Impulse Buy: Drift Miata

[DawsonLiri]

Why not both? You can go for a good grip setup and still go slide the car around. You can run drift knuckles for daily/ canyon/ grip driving, thats just my $.02. I dig the valve cover, oddball parts are always interesting

I agree to the first part, but for me you can keep stock knuckles and keep drifting anyway.
The valve cover came out fire btw.

[bwwaaaa]

Still Not Sure What I'm Doing

I keep saying I'm going to sell this car, but for whatever reason I keep pressing on with improving it. We'll gloss over that for now, because I have no idea what my plans are for this car anymore. In the mean time, I've made some more adjustments.

For reference, this was the toe when the steering wheel was dead center

I set the car on the ground and rolled it outside for the first time in months. The toe was hilariously bad, pointed straight forward both wheels were facing completely outward. Granted, I didn't even attempt to align the front, but it did make for a ridiculous look. So I called a local mobile alignment guy to come straighten things out.

In a spot of bad luck, we went to charge my new AC system, and ran into some major issues. First we discovered one plug had been ruined, and had to splice a new wire in. We had hoped that would get my compressor to finally engage, but no such luck. We then checked every other wire and fuse through the system, swapping them one by one with known good units from my friend's Miata. Still no luck. Compressor would not engage. After hours of troubleshooting, we were left to conclude that the new compressor I had purchased was no good. Which means discharging the system, removing it, and getting a new one. It's a major, MAJOR pain in the ass. But necessary in Arizona.

I tend not to take photos while working on my own, because I'm already roasting to death in my garage. I grabbed this one shitty photo of rolling the fenders to express my frustration with the airbag harness getting in the way over and over. The main point is though, I rolled my fenders. They came out ok, no bacon or buckling which is nice. However I did lose some paint on the front two fenders, despite my best heat gun efforts. I did eventually zip tie that harness out of the way. It's not necessary anymore, however removing it entirely is a pain in the ass I didn't want to deal with right now.

Just for fun I took a few photos of the Miata during an extended test drive. It looks fantastic, and the non-bent subframe, steering rack risers, and poly rack bushings really have made a noticeable difference. The coilovers are meh, but a step above the blown out stock suspension for sure. The alignment is dead on, and overall I'm pretty happy with the car. There is a small list of things that need to be taken care of though. Namely:

• Replace alternator (current unit is making horrible noises)
• Fix driver's door latch (hard to close door)
• Adjust intake (hot air intake is right on the headers...)
• Exhaust leak post-cat (new gasket needed)

Plus there are small pieces I've yet to install yet. I'm on month two of waiting on my roll bar, and about two seconds away from filing a PayPal claim. If that's the case, I'll have to order another one from someone else. This chassis definitely needs some more rigidity. So hopefully that's resolved soon.

[hinrichs]

I **** trying to find those odd noises and such. With my old jeep I had a sound like that, happened over bumps sometimes. I looked over everything, a few friends and shops while getting other work done...ended up being a driveshaft washer thing that was loosed and wasnt needed.