200$?!?! Alright, I'm coming over... The Crinkles story

In reply to BirgerBuilder :

it's had a roll bar installed in it at some point.  should two more sets on the vertical face down at the bottom outside corners, iirc

The white four pin connector is cruise control.  The black two pin on drivers side near radiator is electric fan.

That's all I got.

sleepyhead said:

In reply to BirgerBuilder :

it's had a roll bar installed in it at some point.  should two more sets on the vertical face down at the bottom outside corners, iirc

Ah, I should have noticed the bolt holes in the floor.

Doc Brown Dork 
1/22/19 6:44 p.m.

The white four pin connector is cruise control.  The black two pin on drivers side near radiator is electric fan.

That's all I got.

Very helpful, I didn't even think about the fact that the fan was missing. 

We took the exhaust manifold off to get to the engine mounts and noticed this...

Sloppy, lumpy welds, protruding into precious exhaust real-estate. unacceptable. 

I don't know where I got these rasps, but I've never used them before. They do work like a treat though!

(Also, the GRM sweatshirt is quite comfy)

Much better!

I also got the new coolant hoses I ordered. 23 ebay dollars and they come with a free bikini pic. (so you know they're good) 

They actually fit pretty well which was not my experience when I ordered some for my WRX several years ago. 

The radiator itself however...

Those tabs are supposed to line up obviously. Deploy the BFH!

Better. Note the spacers still needed to keep the radiator off of the core support. Good. Nuff. 

Stuff has been happening but I have been real lazy about posting. 

First off, I got the cooling system back together. Now I was told there was a leak, hence the new hoses. However they all looked fine. 

Fired her up and filled with coolant and noticed this...

Hmm. drip, drip. 

Yeah, that might be the issue.

So the side that is destroyed, likely by 15 year old kid who is not educated in the art of hose removal, is permanently attached to the core. 

Welp, no room under there for a real saw, or even a pipe cutter...

That's okay, I have a broken bandsaw blade and vice grips. 

If you are familiar with the NA, you know you need to remove the dash to get the core out if you don't cut this pipe. It's all berked up anyway so, chop, chop. 

Luckily, I have this nice little piece of VW hose sitting around, just the right size. 

But after cutting down the pipe, it needs a bead on it. 

Well, I don't have a bead roller that small...

Okay, now I do. 

Not perfect but should hold it's water. 

Add a coupler made from old piece of tubing...

And boom, no more leaks. 

Probably. It's 20 degrees and snowing out. I have not taken it for a test drive. 

Anyway, moving on, I stripped the other door and added a pull-handle. 

Then went on to deal with the badly dented hood. It was smashed from the front and the bracing popped free from the hood panel.

What to do...

I know! I'll put some seam sealer in there and then drop my brother's Porsche on it!

A little more than that went into it. But not much. 

Good enough! just add hood pins. (for safety)

And as a bonus, I can put a big sticker on the hood that says, "Bodywork by Porsche" 

So I have been spending a stupid amount of time looking for new wheels and tires. The ugly mismatched wheels with all-seasons are really only good for burnouts. (and will be kept around with that in mind)

They are not quite as heavy as I expected though. 

Coming in around 34-35 in all for these (With one pound of chain)

And only about 31 for these ICWs. Not too bad, but needs width. 

So I'm currently on the hunt for some 15x8 rims, under 15lbs, and as close to free as possible. This may take a while. 

In the mean time, I needed a shift knob and I just happen to have one around.

Just gotta, you know, get it out of there. 

I learned my lesson from the last one that a 2" diameter is too much and cut this one down to 1.75". Feels good, man. 

I will probably have to add leather since there is no roof to keep the sun from super heating it to it's melting point.

And lastly, my brother came over the other day and we got bored, so... this happened. 

Well, looks like we are on the path to Death-Kart!

This is getting soooo good. 

BirgerBuilder said:

[...]

Well, looks like we are on the path to Death-Kart!

Love how popular this idea is getting, instead of letting these beat up cars go to waste. Looking forward to seeing it progress

Crinkles has been sitting in the back for a while now, but I had a reason to pull er out.

First Auto-X of the year!

