My Miata is getting a pretty old Lady. With twenty years of cruising, travel and track abuse behind the wheels, the time has come to give the engine a proper rebuild. The money was in place, parts were about to be ordered but how do I travel around during the rebuild? Last weekend the whole situation took an unexpected turn as I got a great offer on another Miata.
As some expensive parts on my car, besides the engine, needed to be replaced as well, the car on sale had these already installed and they were in good shape. Hmmm…..what to do??? Sell one, get the other? That was not an option. A lot of changes had already been made to the red Miata to make it work both on the street as on the track. Unfortunately I can not keep two cars in front of my house due to limited parking permits. Fortunately a great solution presented itself and I now have an indoor space to keep one car dry during the year. Great stuff!!! I bought the blue Miata the same day. Finally I can get some work done and learn more on how to do some wrenching myself.
This is my new NA Miata. Like the other one it is one of the first ever made. The chassis code is even under the 5000 produced NA’s at that time. It still feels like I am cheating when I drive off and leave the red one parked. The wheels are way to big for the car and it’s handling. These 17 inch wheels will be replaced with soon with the spoked wheels which I run on the red car. Small other changes will probably follow as well to make it handle better and give it a bit more of an aggressive look.
As I do not have the budget to run a full season of MaX5 racing and I love taking the photo’s for the series, I run the occasional track day instead. For this reason the car was already transforming slowly into a track car. Now that the blue car has joined the family I can go a bit more crazy. Once this car has been turned into the track spec, that I have in mind, it has some more horse power and great throttle response.
The engine will get a full IRTB set up with AE101 throttle bodies and many other additions to make it a bit more aggressive and functional. It will remain street legal so I can enjoy it while running the hills surrounding the Nordschleife and other great roads as well.
Ever since I own a Miata it has surprised me how well these little cars handle on track. While being way down on power these cars fight off some pretty hardcore machines in the corners. This photo was taken a few years back by Michael from Autofotos.nl.
This is one of my favorite shots of my car running at the Zandvoort racetrack in Holland. I was doing a track day together with the guys from Team Zerospeed. An awesome day out. Here I am running together with Mike (R.I.P.) in his mighty S2000. Credits go out to Austin from Team Zerospeed for taking this image!
The full progress on this build we be published as soon as the project starts on PagodaGarage.com
Matmiata 