Project 10AE Miata

[Goodspeed]

Time for an update!



Last we left off, I was getting ready for my first track outing (Summit Main - NASA Hyperdrive) back in November. Had a fantastic time, and it was awesome to be on the other side of the fence for once :thumbup:



But, speaking to other first timers, you know what they say about going out bone stock for your first time? Yeah...don't do that. I mean, don't go crazy - you don't need a ton of work done to your car, but a little helps. Like pads and tires. My R4S's/Yoko S.drives did ok, until I lost brakes (pad fade) half way through the session and the tires dropped off shortly thereafter.

I was also spending about half my physical and mental energy trying to brace myself under cornering (body roll + sucky NB1 seats). Not fun, and diverting that focus away from watching my braking/turn-in points made me a little uncomfortable.

So, remedies were in order.

These beauties were installed last weekend. Big thanks to DJ for lending his swoll arms/general help with the whole install!



- Flyin' Miata VMaxx coilovers
- Flyin' Miata Sway Bars
- 949Racing Endlinks
- New Mazda bushings (replaced old ones in coilover assembly)

Before:



During:



After:



Installed F/R:




Impressions:

I have about 100 miles on them now, and they've broken in/lowered a bit since those pics. The ride/handling is awesome - they soak up bumps a lot better than the worn out stock pieces and the car rides much smoother than before. The handling is noticeably improved, even without a new alignment (which is forthcoming).

Most of those miles came from driving up to Mt. Airy, MD today for a Miataturbo.net meet and dyno day. I threw the car up on the rollers for shits and came away with some interesting observations...

Dyno Video



Peak WHP/WTQ was 108/97 (lol) on York Automotive's Dyno Dynamics dyno (aka, the "heartbreaker" dyno), which is apparently very strong for a stock 1.8. Maybe I have some sort of factory freak? I found it humorous that a SM in his shop with a $8k motor pulled 112whp without a cat - perhaps I should sell this motor to a SM racer :lol:

AFR's though are lean (see below). Likely culprit is that the cold air intake/Mazdaspeed muffler I bought from Maeng because it has those cool purpley-blue metal colors I freakin' love increased airflow just enough to lean things out a bit.

Probably OK on the street/auto-x when I'm not 100% throttle for huge stretches but I'll probably install a simple AFPR kit to bump pressure up a bit before I do any track events again. No big deal - I plan to stick with auto-x for a while to relearn things.







Thats all for now - I'll hopefully have a few more goodies installed before the July 3rd VMP Auto-x...