99 Miata build Part 8

The stereo was finally sounding good once the mismatched speaker was corrected, but there was no AUX input for hours of iPod music and the CD player wasn't working. Even just the one trip out to Darlington proved once the local radio stations drop out of range good stations are sparse.

Pulled out the old CD/radio/cassette player in favor of a new unit that does it all (okay so I lost the tape player but gained USB, BT, and AUX)

The unit needed a special wiring harness to keep the stock Bose amp and speakers.

And that needed some further modification! Thank goodness for miata.net and thousands of other people who have already figured this stuff out.

A few minutes of troubleshooting and wire swapping and I finally got it running.

Cram all the wires in there and go for a cruise with all kinds of tunes!

This one has a huge range of color choices for the display so I even got it pretty closely matched to the stock green colored instruments.

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99 Miata Build Part 7

Not too exciting today but the car got a radiator/coolant flush. Now running much  closer to the recommended 30% coolant 70% water. Even picked up some distilled water and the correct mutant green coolant. 

Removed the overflow container after it had been drained into a container for proper disposal and rinsed the last tiny bit of crud out.

Getting ready to reassemble and fill up. 

No more brownish-orange fluid!

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99 Miata Build Part 6

The journey continues...

Today fellow autocrosser Harlan joined the action at the NMS South garage to assist with some fluid changes.  Harlan's tearing it up in a MINI Cooper S in Novice class but is looking for a Miata for next season, so it was time to get some hands on with the roadster.

I jacked up the car and started poking around the rear, inspecting everything when I saw a part I didn't recognize.  I grabbed it for some reason and it immediately broke free.  My initial guess that it was a CIA GPS tracking device from the car's previous life as a spy car turned out to be incorrect.

Almost even better, it turned out to be a hidden key.  Unlike the 2 keys I got with the car, this one is a Mazda OEM key and is in much better condition.  Woo hoo!  Now onto fluids...

After the weird sounding 1-2 shifts I thought I might as well flush and change the fluid in the transmission and differential.  The diff was pretty gunky and after a few minutes I managed to shave another few kilograms off the rear end of the car.  Both of these jobs were really easy to do with a hand from a friend to make sure all the fluid goes where it needs to.

Based on an experienced recommendation, I had some Amsoil oil that would work for the shifter turret, the transmission and the rear differential.  This is a sample of the gooey fluid from the shifter, but I guarantee both the transmission and diff looked equally bad.  Everything is now topped off with high quality fresh stuff and shifting is smooth like butter.

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99 Miata Build Part 5

Okay, time for the last big key maintenance items before race day; brakes and shifter.

First up we started with the shifter that needed some new bushings and boots to keep the heat and dirt out of the cabin and smooth out the shift action.

The old rubber boots were completely shot and ripped and were heating up the cabin pretty bad.  The first job is to remove the center console again, remove the old boots and pull out the shifter.

Old dirty fluid was removed and everything cleaned up.  New bushings installed and new clean fluid added. The top leather boot was even replaced to top it all off. Finally the car had that good, mechanical shifting feel.

Now the brakes.  All around the car wasn't stopping as quickly as I'd like and the brake pedal felt a little too soft. The rotors looked a little warped and the pads were squeaking so we opted to replace everything and do a bleed of the fluid to make sure there weren't any air bubbles trapped in the line contributing to the issue.

The front rotors came off easily and were replaced with shiny new ones.  The pads also were swapped out easily.  The right rear rotor and pads followed suit but the driver side rear refused to come free.  With the help from both Kyles and other autocrosser, Philip joining in the fight we still struggled to get it free.  Even after a late night run to pick up a propane torch to heat the stuck area of the caliper and repeated blows from a big ol' hammer, nothing budged.

By 1am we called it a night, gave up hope for it, and re-assembled the rear brakes both with all of the old hardware to keep things consistent. A new caliper and bracket will be procured in the coming weeks so we can fully rebuild the back half of the car, but for the time being, it would do the trick.

The car was put back together and we took it out to bed in the brakes just in time to finish cleanup and send everyone home around 2 am.  It took help from everyone just to get the car in shape to roll out at 5am for Darlington.

Running on less than 3 hours of sleep, I still managed to get to the race track and help set up on time.  We had six runs each but I still couldn't manage to get a single one in without hitting at least one cone.  It was a really unfortunate day since I consistently ran faster than the 3 other Miata drivers.  In the end I was 2nd place (even with a 2 second cone penalty on my fastest run!), and more importantly was extremely happy with how the car performed and felt.

The shifter or transmission sounds a little funky going into 1st after a few runs, but I'll keep troubleshooting it this week to see if it can be smoothed out.  Everything is still running strong and I'm really looking forward to the next event and getting that new vinyl top installed.  It's even looking pretty good after a good wash and wax.

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Victory in Virginia!

Today's cars lined up before the event (no, the Navy ships behind us won't be competing on land!)

