What have you done to your Miata today?

[aMaff]

Oh well then I take it back.

(rlaugh)

Some of them were perfectly fine. Others... less so. And of course, all of the ones that are on show are the ones that come out crappy. Every. Single. Time.

In any event, after a coat of paint it'll do the job just fine.

While I had the trailer in the shop, I went ahead and knocked down a bunch of rough edges, which is why there's fresh paint in a few places.

 

[nate0123]

Took bae to her first autocross... Ok, actually it was the DC inspection station. No line on a Friday morning, nice!

 

[aMaff]

Whipped up a pair of 'bumpers' to support the steel barndoor covers, as their unsupported weight was creating quite a bit of droop at the corners, and causing the center of the hood to bow up about an inch under any aero loading. Used a pair of rubber hood (or maybe trunk?) bumpers I found in my bolt bucket and fabbed a couple brackets:




No more droopy (eye)balls!

 

[aMaff]

Aero is good juju. Took home 2nd overall raw time, and 1st place in XP, where I'm running this season since there's a few cars to play with.

 

[Reitrof]

Nice Andrew. Is it me or is the course short and very bumpy??

Oil change yesterday. Getting old I guess, normally do every 5k but went almost 10k. Got to check my log more often.

 

[aMaff]

Nice Andrew. Is it me or is the course short and very bumpy??

The lot is a good size, but yes, a bit bumpy (and revealed that I need to add some sacrificial rub-strips to the bottom of the splitter). It was only short because of how fast it was. I was in 3rd gear for about 16 seconds of a 37 second course... it was *fast*. A tighter course would be longer, and we often have those, but this one was on the higher end of the autocross speed scale for sure.

 

[bazooka joe]

Took bae to her first autocross... Ok, actually it was the DC inspection station. No line on a Friday morning, nice!

thats awesome!!

The lot is a good size, but yes, a bit bumpy (and revealed that I need to add some sacrificial rub-strips to the bottom of the splitter). It was only short because of how fast it was. I was in 3rd gear for about 16 seconds of a 37 second course... it was *fast*. A tighter course would be longer, and we often have those, but this one was on the higher end of the autocross speed scale for sure.

hows the hinge/stopper thingy working???

 

[aMaff]

hows the hinge/stopper thingy working???

It became clear that the clearance was too tight and it was locking out 3rd gear (which is the opposite of what it should do lol), so we flipped it open and ignored it the rest of the event (see me lose a full second shifting the 3rd in the video). So I took it off and shaved 1/8" off of it on the belt sander yesterday. Unfortunately there's no guide that says how close it should be, and no real good way to test except for bringing it to an autocross and seeing what it does at the top of 2nd.

 

[bazooka joe]

This is too cool!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[aMaff]

Another 1st place in XP (running there since no one is running DP)

 

[bazooka joe]

Another 1st place in XP (running there since no one is running DP)

nnice! love the sound of your na motor!

 

[aMaff]

nnice! love the sound of your na motor!

Danke! Running an external mic on the camera makes a huge difference in sound. I have a cheap lavalier mic mounted to the "roof" of the trunk, with the cable run up 1 of the down bars of the cage, with a good water loop so that water drips off before it gets to the mic. I don't *RUN* the mic when it rains because that means opening up the waterproof back of the camera to plug it in, but it keeps things working. It's so much better than the standard all-you-hear-is-wind-noise from action cameras.

 

[chiefmg]

Watching the first half of that, I was thinking, "You call that autocross? Where are the turns?" Then the second half showed up. That looked like a fun course, and like Mark said the car sounds great. I"ll have to see if I can do something like that with my GoPro.

I'll be back home later today so I'll finally be able to start putting something in here.

 

[aMaff]

Watching the first half of that, I was thinking, "You call that autocross? Where are the turns?" Then the second half showed up. That looked like a fun course

The whole first half was offsets and slaloms (drive)

like Mark said the car sounds great. I"ll have to see if I can do something like that with my GoPro.

I used this (though any cheap lavalier mic will work):
https://www.amazon.com/dp/ (commissions earned)

Then realized the adapter it came with is apparently pinned differently than the action cam ones, and snagged one of these to go with it:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/ (commissions earned)

$35 for audio that isn't terrible. For a stock car, just running the mic down to the center console would be a huge improvement. Anything out of the wind works great.

 

[chiefmg]

Thanks for the links. I need to check my GoPro out when I get home, last time I tried using it I wasn't able to switch it from upside-down mode (normally operate it off a roll bar mount that requires I have it oriented that way). Would be nice to hear my supercharger whine over wind noise.

 

[chiefmg]

I see I didn't post it in here, but right before I went back to work in March I noticed that the AFR in TunerStudio wasn't changing from 14.7. Wrote to Reverant and asked about it, turned out when he is testing the units he puts the EGO setting to a remote input. I had to switch it to local, unfortunately I didn't get his answer until I was at work.

Got home yesterday, this morning I went out and performed that change to the MS settings, success! Took her out for a spin despite the threat of rain (which became real), did some tuning and went to storage to swap over to my Flatouts w/Rivals. I'm hoping the next few days clear some so I can get out and do more tuning.

 

[bazooka joe]

cursed her as i walked by on the way to work...stupid starter!

 

[aMaff]

Made a mount for the LED Tach so it'll show up on the video. Helps when comparing speed in different elements between runs.

https://preparedmiata.wordpress.com/2016/05/04/led-tachometer-mount/








Before and after:

 

[thejeans]

looks good man!

 

[Reitrof]

cursed her as i walked by on the way to work...stupid starter!

Ouch, did the starter quit all of a sudden or ongoing?

Finally got the new Dunlops installed, which was good since the Bridgestones tread was basically an imprint. Going to change the colour scheme a bit, gold for the wheels, may remove some of the black.