All my Cars (92 Miata, 03 MSP, 97 Impreza, 94 Miata, 88 RX-7, 06 E-350, 90 Miata, 03 P5, 97 Miata)

Frank_and_Beans wrote: Just a warning about putting a skidplate on a car with a cast aluminum oilpan. We had a local guy here toast the engine on his VR6 GTI, because a piece of gravel got stuck between the skidplate and oilpan. The next time the car bottomed out or put pressure on the skidplate on course, the piece of gravel punched through the cast aluminum oilpan, dumping the liquid contents of the engine on the track. So, in this case, the skidplate actually caused the oilpan failure. I see you have had it on there for a while, so maybe it isn't an issue. I rallycross a miata as well, and made a similar skidplate out of 3/16" aluminum. Paranoia has now caused me to unload an entire tube of red RTV at the interface between the skidplate and the oilpan. That way the void is filled, and no gravel can get in there. The downside is having to spend $8 everytime you take the skidplate off, but it's still cheaper than a new engine!

I thought about that issue but decided not to worry about it until it happened to me.

Flight Service wrote: just curious but do you like Mazdas?

No I just like cheap good handling RWD cars and the color orange. The MSP had the best orange color available at the time (better than Focus SVT and Neon SRT4) so I ended up with that. Every time I go shopping for an AutoX or RallyX car I seem to end up with another miata. I was looking between a miata or an E36 for RallyX when I fell into the deal on a precrashed miata for a price I felt was hard to turn down with the hardtop. I have to admit that I do like the support that mazda has for racers. I think they have paid me somewhere around $1000 in contingency over the years I have been racing them and the discount on parts is pretty good.

Are we distantly related or something?

If it weren't for the fact that you obviously get work done I'd say we have to be.

I'd just fart a junkyard knuckle into the Impreza.

ssswitch wrote: Are we distantly related or something? If it weren't for the fact that you obviously get work done I'd say we have to be. I'd just fart a junkyard knuckle into the Impreza.

Get work done? I think some people might disagree a bit there. My wife wanted to get me this t-shirt for christmas but I talked her out of it.

I already farted out two junkyard knuckles for the impreza. The first one came with a bad ball joint and a broken ball joint bolt. Even after drilling out the bolt the ball joint refuses to come out. The second one is what I have in the car now and it is better than the one I killed but it is still making noise so I have to decide between another knuckle or seeing if I can actually get this wheel bearing out (I could not get the wheel bearing out of the first one I killed but I think it might have overheated it a little bit)

May
Found out there was a little more damage to the miata from the accident than I had found before. I had occasionally smelled a little coolant smell but could not track it down then at the first rallyx of the month I found the radiator was empty. Unfortunately I did not notice this until the car overheated and stopped running so I did not finish my morning runs. During the mid day break a bunch of us worked on the car to see if we could get it running well enough to finish out the day. (picture stolen from Josh's build thread)

It seemed to run ok on the trailer for a few minutes so I took it out for the afternoon drivethru when it started overheating again so I parked it for the day and stole josh's car for fun runs in the afternoon since his car was not legal in my class. (Another picture stolen from josh since I suck at taking pictures at events)

Got home and found the radiator was empty again and leaking out so ordered up a new one. Put that in and found the head gasket was blown and pressurizing the cooling system so need to do a lot more work. Started pulling the head and searching to see i I could find a cheap replacement engine. Maybe it was a good thing I needed to pull the belts? This does not look very good. Parts in trunk so I don't lose them. Block Head Head Gasket

Since I was not able to get the RallyX car done in time I decide to take my daily driver miata (1997 M edition converted to R package) to rallyx at the end of the month. I knew it had some soft spots and some rust bubbling in front of the rear wheels but figured it would be fine.
After "media blasting" the car. I call it media blasting most people just call it rallyx at a gravel site.
Drivers side not so bad just broke off some of the rust bubbles and did a bit more paint damage. Passengers side. Ohh well damage already done no reason not to keep rallyxing the car now.
Almost spun on the last run and my wife did spin so looking over the car as we went to put it on the trailer noticed we had an inner de-bead on the drivers side rear tire. Later taking off the tire it had a lot of gravel and dust inside.

