Project: 1995 Miata

[D_Eclipse9916]

You have no room to talk mr. "its too cold to autocross.....yet ill spray water everywhere and spend hours detailing my car int he same weather". Seriously? Good god at least at the autox your IN the car.

[Goodspeed]

You have no room to talk mr. "its too cold to autocross.....yet ill spray water everywhere and spend hours detailing my car int he same weather". Seriously? Good god at least at the autox your IN the car.

[D_Eclipse9916]

Yeah I def called you out Get used to it! hah

[Jake]

Picked up Navin's Kosei K1 Racing wheels yesterday and put them on this afternoon. Love the look of K1s on a Miata (or anything, really) - and I actually like the blue against my black paint, too. The tires are in 'meh' shape, one of them has a small flat spot so certain speeds are a bit bumpy right now. Hoping to throw new tires on in the next few months, assuming I find some income.

[CaptainHenreh]

I've seen worse.

[Jake]

Looking at the photo, it really needs moar lower.

[andrew_j]

moar lower is moar better.

[TorinoCobra070]

I still think it looks awesome. Pics don't do it justice.

[Goodspeed]

Hmmmm



They should go black.

[D_Eclipse9916]

El o El that flat spot is hella annoying going down the chute (I think those are the wheels and tires I locked up going down turn 5 in Navins car)

[Evan]

flat spotting azenis takes some serious effort

[navin]

[D_Eclipse9916]

flat spotting azenis takes some serious effort

Once flatspotted as you can see from the above picture, it was realllllly easy to lock up that tire on the same spot.. I felt really bad at first, then Navin told me he had already flatspotted em. :lol:

[Jake]

Got my tire "situation" all figured out. Jeff gave me a deal on mounting/balancing and took care of everything tonight. So... I have a brand new set of Dunlop DZ101's on the Koseis, and some Avon Tech-R R-Comps on the stock Mazda wheels.

Dunlops are 205/50/15 and were $235 for the set, from Tire Rack. They have a $50 rebate on Dunlops through April 17th.

Avons were FREE from a guy at VIR back in March. He used them on an E30 and decided they were too worn out for track time. They still have life for AX though. They are 205/50/14 I believe. Pretty big for the stock 14x6 wheels but they fit!

So... that puts me into CSP for SCCA rules. Pretty stoked, I got to drive a '99 with R-Comps back in March (first BRR event this season) and it was soooo sticky and grippy. Looking forward to my first playtime with them on Sunday down in Norfolk.

[Jake]

Updating this for my own sake. Now that summer is here - and a more steady paycheck as well - I'm making a list of small projects to tackle in the coming months.

The Koseis are first up. Sorry Navin, but you did a really um, fast, paint job with the blue. It's chipping, holds brake dust, and isn't clear-coated. So... the question is do I keep the blue and touch it up, or strip and re-paint? Naturally, I'm choosing to strip and re-paint because it's more work. Hah. My goal is to work on the wheels this coming weekend - hopefully get them done. They are going to be stripped to bare aluminum, primed with self-etching primer, sprayed gunmetal, and cleared. I have some bawlin' red lug nuts coming in the mail, too. The red should offset the gunmetal nicely without looking too ricer-fanboi.

Past that... I would like to replace the upper and lower shift boots - like Goodspeed did - and make sure there's fluid in the shifter turret, since it's doubtful at best. With that, I'll replace the cosmetic shift boot since my stock, old vinyl one is tearing in a few spots. I'm debating black "leather" or black "suede" as sold on eBay. I kind of dig the suede look.

It needs an alignment eventually.

I want to remove the door panels and tighten up the speakers' screws, and also lubricate the window tracks (again, a la Goody) because my driver's window is no bueno if it's not 95┬░ out.

I really should remove my steering wheel and re-align it on the hub thingy. I replaced it last summer because the original leather was all chewed up, and it's off by a tooth. Oops. I really don't care but I wonder if it'll be a big deal for getting it aligned or not. My other thought is to get a NB (99-05) leather Nardi wheel and airbag. I really like the look, though you have to wire up the connector for the airbag. The wires are the same but the plastic connector piece is not. Not hard, but so far nobody's crashed and seen if the bag will blow up or not.

That's it for now, I think. If I get mega-bank amounts of cash, I'd like to do some suspension funsies. All this other stuff is far cheaper and easier to accomplish, though, so it's first on the list.

[V1GiLaNtE]

I think you should do suede as well.. if only you had an actual headliner.. that would be nice too

[Jake]

I want to remove the door panels and tighten up the speakers' screws, and also lubricate the window tracks (again, a la Goody) because my driver's window is no bueno if it's not 95┬░ out.

Went over to Goodspeed's place last night and we attempted to grease the window tracks. It really didn't seem to help much, but in driving to work this morning, I think there is some improvement. The windows now drop at the same speed... typical behavior is for the driver's side window to be about a third slower than the passenger side. Up and down they are now matched. So... I guess it worked.



Add another "upgrade" to my list... Hella E-Code headlights. Stockers suck and it's a relatively cheap (~$85) upgrade.

[Maengelito]

I want to remove the door panels and tighten up the speakers' screws, and also lubricate the window tracks (again, a la Goody) because my driver's window is no bueno if it's not 95┬░ out.

Went over to Goodspeed's place last night and we attempted to grease the window tracks. It really didn't seem to help much, but in driving to work this morning, I think there is some improvement. The windows now drop at the same speed... typical behavior is for the driver's side window to be about a third slower than the passenger side. Up and down they are now matched. So... I guess it worked.



Add another "upgrade" to my list... Hella E-Code headlights. Stockers suck and it's a relatively cheap (~$85) upgrade.

What I did was I used a wire coat hanger and got all the old dried up crap grease out of the tracks that I could. Then I used thick bearing grease instead of spraying white lithium in there. The windows move pretty quickly now.

[Jake]

It's starting to storm now, but I made pretty good headway into refinishing the Koseis this morning. The end result will be Duplicolor "Graphite" wheel paint, clearcoated, with red Muteki lug nuts.

Started off by taping off the edge of each tire. I really didn't want to get the paint stripper on the rubber as I'm sure it could eat it.



This is the paint stripper. Incredibly potent stuff. I bought nitrile gloves at Home Depot and put on my "safety goggles" that were mandated for my GISAT lab class, and went to work. I got a teeny speck of the stripper on my arm, above the glove cut-off, and it stung BAD. I'd hate to see what it could do if it got in your eyes. Mine were watering just from being ~2 or 3 feet from the stuff.



I put the stripper on with a paint brush and let it sit for 20ish minutes. You can actually hear the paint bubble off of the metal while you wait. Initially I put it on too thin, so it didn't take much off.



This is what happens when you do it right:



If it's bubbling that much, you're good to go. I used a little plastic paint scraper to get the paint off. It came off in sheets which was convenient and cool to watch. During all this, I noticed blue, green, black and dark silver paint come off. Story time kids... how many colors have these wheels been before?!

Finally, we loaded them into Nate's truck and were off to Miracle Wash for a quick power-wash spraydown.



At this point, it's about to monsoon, so they are in my shed drying and waiting for more dry weather. Hopefully this storm will pass by quickly and I can do work tonight, or tomorrow. I need to sand them a bit, then do the prime/paint/clear job. Prep work is the hardest and most tedious bit of this process, but hopefully by putting some good time into it, I'll have the end results I want.

[.RJ]

You're doing it rong