I was inspired by @nandovina22 to start my own build thread before I forget everything I’ve done to my car.

My childhood consisted of many hours playing Gran Turismo, Need for Speed on the playstation, and watching Initial D. I knew that one day I would love to own an EVO or a WRX and do race car things in it. Fast forward a few years into the middle of college years, my child self would have never believed that I would own a miata AND track it.

My step-dad races with NASA in the Spec-911 series managed by PRC-Racing. I went out to a few of his race weekends, sitting in the stands at Sonoma Raceway while admiring him and all of the other cars driving on track. I thought to myself, "Damn, I really want to get out there one day". “
His is the blue car in front:



During this same time, I met and made friends with a few car enthusiasts. A few of them owned Mazda Miatas. After spending time with my new friends and visiting the track with my stepdad, I started to put the two together and began the search for my own track car. I spent about 6 months on craigslist and on m.net reading and looking for the “one” miata that I would get my dirty noob hands on. After literally looking at a dozen different miatas, I saw an ad on CL for a 1995 M-Edition. I contacted the owner and bought it within 24 hours of seeing the ad. The purchase was made in June of 2015 with 81k miles!
The car as it sat after a quick clean and detail:



According to the carfax, I'm the 7th owner. The car reeked of cigarettes inside, but was in decent shape overall.
The car was mostly stock. It came with a Racing Beat exhaust and Tokico Illumina dampers and Flying Miata lower springs. I was super stoked about having a car with aftermarket suspension already. I finally have my own street go-cart!

Over the course of the next 2 years, I would slowly save up some money to afford some mods and perform all the maintenance to baseline it before it gets thrown on track. I actually took a huge risk and bought the car with 0 maintenance paperwork. Any chance that I could I would perform the maintenance and work on the car myself, as the miata would also serve as a learning platform. I’ve never wrenched on a car before this! Around this time, I wasn't sure how far I would want to modify the car, but I know that this would be a fun project car that I would eventually take the track. I'll slap parts on and start butchering it as I go.

 

From 2015 to the beginning of 2017 I performed numerous maintenance items, small things and modifications in preparation before I started tracking it. I also peeked at the classifieds quite often hoping to get parts for cheap.

I keep a google docs sheet to keep tracking of every mod/maintenance item, but it would probably be too overwhelming to post it here. So here's a condensed version:

Maintenance:

- All fluids: motor oil, trans, diff, brake fluid, coolant.
- Timing belt and all the usual bits done by SBGarage in South San Francisco. I sprained my wrist from falling off my bicycle around this time and couldn't work on this myself, shame.
- CSF radiator(the original one was browning and started leaking sooner after I bought the car) and replaced ALL of the rubber coolant hoses. Some of the smaller hoses were a TOTAL biatch to replace. Good thing I have smol hands
- Clutch master/slave cylinders, OEM
- Rebuilt the shifer with OEM parts
- NGK BKR5E-11 plugs and NGK ZE21 wires
- Aligned the car to get -1.8 camber in the front and -2.0 in the rear. I wanted more front camber, but the ride height with the flyin miata springs were limiting me.


Mods:

- Car came with Racing Beat exhaust, Tokico Illumina dampers, Flyin Miata Springs
- Hardtop mounted with Garage Star brackets and security bolts, removed soft top. Didn't care too much about the top down experience.
- Bossfrog Frog Arms fender braces. These made an immediate difference going over bumps on the road, the front end felt way more stiff. It also quieted down some of the rattles I would hear in the car.
- Flyinmiata brake cylinder brace.
- Racing beat 54105 sway bar from @afm and new set of sway bar reinforcement blocks directing from racing beat.
- Garage star delrin door blocks. It got rid even more creaks and rattles in the car.
- Picked up a set of new-in-box 15x8 6UL wheels in silver from @thumpetto007 at Miatas at Laguna Seca in 2016. Mounted a new set of Maxxis VR-1 tires in 205/50-15.
- Blackbird Fabworx GT3 NA rollbar from @astral
- Stage 1 brake kit from 949Racing which included orange wrapped stainless steel brake lines, fresh blank rotors, G-LOC R8 pads front and rear, and Motul RBF600 fluid.
- Sparco Roadster seat that I found laying around my stepdad's garage unused. Mounted with Garage Star seat brackets, their special short people version that allows the seat to sit a little more forward than their regular brackets. I'm 5'5".
- Works bell short steering hub, NRG quick release and a Renown 130R Dark steering wheel










With all of this completed, I was ready to take the merlot to its first track day at Thunderhill West on April 15th, 2017!

 

April 15th, 2017

FINALLY, track day in the yata. While this was her maiden voyage at Thunderhill west circuit, I actually cheated on her with my daily driver, a bone stock 2010 honda fit, half a year ago at this very track. It allowed me to give me a good baseline and comparison between my two cars.




Being my second track and first time in the miata, I was overwhelmed with excitement and fear as this was actually coming true. Tons of mistakes, early braking, terrible line were driven, but I had a ton of fun this day. The miata would obviously be nothing compared to my honda fit, but damn was I jittery rabbit from the excitement I had of just driving the thing around. I used harry’s lap timer and timed myself with a best of 1:39.89.



The day was not without some issues though. I had a terrible problem shifting from 2nd to 3rd at times, causing me to force it into 3rd making a nasty grind noise. I had to slow my shifts down for it to smoothly shift. After digging around the forums and watching TheCarPassionChannel switch out his motor mounts, I thought I should do the same. I gave Moti from Blackbird Fabworx an email and ordered his recently released motor mounts. When the old mounts were taken out, both of them were torn apart and in pieces! Yikes. The new motor mounts turned my car into a shaking blender at first, but after a few hundred miles they settled down dramatically. The shakes are not bad, bearable, but not bad. The shifting was night and day. The shift **** simply does NOT move under throttle anymore. Every shift became solid and smooth. I had to go back to the track to see how the car would do now.

I also got bored one day and decided that I wanted more POWAH, but no turbo yet, I’m too cheap. I found a spare exhaust camshaft for dirt cheap and decided to do the exhintake cam swap. The difference was noticeable, but not as much as I had hoped. Oh well, worth it for what the 20 odd dollars I paid for the camshaft.

 

July 26th, 2017

Took the miata out on its second track event at Laguna Seca with Speed SF. My only other track comparison is with Thunderhill West circuit. Both tracks are quite vastly different. Thunderhill West is a very technical course with some tricky turns and short straights while Laguna definitely favors cars with some power. Laguna Seca is super thrilling with its higher speed corners. I get to finally experience the famous CORK SCREW after driving in Gran Turismo for so many years.



I took it easy being still very green with track driving and clocked a 2:02.01 as my fastest time here:

A butt puckering moment where I thought I was going to smack into a wall:


The car was great! I made it to the track, drove on the track, and left the track without any issues! The new blackbird motor mounts were working GREAT. Watching my GoPro footage revealed that the movement in the shifter was dramatically reduced. Shifting on track felt much smoother. The vibrations also started to settle and became much more tolerable when the engine is at idle. There’s still a large amount of shaking of the whole car, but this being my track toy, I didn’t really care too much. I highly recommend upgrading your motor mounts if you’re having shifting problems.


I couldn’t wait to come to Laguna Seca again.