The local club is pretty chill but you must have; solid seat/ belts, Battery secured, no wheels falling off, no leaks and some kind of exhaust. 

That's a check on all but 2.

Needs a battery tie down, so I grabbed this old piece of miata.

Cut and bent

Add a few more pieces from the scrap pile, and done.

Now I could drive her over to the lift for problem number 2.

What have we got to work with? 

Scrap of course. 

The "muffler" was found in the scrap yard and traded for my own scrap. I forgot to weigh it but I'd say it's 10 lbs at $0.10 a pound. Tubing was left over from other projects. 

As was this piece of scrap, let's get started!

This took, for fricking, ever. I did learn how to sharpen a hole saw with a dremel tool though. More or less. 

Add first section. 

Side note, NA owners, is this section of the exhaust supposed to be so damn close to the frame? 

 Next section,

And we are getting there. 

I did have to spend $7 on that poorly bent 90 from advance auto. 

Now, I just have to weld all of the holes...

Which would be easy, except I ran out of mix gas, on a Saturday afternoon when all of the shops are closed...

Well, I did finish up the TIG cooler a while ago.

Only issue is... I don't know how to tig weld. 

No time like the present! 

It got better than this but lets just say I need more practice. 

I didn't take any more pictures apparently, but by the time it was all together it was 10 at night. Then my brother came over to fix his mazdaspeed three, then we got the truck, then we loaded the car and all in all I was in bed at 1:30am and up at 6:00 to drive to the auto cross. That's ok, I can use my lack of sleep to justify my abysmal track times. I was 2 seconds slower than a stock miata on street tires on my best run. But that's ok because the car didn't break! or overheat! and nothing fell off! As the safety tech said, "there's no parts left too fall off." 

touche

Not a whole lot happening on the car this weekend. But after the autocross, I decided that the stacks of wood acting as ramp extenders were no longer sufficient. 

See previous model in the background. 

And the upgrade. One down, one to go.

...Also I did pick these up. 

$40? Who could say no. 

Should offer a slight improvement in traction. Now, who's got some 10" wide 15s they want to sell for cheap?

Got another Auto-X coming up so I'm doing some prep. 

First I built the second helper ramp.

All primed up. 

Then I decided to do an alignment, since... I never did.

Started with Camber, had these super precise alignment bars. 

Combined with a level and a precision ruler, they seemed to work pretty well. Or at least repeatably.

I maxed out the camber bolts however, they have seen better days.

They still adjust fine so long as you use a hammer an punch to move em...

I ended up with about 1 degree of negative camber up front. As best as I could measure. should they go farther than that? 

I had eye-balled the toe before but apparently my eyeballs are pretty far off...

Is 3 inches of toe-in too much? LOL.

So I went with just the tiniest fraction of toe-in, basically zero.

1 deg. of neg camber up front.

Rear: again just the tiniest fraction of toe in.

and then 2 degrees of negative camber in the rear. 

What do you miata experts think? 

From what I have read, you should have 0.5 more neg. in the rear but I didn't know if it would be better to knock the rear back to 1.5. Or should it be possible to up the front to 1.5? 

It has been in the crash but setting both front bolts the same, yielded very close measurements. 8mm/450mm verses 9mm/450mm 

Have you re-checked all of your measurements with the car on the ground after rolling it back & forth? You may be surprised how much changes when the tire cramps the suspension during a static load. Professional alignment racks have slidy turntables under the wheels to prevent that, and your wheel cribs look like they will not.

You can't see them in the pictures but there are pieces of aluminum flashing under the wheels that slide against each other pretty well. I also raised and lowered the car before the final check. That being said, I probably will do another re-check when the second half of my two man team is there. 

I've always been able to get right around 2 degrees-front and almost 3 degrees-rear on my three different Miatas. Two were NBs, the other an NA.

Not any real build progress, but, my brother and I got out of the house for this past weekend's Auto-cross.

The local guys at Capital Driving Club are super cool and genuinely seem to enjoy this pile of crap. It usually draws a certain amount of attention for being the cheapest car there by a factor of 10 over the next closest competitor. 

