Yeah seriously, that cars design is nothing short of phenomenal.

wowsers. Thats beautiful

That FD is sick. It's like Mazda said "OK we need a supercar. Let's take the nb and make it a full street weapon. Oh and let's make it hardtop, sorry hairdressers this one's not for you."

Ian you basically own all the cars that make up my dream garage. Thank you, I'm living vicariously through you and your exploits.

2010 WRX, The FD came before the NB. The same group of designers worked on the NB after designing the FD RX-7. I agree with you, the FD is one of the most beautiful designs in the automotive world. That's one of the reasons I have an NB Miata. I love the similar curves.

Ah good to know. And yes, dream garage. Including the trailer!

God damn. That's, like, beautiful and shit.

Per above conversations, I had not realized that the same designers were involved with the FD and the NB, which explains my love for both. ND2 is coming in a close third ...

Thanks guys! Like I said, I'm blown away by how the paint came out, it's just spectacular.

Ken: I agree on the NB vs FD. In early 1998 I owned a Ford Probe GT (1995) but had driven a couple of NAs and was starting to think about a Miata. I'd always loved the FD but it was out of my reach at that point, and when the NB came out with similar styling on a car that I'd already been considering -- that just sealed the deal. One of these days I need to get both cars out to do a photo shoot with them together. :)

--Ian

Iirc correctly, someone on the design team for the nb also worked on the viper? You can certainly see the resemblance there too

I dunno about NB & Viper. There are certainly some similarities, the double-bubble roof with the FD, for example. I quite like the late 90s GTS -- in a world with more money and more parking, I wouldn't mind having one of those too. :)

So the Dynapro calipers on my car are 3 years old, which is about the length of time Savington recommends replacing them after with regular hard track use. The bent backing plate in the most recent track day made me suspicious of them, so I pulled one off and popped the pistons out to inspect it today. One side of each piston is pretty chewed up:

http://www.codrus.com/miata/fm2r/dynapro-worn-0001.jpg
http://www.codrus.com/miata/fm2r/dynapro-worn-0002.jpg

I don't remmeber if that's the leading edge or trailing edge, though.

Bores are also kinda mangled on the outer edge, and there's some weird discoloration at the base near the fluid ports:

http://www.codrus.com/miata/fm2r/dynapro-worn-0003.jpg

All in all, it's time for new calipers. I'd hoped to put just some new O-rings in these and get them to work for Miatas@WRLS and then retire the Miata from primary track car duty, but... I don't want to trust that at this point. Plus there's another event on Labor day I want to go to... :)

--Ian

Cool. :)

(BTW, when I said "I dunno", I wasn't doubting you, just saying that I didn't have any info on it.)

--Ian

So I picked up new calipers from Andrew and put them in. No pictures, they look pretty much the same, only shinier.

Went to visit the M3 today, TC is almost done with the rest of the stripping and is going to start welding in the cage in the next few days.

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/build/m3-tc-1-0004.jpg

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/build/m3-tc-1-0003.jpg

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/build/m3-tc-1-0005.jpg

--Ian

Miata content, I drove it to work yesterday! Still had the DTC-60s in the rear from the the Laguna day a month or so ago, but the BMW is at the race shop, the truck is at Chevy waiting for GM to find a steering box that isn't complete garbage, the FD is broken awaiting parts (FD things) and the Audi sprouted a screw in the tire. You'd think with 5 cars I'd have one that I could drive to work without having issues... :)

http://www.codrus.com/miata/miata-arista-sep-18.jpg

Also got some in-progress cage shots from TC:

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/build/m3-cage-1-0001.jpg
http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/build/m3-cage-1-0002.jpg
http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/build/m3-cage-1-0003.jpg

Still needs door bars and a few others.

--Ian

Giggity

Looking good. I can't read the checklist but I can see stuff is getting crossed off!

Heh. There's gotta be another 4 or 5 pages' worth of checklist after that one. :)

--Ian

Prepping the car for Miatas@WRLS. Not much to do, basically just putting the race brakes & tires on it and looking over to make sure everything looks OK.

Shot a photo of the new calipers. It'll be interesting to see if replacing them helps with the very severe pad taper that I experienced in July.

http://www.codrus.com/miata/miata-pr...-2018-0002.jpg

Random shot of the back end:

http://www.codrus.com/miata/miata-pr...-2018-0004.jpg

Not much droop travel in the rear...

http://www.codrus.com/miata/miata-pr...-2018-0003.jpg

All set. Just need to pull the trailer out and load it -- probably do that on Thursday.

http://www.codrus.com/miata/miata-pr...-2018-0005.jpg

--Ian

Also glad to report that all the cars are running now. :) The Audi tire was fixed fairly trivially, and the truck is now on its 3rd "new" (reman) steering box in the last 3 months. This one seems to be OK.

As for the FD, it started smoking on me on the way home from work a couple weeks ago. I was a block from home, so I made it there, grabbed the extinguisher, and popped the hood. (need to mount that extinguisher in the car...). It appears that when the painting guys were working on the car they took a some of the intake piping off to clean it, and when they put it back on they didn't tighten all the clamps all the way. The outlet pipe from the turbos points up, and has a rubber coupler on it. That leaves a small annulus of space in which oil can build up (there's lots of oil in the intake -- not sure if PCV/breather or turbo seals or both), and my working theory is that when the turbo pressurized the intake it blew that oil straight down onto the turbo. Poof, smoke.

While taking it all off to investigate, I noticed that one of the bypass valve lines was rotating freely on the nipple, even though it had a hose clamp on it. Further investigation showed that the rubber hose had gotten really hard and was more the consistency of plastic rather than rubber. It cracked into pieces when I took it off, so that's what parked the FD while I waited for Mazda to ship me more parts. They got here last week, so Saturday I put them on.

Cracked hose:

http://www.codrus.com/cars/fd/fd-bypass-0001.jpg

Of the four relevant hoses (two bypass valves, one hose on each side of each), that one was the worst (furthest back, gets the hottest), but none of them were in great shape so I replaced them all.

http://www.codrus.com/cars/fd/fd-bypass-0003.jpg

There's oil all over the bottom of the car, leaking from the pan and the oil filter mount. Both are common leaks. The oil filter mount is easy (just a couple O-rings), recommendations on the RX7 forums for the pan is to abandon the Mazda gasket and use RTV (a couple recommendations on specific compounds), along with a new pan (the sheet metal flange on the rim gets easily bent) and a brace for the flange. So, one brace:

http://www.codrus.com/cars/fd/oilpan...-pan-brace.jpg

(Cocoa inspected and approved it)

One new pan:

http://www.codrus.com/cars/fd/oilpan...pan-2-0001.jpg

And they nestle inside each other nicely:

http://www.codrus.com/cars/fd/oilpan...pan-2-0003.jpg

I'll tackle that after Miatas@WRLS.

--Ian

If I were buying a BOV for a Miata, I'd probably buy an aftermarket metal one (have a turbosmart on mine) rather than a plastic OEM FD one. They're a couple hundred bucks each -- I don't have the part number offhand.

--Ian