Two 1990 Miatas - STS Autocross, CSP Hillclimb, PR Rallycross

Well the OEM fronts were pissing fluid out the top seal so...cant be worse?

In reply to RedGT:

For sure, just saying there's a reason they're cheap.

The alternator belt loosened (read: has apparently been loose and is of unknown age, but finally let go enough to slip with headlights on) on the way to lunch. I had a 10mm and 12mm wrench in the cupholder but nothing else, so i retensioned it while waiting for my wife who was in the area anyway to show up with jumper cables. Made it back to work but the belt still slips with the blower motor on. Glazed to hell. So I get to swap that belt tonight which is behind the PS/AC belt so...I guess I'll put both on.

This likely explains the high-rpm rubber smell I had during 75 miles of spirited driving last weekend. I should probably neglect the car a little bit less.

RedGT wrote: I actually like the process of masking believe it or not, I just hate the 'painting' part.

OMG will you come to Oregon and mask my Motovan?!?! It wants to be desert tan, really it does!

Well, the new belts are on. In the process i sheared off the frozen ps/ac adjuster bolt and replaced it with a really ghetto solution that held long enough to tighten the main pinch bolt.

With belts off, observed that there is definitely some play in the water pump pulley. Just a bit but enough to feel by hand when rocking the pulley side to side. Sooooo we'll see if it makes it through the event. As with everything else in this build, theres a new one in a box in the garage, but i didnt get a chance to put it in yet.

Both rear shocks are on. R&R in under 45 minutes total. I think thats a new record for me.

The rallycross was a total washout. Event cancelled after standing around in the rain in various ways for 4 hours. Shocks feel great compared to the blown stock ones (duh?) and I'm sure the foam bumpstops are helping there too. There's a nice dip at the entrance to my work parking lot that at 20 mph would bottom out the rear of the car and launch my head into the hardtop. This morning on the 'new' shocks it was absorbed with no fuss. This was my ugly fix for the busted PS belt tensioner:

 Moxnix gave me a new one at the event so THANKS!

And this was my fix for the gaping rust hole in the PS fender: 

Now for the project creep. Because winter.

(backstory) I have been considering taking the STS car hillclimbing in CSP class for a few years now. I bought the hardtop and the technically-legal roll bar. I have a seat. I need belts, fire extinguisher and about $900 in personal safety gear to actually take the plunge. But I couldn't quite bring myself to cut up the STS car, given that if I get hooked and competitive I would need to finish caging it, buy a better seat, etc. And I really don't want to think about backing that car into a guardrail at 70 mph. The concept of installing the roll bar and safety stuff in the rusty chassis and then swapping the nice suspension and external engine parts onto it (it would take a weekend day plus an alignment, that's it) crossed my mind. But I like the STS car as it is, want that to be my primary focus, would miss autocross events around the hillclimbs while finding that 'weekend day' to swap parts back and forth, and I don't really have the time for that crap. Plus the full STS setup would be a bit stiff for the hills, leading me to want to autocross it in sub-par-for-autocross softer form for a few events to get ready for a hillclimb. So I just shelved the whole hillclimb idea for a while. Thought about selling the roll bar, etc.

I recently impulse-bought (hey they were $500) a set of double-adjustable Konis for the STS car. Fronts will need to be revalved for the springs on that. In talking with Chris yesterday I kinda talked myself into the realization that, duh, the DA konis are valved just about right for the springs I would ideally run for hillclimb (~500# rather than 700#). And there is a good header, cat and exhaust on my local craigslist for a good price that I had no real reason to buy. And I ended up with a spare intake somewhere along the way. And there's 4 unmounted 6ULs sitting in the basement. So...berkeley. The rallyX car might turn into a hillclimb car in the spring. I think I could put it all together for about $800 more. Plus safety gear and tires. Which is another substantial chunk of change and I have about $2800, not a penny more unless I sell stuff, to work with for parts and entry fees and all motorsports related stuff for the next 2 years while my wife is in grad school. But it's got me thinking. When you boil it down, the hillclimbs are just 3x the entry fee for a really dangerous 8-run 2-day autocross. That shouldn't be that tempting. But it is.

If you want some help with the safety gear aspect, I have some ratty Sparco Evos sitting in my basement with side mount brackets- I was planning to reupholster them but could be persuaded to sell one or both cheap. And you've got all winter to find some decent used tires.

Am I helping?

Absolutely!

What cert/date are they? How cheap for just one? They're the basic Evo, not L/XL/III right?