June/July Took head to machine shop for testing. just a little warped and exhaust valves were pretty bad on cylinders 2/3. Not a big surprise since the compression test results for the motor were 1 - 120
2 - 90
3 - 95
4 - 140
Talking with the machine shop he thought it was worth fixing. Got the parts for the machine shop and got the head back pretty quick. Lifters safely tucked away so I don't get them mixed up when putting them back in the head. Cleaning the block.

Got interrupted working on the rallyx car to take care of a few other things. Van needed some ABS work. luckily it was just a front sensor and I only had to take apart the whole front hub to get to it.

Finally got the CSP car "mostly running". It would start up but die unless I kept pumping the gas pedal. Sent logs to the tuner and he said he thought it needed more fuel but he could work with it. Took it to him and pushed it off the trailer. Had a bit a trouble pushing it up the little hill to the dyno so my tuner decided to take the lazy way out and added more fuel and was actually able to drive it up the hill onto the dyno. Spent the 4th of july making loud noises on the dyno. https://www.youtube.com/embed/Wp5KKv6nyLk

Ran into a that we thought was with VVT Targeting issue and had to give up for the day but it was at least running. Spent the next week getting a few parts to replace before hitting the dyno again. Replaced the radiator and the intake manifold (swapped the 01+ for the 99-00 intake) During the week we found that the problem was a cam sync issue. Megasquirt would lose the cam sync at higher RPM's but did not report it since it could run on the toothed wheel fine but the VVT relies on the cam input so it was not working correctly. Low RPM good sync. High RPM Bad sync. Adjusting R11 CCW got it working. Also changed C13 to .001uf instead of the standard on the MS3X. went back and had a few high RPM issues with the crank sensor but adjusting it out a little bit more seemed to solve those. A decent dyno for the engine. I think I have one that is better but this is what I could find right now.

Now that it is working we can finally put the megasquirt in a little better than just tossing it into the passenger footwell.

Got my wife to figure out how to make it look a little better. Ended up with it in the stock ECU location. Attached to the ECU cover.

Installed in place. Covered. It only took a year and a half but we got our CSP car out to it's first autox in our hands. https://www.youtube.com/embed/8jKnsSAF9TM

Not to bad. 2.8 seconds behind julian garfield (2nd at nationals in 2015) on a 40ish second course and I was on the tires that have been on the car since I bought it. I asked julian to drive it and he beat my raw time by about a second so the car is a little better than I am driving it right now.

Still having some issues with tach cutouts while driving and a high idle but the CSP car is running and driving now.

Since the CSP car is running I can get back to work on the rallyx car. Got the head back on. Was hoping to get it back together in time for the rallyx event at the end of the month but had some issues and ended up in the daily driver miata again. Thanks to Ed Palaszynski again for the photo's.

August We had registered for RallyX Nationals in Indianola, IA a few months ago when I was hoping the RallyX car would be back together again in time. The RallyX car was still not back together but we decided to tow the daily driver miata out to run and do a mini road trip on the way out instead of staying home and working on the RallyX car. Bought a new set of DMACK rally tires since the old ones were almost gone. Hitting a bunch of amusement parks and other things on the way out and then make a quick run for home after the event was over.

Starting out.

Nationals Saturday morning runs where on a very wet course where we had a few cars get temporarily stuck on the hills during the drivethru and the only time I have seen a long release interval on the drivethru so cars did not run into each other. Not running much in the wet dirt and not having mud tires really hurt most of us in the class and I ended up 44 seconds back from first place after 3 runs and I was in second place. I managed to claw back a few seconds over the other 6 runs but ended up 41 seconds back from first place but still in second place. The top three drivers were all pretty close in the dry so it is hard to say how it would have ended up if the whole event had been in the dry.

