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Alright let's get this clear, this is gonna be a long one so here's your tl,dr: Dominic finds "the one" after owning three other miatas. He also does very many projects.
Disclaimer: All pictures are potato quality. The order of the cars is the only thing in chronological order. Thank you.
We'll start with my first car, a 2000 NB (owned 2010-2013). This was the car I drove during high school and at the start of college. It had its fair share of problems, including a misaligned crank sensor (misfiring), a loose connection on the fuel pump (loss of power), and two clogged cats (major loss of power). All in all it ended up being only semi-reliable so I backed it down a hill (failing at a j-turn) and ran into a tree. The car was totaled and I ended up with car #2, a yellow 1990.
Car #2 was quite the downgrade (owned 2013-2014). This little piece of work was what I did the most engine mods on. I bought it for $1600 and used the rest of my insurance money to turbocharge it. I didn't know anything about the turbo I was buying at the time and it ended up being way too big for a 1.6 (think 5 psi at 4500 rpm). After a while I decided I wanted a mariner, so I de-turboed the yellow submarine and sold it.
Queue car #3 (owned 2014-2015). This little bundle of blue was a 1.8 swapped 1990. It was the most reliable miata I'd owned to date and that made me the happy. I was able to see past the cosmetic flaws for about 4 months before they began to bother me. I sold it shortly after I realized that I couldn't live with the stupid "nipple ring" hood pins the p.o. had installed.
Here is car #4, a beauty at 63k miles and only garage kept (owned 2016). It's a 1997 popular equipment package, meaning it was only missing a torsen. I found it to be nearly all stock, except the wheels, a strut brace, and some light wiring. I knew it was "the one" as soon as I saw it. This is the car which I have made the most cosmetic mods to (not pictured except ducktail trunk).
Now for some info on myself. I am a Clemson student and I love to do all of my own work. I work at the student shop which gives me nearly unlimited access to a mig welder and some big tools:
One of my projects was installing that torsen into my '97, so I did what any poor student would naturally do, I made my own diff mounts. The torsen came from a trade I made using wheels acquired as part of the deal for selling the yellow miata. I used delrin stock from the shop (free) to make them. I aim was to do this as cheaply as possible.
The end result of these mounts is amazing, for they create this vibration in the car that changes in pitch and travels through the cockpit as it accelerates. It's a bit loud but it stiffened up the rear end and the transmission movement a lot.
Another project happened when I went to a junk yard, sawa Mazda B-series truck, and I thought: "I want that shift stick in my miata". I later found a miata with a short-throw shifter, which I knew was needed to complete my project. The two shifters were cut apart by hand (because the horizontal band saw was too unreliable), and welded together. Literally $10 later and viola! It gives the benefits of a retarded bubble shifter (being able to have cups in the cup holder), without making me a tool (I hope).
One of my scariest projects was fixing the hardtop that came with my black miata. The p.o. made the mistake of breaking bolts off inside of the hardtop, making it impossible to mount the front latches. One of his meager attempts at fixing his blunder was installing a Helicoil. A cow with thumbs could've installed it better, but oh well, it still holds. The other holes which he left alone, I had to mill out, resize, and thread for a metric size bolt (I emphasize this because there are idiots who think its acceptable to use an imperial size Helicoil in a miata hardtop!). After all this I was able to attach the latches back to the hardtop and I managed to avoid stabbing a drill bit through the top of the hardtop.
Sadly I don't have more pictures uploaded of the varied other projects I've completed, but I feel like these examples give you guys a good idea of what I'm about (insert Turf'n'Turf reference here). I have a large library in my head of issues that I've fixed and projects that I've worked on, so I hope I'll be able to spend more time on the forums and use my knowledge for the power of good. I may update this post with more of my projects if it receives good attention. If I came off like a self-conceited ******* at any point during this post, I apologize. In my defense I have to tell you guys about myself without bragging about myself, which is difficult. And I'm and engineer so my social skills are terrible. Hopefully you all are able to understand everything I wrote, English is my second language. If anyone wants to speak in German with me, it is my native language but I need practice due to living in the sodding U.S. all my life.
If requested, I may go into detail about the cosmetic projects I have worked on with the black miata (ie. Hardtop spoiler, ducktail, flush finish panel, louvered headlight cover, mudflaps, and painting all the accessories).
Thanks for reading, here is a picture of my cat I stole from my sister's instagram (19 years old):
And girlfriend since 2014:
+10 points for every grammatical error you can find in this post.
Last edited by Alleycat Joe; Jan 11, 2016 at 12:29 AM.
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