Hello everyone. This appears to be the place to introduce.

In December 2015 I purchased this vehicle:
https://www.miataturbo.net/cars-sale...0%24%24-86952/

and had it shipped to my house in early January. I live in Hartland, WI and regularly track at Blackhawk Farms and Road America with my bmw, which will be retired from track duty now that I have the Miata.

I'm currently working several kinks out of the car *cough* blue smoke *cough* and tightening nuts/bolts that were not torqued and in some cases finger-loose, and so on. The prior owner had the right parts and a good platform, but the car definitely needs a bit of work to be track worthy.

I purchased this car to be a dedicated track vehicle because I got sick of insuring my bmw 135i for $300 at every track event, paying a lot for consumables, and in general just lugging around a 3300 pound car at the track is not fun. I'm currently in the middle of installing a larger turbo for that car and relegating it to summer DD duty. In the winter I putt-putt around in a Subaru legacy gt, and all of these cars have manual trans because I'm a purist that way.

This weekend was the first time I was really able to dive into the car and start figuring out what it needs. The tune had to be adjusted a bit, needs new radiator, 10 minutes of driving and it starts to smoke pretty bad once you get into boost, and so on. The prior owner set the car up to be worked on pretty easily. Lots of custom DIY stuff for the turbo build but everything makes sense and it's pretty easy to work on from what I'm seeing.

I am pretty excited about the car and getting it ready for track season. I already have many questions that I will be searching for and hopefully not having to bug too many people (can't stand people who don't search or can't search well on forums). I've also got a new set of Advanti storm s1 wheels in 15x9 ready to go and my local suspension/tire shop has a new set of Rival tires waiting for me to actually get the car running well enough to make the drive to the shop

 

Welcome jward1983. Looks like a solid purchase. I've yet to get on the those two tracks but that is the goal with my build. Let me know if you need some help with anything.

 

Welcome- hope that blue smoke isn't from something on the bottom end of that fresh engine.

 

Welcome to the forum. We've got a lot of track guys here, so you are in the right place.

 

Welcome, jward1983. Check out the Miata Gallery and post up some pics!

 

Welcome, good sir! that's a sweet ride. you should start your own build thread to document the progress from where it started after you bought it and post up some more pics!

 

I know the car, I have done some work on it. The first thing I would do is to find some inconel studs for the manifold. I don't remember what size studs and thread pitch the manifold uses. I would guess M8x1.25, but it could be M8x1.5, or M10x1.25, or M10x1.50. If it is M8x1.25 you want to order Inconel studs from TrackSpeedEngineering. They are expensive, but worth every penny.

 

thanks man, i will look into that very shortly because as it turns out I need to tear down the motor and rebuild.

To continue the thread here, I did a compression test last night and before I even got that far I was not filled with confidence because the first spark plug I pulled was utterly dripping oil all over the valve cover when I pulled it out. My socket was soaked as well. So I assume the valve cover gasket was shot anyway.

Then I actually got to compression and read 190 120 120 190 dry, and cylinders 2/3 shot up when i put some oil in.

I have to get the turbo into my BMW this weekend, but after that I will be pulling the engine on the Miata.

Honestly there's a lot of things that I have run into with this car going over it - I will probably never buy a car sight unseen again. The last 2 cars I bought I flew 1000 miles to get and drove them back, but I at least could see them ahead of time. In this case, it was December in WI so I took a gamble and just bought it and had it shipped, figuring because parts are cheap i will just fix whatever might be wrong with it.

There were several hoses that had clamps that were so loose you could move them with your finger, all 4 strut nuts were finger loose, the starter motor wire cluster mounting nut was finger loose (causing the car to only pull 6V on crank), when I pulled the inlet pipe and IC piping from the turbo, all nuts came off with 0 resistance using a tiny 1/4" ratchet, which tells me none of that was torqued, loose ground on the water temp gauge, and the list goes on.

I am at a point now where I have to literally go over every single inch of the car before I will ever trust it at a track.

Luckily I can still take my 135i to Road America in the meantime.

 

Yeah I would touch every bolt before you even think about driving it on the street, much less on the track. I did very minimal with the car. Mostly gave some advice. Car started out as a 1.6 and a diy turbo setup. Blew that motor somehow, then I think the 1.8 went in. Multiple issues then with getting a 1.8 working. I believe it has one of my old heads and the Sr20 t25 on it was mine also.

 

trying to up my post count so I can list the car in classifieds - i have decided to sell it at a discount due to engine troubles and including some additional goodies. bump.

+1

Yep. I'll take this opportunity to thank the bots and scammers of the world for ensuring that people like me have to contribute meaningless posts to water down the overall content of a forum in order to post things for sale, simply because there are too many bots/scammers out there who would make it a nightmare for the mods to enforce cleaning up the For Sale section otherwise

I'll go find some cars to compliment people on.

 

That's a great way to get banned. Stop.

 

Don't do that again.

 

What is wrong with the motor and what else did you find wrong with it? I am curious.

 

Something about tons of cat fur in the oil galleys.

 

Cat fur is not from my house, the VC was off only long enough to pull out the head bolts, then it went right back on and the head was handed over to the guy who previously owned the car.

 

Congrats on the purchase. That thing looks clean man