The Miata experience: his and hers.

Awesome news :D

The shop is cleaned up, tools put away, and the NC is washed and waxed.  Fluids are topped up and everything is ready to go*



*except for a few of those pesky plastic body rivets that disintegrate when you remove them... have some arriving today.  Also have an appointment for Monday morning to recharge the A/C... 

Picked up a new book by some guy that writes Miata books... 

I may or may not have done many of the things described in said book.  It might even contain a picture or two of a certain Miata from this thread.  

It may very well include some pictures, yes :) I was stalking cars at Summer Camp last year.

Took the NC for a quick drive to Tombstone this morning and then to the local Cars & Coffee.

Turned over 35,000 just as I was stopping for fuel...

In front of the Tombstone Territorial Courthouse...  It served as the Cochise County Courthouse until 1931 when the seat was moved to Bisbee, and became a State Park in 1959.  It's also a museum and is worth stopping at if you're into western history and ever in Tombstone.

I still have a bit of fiddling to do when my boost controller arrives, but the car is so much fun to drive.  If you didn't know better, you'd think it was a factory turbo and I think that's about the highest praise I can give for the FM turbo kit.  And it's exactly what I was after.  The extra torque in the midrange is just what the NC needed, and keeping up with traffic no longer requires revving the engine out.  When you have the room to open things up its impressively fast.  I would happily trade a bit of the recirc valve noise for the exhaust noise that was reduced by the turbo, but it is what it is.

At C&C... several folks didn't even notice the turbo until they did a double take.  

Not a lot going on in the last week or so.  Still fiddling with the boost adjustment on the NC, but mostly just enjoying driving it.

We're now into our 'monsoon' season in Southern AZ, so the weeds are at their peak growth.  Yesterday I prepared the mechanized vegitation assualt brigade to go into battle...

So far I've got all our gravel sprayed for weeds.   My wife likes mowing, so she's got about half the property cut so far.  Also used the tractor to haul ~ 1000lbs of gravel out to our driveway to repair some water damage from a storm last week.  At the rate we're going, I'm going to have to get another truckload in sometime later this year.  Ah, the joys of rural living.

The Jeep needs an oil change, so I hope to do that later this week, then maybe I can get going on a few little things on the NA.

Today is our NC's anniversary!  We brought it home one year ago today.

And I don't think I've ever finished* a project car in that amount of time.  But the NC is just about exactly where I want it... nice suspension, FM turbo, and a few carefully chosen appearance upgrades.

* Yes, this is GRM.   No car is ever really finished... LOL  There's a few more things I have in mind, but the big stuff is done.

That's a very nice NC!

Looking great.  Excited to hear the NC turbo install went well. 

Just put a new shift knob in mine after the factory one disentergrated in my hands and it got me all raring to go for more mods :D 

Ours has 111k miles on it and the a/c I just always assumed sucked.  Is that not the case? Might be time to get it all reworked. 

In June my wife started driving the NC so much and getting heatstroke that in four weeks I was never able to drive it.  

So we got her a Bronco in a matching color so she has her own convertible with better A/C... 

With three kids we could not go for the same kind of miata family as you.  Though I was tempted to get her a nice ND to daily. (she really only takes kids occasionally). 

She refused and wanted the bronco. 

Within a Week I was banned from driving it because I kept finding excuses to take it off road.  

Just the little four cylinder but it's an absolute blast to drive.  a modern car with personality. 

In reply to Mad_Ratel :

My wife loves her Grand Cherokee as a daily...  it's something Miatas aren't all that great for, but people make do.  We never had any complaints about the A/C in either our '13 Club or our current NC.  Might want to have it looked at...

In reply to Rodan :

I don't like having my wife in a car with over 100k miles on it, as she's extremely mechanically oblivious.  Her Cayenne Diesel went out of warranty at 120k miles and I tried to buy her a new car.  She asked what would happen to her Cayenne, when I told her I'd keep it and drive it myself that didn't sit well!  She refused a new car and is still driving her Cayenne...

