Yeah, I joined a while back but mostly I just read. Any technical questions I usually take to the mazda-speed forum since my MSM is essentially stock with a few basic bolt ons. Once I get an ECU and such I'll be more active on here to the trolls can attack me harder!

Get your car running already!

 

Don't tell me what to do!!!!😝 I am going to be tuning this Thursday to mess around with it

If I can get to the tuning Paul suggested I will and have him get me running safely, but at the same time I may do the work myself but who knows

 

Lol, on Saturday on our way to the thing at RC's garage I tried driving behind him on the freeway and I don't think I even lasted a 1/4 mile before I couldn't take it! He's having some issue with his wideband so he's running crazy rich on accident. Seriously though... I couldn't take it.

 

Haha ya he has been having that problem for a while, he leaves a lovely black smoke cloud when he gets on it.

Another reason why the hard top stays on often

 

revisited my foamectomy tonight. last time I got rid of the bump underneath, but it didn't really lower me at all. This time I actually removed another inch or so of foam from the bottom side. Feels much lower but the ultimate test will be the broomstick test. Also working on seat mounts to get rid of the sliders and drop another half inch or so.

My bolster near the door was flat from getting in and out, so I added a bit of foam i grabbed from a dumpster at work. Feels much better, but we'll see how it lasts.





Seat is going back in on sliders for now but next time I'm at my local metal supply shop I'll pick up some .25 x 2" steel for the seat mounts.

fun things coming... fun things.

also found out I get a discount on garrett turbos through my work that is pretty dang good. excited to use it some day.

 

So my rear view mirror was droopy and needed adjusting literally every 2-3 minutes while driving, or after going over any sort of bump or pothole, or after hard shifts...

So I set out on a mission to change that. First I waterjet cut and made some fancy things to replace the connector piece:


but that alone did not solve it, though it was much better. It no longer drooped by itself, but still had issues after bumps etc.

so I took the base off, drilled and tapped it, added a cap screw, and now it's great! Excuse the crappy cell phone pic:



Haven't adjusted my rear view mirror in days. It's been miraculous :-)

 

Oh snap. Water jetting custom parts like a baus. Nice!

 

When you've got CAD

 

If you'd like, I can rename this thread to something of your choice, and move it to the build thread section, if you plan to continue to show us updates.

Did you make a MSM drain pipe replacement? I just bought a new OEM one, I'd be interested to see your price point on those.

 

Hey curly! Follow all your work on LAZ and oregonmon's cars on CR.net.

Yeah, I'm in the middle of making a bunch of those. I'll send you a PM.

I'd love to have it moved to the build threads section if you don't mind. Thread title "Humming's '05 Lava Orange" or something like that would be great. Thanks!

 

Mirror was getting droopy, made a thing to fix that a while ago and it worked great, but it was aluminum and bent a bit. New one is smaller and stainless, and has one less bolt, not sure why I thought two would be necessary.

New version:

 

shiny things installed!:

 

I am still debating trimming back more of the support structure underneath. I can always do more, can't do less, so I'll wait on it.

 

I want!!!

I have hood pins so I can just cut away all that bracing I bet.

 

Welp... turns out I am slow. Went to my first auto-X with my brother in his stock '03 on saturday and got my butt handed to me. He plays a lot of Forza, which I'm sure helps a little bit at least, but I'm quite embarrassed about how badly I did lol. May 9th is the next one I can make it to, so hopefully I do better at that one. I'll be maximum attack to beat my brother for sure.

 

how about some road course? im pretty sure ill be at firebird on sunday with proautosports if you want to go.

 

Don't do stuff on sundays, it's family day. Also, NASA and proautosports are still a bit out of my budget at the moment.

 

went OCD on my.... power window switches lol.

so I'm screwing around with some interesting possibilities for my center console and in the process I removed my power window switch. Talk about disgusting. I wish I took a before pic, so that you could all vomit on your keyboards...

see the nasty brown stuff? it was coating every surface that was beneath the console. it was sealing the hole unit up and coating the seams, caked up as much as an eighth of an inch in places.


After several more rounds of scrubbing i finally got it all cleaned up more or less. I didn't bust out the q-tips though. Actually I just got the electronics out, and dropped the rest in hot water with dish soap. the water instantly turned syrup brown. I think the crap was probably soda spills from the PO.



Seriously though... so nasty.

 

Well, had some fun today:

made shiny things look like burny things:
Before:


after:


repaired disgusting shifty broken things:


Didn't get an after pic, but its got two new boots and the MR delrin shift bushing. Shift feel is amazing now, and that was just getting it back to stock. Can't imagine what the MR SSK would feel like. When I pulled out the oem shift bushing, all that was left was the bottom 1/8" or so. All that is now in my transmission I guess. I'll flush it sometime this year.

Also made a hood vent for my brother, changed up the design a little bit:


That was just before painting.

 

test fitting things... the plate above is just a prototype, a nicer waterjet cut version will replace it... with gauges at some point.