Image by Todd Krueger, on Flickr

Finally home 2700.4 miles later

A friend bought a new CSP car and while we were out of town decided to upgrade the areo parts that came on it. I stole all the old parts for my CSP car. This is just the splitter I have the spoiler laying around someplace.

After getting home from nationals I decided it might be a good idea to change the air filter. Nothing wrong with the old one it was just time.

2015 WDCR RallyX #5 & T&T Ran a small course during the morning T&T and then meet up with the RallyX school going on during the same time to run the big course in the afternoon. It was starting to get dark and we were nearing the end of runs when my wife "taking it easy" since it is my daily driver still decided to find a new parking spot on course. Yeah that is not going anywhere quick.

They tried getting all kings men to push it off but that did not work so I brought out the tow beast van and pulled it off the berm. No major damage but called it a day there.

Sunday. Running behind a first gen RX-7 I saw something in the line and said I wonder what we have pulled out of the ground now? It looked like it had some hoses sticking out of it or something. Hit it pretty hard with the skid plate. As you can see from the nice bend there.

Turned out it was their fuel pump and I got flagged down at the next corner since they had run out of gas and stopped on course.

I had decided to run the almost worn out tires instead of the brand new ones since it was a school and a local event the next day. I was hitting a few more cones thruout Sunday but did not figure out why until we loaded it up at the end of the day.
The old DMACKS are a lot worn out now.

Car had sounded a little louder on Sunday and yep broken exhaust likely from the berm on Saturday so quickly ordered a new one so I did not have to drive it long with the broken one since it is my daily driver. Arrived in the same exquisitely awesome packaging as the last one.

September Some friends had been encouraging a full weekend of rallyx. Saturday there was a rallyx at VIR and then Sunday in Frostburg. We had been holding off committing to it since we were still using my daily driver for the rallyx car.

After waffling back and forth all week I decided to go for it anyway. Just a bit of driving for the weekend. We met up with them in Richmond late friday night and spend the night there getting a bit more sleep than if we had to leave our house early Saturday.

Got to VIR and found it was wet and muddy with lots of mud holes and mud to toss on cars The view from my camera during first runs. Avoid the mudhole. Other cars dug some nice tracks into the mud and my car no longer had the ground clearance needed to make it without damage so my rear bumper was a little worse for the wear. And maybe just a little muddy overall.

A few zipties fixed it for the rest of the day. I had to redo the zipties a few times over the weekend since I did not have heavy duty enough ones with me but it got thru the weekend and driving it to work on Monday.

A picture of all the car driven by the nuts that made the two day trip.

To quote the guys instigating this thing "Let’s do this again soon. And by soon, we mean maybe never." But I am sure if it comes up again in 2016 we would do it again.

My car was vibrating a bit more than normal after that 2 day event so I pulled the skid plate. It seemed a little better after that.

October The daily miata still had some vibration issues. Decided it could use some new motor mounts. Yeah the old ones were pretty bad. Decided while the RallyX car was down we should go ahead and swap suspension on it. The car already had koni shocks on it and I had a set of koni perches lying around for a few years that I meant to put on the STS AutoX car but I never got around to it. Bought some 9" springs and tossed them on. It has a little more clearance now. While it was in the garage I tossed on a replacement headlight and bent the PS fender enough that the headlight goes up and down now since that is why I drive an NA miata.

November With the last WDCR RallyX event of the year I really wanted to get the RallyX car back up and running. Found that I was missing some of the seals on the fuel injectors so the car was stalling out right after starting it. Once I found those and installed them it actually started running. Found that the mixing manifold was rusted out and was leaking. Good thing I had a spare 1.6L engine in the basement that I picked up a few years ago (not the one I pick up below) Looks like I have some oil burning/smoking issues but it runs now.

Toward the end of the 2014 season, one of the local guys shucked 2 used 15” Dmacks in the back of our van and told us to have fun with them. Fast forward to November 2015, and we dug them out and mounted them on a spare set of wheels to see if they’d clear with the new suspension setup. Lots of room... I might need to actually bring the car back down more. Made it thru the event without issues so that was good.

