What have you done to your Miata today?

What sort of alignment do you run?

It's TOP SECRET!

(yeah ok, no, I'm not that guy)

Front: -2.75 camber, 4mm total toe out, and as much caster as I can dial in and get the camber I want.
Rear: -1.75 camber, zero toe.

With the power steering system, I'm going to start experimenting with removing a bit of caster and see how that affects things. It'll help keep dynamic camber in line.

Also, I'm embarassed at our abject failure (rlaugh)
I got sick of turning the same collar back and forth in ever decreasing amounts and swinging the needle hundredths of a percentage point either side of the mark, so we called it good. 0.03% is well within the "take a dump between runs to move the needle" territory lol

 
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I've been ailing so haven't gotten anything done lately. Now that I am finally recovering, I took the plunge and bought a Momo Fighter steering wheel along with a MS hub to mount it on. Hoping by the time it shows up I will be fully fit and can get on with work.
 
Steering wheel and hub showed up today:

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The wood is slightly lighter than the stock parts, but I don't think it will be too bad since the wheel is a distance away from the shift knob and e-brake handle. My resistors showed up too, so once it warms some more I will be able to get this installed.

I thought I had bought a new horn trim ring from eBay, but the seller wrote me the following day to say their inventory was wrong and they had none left. They also checked with Momo but it is NLA. I'll have to find another source if I want one.
 
I thought I had bought a new horn trim ring from eBay, but the seller wrote me the following day to say their inventory was wrong and they had none left. They also checked with Momo but it is NLA. I'll have to find another source if I want one.

I *may* actually have one of those kicking around somewhere. Let me take a look around and see if I can lay my hands on it.
 
Not that one...and I can't seem to put my hands on the silver one I *should* have :(
 
Spent a little more money. Bought a trim ring off eBay for the wheel, a horn button from revlimiter and some screws for the wheel as is (got these from Ace Hardware). For Internet info, the screw size is M5 X 0.8 X 12mm. Note this is what fits the Mazdaspeed hub I have. I do not have the horn ring yet but it shouldn't be too thick so the 12mm length should do the trick. I will have to buy some different screws for the trim ring once it is in hand, I'll post their length once I have all the pieces in hand.
 
Yesterday I removed the stock steering wheel and tried mocking up the MS hub. It's going to take some modification to get it to clear the clockspring, and to have the Momo wheel mount up in the correct orientation. No free lunch in this case.

Warmer today and I'm feeling better so it was out to the garage. Had some work to do on other vehicles first, then it was on to Minnie. Pulled the charge pipes, drained coolant and pulled the radiator. With all the other work I did that was all my back could take for today (pulled muscles from coughing for two weeks). Since I have my other chores done now I can hit it hard tomorrow.
 
I decided to take yesterday off and give my back a chance to recuperate some more. I did receive my revlimiter horn button for the new steering wheel.

Today I went back at it. Got everything stripped down to the block in about three hours. It helped a lot having the flex joint in the header, I didn't have to remove it completely as I have had to do in the past with other pieces. I forgot what a PITA it is removing the head, having sore muscles certainly didn't help matters any. Here is how she sits now:

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The mail delivered my horn ring (you need one of these if you plan on using a horn button, otherwise the button will rattle around in the center hole). Once I get the engine back together I can get the steering wheel installed.
 
I did the suspension on an STS Miata this weekend. Shocks, springs, sways, corner balance, alignment. We had to correct a completely dicked install of a front sway that was already on the car, which was fun. With the endlinks disconnected, if you had a lift to get the car over your head, you'd have been able to do pull ups on the arms of the swaybar. So that was a disaster waiting to happen.

We got all the hardware swapped yesterday, then spent today doing the finicky setup work.
 
Wow. I am always amazed by the ineptitude of a lot of shade-tree mechanics.

finally got back to working on the head swap today. Went about swapping the exhaust cam over and installing the JDM intake cam. Moved the front coolant tap and the rear thermostat housing (this required clean-up and the use of sealant for the front O-ring and a new factory gasket on the rear). The Allen socket head cap screws I used for the thermostat housing showed signs of rust so I made a trip to Ace and bought some stainless replacements. Here is all that:

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Before I put the head in place I decided to remove the three exhaust manifold studs that I had to replace with longer studs for the supercharger manifold. Two came out with no problem but the last one was a PITA. Kroil was my friend in this. Once I had it out I could see the threads in the head looked stripped. I'll have to go to my local hardware store that carries metric taps and get one to chase the threads with. Couldn't get a picture of this one.

Next I tackled the crap on the pistons. I am not quite sure what this was, possibly oil that appeared to be leaking by the valve seals. I used some BrakeKleen, let that soak in and then hit it with a nylon cleaning wheel on my drill. Here are before and after pictures of that:

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Finally, the other day I looked at the MS steering wheel hub to see how I could move things around so the Momo wheel would line up properly and allow the turn signal canceling piece to be in the right orientation. It appeared that I could remove the black plastic piece from the hub and reorient it . After some gentle work I was able to do so. Blurry picture of what I am talking about, I will try getting better shots once I get to work on installing the wheel (you are looking at the small black piece in the center):

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Ugh. How badly did that smell? Hopefully the weight of it didn't damage your blower motor.
 
Ugh. How badly did that smell? Hopefully the weight of it didn't damage your blower motor.

I think I killed it when I went to start the car. The blower started and the racket was immediate. I knew it wasn't from the engine since it came from inside the cab. I've picked up debris in the fan motor before so it was an easy thing to pull the motor and check.

No broken blades and the fan was quiet when I tried it after emptying the contents.
 
Dodged that bullet.

Despite it being chilly today, I got things cleaned up and got the new head installed. There are two large Allen head plugs in the middle of the head that are missing from the new one. So far I haven't had any luck at getting the plugs out of the old head. I'll be soaking them in Kroil overnight, if that doesn't do the trick I will just buy some new ones. As proof you should always look around the area you are working in, even at things you aren't touching, during disassembly I found one of the heater hoses being cut due to rubbing (probably due to interference from something on the supercharger). Got a replacement from Mazda and changed that out before failure.
 
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