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I've been around Miata's since I was an infant. My parents used to drive me around in my Grandfather's 1991 NA using questionable safety measures. Here's me and my mom in said Miata.
I later learned how to drive in this car and would borrow it from my Grandfather here and there as I grew up. He recently passed away and my aunt inherited the car. I offered to buy the car from her but she wanted to keep it, which in hindsight was definitely in the car's best interest. Anyway, I decided to buy my own NA and found a clean, stock and well-maintained 1994 C package with ~69,000 miles. I've had the car for 3 years now and have been steadily modifying it myself with the help of this forum . Here's a pic of my car from 2022.
My focus was and still is to build an excellent handling Colorado canyon carver that can handle occasional track use. Without going into too much detail, the car has many suspension mods, a rollbar, bucket seat, short throw shifter, stand-alone ECU and a C30-94 Rotrex kit from TDR that I installed this past winter. There's many smaller, less performance related mods. Maybe I'll post the full list later if anyone's interested. Here's a pic of my bay before my #4 piston chipped from detonation and I decided to pull the engine to rebuild it.
I just got my block, rotating assembly and cylinder head back from the machine shop 2 weeks ago and I'm very slowly reassembling it with high compression forged pistons (10.5/1) and rods, upgraded hardware, bearings and harmonic balancer. I plan to switch exclusively to E85.
Before I pulled the engine I was slightly over-spinning the Rotrex with an 85mm pulley and making about 14psi at a 7,000 RPM redline. Not bad for living at 5,600 feet above sea level. I plan to run this same setup for awhile once I get the engine back in but with more timing thanks to the ethanol. Eventually, I hope to switch to a turbo setup and take full advantage of the built block with higher boost.
I'm so thankful for this forum and all of it's extensive information.
You win with the baby pic, the twine holding the baby seat in place is so 90's and I love it. You'd probably get arrested for that kinda thing now days.
Your white NA is great looking, and I dig the rotrex. Welcome to the group! I agree that high compression + e85 is going to be amazing. My cars 9.5:1 (bp4w pistons) +e85 and I live at 7k feet. The higher compression + boost is really nice for high altitude.
I SEE THAT NAPP INTAKE -- good friend of mine, does awesome work
Keen eye! He definitely does do great work. I'm actually referencing his BP build video for my block assembly, too. Hyped to see what he does with the NC platform now that he's got one.
Cat for the baby photo! I have one of my son in my Bugeye Sprite, taken nearly 50 years ago, but sadly my children have far too much sense than to pour money into old cars. Where did I go wrong?
Is your mom drinking a PBR in that photo too? Engine bay looks great.
Ha! My coworkers saw that pic and said the same thing "that's definitely a beer in her hands". I wasn't as convinced, but it definitely could be! OP please confirm.
Is your mom drinking a PBR in that photo too? Engine bay looks great.
Mom confirmed that it's not a beer and most likely a Diet Pepsi.
She also reminded me that the base of my formula bottle was the perfect diameter to wedge into the round NA heater vents. I got nice, warm beverages on the go.
I'm new on the forum to. It's good that you still have photos like that. I had a few photos of me in and around different cars my parent's and grandparents had through the years, but have since been all lost unfortunately. Your post reminded me of some of them.