Driveway
As detailed a bit in this thread we added a little more parking for the van/trailer.

Spicy
While somebody else was working on the driveway I need to do some work on something. I got tired of trying to get the Spicy transmission hooked back up from under the car so I decided it would be better to just pull the engine to mate it up. I had loaned out my engine hoist a while ago and my friend who had it was not really using it so I got it back from him.

Boom! Engine out. Snap! transmission connected Empty bay.

I think that was much easier to attach it that way. Now to get it back in and get everything hooked back up.
Back in. Now I have to hook everything back up and find the parts that have been sitting someplace for the last 2.5 years.

Miata stuff
Because I always need more miata stuff I happened to see a post on miata.net about an engine and transmission for sale on ebay so since it was localish and I was headed out that way that weekend anyway I decided to pick up the transmission for a spare if it went cheap anough. So for $66.65 I picked up a 1.6L engine that I have no clue what I am going to do with and a transmission that I can always use a spare of. When I got there he had a few more parts. Engine, Transmission, radiator with fans, exhaust, spare tire, and a few other parts later I left. All the regular tires I already had in the van.

December We were out of town for a week or two after getting the new parking pad installed so once we were home for the weekend got the Van and trailer parked off the road. Now if we need to we can park all 9 vehicles plus the trailer off the road.

Christmas My MIL wanted to buy us lift tickets or something to the local ski resort. We said how about some car stuff?

My wife got a new shift knob

I got some new JIS Screwdrivers

Continued to work on finding or buying the parts needed for the Spicy MSP.
Found out Walmart sells batteries from the future (Note the sticker date when I bought it on 12/30)

I usually think I have a lot going on. And then you update your thread, lol...

My recent updates have covered a month each and even then some of them were a little light on any actual work but I may have missed quite a bit of stuff that I did not have pictures to remind me of.

January
Spicy
Found/bought all the parts needed so Happy New Year!!! At long last, the Spicy MSP rolled out of the garage under it’s own power: After 2.5 years on the lift and 3+ years with a broken diff it is back running again. https://www.youtube.com/embed/2TRQTwjpltM Yes the windshield was very dusty. Not sure what the weird noises are in the video it was running about like normal with a bit more noise from sitting for so long. Drove around for a few hours trying to get the ODB2 drive cycle to complete so we could get emissions inspection done and no parts fell off so that felt like a win.

After getting the drive cycle complete sent the wife off to get the inspection done. Pass on first try. It had been so long since the car was registered they could not find the old tags in the system so I got new tags.

CSP Miata
Now that the Spicy is off the lift I can get to work on some other projects that will be a little easier with the car on the lift.
Back in Sept I bought a 949 SuperMiata Race Twin Clutch Flywheel from a user on here for the CSP car since I did not know what it had installed. The prior owner did not know and searching the owner before thats posts I could not tell either so I figured the 949 one would be a good option to put in since if I am pulling it open to check I might as well put something in and if there is currently something good in there it can go on the RallyX miata. It is pretty nice looking. Pulled the trans and found it had an ACT clutch and 9# INDIGO aluminum billet flywheel. Those will be some nice parts for the rallyx car. Trans was dirty as they always are. I feel much better putting this back in. Flywheel Installed. Clutch Installed. While it was up on the lift I cleaned out a few rocks from the front fenders. Yeah just a few. Had to go stock up on redline for the miata's.

Impreza
Now that I have the CSP car on the lift I can pull the impreza into the other half of the garage and look at it without leaving it up on jackstands in the driveway for a month for the neighbors to love.

Damn you brake dust shield!!!!! Yep that noise that I thought was a wheel bearing from my replacement knuckle turned out to just be the brake dust shield rubbing. Sent the wife off the get the inspection and the car passed even with these tires. They did mention it could use a new inner tie rod end and rear brakes were low.

