I've been lurking here for a while and finally decided to fully introduce myself. I took a perfectly good street MSM and have slowly been building it into primarily a hill climb car. I still run autox to keep some skills sharp and for affordable events. Forgive my pictures, I'm more worried about driving the car than taking good pictures of it.

Started here when i bought it. 43k miles, FM big enchilada, Tein Street Advance Coils and 15x9 6ULs.



Did some autox



Bought a 10ae with a blown motor for the girlfriend and stole things off of it, like wheels for winter. Ended up using the msm to get christmas tree one winter



Started getting ready for safety equipment



Moved to a place with a decent garage to work on things. Borrowed the hardtop from the 10ae



Finally 2.5 years after buying the car, made it out to my first hill climb. Ran the Pagoda Hillclimb in Reading PA. Squeaked past an s2000 for first place.



Ran a few more PA hill climbs and autox events. Decided that I was no longer happy with the tein suspension and wanted to upgrade over the winter. Enter big grip kit. I pulled all the control arms, cleaned, painted and zerk'd. Swapped the front sway bar and installed all coils. Also picked up a set of 15x10 Jongbloeds and 245/40 Maxxis RC1s since the 6ULs weren't out yet.




That's the short and sweet of how it sits today without the really boring details. I also picked up a parts 99 miata and stole what I needed for the 10ae which should swap over soon. I'll likely keep tabs on that one also.

Here's some bonus videos from events

 

<p>I remember that car. I met you last year at an AutoX at Hershey, but didn't run at the event.</p>

 

Yup, that was me. Which car were you driving?

 

Here's another video from the event last weekend. Still working on being less slow but I got closer to the M3, good enough for a close second place

 

What exactly about the Tien street advance were you not happy with? Do you remember what rates you were running and do you think they would be at all better with stiffer front springs or softer rears?

I'm trying to justify the price of xidas over the cheaper range of options, xidas mean selling lots of stuff which is a paain! I don't want to ever buy shocks again, so I'm pretty sure what I have to do.

Just curious!

Car looks great, by the way

 

I was happy with the Teins as a street or casual autox coil set of coilovers. I was running the 7/6kg rates and they just weren't stiff enough.

I decided I wanted to get a bit more serious about my suspension and after research landed on the Xidas. I couldn't be happier with the 800/500lb setup paired with the racing beat 1.25 front bar.

I found a picture from the last autox while I'm at it

 

<p></p><p>I left my NA in the outside parking lot</p>

 

I see, yeah it seems like the tien's don't really carry the r&d of the other options out there at the moment. I bet they can be made alright, maybe, but new springs are another $200 on top and then it's probably pushing close to what they can handle, xidas sound like the way to go for sure.

Thanks for the insight!

 

hey i know this car!!! nice to see you finally start a build thread. as for the Teins, i installed them on my car and im happy with them for a street/occasional autocross car. if you want to do more than that and you would probably want a stiffer setup

 

Here's another video from this weekend. Was able to drop over 4 seconds from last year so I was very happy with the weekend.

 

I haven't been doing much to the msm besides driving it. I've grown much more comfortable with the setup which led to a 4th place raw showing this weekend (aided by a few fast guys going to nationals).

Most of my free time has been spent on operation **** rust. A while back I picked up a 10ae with a knocking engine to fix up for my girlfriend. She's been pissed since she can't drive the msm after the race seat went in.

Good news is it was very cheap, bad news is that everything under the body is rusted to hell. Body is good, everything else I'm throwing out. That means cleaning up the spare parts I have off the parts miata (except for the rear subframe). I've gotten almost everything cleaned, primered and painted, just getting ready to rubber coat the bottom of the car to prevent any future damage. Here's where its at now.





Old control arms vs "new ones" with poly bushings



Had to reused rear subframe but it cleaned up nice






Next up is the set of sport brakes that I picked up. Going to clean those up and rebuild as some of the seals are junk on them. Certainly better than the rust seized ones that were on the car.

 

Necro bump. I've succeeded in being less slow this year. Made some changes over the winter to the car which appear to be paying off. I caged the car which helps the peace of mind after watching a few cars roll over or broadside trees at events. I stepped up to big boy 275 A7s on 15x11 6ULs. With that, I swapped to coaxial mounts and 900/500lb rates with the Xidas. I've run 3 events so far, 2 hill climbs and 1 time trial. So far that's resulted in 2 class records with the other event a brand new hill that I was 1.5s off the new hill record. I'm thrilled with those results and am looking forward to running a few more hill climbs this season. Videos below for your critique.

 

Lets go all monster truck status! I need to get working on making a set of flares so the car looks less ridiculous. This is from Giant's Despair Hill Climb, the 110th anniversary running. Great course, although I'd love a bit more power for this one.

 

Bad *** dude!

The only time I go fast on a hill is down them!

 

Lets update a bit more. Ran Polish Mountain which is a bit of a different experience than most. This hill actually has a road that runs parallel which we use as a return road. That allows for a good bit more runs than usual. We had to shut down for 3 hours due to severe rain on Saturday morning. I ran the first run in pouring rain but couldn't make it more than 10 ft back in the pits. Turns out A7's aren't worth dick in pure mud. Thankfully they were able to source a few truckloads of sawdust which made the pits usable again. We still managed to get 17 runs in. I ended up taking first and setting a new class record again.

2016 Polish Mountain Hill Climb - Mazdaspeed Miata - YouTube

Next up was Duryea which is the grand daddy of all hills we run. It starts the same as Pagoda, but then we go past the pagoda another 1.3 miles of stone wall lined road. That lets the big hp cars let loose, with some of them reaching 150mph or more. With that draw, there's a lot more cars, registration was already waitlisted in under 48 hours. Also, with the large amount of cars and longer hill it means less runs. We ended up with 6 runs over both days which was then cut short by severe thunderstorms. I managed to run a 121.7 which was a personal best, good for first place and a new class record. Looking at the times, I should have been able to break 120 given another run or two. That is a special bar, only broken by 42 drivers over 65 years. Either way, a successful weekend and I have a goal for next year.

(to those complaining about the angle of camera, I fixed it for this event)
2016 Duryea Hill Climb - Mazdaspeed Miata - YouTube

Next up is a time trial at Summit Point this weekend, then a fall run at Weatherly to close the season. Its been a great year so far, 4 records broken and 5 first place finishes out of 6 events.