So the other person's insurance company (usaa) wants to pay the shop in the background while the work is done, but I just want to get a quote and leave the damage. Tips on getting them to just send me a check? (This is on my other miata btw if people didn't read that I got rear ended)

And next time I'll bring a gopro, wish I could have gotten some in car video

 

I don't know about where u live but in tx. You can get a check directly to you as long as you don't have a lien/bank note.

 

GLORIOUS!

 

This is how NJ works. They have to gove you a check for reasonable estimates (and of they are low, you can go get your own and make them give you a reasonable payment). I beleive you have to own the vehicle though, other rules apply if the bank still owns it.

 

Yeah I definitely own the car, it's just my daily beater. I'll give them a call today and hopefully I'll be successful. I don't even wanna go through the annoyance of having the car at the body shop. I was aiming to go a trackday on the 27th but I may shoot for the one on the 10th instead. Just had to pay for lemons and that sucked a bit of money out of me. Also been trying to get my girlfriend's mustang prepped and that's taken us longer than I thought it would.

 

Yay, getting $600. Good ol' brad paying for himself. Once the check comes in I'm gonna go for a Holley digital dash. It'll be nice to have a set of gauges that read something more than double the actual rpm and the fuel gauge lol

 

So I ended up deciding on getting a HNRS instead of the digital dash. There were a couple reasons for this, the first was that the digital dash was $800 and also our lemons team needed a HNRS so I asked everyone if they wanted to chip in $20 each and then I'd buy it. I bought a necksgen since that was what we used last year so all our helmets already have the anchors for it. I haven't really had many updates, honestly haven't really driven the car much since the trackday.

 

Haven't really posted much since photobucket decimated my thread, I've considered starting a new one but I should really just transfer all the photos over. Anyway, I've been trying to drive the car some more lately, no point in just letting it sit between trackdays. I forget how much it makes me smile when I drive it. Not really many updates on it, it's been driving well. I did have a fan relay go out but other than that it hasn't been acting up.

Been busy applying for jobs, I'm really shitty at writing things so cover letters have been kicking my ***. Also been prepping the lemons car for the race in a week, as always, things are behind schedule. I'm building box flares to fit the old foxbody wheels. I've never done much metal work (shaping), so they'll probably turn out like **** lol. I also got my necksgen, so that's exciting, yay for safety!



Also made an exhaust for my buddy's fz6, definitely the most challenging exhaust I've done but I really enjoyed it. He loves it and the popping off throttle is beautiful.





Last I picked up some msm bilsteins for $120, they didn't come with top hats so it's more like $200 but I plan to make some budget bilies for brad.

 

Helluva deal on those billies. nice find. and good looking exhaust too. Probably pretty ear piercing, haha

 

Yeah he's just got a little resonator that he built on there, it was real loud before, now it's even louder lol. But he's happy with it which is what's important. And yeah I felt like I got a pretty good deal. Poor bastard got rid of them for racelands, they've only got 30k on them as well.

 

Decided my neighbors can **** off and spent a bit of time playing with the idle in the driveway. I haven't really played with the tune for a while but I really need to again. I started off by raising the timing at idle to around 22*. From what I've read that's around where it should be with a cam around my specs. I also took some fuel out so it's closer to 14-14.5 at idle. I realized I had the target set around there but it was in open loop which (if I'm thinking of this right) means it wasn't actually using the targeted values.

When I originally did it I had only bumped the timing to about 20* and leaning out the mixture made it backfire some so I gave it another couple degrees which seemed to help. I haven't gotten a chance to drive it on the streets yet, I probably will tonight. Hopefully it fixed some of the backfiring issues at idle. I'm also hoping with the higher timing it makes it a little easier to leave from a stoplight, that's the main thing I'm trying to correct or make better.

 

mine sits around 22* and 13.7:1 at 990rpm. I set it so my iac position is around 12% open. that way it has plenty of room to close off, or open up. helps prevent stalling.