Out of curiosity, what were your thoughts on a 2.5 or 2.4 swap vs the turbo. Obviously you went turbo. Just curious if you'd looked into it with your mechanical abilities? 

Nice bronco! Is that the one with the 7 speed manual?

In reply to Stueck0514 :

She loved her manual focus, and if they'd had a manual she'd have taken it, but of course it seems like only those that special order manuals get them... 

Mad_Ratel said:

Out of curiosity, what were your thoughts on a 2.5 or 2.4 swap vs the turbo. Obviously you went turbo. Just curious if you'd looked into it with your mechanical abilities? 

I actually started researching the 2.5 swap ~10 years ago when we had our first NC.  I think the choice depends a lot on what you want to do with the car.  For a track car, the 2.5 (or a 2.4 - I'd do a 2.4 if I was building an engine) with cams makes a lot of sense, for all the reasons I kept our track NA naturally aspirated.  The downsides of removing the balance shafts and adding big cams are not as much of a sacrifice as they would be for a street car.  I have an acquaintance locally who recently finished a 2.4 build.  He didn't go wild with it, so it's streetable, but it only put 195hp to the wheels.  I'm pretty comfortable in saying he spent more than I did on the FM turbo kit, and for a street car, that seems like a terrible ROI.  

For a street car, I like the additional torque of the turbo.  Even in relaxed driving, the car is quick in the part throttle midrange.  We also live at 5000ft, so an n/a build suffers significant power loss from the altitude.  I wanted a relaxed driver, not something I had to run to redline to keep up with traffic.  And I still have a factory built motor with balance shafts.  Nice and smooth, and don't need to worry wondering whether the machine shop screwed up and I've got a 10k mile grenade in the car.  I do think this turbo kit is fine for an occasional/casually tracked NC, but I think if you're pushing it hard heat management will become an issue.  Things are packed in pretty tightly on the hot side.

Just compare FM's torque curve for the turbo to any 2.5/2.4 build and you'll see the difference for street driving.

Yesterday, we took the NC to our local AutoX.  We're not at all into being competitive, and this is certainly not the NC's mission, but it's fun and we like to support our local club.  It's also useful for testing considering it's close enough to home for me to drive the NA there if I want to.

I think the turbo actually made the NC slower at AutoX... 

Our AutoX pad is concrete and is very low grip.   Combined with our 320TW tires, and an open diff, hilarity ensued.  The course was entirely 2nd gear, and passing 4500 rpm at full throttle would light the tires, even in a straight line.  The way the course was laid out, this happened at exactly the wrong time, just about everywhere.  But, I was laughing out loud driving the thing. 

My wife, pulling up to the start box



And out on track



It was definitely a learning experience, and pointed out some things I need to change, and that's exactly why we do the AutoX aside from just having fun.  A limited slip diff has definitely moved way up the priority list, and a more aggressive alignment is needed.   Neither of those will sacrifice any streetability.  I'm debating about sway bars.  They would definitely help, but I'm not convinced they won't negatively impact the ride quality.  A second set of wheels with 200TW rubber is also on the list.

The other thing this provided was a good torture test.  It was in the mid 90s by the time we wrapped up, and with us co-driving the car never got shut off between runs.  I could definitely feel some heat soak reducing power, but it wasn't enough to keep it from blowing off the tires.  Temps never got frisky, and the car just worked.

Here's a super cool Lotus Elan that showed up yesterday and took FTD... nice to see the Miata's spiritual ancestor still kicking butt.  

I thought this 2 stroke snowmobile powered beast would run FTD, but it sounded like it was never getting up on the pipe in the faster sections.  Didn't get an opportunity to talk to the driver, so I don't know if he was having issues.

And today is our NA's 'anniversary'!  I brought it home 14 years ago today.  

Then

Now

Knocked out a small project on the motorhome today.

