Hardcore hairdresser. Daily driven track toy.

[Lurch]

So after 6 years with the E28, I decided it was time to retire it and find something a little newer.

Ended buying a 90 Miata back in October. Mariner blue, base package car (open diff, manual steering, manual windows, no cruise). AC already deleted. Newer long nose engine out of a 91. 15x6 NB wheels with 195/50 Yoko S.drives. KYB AGX shocks with some kind of lowering springs. Also has a basic roll bar. Not the prettiest shell (been wrecked before and has the usual rust spots), but for the price, I was satisfied.

I guess I'll focus on what I did to make it more DD friendly first

Bought a hard top for it almost immediately.



That was handy to have in the winter.

 

First things to address were getting it ready to DD through the winter. Car had a leaking heater core so the lines were looped off. Friend was making his Miata into a much more race-oriented vehicle so he gave me his which worked out great.

Then it was time to make myself fit in this thing. As a lot of you know. I'm 6'4" and around 250 lbs. A stock miata is a bit hard to fit in for me. A friend gave me his defoamed stock seat to sit myself a bit lower. Got an NRG short hub, NRG 2.0 quick release (Works Bell knockoff), and a 320mm Momo Monte Carlo whitch gives me a ton more knee room. Very hard to find a wheel that's as nice as high quality as a Momo for what they cost.

 

Also swapped out the 1.6 door panels for my friend's 1.8 ones with revlimiter door pulls (frees up a bunch of knee room). Ended up swapping out my entire center console, and replaced the shift boot with one a friend won at MATG last year and picked up a Voodoo Magnum shift knob for it. Very well weighed.

 

Decided I needed some better, wider wheels and some grippier rubber. Friend had an old set of Momo Podium Spec Miata wheels. 15x7 +25 with 195/50/15 Federal RS-R's.

Next was windows, Both windows had a bad sag to them, some of the weatherstripping was torn, and the one of my window regulators broke one day. So bought a brand new driver side regulator and and weather stripping, a used passenger side regulator from a friend, some delrin window regulator bushings (the culprit of them sagging), and some project G vent windows.

 

 

Finally I found a deal on suspension come up.

Barely used Konis. Race fronts. Koni sleeves and bump stops. Rear shocks are also custom ground to sit the sleeve a little lower than a normal sport Koni Yellow. Had 2.5 650# Summit Racing springs up front, which I swapped for 2.25 700# Eibach Race springs, and 2.5 450# QA1 springs in the rear (Koni springs adapters used to be able to use more common 2.5 springs on the Koni sleeves). NB tophats were also included for a little more shock travel. For the price he also threw in some offset Poly bushings for the front upper control arms. At that point, I started throwing money at a total suspension and brake overhault

 

Got a full 1.8 brake swap. EBC Yellowstuff front pads, Hawk HP+ rears. 949 SuperMiata SS brake lines, and Motul RBF600 fluid.

For suspension, in addition to the coilovers and the Whitelines, I got Energy Suspension poly bushings for the rest of the control arms, MOOG ball joints, OEM R package tie rod ends for better bump steer, a Racing Beat Tubular front sway bar (the 2 hole 1.125" x .188" wall race bar) as well as the RB brace and block kit to keep it from ripping the mounts apart. Did an adjustable 3 hole 14mm 5xRacing rear sway bar. Also got a full set of 949 Supermiata adjustable spherical end links to eliminate any preload on the sway bars. The final bit was ARP extended wheel studs with Moteki SR48 extended lug nuts (steel, open ended, and use a normal 17mm socket to take them off).

 

Everything installed

 

Got a corner balance and a pretty aggressive alignment.

-3 degrees of camber up front and -2.7 in the back. This is weight with driver and hard top, and around half a tank of fuel. It's under 2100 as it sits here.

 

Next up on the list is finding tires for my other set of wheels and selling the 15x7's. Have some 15x9 TRM C3M's.

They have some shot 225/45/15 RS3's on them at the moment. Debating on trying to find a barely used set of 225's or buying some brand new 205's and stretching them on. Was going to buy 205/50 RSR's but they're on back order. Thinking about the new 205 Maxxis VR-1's but they sold out almost instantly. Supposed to be back in stock next week so I'll make the decision then. Really don't want to go back to "normal" tires when I've got so used to 200TW and under stuff. Just really makes a car like this so much more fun to drive. With what I plan on doing, the tires need to be cheap enough to be disposable.

 

Planning on quite a few autocrosses and dragon runs this year. Should be a pretty capable car when it's all said and done. Not sure what's next on the list for future plans. Finding a 4.30 7" diff with a torsen would be nice. And after that, maybe more power.

Edited April 10, 2016 by Lurch

[Zyo]

Nice. Sweet suspension setup. Not a fan of the black wheels, but those TRMs will look tidy. How bad was the heater core job? I have to do that on my wagon this summer and its a "dashboard out" job. Probably take me two full days unassisted. Its a f*cker of a job.

[Pat]

I still can't believe I didn't know about this thing until recently, I expected you to eventually end up in a Miata but goddamn did everything happen fast. Can't wait to see it next weekend, hopefully my camera is good enough to record it on the Dragon.

 

@Zyo: off topic, but the heater core was the final straw for my L7. Happens to every E23 from what I've seen, but there's no documentation on disassembling the highline interior (and my blower motor is shot anyway) so I said f*ck it and bypassed it. Obviously that's not an option for something as nice as your wagon, so I wish you luck, because that's one of the things I would rate up there with sh*t like head gaskets. Hell, I'd probably rather do another head gasket than a heater core, depending on the car. Anyway, sorry for the rant Lurch.

Edited April 9, 2016 by Pat

[Lurch]

Paid my buddy $100 buck to do it. Wasn't a horrible job, just a bit time consuming. He had to pull the dash. Luckily, that's not too hard in a Miata. I don't really mind the black wheels, as when you start running aggressive brake pads like this, you end up with tons of brake dust on your wheels. Black just hides it a little better.

 

@Pat, it's not really that it happened to fast, just didn't feel like posting it til it was somewhat "nice" and prepped. I really didn't start doing anything with it til about mid January. Wheels, the window stuff, and the suspension/steering/brake overhaul happened in pretty quick succession. I had some money saved up for the suspension but after that ball was rolling, it was basically paycheck after paycheck dumped in. Just now stabilizing a bit. There's about $5000 worth of parts in it now. Over $2k of that just in suspension. Sounds like a lot but I was ready to dump just that in shocks originally. Got a great deal on the Konis though.


Probably the biggest pain of any job was doing bushings. Old ones have to be pressed out (or burnt out). $18 seized up carriage bolts had be cut and replaced. The offset whitelines had to be pressed in since they have a metal sleeve to keep them from rotating. Here's a few random pics since I don't know what the photo cap on this forum is anymore.

 

 

Ride suffers slightly when you replace all your rubber bushings with hard plastic but when you've got a car on dump truck spring rates and stiff sidewall race rubber, you can't really expect it to ride like a Cadillac. Still not really any worse than when I first got it.

Edited April 10, 2016 by Lurch

[Pat]

Shame we aren't closer to each other, we've got access to a hydraulic press at Bridgestone's machine shop. I was going to say January to now still felt pretty fast to me, but I realize now it's already been four months. Time flew by for me.

[*MURDOC*]

I been watchin' u.

 

 

Good stuff dude, you in a Miata is awesome.