Tires, if this happens, will be the same RE71r's I autocross on to start with. I know them and am comfortable with them and they get up to temp fast. The courses are what, 70-140 seconds depending, with an hour or two between runs? And people run R7's or true slick road race compounds? How the hell are they getting any heat into them?

Forgot to add, I also cut the power wire to the (nonfunctional) AC compressor so now pushing the AC button on the dash serves only as a switch to turn on both radiator fans at full blast. You know, for those times when the course is a swamp and we're at 6000 rpm and 20 mph. Turns out it wasn't needed since we never took a run :-/

WAY out of date (have to check but late 90s/early 2000s)- does SCCA care about a current FIA cert? Basic Evos, but I'd have to measure since they may have been totally different in that era.

SCCA Rallycross doesn't need any FIA cert.

In reply to EvanB:

Hillclimb - GCR rulebook.

If it has an FIA sticker (of any age I think) I can run it without a back brace and pass tech. This is essentially a requirement because very few of the seats people go around cramming back braces behind were ever designed to use one and I'm not convinced the rule is safe. A bare bones rib-crushing kirkey with a piece of steel tube aimed at your spine and fixed to the harness bar is legal but I am not sure it is smart.

In reply to ¯_(ツ)_/¯:

Definitely interested, let me know a price if you do want to sell one. Depending how it ends up fitting I could see buying the second one for the STS car.

So there was some snow this weekend.

Then I dug it out.

But by the time I did, around 10am, the snow having stopped just 12 hours before, the roads were already well plowed.

At least the sunset was nice.

But I've gotta put the diff in this thing or the snow event on Feb 6 will be a whole lot of not-moving-anywhere. I spent 4 winters in a Miata followed by 2 winters in a Subaru so maybe that is affecting my opinion. But the old Miatas inspired a ton of confidence. Like "we got a call that my wife's horse was colicing in the middle of a blizzard and took the Miata" confidence. Whereas yesterday and this morning I had trouble not getting stuck at a stop sign. In goes the VLSD, I guess. The first two Miatas had VLSDs and Firestone Winterforce tires whereas this one has an open diff and General Altimax Arctics. I have gone back and forth on my opinion of these tires but everyone else seems to like them so I'll blame the diff.

The subject of this thread is henceforth known as 'rusty' because no one in my family wants to name the thing. STS car is STS.

I ought to stay off the internet during the day, it is expensive.

But my $225 GC coilover kit w/ 550/350 springs is on its way, along with a pair of ISC top hats. Top hats will go on STS to get the ride height lower w/ room for helper springs while rusty will get the FM top hats currently on STS. Don't need or want super low ride height for rusty and it'll sit a little lower on the softer springs anyway. Depending how much actual improvement I see from the STS car's helper spring setup I imagine I will end up duplicating it on rusty eventually (Sigh, $$) and selling off the FM top hats altogether.

At this point...I already have another ECU sitting around. I am only a quality header & cat away from building the same car twice, with the exception of spring rate and safety gear. Can't decide if good or bad. I think I can still sell rusty for what I have in it so...can't be THAT bad.

Rusty miata is finally going in the garage tonight replace the water pump. Poor thing has hung on long enough. Wobble wobble squeak squeak.

The rallycross was cancelled so instead of putting it back together after the tb/wp i took a whole bunch more E36 M3 apart.

Looks like fun in there. All these Miata builds on here have me thinking that needs to be my next large purchase. Need to make some more room at the farm first...

The problem with having time and space to work on things in a leisurely manner is that this has turned into a "while-I'm-in-there" disaster. I think the car will still be under $2016 when it re-emerges from the garage but it's gonna be tight.

Water pump.

Pull valve cover. PCV shatters into a million pieces. Order new PCV, grommet and hose. And another set for the other car too.

While the rad is out of the way, let's get the AC condenser out of there now.

Texted a friend about that and he mentioned that he knows someone who could use the whole system. Sooo let's pull all the lines and the compressor out too.

Go order new belt for PS pulley only.

Well the timing belt pullies are junk, let's do them too, and the belt.

As long as I have the valve cover off, let's do the CAS o-ring.

While looking for CAS o-ring in the garage, I found a pair of lower rad hoses bought in 2009 and never used.

With the AC Compressor out of the way, doing the lower rad hoses is easy.

Now the only old hose left on the car is one of the heater core ones. Better order that.

The air filter box was pulled to get to the AC compressor and hoses better. No sense in putting that back in when I could install the cold air intake now.

With airbox and compressor out of the way, access to the header is easy.

And doing the motor mounts on the STS car was a piece of cake with the header out. I have a pair of plain OEM mounts kicking around somewhere.

