[stmserfur]

In light of my new job and new motivation to start working on my NA again I figure I should start my own build thread. A little background: I purchased my miata in september 2010 and it was fairly stock. All the routine maintenance was done and overall it was in god shape. The mods done when I bought it were FM clutch/flywheel, koni shocks (the cheap ones), an unknown header, and unknown exhaust. It had a white hardtop that needed a repaint and the stock wheels had seen better days. Also included where a set of steelies with brand new blizzaks on them. My first mods were H&R lowering springs and Enkei RPF1's with Bridgestone RE-11s. I also replaced the stock air box with a cone filter, installed FM cam gears, fuel rail, and strut brace, cut my valve cover, and painted it black along with my intake manifold. I cut the resonator out of the exhaust and had my brother weld in a straight pipe to give it a little more growl. All of this was done around a year ago and not much else since. Here is a shot of the car as of last year.

I have since repainted the hardtop black, removed the soft top, and removed all of the carpet.

Within the past month or so I've installed a GV lip, apr mirrors and canards, city lights, new headlights, and mud guards.

 

[stmserfur]

Recently there has been a horrendous squeak coming from the rear anytime I had even the smallest of bumps so this weekend I finally jacked up the rear to find the problem and found it almost immediately. The bushings on both sides of the sway bar had made their out from under the brackets and cause the sway bar to rub directly on the metal.

Fixing this took me well over an hour due to most everything being seized but I eventually got her back on the ground and the squeak was fixed. I was feeling ambitious this weekend and decided I was going to wrap my headers to keep under hood temps down and wrap all the way down to the cat to keep heat from radiating through my transmission tunnel into the footwell (it gets crazy hot by my feet if its over 60 degrees out). So I went to my local auto parts store and bought supplies.

My current setup consists of a inexpensive cone filter and a heat shield made from an old washing machine cover.

Again most everything was seized so it took me a good 3-4 hours to get the header totally free from the rest of the car. On my first attempt to get it out it was coming in contact with the valve cover so I removed it. Second attempt revealed that it was hitting a bracket on the bottom of the engine as well as the steering shaft. I tried pulling it out every which way I could but it would not come free.

 

[Andy]

Damn. Your sway popped off the bushing. I have to check my bushing now to make sure I dont have that problem, since I have been hearing some squeaking.

 

[stmserfur]

After 6 or so hours in the garage I admitted defeat and called it a day.
Here is a picture of the unknown header that came on the car.

It's a 4-2-1 style and has no markings to indicate brand or model #. It looks like I'll be able to grind away part of the bracket on the engine and I'm hoping I won't have to take my steering apart to get this bastard out of there. I know I've read about this problem happening to other people and my question is, do all aftermarket headers have clearance issues or is it just the lower quality knockoffs?

 

[(Adam)]

Wheels look great.

 

[stmserfur]

After taking a day off and reassessing the situation I managed to get the header out by jacking the car up a bit and pulling it out a little more vertically. It took a few attempts and an extra set of hands but eventually came free. Wrapping the header was fairly uneventful and time consuming but I'm happy with the way it turned out and the 50 foot roll I had was plenty to wrap all the way down to the cat and had about 8 feet extra. Replacing the header back into the car was another task entirely. The extra girth added from the wrap made the already difficult task near impossible. The pipes were coming in contact with the bell housing, the top of the head, the steering shaft, the dip stick, and the O2 sensor needed to be removed. After many attempts my brother and I were able to get it back in place by having him push from the top while I crawled underneath and pulled on the end. I drove my miata to work this morning and had a little surprise smoke show while I was pulling in to get my morning coffee. As I pulled into the lot smoke was coming up through the sides of the hood and I immediately thought of all the horrible things that could be causing it. I popped the hood and soon realized there was no fire, just some grease etc. burning off from the install :fp: It was fairly chilly this morning but there was definitely a lot less heat radiating through into the footwell area and I'm pretty happy about that considering its about the time of year when things start warming up around here. Here's a couple pictures I snapped last night from the install (excuse the crappy cellphone shots)
Finally removed

Wrapped and ready

Back in the car

Overview

 

[stmserfur]

A nice big box showed up at work today. Time to get off my bumpstops and get the stance I've been waiting for.

 

[stmserfur]

And there they are, Tein Flex 7/6 kg with standard valving. I had a little free time so I unboxed one front and one rear coil and weighed them on our shipping scale. It's accurate but rounds to the nearest half pound so I'm not sure exactly how much they weigh but the front comes out to 9.5 lbs and the rear comes out to 8 lbs. After I finish the install I'm going to weigh my stock shock/spring combo and let you guys know what the difference is.

 

[stmserfur]

Day 1 Tein Flex Install: Complete Failure.

I got off of work today, went home, and gave my miata a good bath due to the insane amount of pollen around here this april. I pulled my dads car out of the garage, pulled the miata in, and started unboxing the new set of Tein Flex. I got out the jack and the jack stands, got the front end off the ground, only to realize that my brother had all of our tools in his truck which was with him at work and he won't be home till late. So I hung my tail between my legs, snapped a few pics, and called it a day. Tomorrow night the deed will be done.

P.S. big thanks to 949 Racing for the fast shipping and great customer support when my credit card wouldn't go through.

