The U bolts on your leaf spring are "unsupported". Plus there is little to no tension on those bolts. That's just to keep the bag from going anywhere.

Recirculating ball type steering gear boxes are adjustable for lash as they loosen up with use. Makes a big difference for older vehicles, not sure how much lash yours has inthe new box. Best thing is to lay under it while someone bounces the steering wheel left to right and look for play in some component, from gearbox to pitman to inner and outer tie rods.

Perhaps, but the diagrams in the instructions suggest that they should be touching the bottom of the air spring brackets. I sent email to the support address for the air springs and we'll see what they say.

--Ian

More non-Miata content, the M3 is getting close to done. Plan is to be driving it at Thunderhill a week from today! :)

Car has rear windows and a roof now! Front glass goes in last.
http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/build/m3-tc-4-0002.jpg

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/build/m3-tc-4-0003.jpg

Cage is done, interior is painted, driver's seat mounted. Still needs passenger seat:
http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/build/m3-tc-4-0004.jpg

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/build/m3-tc-4-0006.jpg

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/build/m3-tc-4-0007.jpg

More shots of cage:

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/build/m3-tc-4-0001.jpg

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/build/m3-tc-4-0008.jpg

Also needs the exhaust on, a tune, and then some final stuff (alignment, corner weighting, that kind of thing). Really looking forward to running it next week!

--Ian

is that a sequential or just a fancy shifter?

Cage looks nice man

No sequential, that's a CAE shifter. They're stupid expensive, but supposedly they help a lot with preventing money shifts.

--Ian

Ian, have you seen Piers14's picture of both the NA and NB fittings here? https://www.miataturbo.net/showpost....&postcount=597

Hard to tell from the photo, but the threads and o-rings on the lower half look similar.... Could be worth trying to get hold of one to try....

Also, that M3 looks absolutely lovely. A friend here with an FM2 Miata has just bought one to try and make a "Team Schirmer" style car for bigger tracks and 'Ring trips. It will be an interesting comparison at Silverstone GP in a few weeks time to my Xida'd GTX2860 Miata. Nice wheel nuts by the way ;)

Yeah, they look basically identical. Hm. I guess that shoots that idea down.

Thanks! The wheel nuts are supposedly coated in some fancy coating that behaves like anti-seize, I'm not sure of details though. :)

The M3 is done, I picked it up today! Hauling it up to Willows tomrorow, for the inaugural track day at Thunderhill on Friday. More pics, because why not.

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/build/...ickup-0001.jpg

I drove it all of 40 feet out onto the street to line it up with the trailer, then I winched it in. Winched because the clutch is brand new, somewhat tricky, I'm not used to it, and I didn't really want to try to deal with precisely positioning it in the trailer the first time I'd ever used it. :)

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/build/...ickup-0002.jpg

In the trailer. I need to install some new tiedown points further forward, this car is longer than a Miata. :)

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

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

Whee!

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

I can't wait to drive it!

--Ian

Car is looking super sexy Ian! Looking forward to hearing how the first day goes!

The NA definitely has a different, flared, output fitting. I think he was saying that you could swap the output fitting from one pump to another, but I'm not sure if that's worth it given how many free PS pumps are available :)

Oh, I was looking at the wrong end. Yeah, that makes more sense.

--Ian

Took the M3 to Thunderhill for a track day. About halfway up I started smelling smoke from the Paradise/Chico/Camp Fire. Then the sky got really weird:

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/m3-pdc-2018-0001.jpg

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/m3-pdc-2018-0002.jpg

It turns out that the wind at ground level was blowing towards the fire, but the wind at around 5000 feet was blowing in the opposite direction. So in Willows you couldn't smell it, but all the higher-altitude smoke made for very strange light, dark, reddish, but with a bright band around the horizon.

Pulled the BMW out at the track on Friday morning. The same odd sky:

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/m3-pdc-2018-0011.jpg

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/m3-pdc-2018-0008.jpg

Later on in the day the smoke was gone except for the eastern edge of the sky.

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/m3-pdc-2018-0012.jpg

Interior painted, and with the seats:

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/m3-pdc-2018-0009.jpg
http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/m3-pdc-2018-0010.jpg

The car is awesome. It's fast, it's fun, it's stiff, it's noisy, it's a race car. It's amazing how much better cars are on track when you decide you're never going to drive it on the street ever again. :) By the second or third session that I drove it, I'd already gone faster I'd ever done Thunderhill in my Miata. Although, I do have to qualify that by saying that I haven't really had a successful track day on the east course since rebuilding the motor. I'm taking the BMW to Laguna next week, I'll get a better lap time comparison to the Miata there.

Which takes me to the best part of the car -- it ran all day without complaint. The Miata hasn't done that in over a year.

--Ian

Ran out of SD card space midway through the day, so missed my best laps, but here are a couple with Albert in the passenger seat.


