V8 Miata Cooling upgrade and other little stuff.

The flare sculpting is progressing slooooowly. Like all new things it is one step forward and 2 back as I keep trying to get things looking good and symmetrical 

Or in this case wipe on, sand off, wipe on, sand off, repeat....  I've used about 2 gallons of fiberglass so far and as you can see about half of it has been turned into dust!  I have a short video update I made a couple of weeks ago if you want to see it HERE 

 

More on that to come but this post is to update on the cooling system and other stuff I am doing to get ready for summer.

 

I decided to do a cam swap because for about a 100 bucks the new cam will give me 35 more HP, put less stress on the valve train, and well OK I'll be honest and it has a much more wicked idle!

Surprise the cam won't come out because it hit's the core support.
 

Yeah like that would stop me and out comes the saws all! :-)   I got it all back together and if you want to hear it check out the flare video update mentioned above.   

 

Also new this year I decided not to mess with the cooling issues anymore and went for broke on a HUGE radiator.  It's a beast at 5 inches taller and 2 inches wider than my old one!

It is an LS swap radiator for a 60s Chevelle and given that car probabaly weighs 4000 lbs I think I will be in good shape now. 

 It looks low but dosn't not hang down any farther than the AC condenser did.

I had to cut the radiator support quite a bit to push it upwards in the car. It clears the hood by just a hair.  I think it is the biggest possible radiator you could put in an NA miata.

 

This is the new cooling fan to go with the bigger radiator.  It is a 16" and the old one was 11".  It makes an absolute hurricane!

 

I set it off the radiator using a piece of fuel line because a little space between the blade and the fins moves more air. 

 

I finally put horns back in and these are the Camaro horns.  No cute beep beep in this muscle car!

 

The other thing I did under the hood was made a brake pedal support at the end of the master cylinder. 

 

The firewall flexes when you mash down hard on the brakes in these cars and this anchor at the end of the master cylinder is the fix for it.

 

 

I found a great deal on a metal strap mount fire extinguisher so I welded up a proper mount and put my old plastic strap wood mount extinguisher to use elsewhere.



 

I whipped up a couple luggage racks using the wing mounts for them. This one is a tire rack and I also made one to fit my bass drum so I can gig with the car.

 

That about brings you up to speed on the mechanical stuff. I have more body work to show you but will wait till next time so this doesn’t get too long.

 

I hope you had a wonderful Easter season. I always ponder which I enjoy more Easter or Christmas but always decide either would be useless without the other!

 

 

DIY wide body fender flares – Yep it’s really happening!

I’m still plugging away at the flairs and you know I'm starting to warm up to the idea this just might work! 

As trial an error goes the first layer of fiberglass was both a trial and an error.... I'm not sure why but it bubbled and pulled away from the frame in several spots leaving rather large bumps to deal with.  It's hard to see in the photo but it was pretty nasty.  

I really could see no way to fix it other than to get out the grinder and take off the high spots.  That led to a week of grinding, patching and filling to make the high parts low and the low parts high.  The good news is I figured out a way to keep it from lifting like that again and they are starting to take shape and look good now.



With the fronts now covered I had one of my many sit on the garbage bucket and stare at the car till I figure out how to proceed sessions.  


The more I pondered the more I knew I had to toss everything in the back and start over.  They were just way to small compared to the front and if I don't go really bold back there the big tires will look like a monster truck.

  
So I took the lessons learned from the front and started with an entirely different approach. I pushed things out as far as I could on the quarter and also went straight up at the top about a 1/2" to give it a muscle car sort of shoulder.

I used roughly the same top to bottom curve of the original fender but exaggerated it a lot front to back and came up with this..

 

The photos don't do it justice they have some pretty sexy curves in them.

 

I made each piece for both sides at the same time to keep things as identical as possible.

I also was very careful to make things smooth so no drill holes this time because that distorted the metal.

It's slow putzy work but so far I have about 55 bucks into it so can't really complain. I would have less than that in it if I did have to turn all the fiberglass bumps into dust!

Psalm 37:3-5:

"Trust in the LORD and do good;

Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.
Delight yourself in the LORD;
And He will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the LORD,
Trust also in Him, and He will do it."

Hard to believe that one year ago today I cut the tunnel and made my first weld on the car...

OK so maybe cutting off half the fenders was not such a good idea.

I posted my fender flare idea on a couple forums and got an even split of comments.  Half the guys think it will never work, never look good and I ruined the car.  The other half think it’s great and can’t wait to see it done.  I switch camps about as often as I change paint colors.

Since the last post I decided I needed more clearance so I took another whack at the fender wells.

That was fine in the front but in the back I got into the inner fender well farther than I should have and kind of messed it up.

I tried to weld it back together but as usual this car is impossible to weld on.  So I tried to wrap the seam with fiberglass but it was too cold and took forever to set up so it just sort of fell off.

Yeah I have had better days in the garage…  As I contemplated what an idiot I was for not covering the tire and what fun it will be welding new quarters on I decided I should work on the front because when this bombs fenders are easy to replace.   

