modernbeat

My valve stems finally showed up, so I mounted the new wheels and tires. The wheels are the new Enkei J-Speeds from Good-Win Racing in the most un-baller size, 15x7et38. I considered the other two sizes. I didn’t get the 15x8et25 because I didn’t want to roll the fender and wanted to run a mild performance alignment (not too much camber). I didn’t get the 15x7et25 because Enkei went cheap and just added pad material to get that size. The lug holes look like they are two inches deep and extended lug nuts would barely peep out of the holes. That sucks. I don’t want to use extended lugs (don’t like the look on a street car) and I’d like to see the lug nut. I thought that the 38mm offset is a little more than I wanted, even for this mild fitment, but I’ll run spacers if I decide the wheel needs to be pushed out more.




For tires I wanted something meaty with a round corner between the tread and the sidewall and a decently soft sidewall. A lot of the new extreme-performance street tires have very sharp tread corners and stiff sidewalls. I also like the looks of the 195/60-14 that a lot of guys are running on their 14x7 Enkei RP-F1 wheels. But I’d like to stay with 15” wheels as I intend to install a set of Sport brakes that are waiting their turn in my garage. Well, this is about as close as I can come to the round and meaty 14” look and still have room for big brakes. It’s a Dunlop Dierezza Sport Z1 Star Spec. It’s got the extreme performance compound, a soft sidewall, and a nice round balloon curve between the tread and the sidewall when mounted on a 15x7. Here’s a few shots. I’ll post more in the fitment thread. The current alignment has too much rear camber and not quite enough up front. I'll be taking care of that next

modernbeat

Another detail from the build. I don’t like how the license plate fits flush against the finish panel. The sharp edges dig into the panel and the plate can vibrate and make noise. When I mounted my plate I used spacers under the top two bolts. The bottom two bolts are screwed into rubber bumpers that keep the bottom of the plate off the finish panel.




A large number of things I’ve done to this car are either involved with the interior swap or just plain restoration. The next two are restoration. Orwrx on Clubroadster was parting out a ’96 M-edition. I bought this near-perfect window switch from that car. Although mine works, it was due for a cleaning and the labels had worn off the front. You have to make sure that you get the right switch. Automatics and standards got different switches. The mechanism is the same, but the pigtail is different lengths.

Old and faded on the right. Like new crisp lettering on the left.



And Installed.



My right side front turn signal looked bad. The interior mirror was flaking off. I kept an eye out for a good one. “A domomo” on Clubroadster offered a great set of turn signals, shipped from northern California! Amazing – a California seller that willingly ships. I swapped out my bad one and stuck the other one into my stash.

modernbeat

I bought a set of OEM foglights from “Martin…” on MX5Nuts back in early 2009. Yes, his name has ellipsis after it. They came off a JDM R-Limited, which means they had yellow lenses unlike the clear lenses available everywhere else. And I actually bought an entire setup from Martin including the wiring harness, relay, switch, light housings and small mounting parts. My ’92 came with a set of these lights already installed, but they were really worn. The brackets have some surface rust and the lenses looked like they were sandblasted. I had touched them up with a buffer, but the lenses really needed to be wet sanded or replaced. I chose to mix-and-match from the two sets I had to build the best set I could. Here’s the results. I used the original housings, painted the original brackets, used the yellow lenses from the JDM set and one outer lens from each set. Both outer lenses got wetsanded and buffed and the housings were cleaned up a bit.

Yes, it’s a mess.



The two finished pairs.



What both pair used to look like.



What the restored pair looks like now.



I also tracked down all the fidley bits to finish the RS Active Headlight restoration and installation. The shrouds are finally in. I still need to remove some yellow overspray from them, but now that I’ve got all the right parts it will be easy to pull them in and out.

modernbeat

One of the themes for this car was OEM+. To get there, I’ve been trying to remove as many exposed fasteners as possible. While I like the Nardi steering wheel and the black housing of the Sport horn button, the six screws holding the trim and horn button on kept galling me. I’d really like something like the M2 horn button, but they are pretty hard to come by. FWIW, they fit just like any regular Momo horn button.

My current button.



Here’s an M2 stuck in a Prototipo.



Another alternative would be these custom buttons made for the Datsun 240Z. I could easily swap out the center portion for a custom button.







