My answer was....what else but?

So after clearing out a couple of garage spaces, I naturally had to fill them. One of them was taken up by my non-running '91 Tracker. I wanted to fill the other one with a low cost fun toy. Budget was under $4k. Poked around at a buch of different ideas, but always came back to Miata. While they ain't fast, they're pure driving fun.

Found this one. '90 with 134k miles. Original owner, guy is now retirement age. 5spd of course. Clutch has less than 15k miles on it, soft top is 2 years old, brand new brakes. Factory hard top. He's got recent service records and is getting me the rest from the place he always went for oil changes. Has a few negatives. Was in a hailstorm, so has damage on trunk and hood (trunk is much worse than the hood). Differential crapped out a few weeks ago, which is why he decided to sell it. Has the LSD rear. The shop where it is now said the engine runs great, and the car is still "drivable" in that it'll move on its' own, but drives poorly and makes noise from the rear. He didn't open the rear up for a close look though. Got it for the budget friendly price of $1250…including hard top. Sweet. Hoping the rear is an easy fix. Considering putting the '94+ stuff in, but want to keep the budget as low as possible. I did find a used '91 LSD for dirt cheap. I'd like to try to do the work myself if I can, I've never done a differential swap.

Anyhow, here it is. Hoping to have it on the street within the next month (registering it as a "classic", and it takes 3-4 weeks to get the license plate).

Good find! You have more there in scrap value alone w/ the hard top!

god that's a good looking car in red. Good find!

Nice score!

Is that an E30 3-series?

You might as well have stolen it

Well bought, sir.

You could pay to have the diff and the hail damage professionally fixed and it would STILL be a good price. Well done. (The interior looks unusually clean too!)

Awesome steal . . er . . uh. . . score

Paintless dent removal for the hail damage, swap in the diff with the help of your local Miata club, sell the hardtop for $1g....and you have a great Miata for practically FREE!!

Yes, I am jealous.

DrBoost wrote: Is that an E30 3-series?

Yup, with a very tight fitting body kit.

The original pictures the guy sent me are high resolution. When I zoomed in, the trunk is beyond PDR repair. I'll keep my eyes out for a really low cost red trunk lid. If I don't find one, no big deal, I'll drive it as is.

The first order of business will be to get it on jackstands and pull the diff cover off to see what's actually going on and what's broken. I had e-mailed Keith, and his thought is it could be ring and pinion.

Yeah, it's super clean. The guy talked on and on about the car and sounded to have a lot of pride in it. He bought it in Oct '89 and it's been his baby ever since. He took really good care of it. He said he put a Bear Tracker radio in it. Not familiar with them, but sounds interesting.

What about the dry ice trick on the trunk? Seems like voodoo to me, but the Youtubez says it works!

Hail damage can cause pinching in the sheetmetal, so even dry ice wouldn't work. It's easy enough to find a red decklid anyway.

Nice score! You basically bought a hardtop that came with a $250 Miata. I'd skip pulling the pumpkin cover and just get a whole good differential and swap it in. It's pretty easy to do on these IRS cars.

In the first two years 50% of all Miatas were red so replacement, no paint panels should be easy to find. The red paint code also remained the same through '97 so that too will help with finding panels.

great score. this was a much better starting point than that modified one.

how do you people find deals like this?!?!

Atlanta's craigslist?

Appleseed wrote: Atlanta's craigslist?

need to move to atl instead of charlotte. or start buying cars in atl and selling them on charlotte cl. llo

Nope, not CL this time. Found this one on Cars.com, surprisingly enough.