New guy, WA.
 

Hi.

I have a fair bit of experience in the rotary world (rebuilding, megasquirt, et al), but recently I decided to hop onto the piston bandwagon when I saw a really good deal on a Miata.

'91, titanium grey, 1.6 long nose, Brembo BBK with quite a few other goodies (Torsen swap, Robbins canvas...it kind of goes on and on), in perfect shape minus a dent and a cracked windshield. For $1200, I couldn't resist going over to the evil piston.

Plan is either to drop in a 1.8 and turbo it, or drop a rotary in. We'll see what happens, due to the price, turbocharging is looking very tempting. A good 13BRE core runs about the same as it would cost me for the full turbocharging kit (ArTech, Chinacharger, MS) ><. You piston guys are spoiled on the price!

A couple pics of the Miata. And yes, I know, the snow makes it look not so hot, but by the time I got home from work, I was freezing my ass off and just wanted to get pictures of it. Plus the sun was almost down, that gave me added incentive. The odd stuff on the front is just snow afteraffects, gargh they look bad, but that's just from the snow.

Very nice. Welcome. Put your location in your profile, sell your wheels for $50 and get something a little wider if you're planning on a decent turbo setup. I'm a firm believer of getting the rest of the car setup correctly before turbo'ing, since the turbo setup will take over your time and wallet once you get it.

Thank you. I've updated my profile as requested.

My current planned path is based on what I do with my RX-7s:

MS, tune like a madman
1.8 (If going turbo'd), tune tune tune tune
Replace bushings/depower rack (The right way, tyvm. It's nice as second-gen RX-7s are the same to properly depower)/replace suspension, of which this step probably shouldn't require tuning.
And rinse, repeat untill the last bit: The turbo.

Granted, this is assuming I don't go rotary. But the evil, evil piston is singing it's sweet siren song of cheapness. Being able to put together a decent turbo setup for less than the price of a good rotary core is amazing.

Well make endless fun of you if you go rotary. Don't do it. And Washington is bigger than all of France, might wanna add a city to your location.

A wider powerband and more power is worthy of being made fun of, eh?

Well, on a good note then I'll be sticking piston simply due to cheapness. Thought about it last night and on the commute to work today, there's no way I can justify dumping what it would cost to do it on nothing more then a fun/track car. That and I have to do a perfect rotary swap if I want to even qualify for SM2 (No firewall mods, no crossmember mods, etc. - which means a stock Miata tranny and a rotary positioned high in the engine bay), which is just a -bit- higher than a class I'd want to be in.