5.0MX5

Woot Woot, Congratulations! I remember my first drive 5 years ago. As Jackie Gleason said, "How Sweet it is".

Only now after 5 years and 10k plus miles can I go out without the Need of either going sideways or making at least one full throttle run thru at least 3 gears. Course I'm in a very rural part of the world and 65. Point being You're going to have fun.

Enjoy!

97miatam

HAHA thanks! I can't wait to get sideways!

97miatam

Still have about 30 hours of work before the car is ready to hit the road in a legal fashion but it is together enough for a cruise around the block!

97miatam

Oil is smelling like gas, engine has new bearings, rings, and oil pump. Any ideas? Leaky injector?

jrmotorsports55

What do the plugs look like?

5.0MX5

Keep a close eye on the oil level. Making oil is definately a tell of injector issues.

Rings not seated? There is a specific ring seating procedure that Perfect Circle has been recommending since the 50's that involves a high gear wide open throttle (wot) run from 30 to 40, coast back to 30, do then 30 to 50 wot, coast to 30, then 30 to 60 wot,then to 30. I usually do this 2 or 3 times. WOT loads the rings against the cylinder walls promoting seating/sealing and the coast down cools things down with a nice oil bath.

The above assumes timing and cooling is sorted out with no major short comings anywhere else.

Good Luck!

97miatam

I will check for injector issues tomorrow, haven't looked at plugs yet. Hopefully that's all it is. My guess is these are factory injectors with 180K+ miles on them. Im sure the rings aren't seated yet as the engine only has around 10 mins of run time. Thanks for the responses!

97miatam

First autocross happened today! It was a lot of fun but the car def needs more spring

97miatam

Been working on trying to keep this thing cool. The radiator I chose is too small for any of the common oem fan set ups so I made a fiber glass shroud. One fan just isn't cutting it so I'm going to make another shroud this weekend and wire in a second fan At that point I should be good to go. Still need to get the hood on. I have around 600 miles on the car now and all is going well

wcw5023

Looks and sounds great!!!

What are you running for suspension?

Is that a single pass radiator then? I like your DIY shroud, and am planning on learning me some fiberglass work here in the near future!

acedeuce802

That shroud looks really nice! I hope to learn composites to make similar stuff in the future.

I would add some flaps to that shroud. You're likely only going to be pulling air from half the radiator, and you are killing flow by having a shroud that covers the whole radiator, but a fan that only covers half. Fan shroud flaps will seal when the pressure inbetween the shroud and radiator is low (fan is on, pulling air from this area), but will open when there's high pressure between the shroud and radiator (air is being forced through from in front of the radiator).

SPAL Cooling Flaps

97miatam

Right now I have martins springs up front and the old front springs are on the rear uncut. I'm going to order the vmaxx track next week so hopefully that will fix it. The radiator is a griffin 26x15. Y'all def don't need to learn anything about composites to do it. It is a very simple process and turned out to be much easier than if I tried to make the shroud out of metal. I can post the material list if anyone is interested.

I've never seen those flaps before but that is a great idea! Thanks for sharing

97miatam

Well here is rev2 of the shroud. I also found out that the thermostat was installed backwards and it was not seated properly from the previous owner of this engine. So far it looks like all of my cooking problems are solved. As a side not to any of y'all that are creating your own custom fan set up: don't buy expensive fans! The first fan I bought was a 10" fan from mishimoto for 70$+ 10$ for mounting kit. The second fan is an eBay special that I paid 20$ for with free shipping and it included a mounting kit. As far as I can tell the fans are 100% identical with the exception of the mishi fan having its name on it. I bet mishimoto fan is the exact same but the mark up the price so they can offer lifetime warranty. If I would have known this from the start I could have saved myself a lot of money. Total cost= radiator at 179, shroud 50$ in material and 3 hours of time, and potentially on 40$ for fans instead of what I actually spent.

acedeuce802

FYI, the advice shouldn't be to not buy expensive fans, it should be to not buy Mishimoto fans. They actually flow less than OEM Miata fans. If going aftermarket, then it should be a Spal fan. Otherwise I like using OEM fans, I will be using an early 90's Ford Taurus fan.

97miatam

Of course the flow less, They are much smaller. A Miata fan doesn't have a chance of fitting as a puller with my set up. Taurus fans are the go to for a great fan set up but the shroud is several inches too wide to fit my radiator. My point was there isn't a reason to buy a 70$ 10" fan when you can buy a 20$ one. I have a friend that races chumpcar and he recommended which eBay fan for me to buy. He has over a hundred hours on it without any issue so if I can atleast get that, I will gladly replace it with another cheap fan.

97miatam

another fun weekend of driving/racing. The car is way too soft on monster Miata front springs and front springs relocated to rear. I am hoping to buy some coilovers in the next couple of months. Other than that, the only thing bothering me is the gearing. I either need to run 17's for autocross or need to build a new rear end with 3.08. The 3.27 are just too low for autocross.

97miatam

had some fun at a family party after the autocross. I got to do this for 30 mins straight because everyone wanted a ride haha

Casey

I enjoyed the videos and am envious as I have yet to autocross my car even though it's been complete in some form or another for over 8 years. Also very jealous of autox courses in TX. Way better than the tiny courses I've done in the Northeast.

Just curious- what are you using for sway bars?

97miatam

Dude you have to get it out for atleast one event! I am currently running stock rear bar and no front bar. I did this because with the Mm springs, the front end sits higher than stock and is basically at 0 camber. I need the suspension to compress to get me in the negatives while turning. Once I get back to correct ride height I will add front bar

97miatam

Got the car out on track for the first time a couple weeks ago at COTA! First time on that track for me and first time on any track for the car. Im running 3 year old star specs currently in 205 series so I didn't have the grip I would have liked but over all the car did pretty well. I was pretty easy on it as it is isn't proven and I didn't want to cause any problems on track. It never got over 215 F so I was pretty happy because I was definitely expecting over heating issues on a sunny-August Texas day. I drove 2 hours to the track, had an hour of track time, and make it the two hours home without issue.


The night before the event I was under the car making sure everything was tight and I noticed that the rear mount of my differential had completely broken. I had been feeling some movement under acceleration but I was blaming a poor alignment since I had just done the alignment before I noticed it. Had to remake part of the bracket and got it back in the car without issue and it seems to be holding fine now.


Over the past few months and several thousand miles (don't have speedo so don't know actual miles) the car has been awesome and has been completely reliable.

cvx_20

"The night before the event I was under the car making sure everything was tight and I noticed that the rear mount of my differential had completely broken."



Can you comment any more on what exactly broke and why you had breakage?

Thanks, Mike

97miatam

Poor design and material selection on my part. It sheared at the weld from a hard launch on a grippy but rough road. I only had 3/16" around when I made it and it probably needs to be at least a 1/4". I don't have a picture of the fix but basically I welded both sides where it sheared and then added another 3/16" across the top to double the thickness. If it fails again I will do a redesign.

97miatam

In preparation for the event I bought a used roll bar for $200 but had to add a harness bar and a diagonal for it to be legal.