What have you done to your Miata today?

You guys looked good. Nice catch on the oversteer, though Mark's was larger (not surprising given the flamboyance of those from Mass).

PS And Maff, given all you have done you are due some pats on the back.
 
Very pissed off. Did not receive my valve shims in time to get her back together before heading back to work. I stopped by the dealer today and they had all of them except for one. Why not call me and let me get what you had? Kind of a moot point anyway as my digital caliper decided to die. So, I put some parts back into the engine bay for protection and then sadly walked away. Stay tuned in another couple of months.
 
Got fed up with drawing blood on this old dash mount tab a few too many times when working around the dash area of the car. So, out it comes.





After a lick of paint, it doesn't look like anything was ever there :)
 
HA! Naa, I've painted it red plenty of times, unfortunately. Went with boring ol' gray instead.

 
I do appreciate a good blooper reel! Too many people try to put on the face that they're perfect.

Lots of standing water on that course, must have been fun/challenging to get a good time!
 
Yeah, you can watch the "good" videos on the channel there, if you're so inclined, but it definitely allowed for a lot of car-control training :D


I did get fed up with having to fix the splitter mounts after every event, so I'm re-working those. Again. Again.

I like the adjustability, and the fact that they're easily fixable, however they're a bit TOO flimsy. I can pretty much bend them from vertical by hand, which isn't optimal. While having some give is good in case of a big hit, these bend for any cone strike.

This weekend, I hit a cone at fairly low speed, and this happened, so, it's time for a re-think.






So I drilled out the welds around the crush-tubes (crush prevention tubes? The round tube that carries the threaded rod, to prevent the nuts from crushing the box tube) so that they can be replaced:




Then made a longer one. This'll still allow plenty of adjustment, but allow for bracing to take some of the more normal cone hits. ...I hope...



 
It definitely looks stouter. Should be able to take a cone strike, with any luck.

 
A friend of mine needed to replace the bushings in his daily-driver Miata. I gave him a set of stock arms, told him to press the bushings out of them at his convenience and press the new ones in, then when he shows up at my place to work on it all he'll need to do is unbolt the arms and bolt new ones in.
Well, he didn't do that. He started working on it Friday afternoon, and spent Saturday and Sunday at my shop. This is the current state of the car:



Now we're waiting on a couple of tie rod ends, boots for the front upper ball joints, and we'll need to replace an axle because he managed to over-extend one of the outer CVs and there's something jacked up in the boot to the point that I can't get the axle to pop back into the splines.

Getting the axle nut off was interesting. My air impact wouldn't budge it at full pressure on the compressor tank. We don't have all 4 corners together yet so using the brakes to hold the hub from rotating was a challenge. He looked pretty concerned when I said "this is a bad idea, don't ever do this, but it's just stupid enough that it might work" and ran up to the house to grab my bigass 4' prybar. (rlaugh)

I bolted up a sacrificial old honda alloy wheel I have kicking around the shop to the hub, jammed the pry bar into the spokes and had him stand on it, then put a breaker bar w/ a cheater pipe on it the nut and put all of my girth into the effort. Stupid like a fox :D
 
My buddy had today off and came by to finish up his stuff. By dinner it was fully assembled. By the kid's bed time it was on the ground so we could eyeball the ride heights. By MY bed time (well...a hair passed) we had it corner balanced and aligned, test driven, a couple of fender tweaks made for rubbing, his car packed up and out of the shop and my car back in. Successful evening. Time for a brew. Might need to be a shower-beer.

 
It's finally consistently warm enough that I'm no longer paranoid about the car freezing, and can drain out the antifreeze in favor of distilled water & water wetter.

I've always just used a big funnel, which always made a mess, but https://www.amazon.com/dp/ (commissions earned) is MONEY for burping cooling systems. Or at least on the 1 car I've tried it on so far.

No more worrying about bubbles pushing hot water out the spout and splashing everywhere, and it basically just burps itself. Get the nose up high and wait for all the bubbles to stop.



...and then I realized that I'd apparently used my last bottle of Water Wetter last year, so I settled for flushing the antifreeze w/ tap water, flushing that w/ distilled water, and then I'll drain and fill w/ more distilled water @ water wetter once it arrives this week.
 
I picked up one of those when I got the RX7 running last year. Definitely one of the better investments lately!

Do you see a noticeable improvement with the Water Wetter? Opinions are mixed in the rotary community. Many are of the opinion that at least some ethylene glycol is necessary to lubricate the water pump. Although I haven't seen the source there's a claim Mazda Motorsports recommends a 90/10 water/glycol ratio.
 
Anecdotally:
I haven't had an issue with it...except for when I didn't change over to 50/50 the 1 winter it actually got cold down here and the block froze and cracked, but that wasn't a WW problem, that was a me problem.
I also know a ton of racers that use the distilled + WW mix and have for years without out-of-schedule pump failures.
 
Anecdotally:
I haven't had an issue with it...except for when I didn't change over to 50/50 the 1 winter it actually got cold down here and the block froze and cracked, but that wasn't a WW problem, that was a me problem.
I also know a ton of racers that use the distilled + WW mix and have for years without out-of-schedule pump failures.
I was just reading the technical information from Redline and they mention it lubricates water pump seals so perhaps the Water Wetter acts in lieu of glycol in that sense.
 
Back