When we bought the coach, it came with a dash mounted tablet that provided GPS, a monitor for the rearview camera, and a dash camera.  I added a more up to date GPS last year, but retained the tablet for the rear view camera monitor.  The problem is everything was wired to plug into an old school 12v cigarette plug, and there was an additional one to power the camera.  As a result, I had to add a 3 recepticle plug to provide power to everything and it was kind of a mess.  The camera plug was a little wonky and would wiggle out on bumpy roads, and the tablet power supply (12v to 5v output) crapped out entirely on our last trip.  So it was finally time to tear it all apart and tidy things up.

I hard wired a 12v to 5v usb output adapter into the input to the factory cigarette plug, and also hard wired the camera power supply, eliminating two of the plugs.  I retained the 3 plug adapter, as we will still use it with the wireless adapter for our Brake Buddy when flat towing our Jeep; it also provides two USB outputs for charging other stuff, and a digital volts readout.  The Garmin GPS plugs into the other factory plug, as it's not compatible with a standard USB (thanks, Garmin!).  I cleaned up all the routing and velcro mounted the 3 plug adapter to the dash.  Should make for smooter cruising, and it will be nice to have the rear view camera back!

In reply to Rodan :

Those are some nice cars.

on the NC swaybars. 

Dad's 2006 has the C class setup. (as recommended by the facebook group, goodwin spec'd bump stops, koni's, stock springs, and a bigger front bar).

My 2009 has just some used koni's with random lowering springs I found used for $500.  no bars. 

Dads car feels SUBSTANTIALLY more sporty and fun to drive.  You can leave the shocks much softer and still have fun handling and turn in. I've got to turn the shocks stiffer and sacrifice ride quality to get closer in turn in.  

As such front bar is on my list of wants.  Though with fall coming, so is a laundry list of house renovations I need to complete so my wife does not murder me. 

In reply to Mad_Ratel :

We had Progress bars on our last NC, and I liked them, but not sure I want to go that stiff for this car.  Still doing some research.

Followup underway pic of the screens in the RV...  review camera has since been aimed a bit higher.

It's been a minute, and that's because we were on the road for a few weeks.  We have friends that retired to Cody, WY, and we were attending their daughter's wedding in Red Lodge, MT.  We took the motorhome and Jeep and made a 3 week adventure out of it, visiting MT, WY and CO.  2900 miles (and 408! gallons of diesel) in the RV, and about another 1000 miles in the Jeep running around in the back country.

It was cloudy as we headed East towards NM on our first leg, but for the first time in a while we didn't get rained on the first day out!  It's nice for the rig to stay clean for at least a couple of days after you spend all the effort to wash it.

We took 3 days getting to Red Lodge and once there, unhooked the Jeep for a loop over the Chief Joseph Scenic Parkway and Beartooth Pass.  One of my favorite roads, and disappointing not to have a sports car or bike along on this trip.   I mean, just look at that road!

The scenery is incredible, though, and worth the drive even without a 'fun' car.

Beartooth Peak from the Clay Butte lookout

Alpine lake near Beartooth Pass

The wedding was very nice, and we moved into Cody, WY, and spent a few days hanging out with our friends.  A day trip into the Big Horn Mountains rewarded us with more spectacular scenery and a moose sighting...

From Cody, we headed south into Colorado.  We waved at FM World Headquarters as we drove through Grand Junction for the second time this summer on our way to Ouray, on US 550 in the San Juan Mountains.  Ouray is one of our favorite spots in Colorado, with the RV park right on the Uncompahgre River and it's at 7800ft so the weather is about as pleasant as August gets.  Downtown is an easy walk, and there's fantastic back country Jeeping in every direction.

Our first day we headed out to Governor Basin.   We had been here before, but the panorama from 12,000ft is just breathtaking and worth the repeat visit.  That's really true of the entire area!

We were surprised no-one else was up there as it was Labor Day weekend; the roads were busy and there were many cars parked in the various trailheads.  Throughout the weekend, the roads were busy, but we never felt like things were 'crowded'.  

The Atlas Mine ruins are a great photo-op on the way up the mountain.

The next day we went to Silverton for breakfast, and headed into the Red Mountain mining area.  It was another area we had previously driven through, but you always see it differently driving the opposite direction.  Lots of old mining structures and more great panoramas...

The local fauna were out and about as well...