The red one above looks to have some kind of truck bed liner on the floor, maybe painted over? That's not a bad idea for traction.
The red one above looks to have some kind of truck bed liner on the floor, maybe painted over? That's not a bad idea for traction.
Agreed, looks like painted over bedliner. I'm not taking that car as my ideal, most of a general concept of the half dash with the center stack cutout removed. There are a whole bunch of small details I would do differently.
I like the bedliner idea.
My first thought.
30 years from now some young car person answers an ad posted by a woman who's spouse passed away leaving various projects. The (future GRMer born in 2030) arrives to find an old beat up worn out Miata sitting outside in back of a garage with a faded old cover full of holes. Upon seeing the severely faded Martini livery he/she has to have the rusty hulk. Then after discovering it was the famous "Targa Miata" decides to bring it back to it's former glory including the cage etc. Spends 100,000.00 "restoring" it (because inflation) to "last as run" Targa specs.
I love your plans and this 'build' makes complete sense to me.
In reply to NOT A TA :
Geez Keith has some gray hairs, but he isn't that old!
A little work on the interior. I was moving slow today.
Starting point. Well, almost. The steering column and gauge cover are out.
Here's what's under the dash skin. The vertical and horizontal supports are ones that I've added to replace the factory ones. After playing around with this, I have some ideas.
The little hammer formed switch panel. This looks better than it should, but I think it's going away. I spent some time today making lists of required controls. Such as - does the "laser" (ie, raise headlights) switch need to be in the interior? Or is that more of a maintenance thing, and could thus be under hood? Can I put audio controls in the door panel?
I've already bolted in a non-airbag steering column, and here's why. That's the new one up top - the switchgear feels much, much nicer and it looks better. This does mean some rewiring including, oddly, a new wiper motor. But that's easy enough and I have the motor. I also have to replace my quick release as the last one was welded to the shaft - or do I need one without the cage? I may just give it a try.
In reply to clutchsmoke :
Wasn't thinking Keith, but rather someone else who owns it after Keith's done with it.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
What was the "Eject" toggle wired to?
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Something is broken in the editor now and I can't properly quote or embed pics for some reason, but that last pic of the multifunction switches: The top one looks just like a Series 3 RX-7 unit! (S1 were truly weird, you rotated the left stalk for wipers and flipped the right stalk up to turn the lights on)
I am curious now if the diameter of the steering column is the same as FB. You see, when Mazda went to FC, they made the steering column larger in diameter, so you cannot use an FB switch on an FC column. I am curious if the Miata is FB sized or FC sized, because people who do front suspension swaps can't use FC columns because the FC switch is grossly incompatible. If the Miata column works, that would be huge.
I vote work truck vinyl flooring.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:In reply to Keith Tanner :
Something is broken in the editor now and I can't properly quote or embed pics for some reason, but that last pic of the multifunction switches: The top one looks just like a Series 3 RX-7 unit! (S1 were truly weird, you rotated the left stalk for wipers and flipped the right stalk up to turn the lights on)
I am curious now if the diameter of the steering column is the same as FB. You see, when Mazda went to FC, they made the steering column larger in diameter, so you cannot use an FB switch on an FC column. I am curious if the Miata is FB sized or FC sized, because people who do front suspension swaps can't use FC columns because the FC switch is grossly incompatible. If the Miata column works, that would be huge.
The non-airbag switches were pretty much standard Mazda units, at least in general design. The Miata ones are a little difficult to source in North America because they were only used for a couple of years in Canada, but they're probably pretty easy to find in the UK.
Let me know if you want any specific dimensions. The OD of the column is larger on the airbag cars.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I measured an '81 (series 2) column at 30mm. I am 90% sure that they were all the same diameter '79-85 because they all used the same two pin turn signal switch cancel cam. The one that will break unless you have the steering wheel perfectly lined up.
Airbag being larger diameter probably means they are FC sized, which is something like 32mm. I was able to grind one down enough to fit an FB turn signal assembly on but I was close to air in most spots so I scrapped that column.
