I've never had a build thread as I always considered it something for people that know what they're doing. They have a goal for their car, make a plan, and then actually do it in a reasonable timeframe. That ain't me. At this rate it never will be, so might as well go ahead with a thread. It's not like car forums have too much traffic to handle nowadays...

I'm not much of a picture-taker but I'll start at the beginning and go through the pictures I do have. Need something to remind me what happened in what order.

How it began: 2014, had a turbo 940. It broke, I wanted a new car anyway, and a Miata seemed like a good idea. Ended up with a 32k mile 2000 NB1 for ~$8k if I remember right. First manual car, lots of hills between the used car dealer I got it from and the house. Apologies to all the people stuck behind me at green lights while I stall, over and over. I should probably note that pretty much everything I've done to the car so far I'm doing for the first time. A lot of this is tiny/easy work in retrospect, but seemed way harder at the time.

Old vs new, so clean!



A few months later, I realized a Miata was not a great car to daily in the Northeast for a good part of the year. I liked the car though, so the only option was to move to AZ where it doesn't snow.



It took a beating during the trip, going through snow/sleet/rain. Upon arrival in AZ it smelled terribly of gas. Probably used this forum (or miata.net) to find the smallest of cuts in one of the hoses rear passenger side that connects to the CA-smog giant charcoal canister. Met Mike "The King of Miatas" whom sold me a new one. Interesting guy, no picture though.

Bonus cat picture, RIP.


I knew no one in AZ, so joined a group that did occasional trips around the state. Also got some 6ULs and converted the headlights to HIDs, and the turn signals to LED DRLs/signals. Very cool in 2015.


Went all around AZ with the group, great way to see the state. In one trip you could go from desert sun to mountains with snow. One big problem with the group though, they wanted to take pictures, spend hours talking about how they totally are going to upgrade this or that, whatever. I just wanted to drive, really no interest in spending an hour getting the cars lined up for the perfect instagram shot. Maybe track people would be more my thing? Got a rollbar and replaced the soft top at the same time. Also replaced the rad with a SuperMiata one in preparation, the stock one was turning weird colors.



Actually, maybe I should just do bike track days instead.


Ah ****, better stick with the car actually.

Next post will start at 2016.

 

Didn't get to the track like I wanted in 2016, did some maintenance, installed a TSE BBK:


Spent a lot of time traveling for work (pic semi-related, spent months in the country took ONE day to sight-see):


Bought a house this year too, and got distracted by another bike.


2017 I finally made it out to the track. I packed like this for quite a while. It worked, don't recommend it if you care about the finish on the rollbar though.




Had a blast at this first track day. Went with an org called ProAutoSports, mostly because they were really lenient on tech. With the stock seat and a helmet on I wasn't even close to passing any type of broomstick test. From the side it was clear as day, but no one said a word (for better or worse). At this point the car was slow, on original suspension and most everything else, and I think I had Dunlop ZII Star Specs and Porterfield RS4 pads. She didn't miss a beat though, and it was super fun getting point bys in the new member group from Corvettes and BMWs. This was the start of a pretty expensive hobby, I've been with ProAutoSports ever since. I've only missed a handful of events since this event.

 

I think we're into 2018 now. I've been going once a month to trackdays for about a year, so I decided to upgrade the safety a bit. The car at this point wasn't really my daily, I took the bike to work day to day, so I could do harnesses/seats/etc.


Still using the same steering wheel. The seats weren't comfortable at all, nor was the helmet. The Crow harness was fine, but you couldn't adjust the lap belts worth a damn once you were in the car.

I was still driving the car to the track, it was still registered and insured. Some of the further track days like Inde were a few hours away though. The trips there and back weren't very fun. Here's the car at Inde with some airplanes they have scattered around for whatever reason.


This was also the year I had one of the few on-track technical issues, the NB1 coils died. No idea why I have a picture of me fixing this. I assume it's because I had no idea what I was doing and have a habit of taking a lot of pictures so future-me knows to plug things back in.


Unrelated, this is also the year a bosses bosses boss heard I was going on a roadtrip and threw me the keys to his 911 for a week. Cool!


No pictures, but this is also the year I bought the SuperMiata "Big Grip" kit. Immediately dropped seconds across each track. I vividly remember hating a certain bump mid-corner at the Firebird East track. It'd throw the car probably 3 feet towards the outside of the turn every lap. No one else seemed all that bothered by it. Went back to the track with the Xidas, literally couldn't feel the bump anymore. Crazy.
This was also the year where I decided to drive the car to work and got rear ended. Not hard at all, not much damage. However, I only had a harness, and had them really loose so I could work the radio and whatnot. So when I got hit at 10mph or whatever it was, I still slammed into the harness at 10mph. **** hurt, don't do that.

Between realizing "full race" safety gear is painful on the street, having no room for stuff to bring to the track, wasting still-good tires since I couldn't bring more, and being generally uncomfortable coming home Sunday afternoon in 100 degree weather, I decided I needed a truck/trailer. Bought this via a friend of a friend that had auction access for $16k, sight unseen - thought it was a pretty good deal.


By 2020 I was doing Time Trials in addition to the street group. So a typical day was 2x 15 minute TT sessions, and 4x 20 minute street group sessions.

Now that I had a truck/trailer, the car didn't need to be streetable. Air conditioning was gone, and I added Singular hood vents. Again, learning as I go, so I just had a Dremel. I went through an ungodly number of cutoff wheels, this took hours and hours. I wish someone had shown me what an angle grinder was!


I also got a more aggressive alignment since tire wear was no longer a real concern, and a corner balance because it's totes a race car now.


The trailer was custom built locally, so I could fit it through my narrow pull-through bay and not have to pay steep rental fees somewhere.


I also upgraded the hubs this year to SADFab versions since I saw videos of wheels falling off and got freaked out.


So as of 2020, the car looked like this: