My brother is The Man! He found a hood & headlight assemblies from a local junkyard and picked them up for me yesterday. The hood has a very slight bend at one of the corners, which, it should work fine, but if I found one with no bend at all, I would be likely to use it instead. The headlight lids are in great shape, and I was able to pull the headlight rods off of them as well.

Last night when I got home, I went to throw the driver side headlight rod on the Miata, which took all of ~1 minute or so after pulling it off of the other assembly. Checked them, and it worked just fine.... unfortunately, when I went to get into the car, it had a notice on it saying that because the car had no plates, they were going to tow it within 24 hours... *sigh*.

So, even though I had Wednesday scheduled off to take care of it, I took a half day today instead. I got the title switched over, and got tags, which cost a bit more than expected (although I did pay more for the new "Veteran of the Iraq War" plates). After that, I took the car to a local paint shop, got a quote, and then took it to an upholstery shop and the rear window is being replaced as we speak, it should be done by Thursday. Will be taking the car to have the new-to-me parts painted on Saturday, which will take a few days.

I've been playing with the dampening settings on the coilovers, but they don't seem to make much of a difference on the street haha! Either way, once the rear window is replaced, and the car gets the new body panels & paint on it, there's a couple of issues I need to address:

-Have a set of Hawk HPS pads on the way that I need to throw on there.
-I'm going to adjust the ride height on the coilovers, as I don't think the previous owner knew what he was doing and lowered them too much/cut into the suspension travel.

The previous owner also lost the adjust tools for the coilovers, but I ordered a replacement set from Tein, which were shipped yesterday.

The previous owner also replaced the radiator and thermostat last year, so the radiator is aftermarket.... which, would be fine, except that he is only running one fan (he said both of the old ones went bad and he only replaced one of them). Which, the second fan was only supposed to come on when the A/C was on, and since the A/C has been removed, it's not that big of a deal, except that the previous owner wired the current fan to a cabin-mounted switch.... *sigh*.... the car isn't showing any signs of overheating when driving around on the street without ever turning the fan on, and I suppose I can just leave it on the entire time at the track, but there is a part of me that would like to have it regulated by the thermostat like it's supposed to.

The previous owner replaced the thermostat, but not the relay, so I ordered a new relay, and will try giving it a shot when it gets here, although it’s going to be tough to test as I can’t monitor the car temperature with anything other than the dummy gauge.

Since it’s currently just setup on a cabin-mounted switch, what thinks you CMZC? Leave it alone, or try to wire it back up to the thermostat?

Either way, after driving the Miata around for a little bit on the street, I am reminded of one thing: my BMW 335xi is an AWESOME daily driver! Haha! Seriously, the Miata has no body roll to speak of, requires a good bit of steering effort (P/S de-powered), everything rattles, the aftermarket stereo in it sucks haha, rides rough as hell, the shifter feels like s*** (thinking about ordering new bushings at the very least), the clutch has gone a bit soft… and well, it’s a “project car” haha, that’s how it’s supposed to feel! I’m sure the Miata will corner harder with the right tires on a smooth track/course, but on bumpy/uneven pavement: 335xi>Miata. Of course, it’s not fair, considering my 335xi is probably around the ~360whp & 420wtq mark on MAC’s over-inflated dyno, but driving the Miata for a while really reminds me of how nice it is to have the Bimmer’s amazing low-end torque and uber-broad powerband. I kind of like the contrast of switching back and forth between them.

Either way, it looks like I’m going to be dumping a little bit more cash into Project Miata than I had originally intended, but that’s how these things always seem to work haha! I think once I get the car sorted out, the suspension setup the way I want it (to include a custom alignment), some new pads, new tires (will likely borrow a set of Ecam/Eric’s in the meantime haha, thanks Eric!) and a bit of basic maintenance/TLC, I think this is going to be a fun little play toy!

I don’t suppose anyone wants to invite me over to their garage & give me a hand with adjusting the suspension/putting in pads on the Miata one of these coming weekends?

Happy modding!

-Brandon

I'm up in Johnstown, but I'm always up for helping one in need. We can throw pads at it in no time. I'm looking at doing brake swap on mine soon. That might be a good day to do it, and we could go ahead and bleed/change your brake fluid as well.

On my black RX-7, I ran a Painless wiring fan kit and it worked great. http://www.summitracing.com/parts/PRF-30102/

Sure! We have a weekend thrash planned this Sat/Sun at my house. Even if the car is not ready, plan to drop by (BMW parking just down the street). Or when you are ready, give me a call and we'll set something up.

I would rewire the fan back to the thermostat if at all possible. Mine almost never comes on either in normal driving, even after idling for a while like in a drive-through. But the heads on these cars are aluminum and if you overheat one day because you forgot to turn on the switch and didn't notice the gauge, they will warp. So I'd definitely try to wire it back to the thermostat to avoid that possibility.

rugger wrote:I'm up in Johnstown, but I'm always up for helping one in need. We can throw pads at it in no time. I'm looking at doing brake swap on mine soon. That might be a good day to do it, and we could go ahead and bleed/change your brake fluid as well.

Awesome! I think ecam is a bit closer to me geographically, but either way, I would be more than down to help with your brake upgrade! I would also LOVE to pick your brain about the Chevy 327 swap

RX-7 Chris wrote:On my black RX-7, I ran a Painless wiring fan kit and it worked great. http://www.summitracing.com/parts/PRF-30102/

I just might pick that kit up, thanks Chris!

ecam8000 wrote:Sure! We have a weekend thrash planned this Sat/Sun at my house. Even if the car is not ready, plan to drop by (BMW parking just down the street). Or when you are ready, give me a call and we'll set something up.

