Hi I'm AJ and I like to party.

About me: I'm 23 years old and just graduated/commissioned into the Air Force this past spring from the University of Washington with degrees in aerospace engineering and physics. I live in Del Rio, TX because the Air Force likes remote pilot training bases and we get pretty good flying weather year round. It's not actually that bad, just a little slow paced but I'll be kept plenty busy when my official training starts in April. Until then I'm working like 3 hours per day making powerpoint presentations and clicking slides for people. So it's a good time to work on my car before life gets crazy. Miata-wise, I owned a 97' for a year and then essentially traded it for a 04' which I've had since the start of this last summer. I was able to make it to a track day in WA at the Ridge, and also made the holy pilgrimage to Laguna Seca with some awesome people for the trip of a lifetime. I met so many Miata folk from different walks of life and they were all legitimately genuine and cool. I'm so stoked to be a part of this community that brap around in these tiny little cars. It’s so fun!

About the car: Bought it for $1600 off a dude leaving for Japan looking for a quick sale. 115,000 miles and what I thought was black but turned out to be Black Cherry Mica. Only issue when buying it was a bad wheel bearing which I painstakingly fixed with the help of my best friend and Miata guru SCAXX.

MODS: So far I have bought/installed a disgusting hardtop, budget baller billies, a Zerek Fab roll bar, the trackspeed BBK with dynapros, SS lines, a T1 torsen, supermiata crossflow radiator, and some 225 Rs4's on 15x9 6UL's. Stuff that is sitting in my garage awaiting to go on the car: FM sway bars and frame rails, qmax coolant reroute, singular motorsports hood vents, supermiata clutch w/ lightweight flywheel, skunk2 intake manifold, and an MKTurbo kit.

The main goal is to get around 220 whp for the street and be able to have a separate tune for the track to run a little bit less hp reliably to not break things. Not sure how much track time I'll have in the next while, so it should mainly be a street car for now. We'll see how my goals change over time though. I'll get a build thread going and try to take plenty of pics as I go along. Below are a few pics of my car, me failing the broomstick test on track, a funny picture of my last car, and of course my cats. I'm excited to acquire more Miata wisdom and will keep researching rather than asking questions. Thanks for reading.

-AJ

 

Perfect introduction. And a good plan. Glad to have you onboard.

 

What up dude! Glad to see you finally posted (and it actually went through lol) Nice intro post and a cute picture of the kitties! I'll give you your first poscat haha

Aj is good people. Known him most of my life and we've been best friends for a long time. We also did lemons together two years ago which was fun and he got to experience our entire cooling system explode onto the windshield on his first few laps out. A couple of my favorite pics from WRLS this year:




Not sure I qualify as a miata guru quite yet though haha

 

Cats!