Before I was married I had many Nissans that were great and a lot of fun, but marriage happens and the 2 seater had to go. Fast forward 10 years, my business I started after the Covid layoffs is taking off and I decided to do something for me. A friend of mine that knew I was trying to get into a Miata sent me info on a 2009 true red Miata that an older lady was selling. It was almost completely stock except for a bunch of Wonder Woman stuff and some damage, but over all, it was in great shape for a 12 year old car with 114k miles on it. I sent her an offer I was sure she would reject, so much so I almost talked my wife into allowing me to buy it because of the ridiculous offer I sent, she said only if it is that cheap. To my surprise about an hour later she accepted and I sent a deposit ASAP. The next day I paid for the rest and took it home! After removing as much Wonder Woman as I could, I gave it a deep clean and just started to enjoy the car. My son loved going for rides with me with the top down. Well, I couldn't leave it stock... I got a set of factory 17's for free (well actually with promises of tacos that was never fulfilled) and I had the crappy tires ripped off and I sent them to my powder coater. I also had the front sway bar swapped and much more aggressive brake pads slapped in (I don't remember what they were). I got the wheel back from powder coat and sloppy 205's RE71R's on and went to my first Auto X in CS class. I had fun and I pushed harder than I thought I would but it quickly became apparent I was not going to be able to leave it there.
As it turns out, another NC Miata at the same auto X oil starved the motor and it was knocking pretty hard. I was there and offered to sell my stock, running extremely well 2.0 and we made a deal.
After lots of talks and advice from people smarter than me about Miata's, I sent my car to AR Hindrichs's and let the transformation begin! The month plus the car spent there was worth every day and every penny. I had the 2.0 pulled out and sent to it's new home with many stock parts that were needing replaced on that car. My car got a Ford Fusion 2.5 with spectacular compression tests. The engine was left alone internally except for an oil baffle, BC stage 2+ cams and upgraded valve springs. Because ACT is backed up (and as I write this still is backed up from the order I placed in May) I went with what was available with an exedy stage 1 knowing fully that this clutch is not rated for the torque I would be putting out. A 1.8 header to a full exhaust went on, a quaife diff went in, Miester R club sport coilovers, and a new set of wheels and tires went on, 17x9 Enkie PF01's with 245 RE71's. The best part of what was happening while it was at the shop was adding BBR ITB's!
On a drizzling and damp day in July, after a few warm ups and quick drives, I strapped in and attempted to drive my car to the dyno... Well... It didn't go well... although only a few miles from the shop, the TPS keep hitting bad values and it would make the gas pedal dead... I could kill the engine, start it back up, and most of the time it would engage the gas pedal again, this got monumentally worse the further I went to the point where I had to pull over because it was just to much work to try and keep going and I pulled into a parking lot. Luckily the tuner was in one of the cars and stopped with me with another guy who was heading to the same dyno day. After seeing what the car was saying with the laptop he quickly found the problem... the linkage between the factory throttle body that links into the BBR ITB's had come loose and was backing off making the ITB throttle plates further and further off causing monumental problems... after a quick adjustment and a tune to get me to the dyno place, I was able to limp it in. The car was adjusted again once cold, but wasn't completely adjusted but we put it on the dyno anyway. It made 194hp and 188tq. I could drive it now, but it had issues still.
Later after some more mechanical adjustments and many more tunes, the car woke up, I am confident it is making more than 200hp/tq now.
I took it to Auto X again in August and found myself spending 95% of the time trying to adjust the car as it wasn't behaving well. I did what I could with the dampners and tire pressure but the car felt like it was binding the front against the rear in turns. After that Auto X I moved the front sway bar from full stiff to middle/middle which made a massive difference. I also added V8R's wilwood 4 piston front brake kit with HD 2 piece rotors. I also added 2 piece slotted rotors in the rear. I went to a time trial/time attack at MSR and put the car to work. Braking was a problem, but I tried to muscle through it. The car simply wasn't making enough vacuum and the brakes were essentially manual. I had fun anyway although my times were terrible. Every time I exited the track my passenger front was making a horrendous squealing noise and I thought it was the dust shield at first. After the track day, driving it on the street it was still there and it turned out to be a bad wheel bearing... my car sat idle while waiting on parts for an RX8 upgrade and brake ducts. While sitting idle I found a deal on a factory hard top, it has been gutted on the inside, but that didn't matter to me. I cleaned it up, made some small metal plates to fill holes made for the cage on the car it used to be on and painted the inside black. Also during this time I added an electric vacuum pump for the brakes to finally see their potential!
This past weekend was my grand return to Auto X with a 2 day event to close out the last time GGP would ever host man Auto X. Saturday was cooler and I opted to keep the top on. Since I had a lot of the initial adjustments out of the way I was able to quickly adjust the car to the surface and get to work putting some times down. Saturday I didn't put great times down, but I learned a lot. I also bounced off the 2nd gear rev limiter in 2 runs, I was proud of this because I felt it meant I was really opening it up. I got 6th of 19 in Novice Saturday.
Sunday I came back on a mission. I wanted to go fast and prove me and this little car are here to party. My first run of the day I came out of the long sweeping turn into a slalom before the finish, the car was destabilizing and I pushed it anyway since I was at the finish, I finished going around the last cone in the slalom and the car began to spin, but I aimed it for the finish line anyway! I went through the final cones sideways and quickly went into a violent spin into all the finish line cones! Spectators loved, staff hated it. Car was fine besides many cone marks. I improved for my next 3 runs bringing my time from 57 seconds to 54.089. The next run I didn't hit the exit of a turn right and lost speed causing a 54.200... Next run was my last of the day and I was determined to get 53 seconds! I set out and laid down a pretty good run and was rewarded with a 53.5! But apparently I hit a cone... my 54.089 was good enough to get me 5th out of 29 in Novice Sunday.
Now that I had some real runs with the car and knew it's handicaps, I knew what direction to go to fix it. I have 17x10's on the way and 255 A052's to wrap around them as I was fighting for grip and trying to keep the rear end from kicking out. I am also ordering a Blackbird fab works adjustable lexan spoiler to add some much needed down force to the rear. I am also going to get a more aggressive alignment and take this setup to 2022 and progress both as a driver and with the car. I am running STO B (because houston doesn't like just calling it XS B like the rest of the country) and I am no longer going to enter as a Novice. I know my car is under powered, under tired and won't have as much aero as most of the cars in my class, but I am coming to battle and have some fun.
I have a Miata track day at MSR December 1st and assuming I don't break my car, I will have the final Auto X if the year on December 5th.
I apologize for the wall of words as I should have just made this months ago and been updating it...