As long as I am down here, why not pull the fender liner and push this huge-ass dent out?

And so on and so forth.

About half the list is done, waiting for parts to complete.

Wrapped everything up. TB, WP, pullies, PCV valve, grommet and hose, a/c fully stripped, 3 main rad hoses, CAI and K&N filter are installed, had to make a custom bracket for that to keep the filter off the brake line. It makes happy whooooooosh noises now and I love it.

Replaced the ghetto PS adjuster, hacked the heat shield off the stock header, relocated the diag port, cleaned up the T-stat neck, etc. I even installed a new oil cap gasket I ordered on a whim when ordering from mazdaspeed. Old one came out in crumbs. Heck, I didn't even know there was a gasket in the cap until a few weeks ago, thought it was hard plastic.

At least the crank pulley keyway is in a happy place for the moment. I didn't bother doing a new bolt at this time. Leaking front crank seal is getting 'fixed' with ATP 205, I am 3 for 3 with that stuff and I will keep using it until it doesn't work.

I finally used this little guy for something besides opening beer:

New pump in, along with timing pullies. Think they were actually the source of all the noise, they were rusty with grind-y bearings. Oh and spider eggs. Toasty fried spider eggs everywhere behind all the timing covers. Whole front of the engine. Freaked out and cleaned them all up and forgot to take a pic.

A/C components in the engine bay weighed a total of 35 lbs not counting the intake box. Not bad.

I skipped the header and exhaust for now because I wanted this car out of the garage for a bit to put the new mazda3 in for a once-over. Just bought that and have been commuting in it without touching a thing which kinda freaks me out. More on this in a bit.

Buttoned the Miata all up, started it, burped the coolant system, took it for a short drive, called it done. Drove to work this morning. Coolant smell. Open the hood. Coolant spray. E36 M3. No leaks evident but coolant is low. Leave it alone, work for 3 hours, check on it at 11. Still no leaks/puddles. Open rad cap, suddenly now I have a steady drip out the thermostat bypass hose. And it's just going to keep dripping. Guess I should have replaced that hose too but it did not arrive before I reassembled the front of the engine so I reused the old one. Not too bright. So I drove down the street to the hardware store, grabbed a gallon of coolant, topped it off and drove the 15 minutes home.

I even noticed in a pic I took that I never even took this end of this stupid hose off. But it appears coolant is coming only from the bottom of that hose, not from anyplace else nor the WP gasket next to it.

Mazda3, by the way, had not munched a tie rod as I suspected but rather 8 of 10 front lug nuts were loose. The previous owner's wife had been commuting in it for months and I put like 450 miles on the car myself before it started making noise the last 5 miles last night which inspired me to finally get it in the garage as mentioned above. NOW they loosen? Out of the blue?

Whatever, cleaned the hub and the threads, torqued everything again, stuck the Miata in the garage where it is now not-dripping since the system is pressurized and hot. With a bucket under it for when it does leak in about 4 hours. Back to work.

I will need to do something with the brakes on this before competition. They work on the street now and retract properly but have a soft pedal and will not lock up the tires. I think I bled things adequately but maybe not. There may be fluid missing from the master cylinder, topped it off and will keep an eye on it. Wouldn't surprise me if it needs a master at 185k miles or one of the rubber lines is weak.

I did, however find some FIA seats I forgot I had while swapping little-kid furniture for kid-kid furniture the other weekend. I need to do something about the situation in the storage half of the basement one of these days.

So, major maint is done. Delicious intake noises added. Seats located. Brakes still need something. I might leave this car alone after fixing the bypass hose so that I can get the STS car done and on the road by the first event in March. Or install the Konis I just bought for the Maz3 and go STF for the first few super cold events. Then back to Rusty for roll bar, brakes, header.

More rusty water out.

E36 M3, you can break that? Or rather, it can rust through from the inside? Great!

So that's where the water was coming from. Hose was fine. metal fitting not so much.

As an aside, 72 tooth ratchets are an amazing thing.

So as long as I was in there again, header time. Most of the nuts came off. One stud joined the party.

Cheapest new price for a water pump inlet was $85 from mazda. Or $45 from various used parts suppliers. Found one from a private partout for $35 and that included the tube and o-ring from a car that had not been parked with rusty water in it for 2 years.

Soaking in 205 seal re-sealer stuff for good measure. This o-ring freaks me out a little but somehow it holds.

Header in. High-flow cat too. Still stock catback for quietness.

Only the highest quality homemade bracketry here.

All buttoned up.

Washed it! Gee. It doesn't look bad when clean.