 

So I finished up my front frames and welded them to the fenders.

 

I spent quite a bit of time trying to get them the same.  I should have covered them with contact paper or something to better see the shape of them but I thought I had it close enough to glass them.

I also should have taken the paint off farther back and primed everything but it was the first 50 degree day in 6 months and the forcast was for snow so now was the time to break out the fiberglass.

Looks like a big nasty wart...

It would be easy to list all the ways this could end up looking awful or structurally unsound.  But as nasty as it looks now in my minds eye I see the end result and I'm feeling fairly OK with it.  Mostly because my wonderful wife reminded me of how many times last year I thought the car would never run again and how confident she is that this is no different.  Yep she is the best wife ever!.  

Update on paint colors - Matte Black is out and Copper Pearl is in!

For the better part of 2 weeks the car was going to be sun burnt copper pearl with silver stripes.  If you are counting that was “this is it” color number 4…  I love the copper but it's just too much of a good thing.  So todays top pick is gloss black with sun burnt copper pearl stripes.

A tad less orange than this and smaller stripes but very close to what this looks like. 

 

And what happened to dark blue and silver that everyone liked?? 

Yeah I know but we have been given so many options!  I'll just have to see what next week brings…

There are no good tires for V8 Miatas!

Yet another set of wheels arrived this week. Number 4 if you are counting. Blah. You’d think I would be excited but really I am pretty crabby about the situation.  Let me explain.

There are no good tires for V8 Miatas. Period that’s it. I don’t care what size wheel or what offset you pick there are no good street tires available that are wide enough for a V8, and short enough to run on a Miata.

Most guys run 225/45-15s which is the biggest streetable size there is but still a very wimpy tire for 400+ hp. And all the tires in that size are expensive track orientated tires with only 7/32nds tread and a wear rating of 200.  So good luck getting even 10,000 miles out of them.  At the rate mine are wearing I think 3 track days would completely consume a brand new set of them.

Well why are there no better street tires? The problem is there are no factory production cars that use wide 15” tires to support wider sizes. For example the Corvette has used wide low profile tires for that last couple decades so the guys in Camaro and Mustang world have lots of great tires available to them. But our little Miatas have no such benefactor.

The choice is to spend $800 to $1000 a year on the available wimpy tires or doing lots of surgery to fit bigger, cheaper longer lasting street tires in it. Anyone will tell you the disadvantages in height and weight out weigh the advantages in width but for me I just can't spend that much on tires every year. 

OK but why exactly are you crabby? Because I am digging into a major project that won't even give me half of what I want out of it. Sure it will be cheaper in the long run but for all this work I'd like at least 3 more inches of rubber on the ground and I can't even get half that because THERE ARE NO GOOD TIRES FOR V8 MIATAS!  Humph. So here we go.

The new tires are 255/40-17s and this is what they look like.

Yeah I know 5 spoke chrome are not what JDM Miatas are suppose to have but I don't care what the tuner kids say. I am an old muscle car guy so Jenna gets stripes, scoopes and chrome wheels and Charlie can fix her next time around. :-)  Anyway as bad as the fit looks with the fender sitting right on the tire the real problem is behind the scenes.  In a turn the tire hits the firewall where the frame rail gusset is.  That is a major support structure I don’t take modifying lightly.  So no cutting for sure... lets just say I induced a tolerance.... 

Obviously the fenders need lots of cutting too.  I love owning a Sawzall!

The rear inner fender is a structural piece so it will get rolled around and welded back together. 

The holes are to plug weld it clean as a factory spot weld! 

OK now that you have cut half the poor car away... yeah I said it is major surgery! 

You  may recall I bought a set of flairs with the first set of wheels last summer and sold them both. Thing is I really don’t like the look of bolt on flares like that. 

Even painted they look like an after thought.  I want something that looks like it is part of the car and belongs there.  Such flairs and wide body kits exist but they are over $1500 so there is no chance I can do that.  But I can do 100 bucks worth of sheet metal, fiberglass and body putty to make my own.  

Of course I need a pattern and vision of what to make them look like and this is mine.

I thought about working up a foam mock up to take a mold off of the way most folks do it.

  

But you end up making 3 parts (plug, mold and flair) and only use one.  Seemed like a waste so I decided to just do it in one pass by making a metal frame to support the shape I want the fiberglass matte to be. That is a all a mold really does and this way I gain support by having a metal frame inside the flare.  

All those hours playing erector set finally pay off!  I'll have to weld the frame to the car to really be able to work it to the shape I want but overall I think this will be a better way to go.  Mind you I have never done either method and never seen anyone do this frame idea, but that is hardly a reason not to try it.  What could go wrong?  LOL!

Still no decision on the paint color but the poll was overwhelming blue and silver.  My latest thought is hot rod matte black with gloss black stripes like so

Chrome looks good against it but my wheels are not this bright.  They are a black chrome and I think would really pop off the satin black. 

Something kind of different but I don't know.  I'll see if I get any reaction to the idea here and keep looking. Forever forward!

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  
Have a GREAT week!!