What have you done to your Miata today?

Been a while since I provided an update. Got home mid-July and looked into some things trying to figure out the intermittent CEL I have been getting. Some research showed I never connected the white wire for the wideband gauge lighting to ground as instructions direct so I did that. While I was in there I slotted the upper hole for my Megasquirt mounting bracket to make it easier to get the thing in and out. I also pulled the connection harness between the factory harness and the MS to look for any problems with it but nothing presented.

A few days later I changed the supercharger oil. I had noted some leakage past the snout seal so wanted to check on how much was left. Strangely enough I got 4 ounces out of it which is what is called for. Combined with the fact that I only had 2 ounces remaining in the bottle the rebuilder sent me, the logical conclusion is that the rebuilder overfilled it. I used some AC/Delco oil I got off Amazon. I had also purchased a replacement charger mounting bracket from FFS to see if there was any difference between it and the original BRP bracket. There was not so I went back to the original bracket. I was able to remove one of the washers I used for a shim to space the charger snout away from the crank.

I did an oil/filter change, adjusted the center butterfly brace part to give me some more clearance, and adjusted my steering wheel after trying different things to clear the blinking airbag light (unsuccessfully). Thanks to some things coming together I was headed for MATG again this year.
 
She gave me some trouble on the way down, again with an intermittent CEL and one time with the battery light coming on after which I was unable to restart her for about 15 minutes (had stopped at a rest area). Other than that she ran pretty well the whole time there. I did more driving this year than last, met new people and reconnected with old friends.

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While there I was talking to a member from another forum and he suggested looking into leaks from the FO injector seals as a cause for my fuel smell under boost. After considering this and other possible problems with the fuel system, when I got home I ordered a new fuel pulsation damper along with some injector O-rings/seals. I did see some leakage from the charger drain/fill plug so ordered a new one of those as well.
 
I was driving to the store one night after getting home and heard a clicking noise that sounded like it was coming from the stereo. After some on-the-fly troubleshooting I realized it was happening when I used the clutch. Suspicion was it was the green plug for the upper clutch switch. When I got home I looked and there the old one was in pieces on the floor. Luckily I had an extra from when I was trying to fix my cruise control problem so got that fixed quickly.

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All my parts came in today so I set about pulling the supercharger and upper intake manifold. Got about 3 ounces of oil out of the supercharger so that needed doing. There was some oil residue in the charge air piping, not sure if this was a result of my using different oil or not.
When I removed the upper intake manifold and the injectors, I saw signs there was leakage past the O-rings on the #1 and 4 cylinders. Pulling the injector spacers showed the O-rings were collapsed:

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I was given two sets of O-rings after sending the injectors out for checking, I used the larger set as they seemed to fit tightly but it looks like they were too tight. No way O-rings should have a flat cross-section after just a couple of years. I cleaned everything up and installed new O-rings and head seals using the lubricant provided. Installed the new fuel pulsation damper as well, just in case it was a contributing factor.

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The results on a quick test drive? No more overpowering fuel smell under boost. Have to do some more driving to see if that also took care of the CEL.
 
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That's quite an update, I hope that actually corrects the issue.

Imagine how much easier all that would be if you cut the whole front out of the car though! (rlaugh)
 
That's quite an update, I hope that actually corrects the issue.

Imagine how much easier all that would be if you cut the whole front out of the car though! (rlaugh)

You and me both brother.

I'll leave the Frankenstein mods to you racers. (laugh)
 
Of course, no matter how careful I am and how nice of a tool I use, I always manage to booger up at least 1 of the ball joint boots on removal.
I've got a new boot coming, but they're a real pain in the ass to put on without punching a hole through them. And of course, I don't have a 'correct' tool for installing one. Assuming there is one? Surely there's some specialty service tool for this, but regardless, this should do the job.



Forgive the chowder marks. It's a small lathe and I probably had a bit too much stickout, so it chattered a bit more than I'd have preferred, but it got the job done.



 
It never ends. Mazdaspeed finally did me wrong (only took them 15 years lol)
They sent upper ball joint boots instead of the lowers I need. The lower joint, since it takes more load, is a good bit bigger than the upper

It's the 1 thing preventing me from bolting the suspension back onto the car and at least being able to put the car on the ground to roll it around if necessary
So close....



Anyway, they're sending them out from the GA warehouse. I'll probably have them Wednesday. Would have preferred to have them today though...
 
About a week and a half ago I took a drive to visit a friend from several forums. After a nice visit I drove home with a part in my possession. Good thing too as the one I was using was on its last legs. What might that be? One radiator fan shroud. First, a picture of the Lexan one I removed:
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You can see two of the attachment points had broken off. After some aligning and drilling of new holes for my fans, the installed shroud looks like this:

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It is a Mishimoto shroud, fits great and now I don't have to worry about fatigue failure (at least as much) of the material used.

I have had gas smell under boost again, but the injector O-rings are not leaking so this should (hopefully anyway) be down to a tuning issue. Heading back to work end of the weekend so that will have to wait for my next time home.
 
Finished my bolt-in bumper bar solution. I'm really happy with how it came out

Started by boxing in the ends of the frame rails where the bumper bar was cut out:



And boxed in the ends of the bumper bar:




Then welded the 'paddles' on that let it bolt up to the chassis, and hit it all with a couple coats of paint:

 
I'm at that depressing point in a new build where the car looks like it's more ready for the scrapyard than to be a race car again.

The front end's cut out, half the panels are missing, bits and pieces are notched and cut here and there, paint's missing all over the place, wires and hoses hanging around everywhere but attached to nothing. It looks like hot garbage.

Guess there's nowhere to go but up at this point



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I never got the fascination of 'car guys' about a generation older than me have with the old school Stack dash that was in, like, every race car 'back in the day'. When I was coming up and starting to pay attention, it already looked old and dated.

When I was coming up, all the big GT endurance racers had that iconic blue-back lit Racepak dash.

And it occurs to me that my kids are probably going to think I'm an idiot for, in the world of full color 3D dash displays, how idiotically happy this makes me

 
Finished up the RacePak dash mount with a gusset & finished welding it:





Installed a Walbro 450 pump and swapped from the NA 1.6 to NB 1.8 fuel sending units. The main reason for the swap is that it's WAY easier to adapt the NB's quick-connect fuel fittings to AN fittings, because these exist: https://www.summitracing.com/parts/RUS-644113





I could probably do that with the hardline that runs under the car, but there's enough space & access that compression hardline fittings are fairly straight forward:

 
Well, hello there! Does anyone know what happened to the app? I can no longer access via Tapatalk nor find it when searching and did not see anything mentioned here in the news section?

I finally did something about the stock 4x4 stance that plagues all factory issued Miatas. I've been leaning towards coilovers but decided they were a bit overkill for my driving needs. I went with the tried and true Koni Sports paired with Progress springs and sprinkled with 36/58 GWR bumpstops. They are very popular so I figured that I couldn't go wrong. I haven't had a chance to play with the settings yet but so far...what a difference! I had an even bigger smile than normal when driving home from the shop last night. lol I will have to drill holes in the FSTB brackets so I can make easy adjustments in the future or I could take this opportunity to upgrade the FSTB? hahahaha

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Car looks great! I have Progress springs too....Ya, what happened? I lost the app once before too?
 
Thank you Mahk! Are you running them on the OEM shocks, I can't remember?

No idea? All of the other forums that I follow are up and work with no issues so I don't think it's an error with the app.
 

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