All posts by Chris

1990 Miata 'The White Car'

Miata Challenge 2012; NJMP

EMRA – Eastern Motor Racing Association

Sunday, Jul 29, 2012

New Jersey Motorsports Park, Lightning track, Millville, NJ

 

IMG_1091NJMP is close to home, and a great facility. Lightning is the shorter of the 2, and is well suited to the nimble (and very slow) Miata.

IMG_1171There were 3 timed sessions, I think 1 untimed session.  My best time for the day was 1:25.010.  The next fastest session was a 1:25.023; so I was pretty consistent.  These times were enough to get the Miata Challenge win.

 

IMG_1482Another day without the car breaking.  Awesome.  There was a C4 ‘vette that had an issue being passed by a little Miata.  He gave me some grief,  but the final word from the officials was: “was the Miata in your mirrors earlier in the lap?  No?  Is he in your mirrors now?  Yeah?  Well, that means he’s faster than you.”   LOL.  “Fernando is faster than you, Can you confirm you understood that message?”

 

Interesting Miata track record stats:

  • SM – Tosh Desai  1:17.511  10/19/08
  • SMT – Steve Rollo  1:20.182  6/29/14
  • SSM – Darrell Lapointe  1:17.879  10/18/08
  • SM2 – Jason Livingood  1:20.062  7/01/12

IMG_1172 (2)Again, my car is not a Spec Miata (I don’t have slicks, but I have wider wheels…),  and this is a cheapie suspension setup, but more seat time will get me closer to these numbers.

 

Another view from the ‘shake cam’.  This time the mount was held together with zip ties.  I wish I had bought my Ram mount earlier.  I don’t think I have my fastest lap recorded, so this’ll have to do.

1993 Miata LE 'The Black Car'

Wheels, Tires, Frame Rails, and AC

Daily driving the 93 now, it’s been pretty good so far.  Not the quickest car on the street, but I haven’t touched the timing on this.  Maybe there’s a bit of pep left in this 200,000 mile lump.

I picked up a few cans of R12 and a great set of R12 gauges.  Unfortunately, the compressor wouldn’t kick on no matter what I did during my testing. I ended up bypassing the safety switch at the compressor.by jumping the wires, and the compressor kicked on.  I threw a can of R12 in – but it only lasted about a month.  There’s a leak somewhere.  I’m going to hold off on putting in the rest of my precious R12 until I decide if I’m installing the 1.8L engine from my parts car.

I sold the XXR’s that came with the car and threw on the TR Motorsport 15×8 et20’s with Yokohama 195’s that I had on the White Car.  I ran them for a few days, and someone made me an offer I couldn’t refuse on them.  With my winnings, I bought… (drumroll, please) another set of TR Motorsports wheels with Yoko S-drives! This time, 205/50/15.  Crazy.

I also installed a set of FM chassis rails.  This car’s rails were beyond bad.  I didn’t take a pic, but I promise to the next time I’m under this car.  I needed to beat them with a deadblow, squeeze them with a c-clamp, and swear and curse at them until they were able to fit under the FM rails.  The rails transformed this car. The White Car didn’t see this kind of improvement when I installed the rails, but that chassis was mint. Most of the groans and rattles were gone.  Good upgrade.

1990 Miata 'The White Car'

Miata Challenge 2012; Watkins Glen

IMG_1128Monday, Jul 2 — Tuesday, Jul 3, 2012

Watkins Glen International , Watkins Glen, NY

EMRA – Eastern Motor Racing Association

IMG_1125‘The Glen’ is a bucket-list track of mine.  So happy I’ve been able to cross it off.  My father and I stayed at the historic Seneca Lodge and had a beer in the bar where legendary drivers once did.  Totally geeky/cool.

 

The car was flawless all weekend:  rolled it off the trailer, and checked pressures/ fuel between sessions.  Nothing broke, but I did blow through Turn 1 a couple of times.  Hurray for paved run-offs.watkins12garage

 

IMG_2130

On Monday (who races on Monday?), we ran 4×20 min sessions.  My last session was fastest @ 2:35.074.  Good enough for the win in Miata Challenge.

