Where's the fuel return aimed?
Where's the fuel return aimed?
Straight down? the return is just the metal tube that goes.... maybe halfway down the pump?
Sounds right. it should be dumping into the sump. I guess it's mostly on the NBs, when people move the FPR they end up turning the return into basically a showerhead and start getting fuel starvation at low levels.
I'd put a pressure gauge on the car to confirm that you are indeed losing pressure when this happens. I'd also be interested to know if it's possibly a pump power problem given the high-vibration history of this vehicle. There could be a harness moving around and creating an intermittent connection under hard cornering - but that wouldn't be fixed with more fuel in the tank. If it's tied to fuel level, it has to be a pickup problem.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
May or may not be tied to fuel level. It's only happened twice, only in lefts, and only at lower fuel levels, but that very well could be coincidence. The good news is that it looks ok which rules out obvious problems. I'll fill it all the way up and see what happens.
Great read.
Aaaaand now I'm missing my Miata again. The Exocet is fun, but it's more motorcycle (or like driving a washing machine) than miata.
Off to craigslist I go.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
Problem would be below the pump, not above. On my ‘03 Mazda6 iirc the split wasn’t visible, but my pump module was a different design. See below. Still, given the symptoms, I’d be replacing the inlet side of the pump assy if it’s separately serviceable.
My sc'd NB had the same issue. Needed to be a left turn and hard throttle and less than 1/4 tank and it would starve. Sorry, no advice, I fixed it by keeping more gas in the car.
In reply to RedGT :
Good to know there's a cheap fix. I'll probably snag a new strainer and rule out some sort of crack that I can't see.
Note that the OE strainers are better than many of the aftermarket units. If you really want to be sure, you can get yourself some Hydramat.
But I'd start by doing the fuel level test.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I was surprised when I googled "Miata hydramat" that there didn't seem to be a plug and play part for this application.
It's because they don't really have a problem with starvation if they're in good shape, so there's no demand. The Exocet guys often use it because the tank is at the wrong angle in that application.
I just spent the weekend hanging out with Seth, some other Houston friends, and autocrossing.
I drove down in my focus from Ft Worth, but Seth joked about me stealing the Miata and I snapped it up. And DAMMIT Keith is right. Hardtop and a bit of vinyl make this car is amazingly quiet. I even took a friend of mine out for her birthday in the damn thing and we drove around Houston for over an hour afterwards. It got a seal of approval from her in my book from her not saying a single word against the little thing.
I put nearly 200 miles on the car Saturday. It's a DAMN good little car and I never loved my 99 the way I love this car. The driver seat is sooooooo janky... But it WORKS!
Seth and I also autocrossed the stupid car today. Sideways literally everywhere. I almost pulled off a perfect pirouette drift around a corner into a slalom initiation but I was 12-18in shallow on the drift and nailed the first cone of the slalom.... But man was it glorious.
We also found out the clutch is slipping and the cutting out reappeared in late runs, it's definitely electrical. But the little guy keeps trucking along, I LOVE it.
I approve of the ziptied front license plate to the bumper, that's how I ran mine. Because I was doing track stuff, I also ran some blue tape along the bottom... but left it on too long, so that it was impossible to get off ~4 years later. ymmv
edit:
Also, I get the impression that spacecadet is as jazzed about finding a person that would spend an hour in that car with him that wasn't a doode... which is all kinds of impressive in and of itself
I took the car for an hour drive in the morning by myself as, 5 minutes on the freeway and I knew immediately how phenomenal a car it was.
Which is why it got 200+ miles on it over the rest of the day.
Also you're not wrong.
i believe someone gave the diagnosis of weakish clutch several hundred posts ago 
In reply to Patrick :
Yesterday was the first time I've every really tried to launch the car. Didn't work. Did I mention that I've never had to replace a clutch because I've never worn one out? I'm gentle.
Yesterday we went autocrossing. It felt good to get this car back into "competition" mode. The most frequent question of the day was "Why?"
Off and on for the last couple of years I've been tossing around the question of what makes me like a car? What makes me like driving? Why am I part of this dumb hobby? I like rallycross more than autocross but I would rather drive on empty roads after a fresh snow than either. Track stuff is fun but super expensive. I want to stage rally but time, money, and geography keep that from happening. I'd be playing with motorcycles if falling off didn't hurt so much.
What do I like?
I like when a car moves around under me. Especially when it does it in a safe predictable manner where I'm not breaking the law or endangering anyone. Closed course is best. Low speed is best. Always want more suspension than tire. Hopefully want more motor than tire. I don't know that I have an answer, but this car is letting me play with these ideas. I'm having a good time.
I forget if yours is a factory clutch but if it's a little old and you slip it excessively on the launch every run it can get unhappy in higher gears as the heat/glaze builds up. This has been the case for (3) NA STS cars I am familiar with locally on stock clutches. One in particular where the owner is delaying replacement, can end up slipping badly in 2nd gear until you let it cool down and then do burnout launches instead of clutch slip ones. Then it is fine. In my own car I'm in the habit of doing a quick aggressive clutch drop to get some wheel spin (really, sidestep it at 4500+ for stock power and good tires) rather than abusing the clutch. When new people codrive the car they tend to slip it WAY too much because they're afraid of smacking the thing from 5000 rpm. Just do it. It's happier that way.
I've now missed out on two local hardtops. One got sold with the car, even tho the guy said he'd hold it for me and the other one I was too slow to see/respond to the ad. Doh! I'll keep looking...
In reply to RedGT :
My clutch had 120k of "abuse", Side steeping the bad boy at 5-7k, general aggressive driving and it was in good shape.
In reply to RedGT :
So you're saying I should do a couple of burnout launches and see if it gets better? That sounds fun!
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
Thats exactly it.
A half dozen proper clutch drops seem to have the car leaving lovely 11's on the road. Not sure if that has any correlation with the unmarked police Tahoe that was slowly driving down my road when I got back from the test drive. I'm probably not the sketchiest thing on my street on any given day.
Thanks Professor_Brap!
I am enjoying this thread very much.
mazdeuce - Seth said:In reply to Patrick :
Yesterday was the first time I've every really tried to launch the car. Didn't work. Did I mention that I've never had to replace a clutch because I've never worn one out? I'm gentle.
You told me to give it a proper testing. I tried to launch it like my wrx and drove right through the clutch’s ability. Never heard of doing clutch drops to bring one back to life, that sounds fun. It’s blizzarding today, i shall go do awd some snow drifting in honor of the miata’s clutch being revived. I’m taking a liking to this brap guy, we should keep him around...
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