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MiaTia - Nb2 content with very slow progress

3K views 20 replies 9 participants last post by  S2K_MoZo 
#1 · (Edited)
Hi everyone,

I've been on here for a while and slowly making progress so I figured I'll start a build thread.

I know you guys love pictures more than words so I will post pictures first and then try to post some story around the cars. I spent way more than first roadster, a little less and more functional on the second one and I plan to keep it cheap, functional and super cheap for the third one if I haven't mentioned it yet. It is going to be a slow progress since my roadster gets my attention only when I'm not busy with wife, kids and household stuff. Can't go balls to the wall anymore :)

I went from this: (Single with no kids)







To this: (Happily married with 1 kid)



To Finally this: (2 kids now, happily married but didn't learn from the first one on how expensive kids can be..lol)

People kept telling me that the answer is Miata but after my S2000s, I went through around 12 cars but didn't like anything. Some of the cars were (TSX, RL, Civic Si, Accords, Civics, Tiburon and some more.
(These pictures are from when the small dealer in Tulsa, OK posted the car for sale)





















Big thanks to goofygrin and OZMDD for helping me find this gem and a big thanks to goofygrin for driving with me on Jan 1st all day on his day off while he was sick to go get the car with me and check 'er out :)
 
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#2 · (Edited)
Re: MiaTia

First things first. With the help of a couple of friends we tested the car thoroughly and changed all the fluids. Previous owner did maintain it well but decided to trade it in when he/she got into a wreck.

I ordered some MSM mats, front bumper, passenger side headlight and a few other much needed parts.

Upon changing turret oil, I found out that the previous owner loved drinking coffee in the car:



You can see the foam/insulation under the carpet turned dark brown and everything under there was nasty. There was no sign of any oil whatsoever:





Nice and full for now. I'm new to this Miata world and still learning:



Ordered some new boots but this will do for now:



In the meanwhile, I found a great deal on some TRM wheels in 15x7 for daily:



Me and my buddy picked up our cars around the same week and he ran outta gas and told me there is no low gas light in Miata..I got curious of course and decided to be brave around the house:



Turns out, he was wrong :)

Radio display didn't work all the time, turns out some circuitry was burnt up/messed up so I decided to switch the internals from my buddy's silver radio. Didn't want to put in silver radio in a black interior base so I just swapped internals (Thanks Miatamoto!)



I cleaned out the interior and took out the carpet under the soft top since it was wet and had pistachio shells all over. Who eats pistachio while driving a manual roadster?

I will post pics of the interior re-done later since something else happened which I will put in the next post :)
 
#3 · (Edited)
Re: MiaTia

I was on a budget for racing and did my first autocross on budget tires to only find out that stock Miata sucks on mismatched fronts and rears.

I was lucky enough to find a partial sponsor for my car and I immediately dropped the car for a face lift.

A big thanks to Hugh at Ace Paintless Dent and Repair who also owns Ace Miatas and More here in Lewisville, TX. Great guy, has a lot of his own pimped up Miatas and one of them is track ready. I will post pics of his cars later but for now, here is where the car sits today:

















This is for now. I have some go fast parts sitting in the garage that I will try to take pics this week and post the details. It's hard to do a lot specially since you're sick.
On top of that I decided to change the front axle on wife's MDX this weekend. Never. Again.
I was going to setup my suspension and clean up some garage but it didn't happen so I'll post all that later.
 
#7 ·
looks good. generally not a fan of two tone cars but some red miata or roadster script side stripes &/or chevrons on the fenders and of course lowering it appropriately would probably really set it off...nice start
 
#12 · (Edited)
Finally got to attend the first NTAXS autocross of the season and ended up being 4th in the morning in my class but ended up leaving since it was too cold and wet and I was still recovering from cold.

Here are some pics: (Sorry, no action pics since it was too cold out)











And some bonus pics of a car that I loved!!





That twin turbo beast was a whole second ahead of me.

Car was pushing a little with MSM shocks, H&R springs and stock sways.

Need to get a bigger sway up front and fix the broken sway bar chassis bolt as well.
 
#13 ·
Finally got the decals installed all around and now the car looks a little more like a race car. Tempted to ask Hugh at Ace Miatas and More to take out his yellow NA race car out with my NB to have some play time at MSR.



Suspension is still not 100% sorted out. Rollbar plans are in progress but ran into a broken sway bar bolt and dead UCA ball joints issue that might slow down other tasks.

