Live From Solo Nationals Sep 11, 2009
Our time at the SCCA Solo Nationals has been successful so far. The car behaved beautifully during the 1500-mile trek from GRM headquarters in Florida. Our current suspension offers the flexibility to work well as both a daily driver and autocrosser, so we didn't even have sore backs when we arrived at the championship event in Lincoln, Neb.
Over two days of competition, our daily driven underdog mixed it up with some of the country's fastest cars in the Super Street Modified class. While we didn't have any expectation of an overall win, we were eager to see exactly how our project would stack up against the more serious entries.
We posted some fairly competitive times, but at the end of the first day we had only managed to place 17th out of the 23 entries. The second day of competition went better, and thanks to some bad weather we climbed two places to finish 15th in class. This result was about where we had hoped to be. We were even ahead of some extremely powerful cars, including a Dodge Viper, a Ferrari F430 Scuderia and a couple of turbocharged Porsche 911s.
Despite the "Street" part of our class's name, we weren't surprised to see that we were the only ones in SSM who had driven their car to the event. As such, we were a bit overweight and underpowered compared to the other cars, making our mid-pack finish a bit sweeter than it would have been otherwise. Our conservative driving technique may have left some time on course, but we made it through the competition without hitting a single cone.
Just because the Miata is finished, however, doesn't mean that our Solo Nationals adventure is over. Thursday and Friday, Tech Editor Per Schroeder and GRM reader Joe Gonzalez will test their mettle in the B Modified class; they're co-driving Joe's LeGrand Sports Racer. Wish them luck as they chase a trophy!
Loving Louvers May 18, 2010
After seeing how cool they look on Per's LeGrand project, we decided to try a similar vent on our Miata. We ordered a set of RunCool hood louvers, hoping they would help prevent our turbocharged project from overheating after extended on-track sessions by allowing the heat to radiate away from the turbocharger.
The RunCool Louvers come in pairs, but for our application we thought we could get most of the benefit from only one. After all, the exhaust manifold and turbocharger all live on the left side of the car. Plus, asymmetry gives our warbird-themed Miata a purposeful look. We also wanted to be careful with the vinyl wrap, as the vent would need to go dangerously close to the Peter Ledger nose art.
Installation was more intimidating than difficult; we simply had to remind ourselves to go slow and be patient before cutting holes in the car. We started by eyeballing the vent to the best possible location. It's almost directly above the turbocharger itself, but offset a few inches back and to the side in order to preserve Miss High Octane's sassy good looks.
Once we'd found the right spot to install the vent, we followed the kit instructions by taping a border around the chosen location. After lifting away the vent, we laid down another tape line that overlapped the outside border by about an inch. This border would provide plenty of space for the rivets needed to hold the vent in place, but still allow for unrestricted airflow to the the louvered panel.
We're pretty happy with the way the louver went in, and the finished product looks great. We're confident that the newly provided escape route for underhood heat will help, but we won't know for sure until we got on track and put in some hard laps on one of those hot summer days we're bound to get around our Florida headquarters.
New Shoes for a Long Trip Jul 15, 2010
Our turbocharged Miata project continues to make us smile every time we slide into the seat. The car is equally suited to hardcore competition and commuter duty, and it rarely leaves us wanting more.
Since it came into our lives, the car has spent most of its time on R-compound tires. The super-soft rubber makes this car an autocross terror, and the warm Florida climate rarely challenges our tire selection.
However, long trips always make us cringe--not because we don't think the car or the tires are up to the task, but because every mile sounds like a cash register ringing up a substantial bill to re-tire the car thanks to those same ultra-grippy tires.
As we began planning for the 4600-plus-mile trek to Grand Junction, Colorado, we decided it was time to change our plan and install something better suited to a long trip into unknown conditions. As much as we've enjoyed the ridiculous grip levels afforded by our competition-focused rolling stock, our recent street vs. race tire comparison highlighted the fact that we could get 90 percent of the performance of an R-compound tire by choosing the right ultra high-performance street tire. Better yet, a good UHP street tire would offer a much longer service life, doubling or even tripling the distance that R-comps could cover.
To this end, we elected to try Yokohama's new Advan AD08 in a 205/50R15 size. The tire showed very strong performance in our most recent Street Touring tire test article, and we're told we can expect solid and consistent performance for many thousands of miles in a variety of conditions. We mounted the new tires on a set of Konig wheels from the old Honda Civic Si project car. The Konigs aren't new, but they're pretty lightweight and in good shape. We're glad to put them back into service.
So far, we're really happy with the performance of the Yokohamas. They provide more than enough grip for street duty, and we even noticed a slight improvement in fuel economy as a result of a smaller contact patch and less rolling resistance.
Many Miles in the Miata Dec 1, 2010
Way back in August, my wife and I took some time off, sent the kids to visit their grandparents, and headed west to Grand Junction, Colorado. Why? To meet up with other enthusiastic lunatics for the Flyin' Miata Summer Camp get-together.
I'm happy to report that the car performed flawlessly except for insufficient air conditioning. Our cooling system is noticably improved since we added the RunCool hood louver, although sometimes we had to slow down a bit to keep temperatures from creeping up. Most of the trip happened with the top down, and the car was a joy to drive cross-country when there was enough breeze or cloud cover to keep us from baking.
For us, the highlight of the Flyin' Miata summer camp experience is always the track meet. Taking our trusty steed on track right in the middle of a 4700-mile road trip caused us some level of concern, but we had no reason to worry. The car performed brilliantly.
During our sessions at the Grand Junction Motor Speedway, we turned in laps in the 1:06.5 range. That was among the top 10 times for track day participants, and may have been the fastest time on the board for a car on street tires. We couldn't resist sampling a few other examples of Flyin' Miata's machinery, however, so our fastest laps of the day came when we were driving their V8-powered Miata dubbed "Elvis." Elvis was devilishly fast, and even with a conservative "borrowed car" driving style our times dropped to a 1:04.6, the fourth fastest time recorded that day. In the end, it was Miata luminary Skip Cannon at the top of the leaderboard with a 1:03.541 driving his turbo Miata-powered Caterham.
The weekend continued with some terrific group drives to the Grand Mesa and Colorado National Monument, along with a fun gathering at the local Sonic drive-thru. Once we'd had all the fun we thought we could stand, we began our trek back to Florida. Although it also went without a hitch, a heat wave followed us east and made for some challenging days of slugging water in an attempt to stay hydrated. The car proved tougher than us, because even though all parties made it, the car didn't whine about it.
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