Magnolia Garage

Got the roll-cage almost complete today (thanks Walter!), just a few things remaining. We need to bolt in the front and rear plates, and finish up a couple welds in funny angled places. Note that the hard-top in the picture is not for the race, we just thought it looked cool

If you ever need some extra cash, just look in the hand-brake-well of a Miata - we found $12.94 there today (and counting) while pulling up the carpets to do some welding of the cage.

In preparation for welding up the roll-cage tomorrow, we removed and sold the convertible top to RobK. His convertible top is rusty, has holes, and generally wasn’t really a “top” anymore. We’ll install his new one on Sunday, probably along with new carpets.

I’ll probably post a bunch of stuff about our welding and such tomorrow if I’m not shattered by the end of the day.

This weekend hasn’t been super productive (yet) but we did end up cleaning up the cars and scoping out some more parts for sale. One of our friends (Rob) has a 1990 Miata that needs a bunch of assorted parts and pieces to make it nice again. He dropped off his car for a couple weeks so that we can sell him whatever is better on ours for a reasonable price. We spent most of today figuring out which parts were better/worse - it looks like there are a few mechanical things (like power steering and convertible top) and a bunch of cosmetic things (arm-rests, some body panels).

We also sold the outer shift boot to my brother’s girlfriend for $10 - she has a ‘93 Miata.

As you can see in the attached photo, we’ve started on the roll-cage installation. The first phase of installing the main hoop went relatively smoothly. It involved removing the stock seatbelt mechanisms, lining up the hoop properly, drilling a few holes through to the wheelwells, removing the inner mudflaps, and then bolting in some plates. Next we started tacking the other bars in place and everything seems to fit rather well. We still have to trim off some metal for the rear stays, and then we have to buy a lot of pizza and beer for my brother’s professional welder friend

We also found another $0.12 and sold the airbag, the battery, and have a few other parts on-queue to sell. This was sneakily achieved by convincing my brother’s girlfriend that she really wanted a Miata, specifically one that was missing many of the parts that we just happened to be willing to sell. I think that’s one of the marketing tips in business school about how to create a captive market

Thanks to Bill at Flyin’ Miata and Tom at Bethania Garage for the sponsored roll-cage. It just arrived today (all 92lbs of it) and we will soon be welding away to get it turned from pipes into protection.

We didn’t have a lot of time for the Miata this weekend (got my brother’s Ghia running instead) but we were able to get the secondary fuel regulator installed and hooked up.

I was a bit of a bonehead and removed the fuel line from the injector rail instead of from the much easier to access hard return line, but this gave us the opportunity to install new fuel hoses everywhere.

We have exhaust hookup bolts and hi-temp liquid gasket, so at some point soon that will get hooked up. We’re still waiting on some crush washers to show up magically for the turbo oil-line, but that’s just an excuse while we mock up the intake. It’s a bit more complicated and fiddly than I originally thought.

Also, saw the first couple hours of LeMons at Altamont this weekend - pretty cool.

Zandr was able to sell the handbrake trim for $10 the other day. This meant that we had to find a new button, but luckily one was laying around his house so we now have an ultra-chrome high-performance handbrake button. Watch out LeMons!

Oh yeah, Zandr’s friend made an awesome embroidery for our team uniforms.

Got rid of the door panels and steel wheels today for $90 - a bit more and we will be close to getting even. I also bought a banjo bolt for $4.95 from Kragen today plus a bunch of clamps for $10. The oil line now is connected but the intake plumbing will take some more work. I also added in the cost for the intercooler as it wasn’t in our calculations before. Looks like we have about $150 to go before we are back to the $500 budget for the car. I think we should be able to hit it, definitely without the turbo and intercooler but that would take all of the fun out of it

Today we hung the new Jackson exhaust, bolted up the cat and downpipe from the stock exhaust, mounted the intercooler, and mocked up the intake. We are still waiting on the special banjo bolt for the oil feed for the turbo, so it’s not clear when we will be running again, but hopefully by next weekend for LeMons at Altamont just to show off.

My brother and I will make a parts run to get some liquid gasket for tightening up the exhaust system and a few extra bolts (unless we find them laying around) to connect the exhaust stub from the turbo to the downpipe.