Success! The V8 Miata beats the Cobra!

I finally got things put together enough get out on the road and first thing I did was look for a track to hit.  I searched the web and found Des Moines was having an autocross on Sunday.  I checked the registration list and there was a 65 Cobra replica running in the class I run in so that sealed the deal!

So the day starts with rolling out of bed at 3:30am to make the 230 mile drive to the track.  Hey if you are going to be crazy you may as well go all the way! I rolled in right on time, shoveled out the red bull and mickey Ds debris and got through tech. 

  

I should have taken a photo of it but I had forgotten how sitting in line for tech with the hood up and the car running draws a crowd with this car. It's really fun to meet everyone and talk cars with folks. I was delighted to meet a guy with a LS1 96 Miata so now there were 3 drivers in XP!  The other Miata and Cobra were track cars with no heater, wipers, radio, A/C or power steering and both were running on high end autocross tires.  I've got all the comfort stuff and running on 30,000 mile normal street tires so I did what I always do and paid no attention to the times and just had fun.  Note the position of the cone here...

We did have a shot of rain but it only effected one of my runs.  The other run group had a couple pretty soggy runs but everyone had at least 4 good dry runs.  I was glad to have my street tires!

Now if you were to put me in a category as a driver I would be the 4th stooge.  I do try hard to hit the apexes right and take the best line but more often than not the cones get in the way and I end up laughing so hard I have a hard time driving.  The guy in the other V8 Miata suggested I start in 2nd and had I done it right it probably would have been faster but, well it went the way of the rest of the day and you just have to see it... Iowa autocross video CLICK ME

I hope you got a good laugh from that!  It seemed like such a good place to put a camera LOL!  The good news is I had NO tire rubbing anywhere and the flares did great!

I have another event in a couple weeks that should be interesting.  It is a normal autocross then they turn you out on a 1/2 speed run.  This is the track map...

I've had the car a bit over 100 but to be honest when I do the math I am a little concerned about this.  A rolling start on a 1/2 mile run with a 2500lb, 450hp car, 250 miles from home.... What could go wrong?

I hope things are well with you and stay wise!

96 V8 Miata vs 65 427 Cobra going 0 to 100 mph to 0.

Last week we had a sunny 45 degree day and feeling quite festive I spent my lunch break trying to beat the 1965 427 Cobra time going from 0 to 100 to 0.  If you remember from the Cobra post HERE Car and Driver clocked it at 14.8 seconds and test driver Ken Miles did it in 13.8.

As usual my attempt was made on a whim with no preparation at all. The trunk was full of stuff and I have no idea what the tire pressure was. Jenna still has whatever brake pads the prior owner put in it and by the 4th attempt the right front brake was giving off copious amounts of smoke.

Results in minute but first I have to give you the year end update. With highs in the 40s and snow in the forcast it's time to call it a season. Today (Nov 3) was the last trip to church in Jenna until mid April. I have plans for some winter work and I will probably post in late January but for now this is the end of an amazing year.  Remember what Jenna was like in January? 

It all started when #3 cylinder had 20 lbs of compression...:-(

March

April

May

June

July

AugustHonestly I still marvel at it and how far we have come! I thank you again for following along on this great adventure, I am truly blessed by your interest and support!
 

 

Sorry old friend but thanks for all you gave! Yes that is the Camaro... 


I wish you all joy through the holidays and in the coming year. If you go through something hard and wonder where God is remember the teacher always watches close but remains quiet during a test. Unless you raise your hand and ask for help that is! :-)


Now I invite you to turn up your speakers and click HERE to ride along from 0 to 100 to 0 again.  Enjoy!

Can the LS1 V8 Miata really be a daily driver?

I'll get to the question above but first what’s better than a V8 Miata?  3 of them! 

This is 1400 hp in 3 Miatas together at an autocross.

I rolled out of bed at 4:30 in the morning to make the trip to Minneapolis to meet the owners of these fine cars. 
It was fun to see their builds especially the green one because it was built by Flyin Miata.

It was a great day and fun to race with them. I made some new friends and we are already planning track days next year.

Oh and the results…

If you know autocross you know this is a huge spread and the game is 90% driver 10% car. So I just have less common sense then the other guys to know when to slow down!    

The next weekend I raised the car up about an inch and took my sweetie on a 5 day 30th anniversary get away to hit the north shore for some fall colors. 

One of the days we connected with the Miata club of Minnesota on their fall colors cruise.

 

Unfortunately it rained the whole day so I don’t have many photos but it was still fun to roll down the road with 30 other Miatas.The rest of the time we just enjoyed our time away in the north land together.  

