Rotrex Miata Review (AKA, My 15 minutes, 23 Seconds Of Internet Fame)

After doing some filming for The Slip Angle with GRM'er Carbon and friends, their videographer wanted to take it for a spin and test it out, as he was considering adding the same kit to his Miata. Unfortunately, at this point, Lime Rock Park management had thrown me out of the track due to my car being to loud. So we mic'd up and hit the roads and did a nice in-depth dive with my car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8xDc2JL3JY

Edit: What happened to the embed function? No longer seems to work right.

Something killed embed. Going to watch anyway because I may be dealing with a Rotrex Honda in the future. 

Nice!

Gonna watch it later. May help my decision for what to do with my 86.

mazdeuce - Seth said:

Something killed embed. Going to watch anyway because I may be dealing with a Rotrex Honda in the future. 

Ah, I thought I was stupid or something. Well, I might be stupid, but not on embedding videos. 

I've become a pretty big champion of the Rotrex cause. They just drive so nice and make great power. They're really the best of both the supercharger and turbocharger world.

AnthonyGS said:

Great looking 90 and kudos for doing your own wrenching too.  What are you using for engine management?  I may have missed it for all the burbling brappy exhaust sounds.  

It actually never came up. But I'm running the Megasquirt PNP9093. You technically can run the kit on a stock ECM and then Track Dog gives you "fuel cards" to tune it. But that whole system just seems kinda crude and janky, and New York doesn't care about cars this old, so I instead ran MegaSquirt. Also, choosing the MegaSquirt option gets you much much larger injectors from TDR, so I have more overhead for if I ever shoot for more power 

Fitzauto said:

Gonna watch it later. May help my decision for what to do with my 86.

Jackson Racing.

Do it.

I was already leaning towards the rotrex supercharger on my next car and your review was the final nail in that coffin so thank you. Now I need to decide ft-86 or NC PRHT? Once I get that decided I need to sell the M5 to finance the thing and I'll be done car shopping for another decade. 

gunner said:

 Now I need to decide ft-86 or NC PRHT? 

In all seriousness, I'd say NC PRHT. A Rotrex-blown NC on Fox suspension seems like it'd be a pretty lethal weapon on the street and track.

I so, so so wanted to Rotrex the rallycar. Did not have sufficient coin. Darn. 

That’s awesome. 

Thanks for sharing. I think you have me convinced. 

There's also some hard track driving, track reviews and lap times and lateral G measurements coming over on The Slip Angle show, as well as a lap battle against a 185whp ITB NB1 and Tommyfyeah's K24/BMW 6-speed NA. 

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Ffacebook%2Fvideos%2F1052708824893929%2F&width=500&show_text=false&height=281

There was also some drifting. And there were plans to go out on Lime Rock's front straight and get some 0-60, 60-0 and 1/4 mile times, as well as do a three-way Miata drag race. Unfortunately, my car got booted for being too loud and we ran out of time anyways.

 On track the car suffered a little bit from it's "upgraded in stages" build approach. It's still running a chassis setup that was optimized for 92whp with the old 1.6L. I had a recent co-driver at an autocross kind of give me the same advice as well. First and foremost, it needs more tire and wheel, so it'll be moving to a 15x9 with 245 Rival S 1.5s. It also needs more/bigger brakes, but that has to wait until I have more tire, otherwise I'll just be locking the brakes up earlier. And it needs more spring rate and dampening, because it lifts the inside rear tire on hard cornering, and then the Torsen opens up and it just claws for traction. I have the VMaxx Classics right now, so I'll probably make the jump to Foxs.

The car performed well on track, and they enjoyed it, and said it had the potential for seriously fast lap times, but the chassis tuning made it a little unpredictable at times and required you to do everything absolutely perfectly. Although that unpredictability and ability to light the rear tires up was what made it so much fun

I've been so busy editing and shooting that I haven't had a moment to internet lol. Thanks again for bringing your awesome car out to play Nick! It was a pleasure meeting you and your car rocks! 

In reply to Carbon :

No problem. Maybe once I get the suspension and tires and aero sorted this winter, I'll have to make a return and see if it does even better.

In other news, Track Dog Racing stumbled across this video and is using it on their Facebook page, seeing as how there are apparently none-to-few reviews of their kit.

Good press for them, that car works well. Thanks again for coming out, it was nice to meet you!