 

Non miata related post! 24 Hours of Lemons was this weekend and we brought our Audi 90 once again. We did some suspension overhaul this year and used the wheels and tires off of my girlfriends mustang, or at least the old 4 lug set up. First thing we noticed when putting the wheels on was that we were gonna need some larger fenders to cover the wheels. So I tried my hand at making some box flares, it's a solid 5 foot job, I was pretty happy with it for my first time doing sheet metal bodywork, it certainly worked for lemons. I also built an airdam and deleted the second factory radiator. The idea was that if I could duct the main radiator well enough then we could run without the other one and save complexity and weight. My ducting was kinda ugly, in fact the whole airdam was super ugly due to the nature of the offset radiator in the audi 90, but it worked. In fact, one of my favorite takeaways from the weekend was the judge who told me that "I'm no engineer but that radiator hole is way too small, you're gonna overheat the hell out of your car." Well, good thing I am an engineer bud, cause that **** didn't overheat once lol. The crank pulley did decide it wanted more ventilation at one point in the race though so we just left it.

Somehow the car didn't blow up or give us many problems. In fact, other than a blown coolant line (hose clamps wasn't tight) we pretty much raced all day both days. We managed to complete 240 laps at a pace of around 2:30-2:35 at the ridge. Slow, I know, but we have absolutely **** brakes, **** track tires, and an engine with 230k on it so as a team we decided not to push the car much and just aim for putting laps down. We were all shifting at around 4500-5000 rpm which is quite a bit lower than the 7000 rpm redline. This lost us about 30mph down the straight, but our lap times were about the same, just a touch lower than last year with the new suspension and tires.

Overall the car was super easy to drive, it understeered a bit, but it was manageable. We melted the **** out of our tires, they were firestone firehawks or something. They were decent street tires on the mustang but definitely not track focused. No one on the team got black flagged and at the end of the day the car drove onto the trailer and we took it home. It was definitely a successful and lucky weekend.

 

i like how you flared only the front wheels lol.

 

We actually pulled the living **** out of the rear flares haha, the stock car had a small flare on it, we pulled the lip out enough it was in line with the flare and then I flap disked the ridge so the flare looked stock. The front was hopeless though, the tire stuck out about 2 inches outside the line of the fender haha, no way we could fix that! You can see the difference in the stock rear flares and picture #4, but yeah, down the line, rear box flares would be better too haha

 

Now that lemons is over, I'm starting to look towards making the car more street-able for the trek down to MRLS. First up on the list is a muffler that quiets it down more. The current plan is to instead of having a reducer on my burns unit, have a quiet muffler and a track muffler. This should allow me to keep the lightweight qualities of the burns unit on the track but quiet it down on the street without just reducing the tip diameter a **** ton. I have some 4" perforated tubing coming and then the outside case is going to be 6". I'm currently shooting for a 22" body which is 14" longer than the burns unit and .5" larger in diameter. It'll be filled with stainless scrubble for longevity over weight. If it's still not quiet enough, I'll add another perforated tube that's a 3.5" or 3" diameter and scrubble in between. I think after all is said and done I'll have a quality, lightweight track set up and a heavier but much quieter street set up.

Next up on the list is interior, gonna try to reinstall carpet around the car and add some non-permanent sound deadening in the form of that jute ****. I'm hoping I can just put a layer down in areas and maybe secure it in some way but not glue it. I'll see about that, the carpet will at least do something. I'm also gonna try to do something with the doors, I was thinking of making somewhat of a door card and then just fill the door with foam or something? The goal is to have everything be able to be taken back out with little effort. Ideally, I'd just get doors from another miata and bolt them on, but we'll see. I'm also thinking of adding some extra foam to the kirkey, sitting on aluminum for 10 hours at a time is gonna get old quick.

The last thing is, I need to get my gauges functioning, at the very least, speedometer, oil pressure and coolant temperature. I think if I do all of that my car should be pretty well set up for everything and the drive down.

 

We also need to plan the caravan down.

 

Yeah I was gonna shoot you a text about that, any plans on what day to head down yet?

 

I have no plans at all yet. The less work I can miss the better obviously.

If you want to camp we can fit 2 miatas at most campgrounds easily, and just split sites the way down.

 

That would work for me, Katy and I were planning on camping. I was half contemplating making a towing set up and picking up a HF trailer to tow extra **** down but I'm still going back and forth. Either that or put my luggage rack back on lol. I'll talk to Katy tonight and see what she thinks.

Who else is caravanning down with us?