really one of the best exhaust sounds I've ever heard on a naturally aspirated miata. It's one of the big things that almost instantly sold me on the car. Guy really cared about the car though; didn't half-ass things and kept it maintained well. It actually used to have an M45 supercharger/Link setup for about 30k miles, which is why it has the performance clutch and Mazdaspeed motor mounts. Had Tein Flex coilovers too. It was quite the badass car, back in the day.

As far as the rust, yeah, it's a bummer. but for $1500, there are going to be some compromises. It makes it a bit easier on the conscience to drive in the winter too - one of my reasons for buying it was to have a car where I could just not really care about it too terribly much, and focus on school while I'm in school. again, oops. I might eventually weld in some new sheetmetal on the quarters and the left front fender, but for now I'll just keep it from rusting too much more, with black spraypaint and keeping the drain holes clean.

Ha, I wasn't the one who took it from cali. It has been in a MN shed under a roof for the past 12 years.

Also, it won't necessarily rust away in a field either - what really makes MN cars rust is the salt on the roads. Just like my Amazon and any "nice" cars I ever own, this car will only ever be on the roads in the warmer months, when the salt is gone.

When you go turbo, if you go turbo that is, the drone will go away.

For the fenders if you go with very wide tires you can get the over fenders and get rid of the stock fenders.