 

[stmserfur]

Between work and the good run of surf we've had it took me about a week to finish up this suspension project. The front end took awhile due to a worn ball joint with a seized nut that needed to be cut off before I could replace the control arm with one with a good ball joint. The rear was easy and went smoothly with the exception of losing one of the nuts for the top mounts. This was my first time installing adjustable coil overs on anything so adjusting to get everything just right took me about 3 tries both front and back, but eventually I got it sitting how I want. Ride quality is much stiffer than my old setup but the handling was improved greatly, it just feels like I'm hugging the road more while at speed. I'm sitting about 3.5 - 3.75" at the pinch, and rub a bit in front with 16x7 (forget the offset) wheels and 205/45 tires. When stationary I can go lock to lock without rubbing but minor bumps, especially when turning, will cause the tires to rub. You definitely feel every little bump in the road with these but its not jarring or totally unpleasant. I am definitely pleased with my purchase and would recommend these to anyone willing to spend the extra coin.

Front comparison

Rear Comparison

Grinding off the ball joint nut

Trying not to scratch the paint

Re-packing the new ball joint

Front

Rear

First time on the ground

 

[stmserfur]

Finished and washed

 

[etikoner]

Cool build thus far.

Planning on keeping those wheels? Maybe some spacers would fill the wheel wells out nicely. lol

 

[stmserfur]

Yea keeping them for now. Maybe a 5 mil spacer but I'm not a huge fan of stretched tires/sitting "hellaflush". I like the way they tuck into the fenders. Eventually I wanna go with 225s on 8-9" wide wheels but I'm gonna throw on flares whenever I do that. Most likely going to wait till after the supercharger before I spend more money on wheels/tires.

 

[(Adam)]

Bump.

 

[stmserfur]

Well it's been six months since the miata has seen any love but work has finally started slowing down and lots of money has been burning a hole in my pocket. She hasn't moved in about 6 weeks due to a dead starter and was moved to the garage about 2 weeks ago for the replacement. I turned 21 at the beginning of the month and figured I would buy myself a little present to reward the long summer of hard work....so I ordered a MP62 kit from Tom at FFS. The wait on the kit is about a month so I figured I would do a little detailing....then I removed some extra parts...

PS and AC are now a thing of the past. I took out the steering rack and dissambled it to do the full de-power.

Then I cut myself

And I fixed it

Then I made a mess

 

[stmserfur]

And here is how the rack sits now

Then I started painting little bits and pieces

And decided I want to paint the whole engine bay so i started pulling more things apart (still a long way from finish) and ditched the stock hood latch to replace with pins

My headlight fell from about two inches and shattered the glass

Luckily I went looking for the stock lights from the PO and found a nice set of Hella H4s sitting in a lonely box, so they will be installed upon completion. I've made a little more progress since these photos have been taken but we've had a pretty good run of swell lately so I've been spending a bit of time out in the water. I'll be updating when I can but I plan on taking my time and making a few minor adjustments here and there. Let me know what you think!

 

[stmserfur]

Well its been awhile since an update but here we go.

The steering rack has been fully depowered, no looped lines here!

IMG_8590 by stmserfur, on Flickr
I relocated the EVAP canister

IMG_8574 by stmserfur, on Flickr
AC/PS delete completed

IMG_8575 by stmserfur, on Flickr

Mishimoto fans/shroud

IMG_8586 by stmserfur, on Flickr

Silver Bullet washer fluid bottle

IMG_8585 by stmserfur, on Flickr

And riced up my steelies a bit for the winter

IMG_8592 by stmserfur, on Flickr

 

[stmserfur]

I also made a blow-by can out of a sweet thermos I found at K-mart for 6 bucks

IMG_8596 by stmserfur, on Flickr

IMG_8598 by stmserfur, on Flickr

IMG_8600 by stmserfur, on Flickr

And heres a motorcycle

IMG_8591 by stmserfur, on Flickr

And heres my cat

2012-11-14_14-35-10_852 by stmserfur, on Flickr

 

[Stock]

And heres my cat

2012-11-14_14-35-10_852 by stmserfur, on Flickr

Fine, I'll subscribe.

 

[stmserfur]

Alright, after countless hours of scratching my head and drinking beer I finally figured out my car wasn't running right due to me not tightening my TPS :fp:. So after I finished killing myself I dropped the car to the ground, let her warm up, and went for a spin. First impression: WOW! its like a completely different car now. Downshifting to pass other cars is a thing of the past. The power is just always there. I drove around for a bit doing some 1st-2nd runs and couldn't wipe the smile off my face. I haven't taken it much past 50 due to my alignment being out of whack but I plan on doing some pulls up on the parkway after I take care of that and the weather clears up. All I can say though is that I am very pleased with how the car feels and it has great road manners (it is a DD after all)

Install: Major pain in the balls at times, but not unreasonable if you have half a brain. The intake manifold was the hardest part because you need robotic hands to reach the damn nuts. Everything comes together as its supposed to though and everything was packaged well. I think the only things I had to go to the store for were some extra hoses here and there, all else was included in the kit. After I figured out my TPS issue the car started right up, ran well, and needed no adjustments on the PCs. Overall I think Tom did a good job packaging the kit and he was very helpful when I ran into issues.

Now on to the next project:
My Project-G window came in the mail last week and I started the project of install last night. I'm painting my hard top anyway so I wasn't too concerned with fuckin up the paint that was already on there (I did a shitty job anyway). I also discovered the many different colors my hard top saw in its lifetime (white, then red, then white, then black). I managed to get all of the weather stripping off and started knifing away at the adhesive. I thought I was being pretty careful, but I guess I wasn't careful enough because I shattered the whole window and basically **** my pants at the same time. The strip of adhesive that bonds the glass to the roof was a real bitch to get off too. That being said, I think thats the last time I'll ever try and remove glass myself, it really sucked. I'm going to get to sanding/prepping tonight and will post pics of the paint/install process as it goes.