(there's a ton of time that I'm leaving on the table in 1, 5, and 8 here)

--Ian

Looks like lots of fun. Nice clean build!

Man, it's been 4 months since I posted anything here. I haven't done anything with the Miata in that time, other than move it on and off the lift to make room for other cars. It's still got the half tank of race gas in it from Laguna. I'm kinda burned out on it -- had a LOT of frustration with it last year, so I'm driving the M3 instead. The M3 is flawless -- it goes to track days, runs all day (turing faster lap times than I ever could with the Miata), and never breaks. 6 track days on it now (technically 8, but two were completely rained out and did only a couple laps) and the only thing that's even been close to a problem was investigating some brake fluid on the floor of the trailer that turned out to have just been overfilled.

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/m3-misc-0008.jpg

Since I haven't posted anything in a while, here's some stuff on the Audi. Had it at the dealer for the prepaid 35K service (it's only got 20K on it, so this was time-based) and they wanted to replace the brakes. Seems a bit early, but it's a big heavy car with lots of power and I don't exactly drive it slowly. They wanted three grand. *cough*. I don't think so.

Checking online, the parts are about a grand. $600 for the pair of front rotors, $80 each for rear rotors, and about $150 per end for pads. OK, that's more like it. Rear pads came with sensors, and since the fronts haven't actually gone off yet, hopefully I can reuse them.

The rotors are... big. Really big. Here's the rear one, with a 11.75" TSE front rotor for comparison:

http://www.codrus.com/audi/s6/brakes...tor-1-0006.jpg

Here's a front one, with the same TSE rotor:

http://www.codrus.com/audi/s6/brakes...tor-1-0001.jpg
http://www.codrus.com/audi/s6/brakes...tor-1-0002.jpg

The TSE is a cute little baby rotor by comparison! Here's the Audi rotor on top of a 15x9 6UL:

http://www.codrus.com/audi/s6/brakes...tor-1-0003.jpg

Weird OEM aluminum hats:

http://www.codrus.com/audi/s6/brakes...tor-1-0004.jpg

Haven't put them on yet, maybe I'll do that this weekend.

--Ian

I've always got a kick out of comparing "normal" sized car stuff to miata stuff... Really puts stuff into perspective haha. Great thread btw, I always appreciate reading the updates, and enjoy how you do things.

Still no Miata news, but I'm starting to think about actually doing stuff with it again because it's almost time to sign up for the final Miatas@MRLS (or whatever it's called now). I need to figure out why the brake booster isn't working properly and look into a long-term solution for the power steering failures.

In the meantime I'm still driving the M3 at the track, took it to Sears Point and finally managed to cord the first set of NT01s that I'd had on it. 9 track days on these!

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/m3-tires-cord.jpg

Then I ran it on the dyno.

http://www.codrus.com/cars/m3/m3-dyno.jpg

Made 325/250.

http://www.codrus.com/dyno/tfb/m3-dyno.png

I find this chart kind of amusing, Miata, FD, and M3 all on the same chart.

http://www.codrus.com/dyno/tfb/miata-vs-fd-vs-m3.png

--Ian

Hey, some Miata content for once. :)

Last week, I went over to the dyno with a friend of mine to help out with tuning his 2554 FM hardware/MS3 car. (it wound up making 240 rwhp, but Mustang dyno so hard to correlate to dynojet). In so doing, I was motivated to actually drive my Miata again, so I took it out for a spin. It's been sitting for 9 months with only a couple gallons of gas in it, so I drove it sedately to the race gas pump, filled it up, and then got into the boost on the way home and... it fell on its face. Buh, WTF? It was really odd, it was like it was hitting the Race Logic TC system at 180 kpa, just stopped making power as soon as the MAP got to that point, except it wasn't RPM based and the RLTC doesn't even have a MAP input. Took it home, bypassed the RLTC, and now all of a sudden it would barely idle.

Over the weekend I looked at it some more. I spent a while looking for loose connections in the injector wiring but nothing was conclusive. Finally it started running properly again, so I took it out for a drive with the TC bypassed and it did the same thing -- OK, that's ruled out.

So I pulled the plugs to look at them and it was suddenly obvious what was going on.

http://www.codrus.com/miata/fm2r/miata-rusty-plugs.jpg

Last October I had run the car at Laguna at an event with the SoCal Alfa club, and the power steering pressure hose had failed again, blowing power steering fluid all over the engine bay. When I got it home I replaced the hose and then washed out the engine bay with a foamy engine brite that I'd used in the past with success. Apparently this time the spark plug boots didn't seal, and I didn't get it hot enough to boil off the water, so the plugs sat in an inch of water for 9 months with the results above. Frankly I'm amazed it ran at all.

So new plugs are on order.

--Ian

4 new plugs from Summit and it's fixed. Yay. :)

--Ian