Give Love a Chance - 1994 Miata

So Seth, You have found the real fun of life with a Miata......The road less traveled. 

I think we need a full build review/write up of that Buick, sometime

sleepyhead said:

I think we need a full build review/write up of that Buick, sometime

dont sleep on the buicks, 5th place in SF at nationals last year was an 87 Buick Reatta.

At my very first autocross, sitting in grid, I though my future life would be a lot of awesome pensive Steve McQueen moments. 

And a whole bunch of incredible car shots. 

And over the last 15 years I've been surprised to find out that it's mostly broken bolts and using electrical tape to attach paper towels over a gaping wound from an angle grinder. But sometimes, sometimes I'm as cool and I think I am. 

Thanks to Jim Pickering for the photos. 

^ Awesome Shot!

Brake parts coming that will hopefully be more track appropriate that whatever is on there. First, the brake fluid looked like this. 

All the bleed screws broke loose easily, and now it looks like this. Much better. 

excellent! 

Found another Seth "McQueen" shot from the december RallyX. 

I look so confused.......

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

You look like someone just hotboxed your car.

oh dang.  Is that a rallyx boxster?!  No hardtop?

Lof8 said:

oh dang.  Is that a rallyx boxster?!  No hardtop?

I saw that too.  How do you say Mad Max in German?

In reply to Lof8 :

Yes. We're running with an independent rallycross club so we have a more liberal rule set. We run stock, prepared and mod, but only AWD and 2WD. We also don't require hard tops,  just sufficient roll protection as judged by our safety people. It's a good group with a good safety record. 

The boxter is cool. That was it's first event with many pieces missing and on normal street tires. At this last one it had more of the car there, Hoosier dirt track tires, and it won Mod2. Neat car. 

Slightly blurry but better picture of the Boxter. 

Also, one of my favorite cars to drive. You have to keep the throttle pinned the entire run because if you lift you lose boost and you never get it back. It's a hoot. 

New pads and rotors came! Parts! Yay!
Centric blanks for rotors and Power Stop Track Day pads for pads. I've heard a few good things about these for dual purpose cars and they're priced right. On top of that, Power Stop is doing a good job supporting events and people at the grassroots level. I like that. 

The rotors on the car are almost new from a wear standpoint, but the car sat long enough that I haven't quite worn down into the rust pits yet. That and the fact that I don't know what the pads are at all led me to the change. The plan is to have the car be ready for anything up to and including track time. 

And just for fun, Miata rotor next to a R63 Rotor. Fun data point. A single front rotor costs $35 more than all four rotors and both sets of pads for the Miata. 

Mrs. Deuce has the day off and I insisted that I get to chauffeur her around in my car of choice. We drove to the fancy part of town and I parked right in front which Mrs. Deuce found entertaining. I ALWAYS park way out because I hate door dings. Not so worried about that. 

And photographic proof! This is the first time she's ridden in the car. She doesn't hate it. Success!

mazdeuce - Seth said:

Mrs. Deuce has the day off and I insisted that I get to chauffeur her around in my car of choice. We drove to the fancy part of town and I parked right in front which Mrs. Deuce found entertaining. I ALWAYS park way out because I hate door dings. Not so worried about that. 

And photographic proof! This is the first time she's ridden in the car. She doesn't hate it. Success!

Error 404 photographic proof not found

Pics are there for me, I'm interested to hear how the pads work for you with mixed use.

Adam

In reply to adam525i :

I'll let you guys know. I still need to properly bed them. I felt like 10 hard stops with my wife in the car was bad form. 

Today was autocross practice! I love autocross practice. The format is five one hour work groups, you work one hour and drive the other four. Get in grid and go when they point at you. So many runs. 

I did 35 runs today. 31 in my car, four in another car, and four other people drove my car. Course was short for the site (which is how we usually set up practice courses) with the fast cars finishing in the high 30 second range. My first run doesn't really count since we didn't walk the course, so my second run was a high 48. After a half dozen runs I decided that getting into the 45's would make me happy. After about 15 runs I was in the upper/mid 45's and thought that getting 44's was possible. I managed to get three 44's during the later part of the day, with my fastest being 44.5. I don't think I've ever driven a car that punishes you so badly for losing momentum. Like all autocross you're searching for 10th's, but actual mistakes add time in half second chunks. My fast runs were ones simply the ones where I wasn't necessarily driving perfectly, but I managed to string together all of the corners without any mistakes. It was an awesome day. 
I pulled the pyrometer out and messed with pressures to get the best wear and heat across the tire. For any of you using 185 Westlake tires off Amazon, I found 40psi was the sweet spot on coarse asphalt. You can thank me later for that tip. Wear was good. The car did 35 runs today and 10 at another event. I'm sure I'll get 100 runs out of them. Depending on how things wear I may flip them to see how long they last. Yes they're slow, but, I still think they're a good idea. Let me explain. 

This is my buddy Derek's car. This was his fourth event and he's still learning. He does have a lot of time riding motorcycles on track, so he's learing quickly. His NB is lowered on some sort of coilovers that are acceptable. He was running 205 width Hankooks that cost more for each tire than I paid for all four of mine. When I drove his car I was almost 2.5 seconds faster. But the thing is, you can do all the runs in the world on cheaper tires like mine, learn to make mistakes, learn how not to make those mistakes, learn to carry momentum, learn to trail brake, learn car setup. And do it cheaper. And then hop into a buddies car, beat his fastest time, and drop the mic. 
This makes more sense the more chances you get to run. If I'm motivated I can run at least twice a month for 10 months of the year, plus at least two of these practice events. Seat time. All the seat time. 

More rallycross! This time I took kid#2 to his first rallycross in a couple years. He did a half dozen or so events in his go kart when he was 12 but this was his first time in a car. Also, we had done a few minutes of manual trans driving in the Forster a month ago, another 15 minutes in the FJ a couple of weeks ago, and he'd never been behind the wheel of the Miata when we got there. 

He took two laps around the grid area before other cars showed up to get used to the clutch and declared himself ready. He did good. His first run was a bit of a disaster when he nearly looped the car under throttle close to the beginning of the course and ended up stalling. The nerves of the situation mean that he stalled twice more getting going and that pretty much ruined his day from a time standpoint. Of the 10 runs he did, he had that one and two others where he got the car loose and he missed gates. He kept getting better at regaining control which was a huge positive. His other seven runs got faster every time to the point where he was about 10 seconds slower than me on a given run. I am still 2-3 seconds from where I need to be (and it takes me a half dozen runs to get warmed up) but that gives him a good target before we change anything on the car. 

We had a really good day. 

Pictures starting to float in. Still hoping for one with the kid behind the wheel. I do like the suspension on this car, mad props to moxnix. 

Before I put the all seasons back on I took them to my tire guy and handed him a $20 and he flipped them for me. Kid#2 is all about autocrossing this and I'm looking to get maximum wear out of these puppies. 

Small tires are perfect for using the Accord as a truck. 

And while I was messing with things I rerouted the speedo cable, finally.

I love that you've got the kids in on the action.  I want to do that with my girls when they are old enough to drive.  What a fun and valuable experience.

The west lakes are what I put on EVERYTHING they are quite the bang for the buck. 

In reply to TVR Scott :

I've tried to get this particular kid into wrenching over the years and he just doesn't have the interest. He does lots of mechanical stuff, just not cars. Put him behind the wheel though, and he's excited. We're having fun.