Made it to work again, without pissing all over the parking lot this time. By the butt dyno, as well as "if I launch from here, by that point I should be doing 72 mph" it is pretty quick, comparable to the STS car. As I guess it should be, given that it is now the same weight, same header/cat and possibly a better intake.

Brakes are still pretty soft. I only bled the fronts when I did the front calipers. That probably wasn't a good shortcut.

I have 1.5 days entirely to myself this weekend. Daily driver needs exhaust, rotors and a tie rod. STS car needs VC gasket, CAS o-ring, fluids, plugs and wires. Might start cutting this thing up for the roll bar too. Finally.

I had that exact same part rust out on my rallyx 94. Lucky I had one laying around from a 1.6L spare engine I had picked up a few years back and it was in good shape.

Figures. I'd never given that part a second glance.

Scratch the 1.5-days-of-work-this-weekend idea. Just got talked into autocrossing the daily driver maz3 and freezing my ass off.

Well I guess now it's definitely a CSP car because I ain't paying to replace that. Out it comes. Moved the STS car out of storage side of the garage, it will have priority for the next few weeks to try to get abunch of seat time before the DC Pro. This car will go in there over the weekend and stay until it has a roll bar and race seat. After mid-may this car has priority again. It takes well under an hour to do a car swap with dollies so that is working out pretty well. In the meantime the little project is getting some attention. I *may* have crammed the front half of that purple thing in an open mazda3 trunk with one bungee cord during a torrential downpour last weekend. But hey, free is free.

This car has been sitting for a bit. It spat out the cursed water plug, apparently the previous owner did NOT replace that. No harm done, it blew while coasting down my street. Well, except that I parked on the lawn so there is a nice round dead spot now from the draining coolant :(

It's been shoved into the storage half of the garage and filled with miscellaneous cardboard boxes. I did fix the water plug. I can do this job in 3 minutes now, without removing anything except the hose clamp on the plug. Do I get a cookie?

My daughter says I should run a different class this year:

I put new suspension on the STS car resulting in both Miatas being down for a bit so I took the 'daily driver' autocrossing twice and this little thing did staggeringly well in the snow and rain (PAX 4th and 2nd with 340 TW tires)

And then I did my first track event ever with it too. So much for having a crappy Miata for those tasks. But hey, the brakes were AWESOME.

Finished the STS suspension which included the moment of realization that "Riiiight...these are NB shocks and nothing fits anywhere" and resulted in lots of stupid stuff like this:

And this - traded intakes with the rusty car because there's no way the racing beat elbow was going to fit the 12 foot tall NB shock shaft:

And ultimately better stuff like this:

And this:

and this:

and this, FINALLY:

In which the car was berkeleying amazing in the wet and good in the dry too. I cleared the class by 1.2 seconds and coned away top pax in the wet, then in the dry afternoon I failed to drive well for the whole course at the same time for various reasons, but it feels much better than it used to and data says the car had at least another second in it which would put it back at the top of the field. It's ready for me to drive it poorly again at the DC Pro in 4 days and I don't plan to work on it any more this season. Maybe I should hope for rain?

Back to the main subject of this thread:

Which in this picture is having a VLSD put in by the guy who bought my old red Miata. Drift Bro needed an open diff RIGHT NOW and I just happened to have an open diff stored under the rusty car. So he and a friend came and pulled the open, 'installed' his old viscous diff, and went on their way. I say 'installed' because I was busy with the scales and dude didn't tighten any of the bolts and left out the upper spacer at the PPF. I went under the car last night to check on their work and it was pretty much "LOL I guess it is physically in the car at least?" Whatever, it was still 2 hours of getting rusty hardware loose that I didn't have to do, and traded a high mile open for a VLSD...that worked great...before I sold it to dorifto boy 2 years and 50k miles ago...hm. Good enough. When it blows up I have another spare.

So I bought cutoff wheels and flap discs and the next major work I do on any car had better be finally putting the roll bar in this thing!

Can a moderator change the second half of the thread title to something 'STS and CSP' or something? Because the two cars keep getting more intertwined and at this point the turbo idea is dead and 3 out of 4 local rallycross sites have gone extinct. :(

DC Pro was the happiest I have ever been finishing 6th. 0.9 out of 1st but I am happy with the car. I just couldn't drive the right course worth a damn. Left course I was within 0.017 of the leader (and 2015 ProSolo champ) on Saturday and dropped to 0.2 sec as he found some time on sunday. Right course I just sucked at driving it in every way possible, 0.7 off the pace.

So, good, I can stop working on the STS car for a while now and just drive it.