I know a few cars came stock with big horn trims on Momo compatible wheels over the years. So I started looking for what other OEM buttons could I use. I came across four different buttons. One was sorta ugly, two were as rare as unicorn eggs, and the fourth was easy to find and looked like it would work.

Here’s the 1975 VW Scirocco horn button I’ll be cutting up for a custom Mazda horn push.



To erase the VW heritage of this part and make it look like something that would have come from Mazda, I wanted to adapt this RX7 steering wheel emblem to the VW bezel.



The RX7 emblem is almost a perfect fit.



And this is what I hope to end up with.



The Scirocco button is Momo sized and fits perfectly in a Momo wheel and adapter. But since I have a Nardi, I’ll have to use an adapter.



The bolt pattern is the Momo 6x70mm, so I slotted it to use with the Nardi 6x74mm.



So, after first disassembling the 35 year old horn button, I used some wet-dry sandpaper on a glass surface to start grinding down the face of the VW button and the back of the Mazda emblem.



Sanded down.



I used window adhesive to glue the two parts together. The windshield glue was also used to smooth over the seam and the button was done.





I installed it along with the Momo horn adapter and another half-inch Nardi spacer and some longer 50mm steering wheel bolts. Installed pictures are coming.

modernbeat

I bought a pair of the Mazda Tribute Fluidic windshield washer nozzles last year. I added some 90 degree bends, and new longer tubing pieces to make it all work correctly.

modernbeat

I’ve been looking for a textured standard sized Voodoo **** for a while. When one popped up on the NW Connecticut Craigslist I emailed the seller, Alex, and he agreed to ship it. I’ve always liked the looks of this shift ****. I had trouble finding one, since Voodoo stopped making standard sized ***** and all new production is the Magnum size. As a bonus the **** came with a Brainstorm **** collar made specifically for the Voodoo *****. It’s a nice piece, but I’ll save it for another project.

Here’s the **** and collar.



Installed.



I promised a photo of the new horn button installed. Here it is. It matches the profile of the Gara steering wheel very well. It hangs over the edges on a couple other wheels I’ve got (Momo Prototipo and Momo Racer).



And a more fuzzy version in natural light. Sorry about the quality – a hailstorm is brewing and it’s already dark outside.

modernbeat

I’ve been having issues with alternator whine from my iTouch. It turned out to be a power supply issue, which is common with iPods run off of noisy power. I tried a couple cheap fixes that didn’t really work and finally gave in and just threw money at the problem. I installed a David Navone power isolator in line with the existing power and ground and that solved the alternator whine coming through the iTouch. Normally I wouldn’t buy and expensive fix when an aftermarket deck could have easily solved the problem, but I’m dead-set on installing an Alpine 7909 that I bought just for this project and it will use the same iPod auxiliary input that the current OEM headunit is using.

http://www.davidnavone.com/cart.asp?14&pid=178



Gave the car it's first coat of wax since I've owned it. Finished installing the restored foglights, then found out one of the H3 bulbs was bad and changed it out. Did some maintenance: plugs, wires, oil change and air filter. Painted the front tow hooks, as they were as sandblasted as the foglight lenses.



And the foglights installed and working.

modernbeat

I did some prep for a two-day SCCA Divisional autocross event.

A few years ago I bought a slightly customized 2.5” Enthuza Turbo Exhaust from Dan Pedroza of the Austin, Texas Spokes Sports Car Club. It’s an NA exhaust, but it came with a Magnaflow NA8 cat and the cat currently on the car was an aftermarket unit that’s welded to the midpipe. I shopped around and ended up buying a NA6 Magnaflow bolt-on cat and Fel-Pro exhaust gaskets. Just for the record, the NA6 Fel-Pro gasket numbers are 60620 and 60831. I dug around the junk box for some good rubber hangers from a low mileage part out. A few new stainless bolts and nuts and it was installed. Sorry, no photos. This is the fourth Miata I’ve put an Enthuza exhaust on and every one has been great. The only issue I’ve ever had with them is that Jason at Enthuza doesn’t use one of the midpipe hangers. I’ve usually had the hanger added on the ones I buy, and Dan already had one added on this exhaust.