Will try to make videos of my runs at the next autox but in the meanwhile a video of my S2000 at NTAXS event on 2 years old dead direzzas:
 
#17 ·
Looks great so far. I do like the two-tone color as well!!!
Thanks guys. I wasn't sure on the two tone paint job in the beginning either but I love how Hugh at Ace Miatas and More pulled it off and made my car from nothing to a mean looking beast : 3gears:

Big props to them. If any of you are close to Lewisville, TX..be sure to stop by and say hi to him. I saw one NA there today with lambo doors. If you zoom in that pic above, you can see the door is open. :phillyb:

Yeah, this makes me not want to have a wife and kids now.
But I own a miata, so that will probably never happen anyway. :fab:

Looks good though! And when I was low on gas I didn't have a light pop on.... must not have been low enough.

Good Luck!
Haha...you do have to make some adjustments but I would not trade it for the world. I used to put car before any gf, family or whatever but now family comes first and then car..or maybe they are all top priority lol

Yeah, I'm not 100% sure if I can rely on the gas light but it did work for me once when I went low. I try to fill the car up as soon as I'm between 0 and 1/4 tank of gas.

Thanks for all the positive feedback and comments guys. It's a slow progress but hopefully I can get to the point where I can take top position in my class at autocross and have a decent time at the local tracks. :mrgreen:
 
#16 ·
Yeah, this makes me not want to have a wife and kids now.
But I own a miata, so that will probably never happen anyway. :fab:

Looks good though! And when I was low on gas I didn't have a light pop on.... must not have been low enough.

Good Luck!
 
#19 · (Edited)
Thanks NoneShallPass. It was frustrating in the beginning but the I was like WTH, might as well have some fun lol

Got some goodies in mail. Haven't posted much since I've been busy with family and was trying to fix a couple of things on the car so I can daily without too many issues. Got some new high performance all season tires on those TRM 15x7's for year around driving and looking to upgrade the TRM 17x7.5's with something a little wider but we'll see.




also got around to installing the roll bar.

 
#20 ·
Now, some detail about the rollbar install in case some other NB2 people are working on installing Hard Dog M2 Hardcore Rollbar.

First things first, take the battery negative terminal off and put it to work since you don't want to short any wiring like a buddy of mine.



Then, off goes the carpet under soft top, which I left out too since I'm going to try and paint that area black and not have carpet to get wet/dirty.



Broke that plastic tab/pin since that's what I always do when I work on the car..rather break something cheap than something more expensive:



A lot of write-ups out there ask you to take seatbelt tower bolt out, you don't have to in NB2:



After putting that bolt back in, gotta do some actual work.
Since seats were out, I decided to play FBI and figure out some details about the previous owner.

She had medium length dark hair. She loved eating seeds and pistachios while driving the car. She once spilled coffee so bad that it leaked all around transmission tunnel and left a huge mess. She tried to flick pistachio shells out when the top was down but it was all stuck inside the car still. She had a dog too and the hair is never coming off on this cheap carpet! LOL



More nastiness for my OCD self to clean:



Part of why I want to ditch all the carpet so it's not accumulating crap under and I can keep it clean for the most part since I will have some off track and spins at autox:



Only have to get the big bottom bolt out for the most part since rollbar has a hole that lines up with it and goes on there:



No pictures of cleaning in progress but this is how it looked like after I was somewhat done:



Notice how the carpet and the area behind package tray shines now :D

Thanks to goofygrin for his help with cutting and drilling, saved me a trip to ER.



No more shells, seeds, coffee or hair anymore:



Still want to take the carpet off but this will do for now. This was the final result of working over 6 hours on the car:



Hope you guys enjoyed the pics and commentary.

I'm working on installing that motorcycle amp to ditch my stereo since it has a mind of it's own and jumps tracks, skips songs and sometimes digitize and makes a remix of the song if you go over a lot of small bumps lol
 
#21 ·
Finally got around to doing the timing belt since water pump squeal made the next autocross impossible.

3 hours into it:



Almost 6 hours later:



I know I need to clean the engine bay and pretty it up but it's been raining here and I've been lazy.

Got to put my new to me wheels on with some 225 RS-3s

BMW AX the next day:



Another shot:



Ended up with 3rd position in my class after a crazy battle and some car issues due to plug wire backing off during my 9th run:

Final shot after the autox. I still have to get some video footage of my runs and post them on here for fun :)

 
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