I've never broken one of those cams, guess I haven't been trying :) I've certainly destroyed at least one clockspring. Looks like 30mm is accurate for the little one, I'll have to pull the combo switch off the airbag column to confirm the larger size. Probably 32, that's about right.
Very different wiring, though. Weird changes.
I vote for this as carpet.
Well, the wiring conversion is done. Oddly, the wipers won't park. I've been banging my head against this for some time and the wiring is correct. So I give up and move on.
Next two jobs are to figure out what to do with the floor and the dash. The heat insulation on the tunnel looks awful but I have concerns about getting it off cleanly and how hot the tunnel will get without it. All those guys running around with bare metal interiors aren't trying to channel 500+ hp down the exhaust system. I mean, I've melted the asphalt backing to that heatshielding in the past. I would really rather not do carpet but I may have to come up with an attractive yet function-driven transmission cover solution.
For the dash, I know what I want to do. I just have to decide to do it and start tearing things apart.
How about putting that gold heat reflective stuff inside the trans tunnel and colored bed liner for the cabin?
I have no personal experience with this, but I've heard favorable reports: Lizard Skin
Heat insulation is better placed under the car between the heat sources and unibody. I used DEI floor and tunnel shield on the underside of the transmission tunnel of my Spec Miata. Works very well
I have gold reflective foil inside the tunnel already and Swain coating on the exhaust. The foil helped, the Swain is melting. We've used Lizard Skin on our builds at work, I'm not convinced of the effectiveness.
I don't think all the heat is just radiant exhaust heat, I think there's also a non-trivial amount of heat from the radiators and the engine block itself getting swept down the tunnel. My Locost had a side exit exhaust but still saw the tunnel get quite hot to the touch.
I am concerned about future maintenance with bedliner and I don't know how much it weighs and if it has any effect on heat control.
I am told the gold reflective stuff works fine on a car that's moving, but once it stops the exhaust heats the air between the pipe and the foil and that conducts into the car.
When this car isn't moving, it's not making heat :) I stuck a pyrometer in the heel of my right driving shoe and got a temp reading of 147F inside the rubber after driving on track :) The tunnel was 196F. It's that 500 hp thing again, that's just a lot of heat. Of course, that's also a pure racer being driven hard for 20-30 minutes at a time so it won't be so bad as a street car, but I think I need to do something for the tunnel.
Keith Tanner said:When this car isn't moving, it's not making heat :) I stuck a pyrometer in the heel of my right driving shoe and got a temp reading of 147F inside the rubber after driving on track :) The tunnel was 196F. It's that 500 hp thing again, that's just a lot of heat. Of course, that's also a pure racer being driven hard for 20-30 minutes at a time so it won't be so bad as a street car, but I think I need to do something for the tunnel.
It may not be making additional heat, but it's still got a lot of heat sunk into components that are mounted underneath, which will then conduct into the cabin.
I can't see how the airflow being stagnant would change how effective the foil is, though. But I'll let someone else smarter than me figure that out. The point is, it's not enough on its own.
Keith Tanner said:I can't see how the airflow being stagnant would change how effective the foil is, though. But I'll let someone else smarter than me figure that out. The point is, it's not enough on its own.
At one point last year I was concerned that heat soak from the muffler on my M3 was melting the ice in my cool shirt cooler faster than ideal, so I was looking into ways to try to cut down on that. I looked into using gold foil for this, but was told it would not be very effective. I'm a software guy not a mechanical engineer, so I don't claim that I have all the details correct, but what I took away was this:
Heat transfers in three ways, conduction (direct transfer between stuff that's touching), convection (fluid moving around) and radiation (infra red). You don't get much conduction between the exhaust and the body because they only touch in a couple places and the rubber hangers are pretty good heat insulators. You don't get convection when the car is moving because the air is getting blown around by the wind, so all you need to stop is radiant heat. Gold foil is a radiant barrier and will do this to a degree. When stopped there's no wind, so now convection comes into play. Heat transfers from the exhaust to the air, then the hot air rises and transfers heat to the body cooling it down. It falls, gets heated again, etc. Gold foil doesn't help this, because it's not an insulator.
As for how to improve on gold foil, if it's going to be a street car then I think I would go with OEM-style carpet & padding/insulation.
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