http://shop.enthuzacar.com/product.s...6&categoryId=4

The other addition is the driver’s seat. Last year I bought a single Lotus Exige seat from Red92’ on CR.net. I bought a NA Driver’s side bracket from RyokoRob on CR.net. He’s made some additional pieces to accommodate the seatbelt receiver. I bought a pair of ’96 seatbelt receivers and brackets from Soviet on Miataturbo.com. The install was a little tight, as the Exige seat is a little wider through the shoulders than the Elise seat, and the bracket tolerances were so tight that any variance required a little bending or prying to get everything lined up. The end result was a seat that gave me about one inch more headroom than my foamectomy seat. I was even able to wear a helmet under the hardtop, and I’m 6’3”.

Installed.


The tight shoulder. It blocks the hardtop latch. I ran the seatbelt through the harness hole.



You can see the different heights between the ’96 receiver bolted to the Lotus seat and the original ’92 receiver.



And the car at the recent Texas Region Divisional event.

FRT_Fun

Wow, nice build thread! Thanks for sharing

modernbeat

The current system in my Miata has the standard upgrades.

Stock NA deck with Jeff Anderson mods: LED lighting, remove high pass filter from headrest channels, remove high/low filters from door channels, add custom (RCA jacks) auxiliary input.

Installed Blaupunkt PCx352 speakers in the headrests.

Installed Polk Audio db651 speakers in the doors.

I went a little further and added modified 6.5" XTC foam speaker baffles, and some RAAMat and Ensolite isolator to the interiors and inside face of the door, the floors, the firewall and the rear bulkhead and package tray.

To hook up my two iPods (one 5v, one older 12v) I used a cable that's compatible with all iPods from Navone. It also charges it, but pulling power from the old airbag circuit resulted in a lot of alternator whine. I tried a few lowbuck fixes, but needed a quick solution and bought the very expensive 12v Isolated Power Supply from Navone.

So far I've been very happy with the system. The doors need some DIY sealing to enhance the Polk speakers. The Blaupunkts in the headrests are a bit shrill when the hardtop is on, but OK when the top is off. The Jeff Anderson mods work really well and I'm super pleased with the powered iPod hookup.

But, I've been collecting parts to revise my system this winter.

I first hunted down a very rare vintage headunit and had it serviced and checked out. It had just received a new CD transport and lights before I got it and it worked just fine. I've also run it on the bench. It's an original Alpine 7909.



The original was a pull-out, which was all the rage back in the day, but people have different expectations today. Luckily, Alpine made a kit to convert it to a fixed install. I tracked down a NIB Alpine 4100 kit and traded some old gear for it.



The Alpine has line-in capability, but it's really only usable when a CD-changer is hooked up. I can spoof the changer and fool the headunit, but another rare Alpine part can do it without cutting anything. I found a NIB Alpine 4913 on ebay.



The Alpine 7909 does not have an internal amp. So I chose a Zuki Audio 6 channel amplifier. The owner of Zuki advertises his amps as having ridiculously low power ratings, like 3 amps per channel! But he refuses to rate them at any more than 0.001% distortion. In reality they are fairly powerful amps. I chose one of his hard to find prototype 6 channel amps. They have a smaller footprint than the current models. Two pairs of channels are class A and the bass channels are class A/B. Although they were still available new at the time, I bought a second hand, but unused Zuki from a collector. Today they are unavailable new. The amp is fairly boring to look at. Just a black heatsink with crossover controls on one end and terminals on the other.







I bought a pair of new Massive Audio CT2 28mm silk dome tweeters. A dealer was blowing them out on DIYMA.com. These will be custom installed in the doors above where the window winder would normally be.



From an experimenter I bought a new pair of Peerless 830883 6.5" drivers. They've always done well in comparisons and the price was right. These will be installed in the stock door speaker location.



For bass, I bought another pair of speakers from a forum moderator that runs speaker tests. I bought a pair of raw drivers out of a pair of Logitech Z2300 computer speakers. They are really just rebranded Tang Band w8-670q drivers. These will be installed in the package tray.





I'll be keeping the iPod cable and isolated power supply from the current install. I've also got some install parts such as speaker wire, power and ground cables, fuse block, control wire (remote trigger), more RAAMat and Ensolite, grills for the 8" bass speakers and more.