1990 Miata Build by switched

8 minute(s) of a 297 minute read

Picked these up from powdercoating after work today:





Picking the stuff up from being ceramic coated on Wed.

3/21/2012

Cat approved.



4/4/2012

After a huge headache and 4 weeks of hassle with the front control arm bushings, I ended up cancelling my order with Renown Performance and overnighted a set from JSC Speed, whom I would highly recommend. They are on my porch as we speak, and I'll be taking the day off work tomorrow to go mental on the car. Cornerweighting it Saturday morning, so if all goes according to plan I'll be out on the prowl very soon!

4/9/2012

So after 14 hours on Thursday, 7 Friday night, and another 7 on Saturday, the car is back in fighting shape. We were able to get a perfect 50.0% cross weight distribution, and the car weighs 2424 lbs with me in it- not bad at all.

4/16/2012

Picture blast:







All back together and warming up the morning before heading up to corner weight:




Shot of the final weights:


Seeing this really makes me appreciate all the sub 2000lb miatas out there.

4/20/2012

The auto-x was canceled for this sunday due to expected heavy rain

5/22/2012

Finally got new tires put on my rear wheels!



I decided to go with the same crappy Falkens as I know they are able to stretch this much...haha These are just play wheels anyways so it doesn't really matter.

5/31/2012

So last Sat I drove down to RI and did the ADSI auto-x event held at the airport at Quonset Point. I even managed to get FTD (the instructors were all faster than me, but their times aren't listed)!

I had an absolute blast out there. I think I manged to get in 15 runs total (I burned a little over a 1/2 tank of fuel).

some of the competition:


waiting at the gate:


Heading down the runway to get to the course:




The camera seemed to have this odd effect which made the gas pedal just want to stick to the floor











Thumbs up to the camera guy :-)



Hanging it out to dry...





and the 3 fastest laps from everyone for the day:



6/9/2012

Ported out the inside and shaved the outside of the intake manifold over the past few days.





I'm real curious to see how much of a difference the porting makes on my torque curve. Sometime this summer (when I have time) I'm going to head back to the dyno to see the difference, as well as mess with the cam gears a bit. I'll be sure to post the dyno results.

6/12/2012

I just realized I never posted the photos from the Modified Mag. photoshoot, so here they are! Eric Tong was the the photographer. There were some really nice shots that didn't make it into print- Enjoy!































8/13/2012

Haven't updated this in a while, but the car is back up and running. This will be another post without pictures, so I apologize for that. On to the car...

I finished porting the intake manifold out, and had it welded back up here at work. I also had him weld the FM TB adapter directly to the manifold to eliminate a failure point.

I also did a coolant reroute, using the Begi spacer, Kia waterneck, and that big SUV hose everyone uses. I'm seeing 170 deg temps at cruise and sitting in 90 deg traffic, and under boost it creeps up to 190 (t-stat is a 190). I pounded a 30mm freeze plug into the head, and also fabbed a blockoff plate to bolt over that so it can't pop out. I had to also build a new waterline for the turbo as I got rid of the waterneck.

Got a couple of interior goodies for the car as well, which I'll take pictures of later.

The big news is I also have a new set of wheels for the car, which I've been purposefully keeping under wraps. I rebuilt them this spring, got new tires, and have had them waiting, ready to go.