BMR RallyX
Since I thought I might need some rain practice for nationals and I had a piggyback ECU I wanted to play with on the rallyx miata I decided to go for the BMR RallyX that other weekend since some rain was predicted.
Got there and the event was delayed for a few hours to see how the weather would do. After the delay they sent around a few cars the see how bad the track was so I at least got to take the miata out for one run. After seeing how well the AWD cars did vs the FWD and RWD cars they decided to run the AWD cars first so went out to work until the rain came back hard and they called the event. So at least I got a bit of muddy practice that left some mud on the car.

Caught up to today 1/20/16
It was cold this morning so I did not feel like heading out into the garage so I decided today was tire day since the tire machine is in the basement. With the big snow storm coming on friday I decided I should mount up my new snow tires and dismount the wife's old ones.

Old snow tires dismounted, Old rally tires dismounted. Anybody need some 15x6 5x114.3 ET45 steel wheels cheap? New snow tires all mounted up and ready for balancing.

I will need to hit you up soon about mounting some snow tires as well on the 14s :)

irish44j wrote: I will need to hit you up soon about mounting some snow tires as well on the 14s :)

Bring them on over.

The rest of Jan.

Impreza
Got that inner tie rod end replaced.

Then we got more cold and snow so I hid in the house and watched a bunch of shows. Feb.
CSP Car
Worked on installing the aero for the CSP car.
Splitter.
Still need to decide if I would rather pay for one that is easily removeable to get on and off the trailer better or try to figure out how to either make this removeable or get longer trailer ramps. Spoiler. Drilled a couple of holes. Attached.

added a nicer looking EGR delete to the CSP car.

Impreza
Not sure what the inspector thought was wrong with the rear brakes since they were only a little worn down but I replaced them anyway while I was in there since I don't like working on drum brakes any more than I have to. Maybe we can actually get this car back out to some rallyx events this year as a rent-a-racecar.

Since most of the big stuff was done I started working on some little stuff that had been bothering me.
Spicy
The Spicy has intermittent wipers but not variable intermittent wipers. The P5 has had an MPV wiper stalk installed for years to get the variable intermittent wipers but that has a rear wiper switch and would not look right on the Spicy. While the Spicy was sitting on the lift in the garage I had picked up a wiper stalk from a Mazda 6? at the junkyard for it. Yes that one tiny little dial makes things so much better.
Just take everything apart and install and it works.

Green Miata
The outer leather shift boot was completely trashed and I was sure the inner rubber boots were in worse shape. Inner boots. Had to glue some parts of the center console back together. New shift boot looks much better.

RallyX Miata
Installed the front parking light (broke/missing since I got it) to make it more legal for PR.

And just before the end of the month I got the new wheels I ordered back in Sept. The new 949 6UL 15x11 wheels for the CSP car. 14.3 lbs now I just need to cut a little more fender and get some spacers and longer wheel studs.

two things.

1. Awesome progress
2. You live down the street from me.

Flight Service wrote: two things. 1. Awesome progress 2. You live down the street from me.

1. Thanks
2. Literally or figuratively?

March
Impreza

Filed under that minor annoyance category.
Ever since I got the impreza the shifter had been a bit floppy toward the 1-2 side but I had not taken the time to dig into it and figure out what the problem was. The radio surround was also broken and crappy looking with the radio falling out. Since I was fixing other small things I started working on those.

The shifter? There is spring that should have been on the transmission that was not there that pulls the shifter back to center from the 1-2 side.
Now installed. For the radio I pulled the whole center mess out and actually screwed everything into the cage. Yeah it will be harder to uninstall if I need to but I don't see needing to do that anytime soon.

Bought a new radio surround and it looks like a normal car somewhat inside now.

Protege 5
Started getting a P0171 code from the car and some brake squeal so needed to do something for it. Tried resetting the code but it came back quick and had some drivability issues. A quick search online turned up some people having issues with cracked intake boots. Yep looks like that is my problem. New boot $25 from rockauto. Old boot ready for the trash. It ripped thru like that when I was pulling it off.