 

 

IMG_2118I had a fantastic time running with the mk1 Toyota MR2 of Scott Webster – even though we were in different classes, we would run together and drag our lap times down.  Nice guy, and great fun.  In our fastest session, he bested me by 0.476s.

 

On Tuesday (who races on a Tuesday?), we ran 5×25 min sessions.  That was a lot of seat-time!  My last session, was again, my fastest @ 2:33.253.  Shaving 1.8 seconds off was good for a days work.  Annnnd, I beat Scott by 0.112s!  Hey, I’ll take it.   A wise man once said, ” It doesn’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile, winning’s winning.”  Too true, Dom.

Interesting Miata track record stats:

  • SM – Andrew Carbonell  0:02:15.507  7/6/2014
  • SM2 – Robert Karl Jr.  0:02:19.422  9/17/2011
  • SM5 – Chris Windsor  0:02:16.977  5/26/2012
  • SMT – Ronald Jesberger  0:02:25.351  9/19/2009
  • SSM – Tom Kearney  0:02:20.559  9/14/2013

My car is not a spec miata, but there is clearly some room for driver / car improvement here.

IMG_1993

Here’s a video, shot from an iphone, on the shakiest home-made mount ever.  Youtube compresses the heck out of it, but it’s all we’ve got until I can figure out how to upload the good stuff from here….

1990 Miata 'The White Car'

Getting Ready for Miata Challenge

The car is freshly painted, and the new wheels/ tires just arrived.  225/45/15 Hankook R-S3’s on 15×9 TR Motorsports. The lips on my fenders are rolled smooth, and there’s a very slight pull on them.  The 15×9’s fit better than the 15×8’s due to a higher offset.  Too bad TireRack had to steal their offset info from Emilio @ 949Racing.  My sister is a TireRack dealer (RabbitParts.com), so I get their wheel/ tire combos for a song.  I feel like a traitor, though.  Emilio is a knowledgeable guy with a great business; I support him by buying many of my parts through him – but not my wheels at this time.  Maybe I’ll pick up a set of 6ULS someday, but for now, the cost-savings on the TRMotorsports is just too dear.

My father is a long-time racing guy; mostly into dirt-oval cars, but he seemed to take a real interest in the road course stuff after coming with me to NJMP.  He’s decided to make this a 2-person team by buying a trailer and driving us to the races.  The White Car is registered and insured as a street car, and I do drive it to work once in a while; but having a trailer will be awesome on 2 fronts:
1) If I ball this car up, I have a way to get it back home
2) my Dad and I get to hang out for the ride.  He thought that following me in his truck to NJMP was lame – and he wasn’t riding in my Miata

We brought the car to Lime Rock Park for the EMRA meet so I could test for my TT license.  I passed early and was able to spend the rest of the day lapping.  I couldn’t use a transponder today because I needed to get my license, so I just enjoyed the track and learned the line.

Check out the custom fix for when the mirror glass came out of the housing. Classy.

1993 Miata LE 'The Black Car'

93 Miata LE. ‘The Black Car’ intro.

I decided to sell my 90 Mercedes 300TE.  It only got 17mpg, and I only used it for commuting. I decided to buy a second Miata, to use as a street car.  I could give it the ‘spares’ off the White Car and keep it cheap.

I found this car in NJ, it’s a real LE; #193.  Miata purists go nuts over this car, but this one is missing a bunch of the parts that make the car special… so I’ll have no remorse driving it through the snow and such.

The car has almost 200k miles, and came with some good stuff like a hardtop, HardDog dual diagonal roll bar, beautifully recovered seats, a Momo steering wheel and some D2 coilovers.

Although the car does carry the ‘blacked out’ theme well, I can’t stand the 15×8 et0 XXR wheels.  The style is cool, but these things make the car feel heavy and slow. The offset is too aggressive as well.

I will most likely change more things on this car.  The D2 eleven-billionity-way adjustable coilovers will be sold when I get the Xida’s for the 90.  The Bilstein coilovers will go on this car. Although the seats in this car have been recovered and look fantastic, I’ll probably put some Lotus Elise seats in it so I fit better.  I feel like a giant in a stock Miata, and I’m only 5’10”.

For now, I’ll fix the AC and drive it.