[Ham]

The journey will be long an arduous. Updates will be few and far in between (broke kinda sucks).

It may not be pretty, it may not be expensive. Hell it might not even be tasteful but it is mine.

This thread will be of my car, the triumphs and the defeats.

 

[Ham]

June 10, 2007 with 151,141mi. It's a 1991.5 (long nose hell yeah!). Bought if off some guy of French descent in Imperial Beach. Said he was selling it for his aunt. Got it for a cool 2k, just needed it to get smogged and the driver side window didn't roll all the way down (manual).

The driver window I fixed fine. Ended up taking the door panel off and found the problem. The cable for the window came off a clip and prevented the glass from rolling all the way down. Put it back in the clip, lubed the window rails and was on my way.

The valve cover bolts were the first things I broke. Torqued them down too hard. Went through about 4 lol.

This happened a few months after I bought the car. Some kid was backing up in a GMC Yukon Denali XL. I thought he saw me but to my horror after realizing he did not I was back up the car and honked my horn but it was too late. Insurance covered the damage.

Nine months of just driving the car around I started to get this vibration through the accelerator pedal every once in a while. To my dismay I found the crank pulley wobbling.

With the help of JB we ended up tearing the front of the engine apart to do the timing belt and water pump job while we were at it. This is what we found:

Part of the woodruff key sheared while a piece of it was still sticking out of the crank shaft to hold the onto the pulley.

Here is the chaos:

The Performance Projects book was useful but we couldn't help but think that some sections of this were performed with the engine out of the car. Thanks haha.

 

[Ham]

For the life of us we couldn't get the crank gear off. No amount of soaking would make it budge. So here it sat.

The next morning I decided to call in late for work to get this bad boy out. And I did after 1.5 hours. Had to chip the flat "rim" off the gear to get enough room to shove in two of the longest flat head screw drivers I could find. After working it out little by little I had enough room to shove in a wrecking bar and call it a day.

By this time I came home from work the city caught on that my car was not going to be moving soon so they slapped one of those yellow warning saying that if I don't move it 1/10 of a mile under it's own power they will tow it.

The next morning I came up with a brilliant idea! The city can't tow the car if I have it on 4 jack stand and not wheels. So that is what I do. I drive back from work that day and find the car on the ground .

Either the force of cars driving by on the street or some kids coming by knocked the car off the jack stands. Poor guys.

Two months after this I decided I wanted to be cool and buy some wheels. So I bought them off Sean Jay.

Kei Office Modia 15x6.5 +27.

I thought my car was SOO badass. White car with white wheels. Pretty much straight out of Drift Bible lol.

 

[Ham]

2 months later and Drop Top Show Down was coming up so I put down the largest amount of money I put to date down on a roll bar.

Hard Dog Hard Core Hard Top w Double Diagonals (HDHCHTwDD)

Now I really thought my car was hot ****. Cool wheels and a roll bar I can show off!

Bought these:

And did these:

At the end of the day something I thought would never happen happened. I was leaking water from the front of my engine

205mi from home what was I to do?!

 

[Ham]

I had AAA so I called them and got a 100 tow down south to the City of Commerce and stayed at one of their highly appointed Super Motel 8's (I kid, they charged me ~$75 to stay. AND THAT WAS JUST FOR THE NIGHT!).

Watched an episode of this J-dorama for the night before going to sleep.

Woke up the next day and grabbed everything I could from the hotel's Continental Breakfast to get my moneys worth. Called up AAA to find out I ran out of free tows for the year.

W
T
F

I sat there thinking what the hell I was going to do. I was too cheap to pay for a tow truck to pick me up and do the last 105 miles back home so I decided to take the chance and DRIVE.

I was pretty scared until I came up with a plan and stuck with it. After driving a little I figured could only go 5 miles before filling the radiator back up with a gallon of water. I had a few water jugs so it was fine.

I ended up throwing away jugs and bought new ones up until I hit San Clemente when it hit me. WHY WAS I SO DUMB?! I could get as much water as I could for free-75cents from the gas stations I was buying the jugs at!

Ended up getting home in the late afternoon victorious along with the new sense of how far this Miata will be able to go to make it to it's next goal.

 

[Ham]

I thought the leak was just coming from the water pump gasket I thought I didn't silicone up properly. Boy oh boy was I wrong.

The remanufactured Mazda Water Pump I purchased somehow broke a hole in the cast and leaked from there. Bummer. Bought a NEW NAPA water pump and was on my way (Mazda now sells NEW water pumps I believe)

If you don't know me then I don't think you know about my shelf. It holds things. Many things. Many JDM things. And I never put in on my car. I had the idea that I would have to throw parts in a certain order to make the car whole and complete. This went on for a while.

The next woe would come about when I was still going to college. I would be the cool guy and drive to campus top down no matter how early or how cold it was. I was lazy one morning and decided to drop the top without unzipping the rear plastic window.
SNAP!
I looked around and didn't see anything unusual. The next morning I did the same.
SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!
Then it donned on me. THE WINDOW!!!1!