Maybe I should have checked the pads earlier? Ohh well it had been a few years since the last time I replaced them so toss on some new rotors also.

Green Miata
The last time I was working on the brakes on this miata I was not able to get the front rotors off so I just swapped the pads. Since I needed to do the front brakes again I decided I really needed to replace the rotors. That does not look so bad. Stripped the rotor removal screw hole so 10 minutes of hammering later. This should help the next time I need to remove those.

RallyX Miata
When I started to install the hardtop bracket kit last year I broke one of the bolts in the hard top. I did not have time to drill it out then so I tossed the regular latches back on figuring 2 bolts in that would be better than 1 in the brackets. Got it drilled out and new bracket installed.

So much useless hardware

Clean up
My wife did not like my storage for misc nuts and bolts that I have laying around that mostly consisted of toss them on the toolbox or into a trash bag in a rubbermaid container. So we got a thread checker thing from amazon and I built a holder for some of the HF Parts storage cases (inspired from This thread on garage journal) from a old kitchen cabinet that I have had laying around for a while. Thread checker. My new bolt storage place. Now I just need somebody to sort all those bolts out....

I needed some space for when I start working on taking apart the RX-7 engine so I needed to clear off my workbench in the basement. I tore apart this head a while ago and it has been sitting there just taking up room so I needed to put it back together and move it out of the way.

I kept all the parts in order (I think) Putting back together.

Car Wash day
It warmed up a lot in march and I actually decided that my cars needed to be washed a bit. For those that know me this is a big deal since my normal washing method is once every 5-10 years if it needs it or not. The big one that needed to be washed was the Impreza. Sitting on the driveway for the last few years it might have had a little bit of stuff growing on it. Before.

During. Yes there was that much difference with just a bit of washing.

After looks a little better.

While I was at it I got the dust off the van.

Removed the stickers from solo nationals 2012 from the spicy.
Cleaner.

Even cleaned off the rallyx car enough to put some new stickers on it.

2016 WDCR RallyX #1 3/20/16
With the low temps thruout the day and the snow on the car/ground in the morning I decided to stick with the snow tires instead of swapping to the rally tires. I guess I made the right choice. Yeah some of the faster AWD guys were not there or not in their car and you can never compare between run groups but I was pretty happy with the car on snow tires.

Fastest Morning run. https://www.youtube.com/embed/L8EsQEJlqTU

Fastest Afternoon run. https://www.youtube.com/embed/bBEKeeda1S0

It was a bit muddy out there. My car after I got it home.

I think your run group was definitely on a faster course....IIRC the e30 guys in your class were like 5-10 seconds faster than all the MR cars lol...

That said, still awesome to be FTD overall

April the first half

RallyX Miata Now that I made it thru the first rallyx event it is time to make changes to the car.

That pretty Indigo flywheel can now find a new home in the rallyx car.

First I need to clean off a little bit of dirt.

Maybe a little more dirt?

Just a bit more?

Ok I lied it was a lot of Dirt.
One 5 gallon bucket of dirt later I was ready to start working on the install.

One typical miata clutch job later it was installed. Out with the old.

In with the new

CSP Miata Since the 15x10 wheels were still rubbing a bit and the 15x11 are even wider I need to trim the fenders a little more. Also need to install longer wheel studs because the fronts are going to need some spacers.

A little but not to much?

Went thru a few cutoff wheels getting them trimmed.

Installed some door edge guard so I can see where it rubs now. For some reason my wife would not let me get the chrome edge guard I wanted?

Some nice long wheel studs.

I had noticed that the fuel rail was a little odd from what I thought it should be based on a normal install of a 01+ engine. Most installs use the 99-00 fuel rail with the earlier FPR. Looking closer at what the installer (not sure how many owners back the install was) did I see that mine was a 94-97 fuel rail that was cut and slotted and bent until it "fit" I did not like the way it did not have any spacers between the rail and the head just empty air.

RallyX RX-7.

