Month: March 2020

As you might have heard, there is this thing called COVID going around, and it really sucks. So, when the opportunity arose to return to Adams Motorsports Park for an afternoon of Time Attack (this time with sunlight) I couldn’t sign up fast enough. Like most things in this current time, extra precautions were taken to ensure minimal germ transfer and ensure appropriate social distancing guidelines were followed.

The only problem is that unlike last time where we would be doing a warm-up lap, three flying laps, and a cool down before coming in; this four-hour-long afternoon session would consist of taking turns doing one warm-up, five hot, two cool, four more hot and then a final cool-down lap before coming in. Up until this point, the Craigslist Miata hadn’t been pushed anywhere near its limit for more than two minutes at a time. All seemed well on the first series of hot laps; however, when we turned up the pace for the following series of hots the car was not so cooperative.

Continue reading “Time Attack @AMP 03/31/20”

There seems to be a theme lately that every upgrade, modification, customization, and or supposed enhancement; just ends up making the car more and more impractical. This week’s improvement came all the way from Bulgaria in the form of the Jass Performance center console delete and shift boot combination. The setup is straight forward and probably would have benefited from removing the top layer of existing carpet from the transmission tunnel. With a little extra trimming to the thin fiberglass trim piece in order to locate the screw holes and some extra forceful shoving of the carpet up under the tombstone, the pieces fit quite nicely. They tidy up the interior for a more spartan look, now where do I put my cup?

Continue reading “Jass Performance Console or Hold my Drink, Really”

Now, why did we go and do that? We broke the number one rule for the Craigslist Miata “if it ain’t broke yet don’t try to fix it”. In an overzealous attempt to impress people immediately after the hood is popped, the plastic end tanks on our little Mazda’s stock radiator just weren’t cutting it in the good looks department when compared with the anodized blue bar running across the top of the previously polished valve cover. So we finally gave in to the temptation to upgrade the CLM with a very fancy aluminum “racing” radiator. Truth be told, in a past life it was an aluminum Koyo that saved the life of my SR20, so why would things be any different this time.

It was only after finding a small puddle of slightly slimy water under the engine that we took a closer look. The first discovery was some coolant accumulated along the underside of the new cooler, then more red as you went up the core and eventually a little puddle sitting at the base of what appears to be a bleeder screw. One trip to the track and it looks like my new radiator got a cut above its eye and is bleeding down one side of its face. Emails have been sent, along with accompanying photos. Let’s see what they have to say about this one. So, why did we do this again?