We like light houses so we stayed in this one built in 1894,

 and visited a few more.  (this is split rock on lake superior)

Stats on the 5 day trip about half of which was top down :-)

No my sweetie was not in the car when the max speed was set but not by my doing.  The way God has wired me to protect, honor and serve my wife is far beyond my capability!  

So now that you are up to date I want to comment on the question many ask, can a conversion like this be a reliable daily driver?  Indeed.  I have driven her almost every day to work and lots of other trips racking up over 4500 miles since the conversion with no issues.  I do have the overheating on the track to deal with but for normal to spirited use she has proven to be a very capable and fun daily driver.  The gas mileage has averaged 23 mpg including the 4 autocrosses, which for a car this fast and fun to drive is very respectable.  The only real issue I have is the back tires wear much faster than the front ones do…

Well I’m pretty much going to close the adventure out for the year here. In a couple weeks Jenna will go into a shed that will soon be buried in snow.  Come April will be paint, cooling and charging the AC.  So until we visit again I pray this post finds you happy, healthy and not at all average!

Ref is Jeremiah 17:9 in that the only way to be un-average is to lay down our rights, surrender to Jesus, be transformed by the Spirit and be available to God to soar in the way he desires to use us. 

The V8 Miata does it all from track warrior to every day hauler...

I had a most interesting weekend playin with Jenna!  It started with a call Friday morning to play that night with a band I have never heard or worked with before.

You'd think going live with a completely unknown band would be enough to make the night interesting, but I had been pondering how to fit my drums in the car for sometime and I decided today is the day!  

It was a very enjoyable night and the ride home with the stars overhead was stunning!

Before I got home I had a removable luggage rack/ tire carrier whose supports will double as wing mounts designed in my mind! ;-)

Saturday morning it was off to autox with her. I wish I could say it went as well as the gig did but 2 minor issues resulted in major oil leaks that kept me from racing.  The good news is they were cheap to fix and not related to the conversion. The bad news is I need to fire my mechanic!  

Long story short there will never be another trip to the track without checking that the drain plug is tight!

Side note- there was a Camaro built for Good Guys events there. About half the car was carbon fiber and it had a built LS7 in it that sounded amazing.   

I wasn't planning on racing Sunday but since I missed Saturday I decided to duck out of church and hit the track. Sunday was much better and I got all my runs in with no problems.

                                                                                         Photo by CMatson Photography. Click for his FB page

I did have a couple issues though. It was jacket weather and cloudy out but the temp gauge still went from 195 to 215 on course. It came down right away but no way would the cooling system handle the track on a hot day. The other thing was the alternator quit charging. The power wire from the dash quit sending it juice but the charge light did not come on. 

Photo by CMatson

I ran a new wire to the alternator last night and I'm not sure if I am going to put a new radiator and volt gauge in this fall or wait till the spring but I will post on my efforts.  

  Photo by CMatson

You'd think I’d be the fastest Miata there but I’m not. A friend of mine who is an excellent driver runs a 4 cyl NC on race rubber and is always faster than me. It’s a drivers game so I guess I need to fire my driver too! 


It’s interesting that in my little town no body pays any attention to the car. There is not another Miata around so nobody knows what the car is much less that it shouldn't sound like it does. But at the autox it’s a whole other world. I finally got to the point I just leave the hood up because people kept asking to see it!

Photo by CMatson

Next race is the 28th and quite a long drive to get to so I am hoping for no problems.  I'm really excited about it because there will be 2 other V8 Miatas there duking it out!
I pray this post finds you happy, healthy and loving large! 

Is the V8 Miata really a modern day Cobra?

Lots of articles have hyped the V8 Miata as the modern day Cobra; but is it really?

To answer the question I found a review Car and Driver Magazine did in 1965 of the 427 Cobra. Check out the specs compaired to my Jenna: 

                            427 Cobra              Jenna
Curb weight          2529 lbs                  2580 lbs with a full tank of gas

Weight dist           48 F / 52 R              52 F / 48 R with driver and full tank of gas

Engine                 427 CID                  347 CID

Final gear ratio        3.54                              3.55

From the article: “The Cobra will break traction to speeds beyond 100 mph and imprudent applications of power will send the tail end sideways"  Jenna broke them loose at 85 in 3rd and I have no doubt she will beyond 100...