:|

 

[Ham]

At some point I remember closing my door one day at work and heard a piece of metal zing around inside my door. I thought nothing of it. Until I came by to open it again. I couldn't. I COULDN'T UNLOCK THE DOOR! OR OPEN IT! WTH!

It ended up being the rod assembly that does all the mechanical stuff. What a pain in the ass.

Ended up strapping a doll to the roll bar:

And installed Rennenmetal Tow Hooks

Transferred this guy from my Datsun 210

Got towed one day too. That was fun.

 

[Ham]

I wanted to clean up my HKS header so I cleaned it up a little:

Then found cracks

Got it repaired at a local shop called Part Shop Max

During this time (Oct of 09) I started to get this really weird whining coming from the drivetrain. Didn't know if it was from the trans or diff.

Ended up buying these

And doing this with the help of JB

Got the height evened out best I could

At the time I started noticing a lot of gear oil smell burning. I was leaking gear oil onto the exhaust!

Refilled the diff about every weekend until it blew up promptly on Thanksgiving Day 09.

Sat in the garage until I had it towed to Payless Auto Repair. For $500 they were able to swap out my trans, did a 1.8 rear end and replaced my rear main seal (I provided all the parts) all in time for KINOD beginning of the year!

 

[reckless_abandon]

bravo ham. i'm glad you are ok.
i'm also surprised that this joke from vegas ran all the way through to the new year.

 

[Ham]

Sometime before this I ended up selling Sean Jay the Kei Office wheels back and he ended up smashing one into a boulder on Palomar. WOOOO!

I got some mesh

And and exhaust (now I'm a street car!)

Went to Laguna Seca. Had a really fun time. During the last breakfast we had at the host hotel Woolery was saucing up this filipino waitress so she came by and gave us all bananas. This is what I did with mine

Drove all the way back to SD and it still held on for dear life. What a trooper.

I have 212k on my current engine. Bought a spare engine that the PO said needs rings.

The shelf after I cleaned out a lot of stuff

So this is how it sits. Three years six months 61k miles.
It begins. NOW!

 

[Ham]

bravo ham. i'm glad you are ok.
i'm also surprised that this joke from vegas ran all the way through to the new year.

Thanks AJ. I really didn't know what to think of it but I think it's going to stick. For a VERY long time haha.

 

[Ham]

Oh so the plan is that I want to drift it and do a few track days here and there. Got a line on a seat and will need to get an LSD so I'll be in business.

In the near future I want to get the engine rebuilt, obtain a daily driver (less miles on the Miata) and grab a better camera.

Also planning on moving at the end of the year so we will see where it all takes me.

 

[theomega]

This thread has sufficiently punished my scroll wheel

 

[Bryan]

Are those my old HA's?

 

[Ham]

Are those my old HA's?

Yes sir. Planning on switching them out to something else like JIC's in the future.

 

[Canaille]

Nine months of just driving the car around I started to get this vibration through the accelerator pedal every once in a while. To my dismay I found the crank pulley wobbling.

With the help of JB we ended up tearing the front of the engine apart to do the timing belt and water pump job while we were at it. This is what we found:

Part of the woodruff key sheared while a piece of it was still sticking out of the crank shaft to hold the onto the pulley.

Hi Ham,

Can you describe what you felt exactly ? Vibrations ?

Sometimes in the morning, if very cold (i.e. snow or ice on my car) it rattles a bit. It even stalled once 50m after I started (at a stop sign).
Once engine is hot, no issues.
I though this was linked to the K&N in the racing beat CAI, but you're scaring me man !

The timing belt was done before I brought the car ... that can't be it !:fp:

Jerome

 

[Bryan]

Yes sir. Planning on switching them out to something else like JIC's in the future.

Understandable. Have you looked into having them revalved? Not sure if it'd be cheaper than paying for new JIC's.

 

[Ham]

Hi Ham,

Can you describe what you felt exactly ? Vibrations ?

Sometimes in the morning, if very cold (i.e. snow or ice on my car) it rattles a bit. It even stalled once 50m after I started (at a stop sign).
Once engine is hot, no issues.
I though this was linked to the K&N in the racing beat CAI, but you're scaring me man !

The timing belt was done before I brought the car ... that can't be it !:fp:

Jerome

I just felt noticeable vibrations going to the accel pedal every few seconds. You know, the stuff that didn't feel normal. I had a friend look at the car and he noticed the crank pulley wobbling the same time vibrations were going through the pedal.

Other than that I car felt fine. No stalling, no drop in power.

Good luck. I need to do another timing belt job in like 9k lol.

 

[Ham]

Understandable. Have you looked into having them revalved? Not sure if it'd be cheaper than paying for new JIC's.

You know I would if they were one's made for an NA. These one's are the longer bodied NB's and I am all the way down on front so I hit bump stops daily. They would probably feel like a dream if I got them overhauled.

With the next coilovers the only tweak I'm going to make is probably SWIFT springs.

 

[hhsohn]

Man, this is a cool story. My first car was like that... something always broke on schedule every few months.