I had a spare engine from a parts car I bought for the LSD so before I pull the motor on the rallyx RX-7 I wanted to tear down the spare motor and see how the hard parts are.

This should be big enough for the flywheel bolt.

I'm glad I cleaned that table off last month. It looks like an RX-7 engine exploded all over it.

Looking more like just a block.

BMR 4-10-16

Took a short break from working on the cars to make a run up to Blue Mountain Region for their Snow/Mud fest rallyx at the offroad park overflow lot.

Since the impreza had not moved much in the last year or two and we were talking about renting it out to rallyx competitors again this year we decided to make this a shakedown event for it since I don't care about season points for BMR.

Thanks to Mike Vanino Photgraphy for the on course pictures.

Snow and mud and lots of it. Maybe I should have put new tires on instead of the ones I bought back in 2012 that have lots of summit point events on them?

Yeah it was a bit muddy and snowy out there. Lots of mud all over the car. I wonder if I can figure out where to put the numbers back on the car?

We ran the first run group and started uncovering some larger rocks so they made some course changes and swapped run groups.

The second run group just kept digging up more large rocks and deeper into the mud.

They ended the event because of the deteriorating course conditions at the lunch break and we headed home.

April The second half.

Once race season hits I get way behind on updating this thread becuse I spend all my time working on the cars.
CSP Car
The splitter on the CSP car was way to low for loading on the trailer so I had to build some ramp extensions.

As I was pulling the CSP car onto the trailer the night before the first event I found out the clutch slave cylinder was going bad. I should have just replaced it when I was doing the clutch but now I need to go back into it and replace it. Made it thru the event with the leaky slave.
That looks nice.

Got the new one in.

Rally Miata
My wife did not like looking at this when she was driving the rallyx car.

So after a sketchy late night craigslist parking lot transaction we can now look at this.

Dirty Snow
Rented out Dirty Snow to some other people for the second rallyx of the season. Guess we should not have left it on steel wheels. For the second driver on the last run this happened (22nd run on that car that day). Just a small issue. Tossed on the spare and got it off the course so the event could continue.

This looks fine.

Looking over the damage. Biggest issue is that the door hits the fender when you try to open it.

Removed the fender.

Beat it back into enough shape to close the door again and call it good enough for rallyx.

June New RallyX Miata
Knowing from autox that the NB is a little faster in stock class I had been looking on and off for a while for a cheap NB for rallyx. I saw an ad on craigslist for a $1200 2002 miata. Went and looked and bought it for $1100 that night.
Bought from craigslist so needed a craigslist quality picture. As we were leaving we were told that her name was Barbra and she was a stong independent woman. My wife said she would be getting pretty dirty with us so asked if we could call her barbarella....

It was a little dirty and beat up and had 235,000 miles and 3 different check engine codes but it was cheap and that was what I look for in my rallyx cars.
I pulled the seat cover off the seat since it smelled a little smokey. It was a little dirty under the seat.

I am not exactly sure how this happens to a shift knob.

The first check engine light fixed. The second check engine light was the CPS. The last one was a speed sensor code. I reset that one and it did not come back so I'll call it good.

Another miata, Another shift boot torn.

It cleaned up a good bit.

Some of the damage.

This one wheel had a lot of brake dust caked on. Tried some of that color changing wheel cleaner stuff.

Wheel is looking better.

Since the DC Tour was the coming weekend I brought it out just to weigh the car. I ran the tour in my CSP car but 3 seconds off the pace each day is nothing to talk about.

2355 lbs on the SCCA scales.

Parts car Since I bought an NB now I need some extra parts of course.... Parts car to the rescue.

Some parts removed now.

More parts removed.

For some reason the neighbors did not like the parts car sitting beside the garage like that so I had to toss it into the garage to finish getting the parts off it.

If you're gonna have a parts car, you gotta go classy like I do so the neighbors don't notice that it's a parts car And then put a cover on it so they think it's a "really nice" car, just to seal the deal!

Though I gotta say, your neighbors seem pretty accommodating already!