My lap times are still god-awful but I did see some improvement throughout the day. My brother consistently beat me by about 3 seconds, so I guess I should stick to my job as chief engineer and let him drive if we want to be competitive. My best time was 48.5 and he got a 45.9

Also, during the lunch break they have 'Adult Swim' and you can let the more experienced drivers take your car around. The video below shows him embarrassing us both with 44.0 on the first try. 

Other than that I have been spending a stupid amount of time searching for a set of wheels that have; low cost, low weight, good width. So far it's been pick two. This shouldn't surprise me but I'll keep my fingers crossed for that set with just the right amount of curb rash.  

The kids were very upset at how dirty Crinkles is and insisted on giving him a bath. I tried to explain the concept of polishing a turd to them but it was easier to just let them at it. 

Also, I bought some wheels. Two wide and heavy-ish, 4 light and narrow-ish. all cheap. No, I don't really know what I am going to do with any of them...

Also, 2 of the narrower (6.5") wheels have a bad crack on one spoke each hence the low-low price of 80$ for 4. 

I pulled a tire off of one using the tried and true drive your car over it method. 

little over 13lbs. Not bad, if I can fix em. 

Not a ton going on with Crinkles, I've been wrenching on the RX-7 and then the rear end on our Dodge fell apart. 

But I did go out and buy this... 

$200 was probably a bit much for some quarter panels with a car attached but hopefully I can recoup the costs. 

First attempt to get it off the trailer... spoiler alert, this didn't work. 

This did though.

Next step is to strip it down. My three year old's habit of removing every screw he can find is coming in handy. 

And of course there was pocket change, was happy to have 42 cents back but then we found the mother load. 

Quarters for the win. 

Well if anyone needs some odds and ends, send me a message. 

Trying to sell/ recoup 

Trim pieces

blower

heater core

ac condenser

wiper motor

handbrake

air bag module

fuse box

turn stalks

fuel tank/ pump

various switches and anything found under the dash

This stuff

Carpet?

Dusterbd13-michael said:

Carpet?

Not great, has wear under floor mats but yes. 

You coming to the challenge this year?

I actually want black carpets in my tan i terior nb.

Dusterbd13-michael said:

You coming to the challenge this year?

I actually want black carpets in my tan i terior nb.

I sure would like too... I'll try and keep you posted. 

Fair enough! Shippong would be a deal killer otherwise. 

Cool.

For NA miatas at stock ride height, maxing out at ~1.0 degree up front isn't unheard of.  When you lower them, even if just to the next snap ring groove on off the shelf shocks, they pick up camber quick.

Three day weekend! And nearly all of it spent working on this heap. 

I got up at the break of dawn on Saturday to drive down to DC and get a set of crappy wheels that are 9 inches wide. 

They were $180 and came with two very nearly new Toyo Proxes.

I spent another hour trying to find a shop that was small enough to do used tires but big enough to be open on the holiday weekend. 

Results!

Oh boy, Oh boy, Oh boy!

Had to get em done Saturday so I could race on em on Sunday! 

They worked a treat I tell ya. The cooling system, not so much. I had a pin-hole leak in the heater core and no cooling fans. It was a hot day and by the afternoon I had to forego my 5th run since it was bubbling out around the radiator cap. 

Fortunately, one of the organizers who I was talking to last month, bestowed upon me, a whole pile of parts that he was just giving away. This was offered up to the whole Auto-x community and several parts were taken by other people so budget wise I can call em free if I use them. There is more than this as well. 

He had a cooling fan but only one side and from an NB. But the junkyard is on the way home.

This guy offered up his fans for eleven dollars and sixty six cents.

I wish I had thought to get a seat belt because I don't have one for the passenger side. 

Monday morning I started by organizing my haul.  

Then got into installing fans. The driver side has a large crack in it.

But I can fix it with zip ties.

You just melt one down with a soldering iron and then fill the gap, good as new! (kinda)

I also "fixed" the heater core by bypassing it. I need to bleed out and refill the cooling system but with any luck it should work as intended now. 

The other donor car came with an extra core but...

Failed the pressure test. So for now It will go without. Plus I have more important things to do. 

Like get rid of this pile...

You bypassed the heater core by connecting the two pipes from the block to each other right? Not plugging or capping them? That would cook the back of the engine.