While it's nice to finish in first place like I did this morning, I have to be honest and mention that in today's Military Appreciation Autocross in Virginia Beach that there were a total of only four cars in GS class today with the other drivers probably first timers.  But still, first is first!  Mostly, thanks to the Tidewater Sports Car Club for sponsoring such a great event, it was a great way to introduce a bunch of Air Force, Navy, Marine, and two Army guys to autocrossing!  Check out their website to see what else the TSCC is up to: TSSC Autocross

Out of about 30 military members there, Jeremy Garrido and I were the only two Army Soldiers driving, so I'm happy to report that we took 1st and 2nd in GS class, with Jeremy's times very scarily close to mine, so he did a great job at his first autocross!

Here's that look you get after trying autocross for the first time, as modeled by Jeremy!

Also, there was more driving in the afternoon, so until we get the results on line there is a chance that someone drove faster, so we'll see how that turns out.  In the meantime, here's a few highlights on how my drives went:

First run was 36.575 which put me in second place for the GS class, just .676 out of first. Not sure who the other two cars in our class were, maybe a V6 Mustang and a VW GTI.

Run number four and I dropped my time to 34.592 and into first place, almost 2 seconds faster than the earlier run, so that felt really great.  On run five I dropped just a hair to 34.438, so I was getting the feeling that I was just about as fast as I could go, although after every run you get that "I KNOW I could have gone faster" feeling!

Next up, a nearly identical 34.457, and then an even quicker 34.301, so my times were pretty consistent, but it looked like I was stuck in the 34 second range. As a comparison, the fastest time of the morning was at least a 31.5 or faster, so you can tell that even the mighty Abarth with my driving abilities is not setting the world on fire!

Sure enough, the next run was 34.311, just 10 THOUSANDTHS slower than the last run, dang! After that, they announced final runs, so I had one more shot to improve, and it felt pretty good but the timing says 34.376, so another 34.3 and some change.

This photo reminds me to mention that the location for this event was very nice, right on the Chesapeake Bay, on a large concrete pad used by the Navy for some of those big air cushioned vehicles you see behind the row of cars above.  Thanks to the Navy for sharing their facility with the TSCC, and again, thanks to the TSCC for giving back to the military in this event today, it was awesome!

Jeremy about to work on the course, and yes, that's the Chesapeake Bay back there, no one drove into the water!

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99 Miata Build Part 4

With some significant help from friends and fellow Miataphiles, Kyle and Kyle, attention turns to the doors.  When we bought the car we knew the driver side window was in bad shape.  It would barely roll up or down.  The passenger side was better but not great.  We assumed both had not been given any attention for the entire 15 year life of the car. Our assumption was correct...

 Opening the passenger side door started off as expected, but took a weird turn when we noticed the speaker...

 Someone in the car's past had done some "custom" installation work.  This is NOT a factory speaker or OEM duct tape.  It was working but looked pretty horrible.  The 99 is going to be a track day and autocross car, but at least for the foreseeable future, it will be driven to all events.  This means up to 3 hour road trips and I'm not willing to forego a working stereo for those long drives.  We put that part of the project on hold for a day.

 Pulling out the window we were able to clean up that layer of gunk you can see that resides just below the door frame and cleanup and replace the plastic guides that keep the glass going up and down in the metal track.

 Here's a close up of the old plastic guide in my hand, looking pretty work out and dirty while the new Teflon guide is installed and lubricated on the window.  We moved on to replace the passenger side window into the frame and got it sliding up and down like new and then worked on the driver side.  Remember, this is the side that barely moved at all and needed some muscle strength to assist the electric motors to make anything happen.  It turns out the metal track in the door was bent (still on the unsolved mysteries list), and not even the new, overly-greased guide would go in.

 There was only one solution if we were going to get the car put back together for autocross this weekend, and that was a trip to Panic Motorsports in West Columbia.  They were kind enough to step away from the Spec Miata on their dyno and help me pull a working, matching speaker from their parts shelves and salvage a replacement door window rail from another door they had. A few hours later they were hitting the road for another race weekend with a few trailers full of Miata race cars, so it was pretty awesome to get their support for my little project even when they were prepping for some serious track time.

 Ahhhh.  Now the car has 2 proper speaker installed.

 And finally, with the replacement window track installed, the driver side window now rolls up and down better than the passenger side!  Woo hoo!  I can only wonder how many years it's been since these windows have worked properly.

 The aftermath of pulling old grease out of the window tracks.  You can see the really dark yellow gunk, which is 15 years old from my car and is mostly solid.  To the left is the stuff from the replacement part I got, which I must guess is newer and is somewhat soft and might allow some sliding.  The brand new stuff that I applied is almost clear.

Re-assembly is reverse of dis-assembly.  Everything is now back together and working just about good as new.  The stereo even sounds better!

Between all this work the car made it downtown to Complete Car Care who were able to set the car up with a custom alignment.  They were great to work with and also fellow racers, so if you need car work in the Columbia area, I recommending getting in touch with them.