Grassroots Motorsports: The Hardcore Sports Car Magazine

Hmm, so W. Mark Feft is Deep Throat. I was learning toward Henry Kissinger but had no real reason why. I am impressed that the secret was kept for so long.

In the Miata world, here’s what $1200 buy you.

The other side of the Miata is the good one. We’ll need a new nose cap.

The interior is missing a few small parts and has a certain funk, but it’s all there.

Baked-on grease. Yum

We’ll get to the why and what in a bit, but for your viewing pleasure here is the World’s Grossest Miata. And we own it. Lucky us.

We paid $1200 for this 1991 A-package car, and the goal is to keep the project low-buck. While the price was low, the car does run and drive fine. We discovered some rust on the package shelf today, but that didn’t dampen our spirits.

Yeah, yeah, I’ve got the rattiest Miata in the world. It’s dented, broken, stained, and super odoriffic! The thing is, it runs great! I went for a drive the other night just for the fun of it. Top down, beautiful night, driving along the ocean, and then through the state park nearby along a route known as “the Loop” it was wonderful. This little thing is quite repairable, and for only $1,200 I couldn’t pass it up. I figure lots of you folks have a grand or so you can justify spending for a project, while a lesser amount have the disposable $3500 it takes to buy a nice clean starting point. Maybe I’m a machocist, but I’m going the cheap-o route and we’ll see what happens. I spent many a year as a dirt broke kid , and I’d always get frustrated when magazines started throwing large $ into project cars. I’m going to try and keep the cost down as low as possible on this one.

I also just returned from one of the most entertaining Indy 500’s in the last 20 years. What a great time. The weather was wonderful (for once), Danica Patrick put on a great show, and the crowds seemed to be bigger than the last few years. Just a warning to anyone who plans on going next year— The Friday night, and Saturday night party surrounding the track is no place for children, or teenagers. It’s crazy, and fun, but it ain’t rated PG, or even R in some cases. The Snake Pit days of Indy may be gone, but it’s still not a place for those with delicate sensiblities, or those easily offended. Race day is fine, even polite, but don’t go into the madness before then unless you are prepared for debauchery. Consider yourself warned.

The Toledo Tour is in just a few short weeks. We’re gearing up for that and we’ve also got an event this upcoming weekend in Ft. Myers with Gulfcoast Autocrossers. The CFR event at Sebring was cancelled…bummer!

After our experience at the Atlanta Tour with fresh, full tread Falkens, we’re trying out some RT-615 Azenis that have been shaved to 4/32 by Appalachian Tire. We’re having them mounted on the 15x7 Kosei T1s, we’re going to compare that combo to the now worn to 4/32 615s on the 15x8s. That’ll at least give us an idea of the difference in width vs weight on course.

Today, around 4 a.m., I woke up to find a dog’s head on my pillow. The good news was that there was a dog body attached to the head; the bad news was that it was 4 in the morning. This is why puppies only sleep upstairs with us from time-to-time. When they sleep in their room and we sleep in ours, everyone involved seems just a little more awake the following day.

Lot of little clips, screws and fasteners are used to hold a Honda Civic together. We now have some spares.

Missing hardware left some holes in our cowl molding.

Cowl hardware replaced. Some of the fasteners came from an Integra.

We now have a lifetime supply of inner fender liner hardware. While we didn’t score any major pieces at the pick-n-pull this morning, we did come home with a pocket full of hardware, including the fasteners used to secure the inner fender liners and the cowl molding.

When looking for hardware, don’t forget that the factory probably used the same stuff for other models. For example, some of today’s score came from an Integra and an Accord in addition to other Civics.

What are those weird U-shaped pieces for? Those are the factory clips for a Civic EX coupe front spoiler. We’re thinking one would look good on our car—not too much bling, and since it’s a Honda O.E. piece we know it will fit as intended. While the EX coupe we found in the yard today was missing its front spoiler, most of the hardware was still attached to the (crushed) front bumper. (When we asked how much for all the bits, the reply was “have a nice day.”)

On an unrelated note, the Volusia County Sheriff’s office is cracking down on speeders out in front of Speedway Pull and Save Auto Parts. If you’re heading there for some parts of your own, watch your speed. (And no, we didn’t get a ticket.)

Kim and I ordered our MINI today. The good news is that it was relatively painless and the car will be here in early July. The bad news is that they don’t bargain much on these…we got free floormats, which is actually better than most people do on MINIs.

We wound up getting Chili Red/Red Roof/Red Mirrors, sport + suspension, sport seats, multi-function wheel, silver interior trim (standard) and grey leatherette. $18,550 +TTL……..H Stock, here we come!

Now we’re looking for some 16x6.5 wheels…there are several options out there, so I’ll start combing the net.

Per

This is how it usually chokes; fatal, but attractive.

It’s not even pretty this time.

Using all my inner strength and composure to avoid making derogatory comments, I will state the plain fact that my eMac freezes up completely on a regular basis. Usually, it’s a pretty screen that comes down and says I have to reboot; there’s no argument, and no explanation. With the newer version of Tiger installed, first I got a much more fatal looking screen with some hard lines of error code slicing mercilessly into the aesthetically pleasing facade of the Mac OS. But on reboot, the new OS actually gave me some clues to work with, thanks to an error reporting system they’ve implemented. Now armed with the knowledge that I was suffering from kernel panics (honestly, that’s the name), I was able to do a bit of research. I’ve tried removing the stick ‘o RAM that came with the computer, relying solely on the 512-meg aftermarket stick that’s in there; if you’re reading this, I was able to post this message without a crash. I’m mildly optimistic at this point. If you’re a Mac SuperGenius and want a look at my crash logs going back to June of last year, drop me an email at scott@grassrootsmotorsports.com.

Weighin’ in.

And that’s the tale of the tape.

In autocross trim (tires, jack etc. removed), our 2002 Civic weighed in at 2671 pounds; We’ve since removed 333 pounds of stuff from the car, and had a full cage installed and painted. This is where we’re at without the driver in the car; we’ve still got to put a sheet metal panel over the gap where the moonroof was, and we have more to remove (sound deadening, A/C, windows if we choose to), but this is where’s we’re at with weight.

The smell of race rubber; smells like…victory..

As our Civic Si is reborn for track use, some good R-compound tires were high on the list of needed things, and we’ve been eager to give some of the offerings from Hankook a try. First up will be a set of Hankook Ventus RSS Z211 tires. We opted for the harder C30 compound, which should give us plenty of wear to shakedown the car and give Scott the opportunity to get his race license; we’ll consider going to a softer compound after we’ve used these Z211s up.