                            427 Cobra            Jenna

Horse power         485 @ 6500         488 @ 6700 (425 adjusted to 1965 SAE ratings)

Torque                 480 @ 3500          413 @ 5000 (apx with my cam and tune)

Wheel base          90”                        89.3”

Track width           56”                        56.2”

Height                  49”                        47.2”

“Others defend the Cobra arguing that its raw power, great brakes and advanced suspension create such unabashed excitement the owner won’t give a damn about creature comfort"  Agreed but I do like windows and a top!

                               427 Cobra          Jenna

1/4 mile time            12.2                     11.5 on drag radials (time from swaptastic)

0 to 60                     4.4                      4.0
0 to 100 to 0 time     14.8                     14.4 but I will kill that with better brakes
Top speed               165                      Not with me in the car!
Mileage                   9-12                     18-25 typically. My average is 22.

"The driver of the Cobra has about as much fear of being passed by a faster car as he does heard of stampeding water buffalo"  I know the feeling...:-)

                                427 Cobra             Jenna

Cost 1965 dollars       $8,000                  $2,516

Cost 2013 dollars       $57,425                $18,000
 

Pretty cool huh? If you would like to read the entire 65 Cobra article click the Cobra

 

So is Jenna a Modern day Cobra then?  At her core she is the same combination of American muscle and great suspension in a small foreign car to create dazzling performance.  Her modern features like A/C, decent gas mileage and a folding top might very well be a part of the Cobra if they were still being made today. 

 

Still I cannot bring myself to see Jenna in the same light as the iconic 427 Cobra.  It's like I can love current southern rock but there will never be another Lynyrd Skynyrd. There can only be one legendary Cobra and it's no slam to any car that nothing can ever rival it.   

 

 

So it's up to the V8 Miata to find her own glory and leave her own mark on us.  Indeed after 4500 miles of driving one I find it most disconcerting to look down at a Miata interior and hear what amounts to a raucous, unvarnished Grand Sport Le Mans racer emanating from within!

Road Test #2 - V8 Miata Autocross Racing!

No trip home on a trailer -YAHOO!  But do have a couple if issues I need to fix... 

In a 65 second autocross the temp gauge goes from 195 to 225 and after the 3rd run in 20 minutes it was at 250. The other thing is she developed pretty significant power steering leak on the last run.  I think it was damage from when I dropped the engine that came to light under the stress of the day.

OK this is raw video with no enhancements to the audio or speed of it. Obviously there is no image stabilization either!  My friend Steve is doing the driving so crank up your speakers and enjoy the ride!  Click the pic below 

0 to 60 V8 Tire Shredder meets the Klutz!

First up you should know I am a convertible guy.  I have owned a half dozen convertibles with at least one made in each decade going back the 70s.  Suffice to say I have a great deal of experience with convertible tops.

So I’m rolling along to work yesterday when the sky opened up with a TREMENDOUS BANG!  

3 things happened in the same nanosecond. 1, the top went down with such force the back window exploded, 2, I woke up, and 3, I found out the brakes are very good in the car!

On close examination I decided I must not have had the pin in the hole on the driver’s side latch.  Really Mazda you designed a system that would allow the latch to latch without the alignment pin being in the hole properly?  After numerous tries I found it is quite easy to do just that, but still I felt pretty stupid (and Klutzy) for missing it.

As tempting as it was to box up all the glass and mail it with a hate letter to the Mazda top latch engineer, I decided it would be better to install the Aero latches that had been sitting on my bench for a month so we don’t have a repeat performance from the hood.

The pin under the hood Can't miss getting the pin into the hole on these guys! That will hold her!

In other news over the weekend I put a cow catcher on her.  (front chin spoiler :-)

I’m not sure I like it.  Maybe with side skirts and a wing…

After cleaning up the glass last night we put her in a car show rust, dents and all!

Wait, is that a NASCAR shirt with shorts, black socks and loafers? 

 
Oh no problem he has a camo hat!  Yeah we know what cool is in small town Minnesota! :-)

I still have a few bugs to work out but with the autocross race coming up I thought I better give her a little gas and see if anything breaks. 

So I made several attempts to record a 0 to 60 time. I could get the clutch out and ease the pedal to the floor just fine but no matter what I did when she hit the power band around 3500 rpm the back end gets loose. Backing off or short shifting to 2nd helps but it’s still impossible to maintain traction at full power.

So the best I could manage was around 4 1/2 seconds but I know with some sticky drag tires she would easily be in the 3s.  For a video of some of my later efforts: CLICK ME  (the early ones were all tire smoke...)

The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of His bounty! Deut 28:12. Yeah he did that this week!  I hope to have track video for ya in the next post...