I'll be there this weekend, even if the car is getting painted! Shoot me your address and time you guys plan on starting getting to work (unless it's already posted somewhere and I just missed it?!?). I'll be sure the park the "lowly BMW" down the street haha!


It's been a while since I was a moderator on this forum, but I forgot how much I missed this community!

erod550 wrote:I would rewire the fan back to the thermostat if at all possible. Mine almost never comes on either in normal driving, even after idling for a while like in a drive-through. But the heads on these cars are aluminum and if you overheat one day because you forgot to turn on the switch and didn't notice the gauge, they will warp. So I'd definitely try to wire it back to the thermostat to avoid that possibility.

Yeah, those were my thoughts. The guy says he was driving it around this way for the past year with no issues, but I don't care to trust myself to always hit the fan switch.

The guy actually put a stock passenger/right side fan in (normally only supposed to come on when A/C is on), but no driver/left side fan in... which, they both appear to be around the same size, so it's not a big deal, but I also considered leaving the current fan how it is (hooked to switch), throwing a left/driver side fan back in and hooking it back up to the thermostat in order to run it daily, and toggle the extra fan on for extra cooling when beating/tracking the car.

roninsoldier83 wrote:Yeah, those were my thoughts. The guy says he was driving it around this way for the past year with no issues, but I don't care to trust myself to always hit the fan switch.

The guy actually put a stock passenger/right side fan in (normally only supposed to come on when A/C is on), but no driver/left side fan in... which, they both appear to be around the same size, so it's not a big deal, but I also considered leaving the current fan how it is (hooked to switch), throwing a left/driver side fan back in and hooking it back up to the thermostat in order to run it daily, and toggle the extra fan on for extra cooling when beating/tracking the car.

That's a good idea right there. And yea, the fans are the same size on both sides.

I might even have a spare regular fan. I have several different fans. I know the AC fan and the regular fan are slightly different sizes. Go figure.

Oh they are? Oops my bad. I never measured them, just thought they were the same.

94mx5 wrote:I might even have a spare regular fan. I have several different fans. I know the AC fan and the regular fan are slightly different sizes. Go figure.

If you have an extra regular fan that you would like to donate (I don't mind paying you for it either), I would be grateful.

I think they have different plugs too if memory serves right. Will PM about my spare fans.

94mx5 wrote:I think they have different plugs too if memory serves right. Will PM about my spare fans.

Awesome!

Thanks buddy, I appreciate it.

UPDATE:

Car just got out of the paint shop today, and considering it was a fairly inexpensive paint job (didn't see the point in spending lots of cash on paint for a 21 year old car haha), it doesn't look half bad. I had a couple errands to run today, but I was able to take care of the few things on the Miata. I got the following done on the Miata today:

-Replaced shifter/bushings (previous owner was driving the car around with NO shifter bushings... come on, who does that?!?)
-Replaced interior trim.
-Re-wired A/C fan/ground wire so I could use the stock primary fan connector (the former owner was wicked lazy/too lazy to find a proper ground for the fan which I found and wired in under 2 minutes).
-Put parking/turn signal lights in.
-Replaced temperature sending unit.
-Replaced primary cooling fan (previous owner was just running without one lol).

^^^After I installed the temp sending unit & primary cooling fan, I went for a drive to get oil temps up, and after a good ~10 minute drive or so, I sat in a parking lot and held the throttle at about ~4000rpm for a couple minutes to see if I could get coolant temps high enough to kick the primary fan on... sure enough, it works just fine Kind of shocks me that the previous owner drove around without the primary fan for ~1 year, and I fixed/replaced what needed to be replaced in under 10 minutes. I just don't understand some people haha.

I still have a few things I need to do before she's ready to get on the track:

-Put power steering back in.
-Replace brake pads (sitting in my living room, just didn't have enough time to throw them in today).
-New tires (possibly tomorrow).
-Change fluids.
-Alignment.


I ordered a PS steering setup from a guy online, and he shipped it in 2 separate packages, one Fedex & one USPS (no idea why lol). Either way, the Fedex package got here yesterday containing the pump, the bracket, the rack, the power line & return line, but apparently there's more in the other box that's coming. When everything gets here, I'm going ton see what I'm missing (if anything), and go from there.

While the car is too low to crawl underneath, I got a decent look at the steering rack, and it looks like one of the previous owners cut 1 or two lines and looped them (can't tell if they're both cut without removing the hose he put on there). Either way, the good news is that the rack appears to be just fine (the boots even looked ok), so it doesn't look like I'll need to use the new rack (saves me a lot of time/effort haha!). I'm just waiting on the rest of the parts and the new belt to get here, but it looks like I should just be able to run a few lines, mount the pump, fill it with fluid and be good to go. I don't suppose anyone wants to give me a hand hooking this bugger up?

Since I'm still waiting on parts and have my son this weekend (couldn't find a sitter anyway lol) it doesn't look like I'll be able to attend this weekend's autoX event, but I should be able to make the one after that.

I also snapped a couple pics of my vehicles today for no good reason haha:




Just figured I would update this thread. Have a good one!

-Brandon

Looking good! Must feel good to be making progress. It will be done before you know it, and once you get to drive it, I am sure there will be no regrets about all the work that was done. At least you will know it was done right.