Miata person here. This is CP for most people. This is what I’d call an “old man” build. Beautiful paint and body, nice interior, low HP ford rumble with a polished intake, extremely questionable stance and wheels, and zero mention of suspension setup. The typical approach with these guys is higher rate front springs…

This is funny and weird and great.

Bringing up grid girls out of nowhere, in an article that doesn’t mention them, comes off as a temper tantrum, just FYI.

Megasquirt has a pretty good range, but definitely not the only game in town. It’s the ECU of choice for the gang at miataturbo.net which means a lot of support, which is why I went with it. Flyin’ Miata actually just introduced a brand new one of their own, and then there’s people running AEM and even Haltech…

Keeping the price down is pure magic and if you can live with the stock ECU, that sounds like a blast. You can always add an aftermarket one later. I think the real benefits are not just in peak numbers but in driveability. I haven’t been able to tune my Megasquirt properly since I’m still chasing down boost leaks,…

This was an interesting read. I’m in the final stages of my Miata turbo build now, and injectors are always a big deal. Stock Miata injectors run out of steam pretty quickly so no owner doing anything beyond the most basic build would use them. I myself am running reconditioned yellow-top RX8 injectors which are 420cc…

I have owned this 1990 Miata for 5 years. It’s got 245k on the clock and I have spent countless hours and untold dollars replacing almost every moving part in the car. Somehow I still decided it needed a turbo, so phase II of the rebuild started in spring of this year, after a 12 month period of collecting parts on…

This. Basically, every electrical connection should be checked, cleaned, and re-done as needed. Every piece of rubber in the engine bay should be replaced. Every belt and every hose. The clamps should also be removed and cleaned. The motor, transmission, and differential mounts should all be replaced. Likely the…

My god that is impressive.

I stumbled across this video earlier today and red flags went up immediately when I realized we were going to be calling full-grown women “girls” not only in the title but for the remainder of the video, even having the women talk about “girls” and call themselves “girls” and that shit drives me bananas. As a man,…

“What dynos are good for, actually, is measuring the effects that modifications have on your car.” Totally. Also, for tuning your spark tables on your turbo build to keep things from blowing up/failing.

Phenomenal work. Great buy and great documentation. Please keep buying old hero machines and treating them right. I have one of these that’s pretty junked out with no bodywork. It’s destined to be a rat bike but man, I LOVE what you’ve done here.

Wow, I didn’t expect to get so many great responses. I should have clarified that I’m familiar with federalization, low take rates of manuals, and all that other kind of thing. I guess I was thinking that Mazda’s brand image would behoove them to push through that, and also that they were thinking more along the…

Can anyone enlighten me as to why automakers sometimes only offer the higher output motors with an automatic? I get that power = nice and automatic = nice for a lot of people so it makes sense to group it together from a packaging standpoint for that audience, but surely part of the reason an automaker drops a bigger…

Carbon fiber engine accessories plant manager:

HOLD MY CALLS

Probably not sillypants money. Never Shelby money or aircooled Porsche money. But clean E30 BMW money? Sure, and more.

You’re in Chicago?! What neck of the woods where you have that kind of space? Ever go to any meets?

Totally. Which is why when people are like “the electronics will all go away!” I’m just like... wha? No?

I would argue that the NA miata is already a classic and so can’t be a future classic. I lost my garage space and I’m finishing my turbo build - tuning and such - on the street in front of my building. I get into a lot of conversations with my neighbors about the car. People really seem to respond to it.

Nothing’s going to feel rare if you have 4.75 of them lying around your property, but most people don’t have that kind of room to stretch out and don’t see these quite as much. I own a 1990 and there are definitely a few NAs running around Chicago, but clean, original early cars are getting more rare and the prices…

I mean, you can do this now to a large extent. I bought a DIYPNP Megasquirt kit for my Miata and put together a complete ECU, having soldered nothing in my life, and it works fine. Granted it’s running a car from 1990, but later models of Megasquirt have a ton of advanced functions. Can aftermarket ECUs get to the…