Vanilla Build

[brsteinbach]

Loving this. I'm sub'd.

[justaneffer]

fuck yeah. ***** watching that video of it knocking tho... lol gonna look really clean and slammed on the the epsilons

[Drock30]

Alright so Vanilla is on down time until the new radiator arrives since I've been experiencing over heating problems when driving over 50 MPH. Plus the timing is off which contributes to the over heating, So I'll tackle both when the Rad arrives.

In the mean time, I got some wheel work done and stripped the lips to bare metal.

Cleaned them up


Applied the stripper



Then after a few scrubbing and rinsing, I got this



Up next is polishing the inside barrel. Since I'm trying to work smart or lazy, I bolted the face to the lip and mounted it on the rear. Therefor, I'll be able to rotate the wheel while sanding it done.

Since I had them mounted, I wanted to see the fitment again and damn.....



seriously considering flares now. Money is tight though.

[MrGL2]

Looks good ! Might have missed it but any pictures of the bay.

I'm thinking about wire tuck too

[C-Hutch]

so does it still knock? just noticed you talking about overheating problems and getting a radiator and such.

[Drock30]

so does it still knock? just noticed you talking about overheating problems and getting a radiator and such.

I ended up purchasing an engine so the new engine is fine except for the timing being off.
The newer engine to the right/ Old engine to the left


Good news though. Tore into the Older engine and found that the bottom end is perfect. It the head that caused the knocking. It seems that I forgot to torque down the exhaust camshaft.

I'm planning on getting the head work done, new low compression pistons for a future turbo set up.

[LIMESTED]

this is going somewhere

[TeckniX]

Looking good - I'm sure getting everything labelled made re-assembly much easier.
Good thing about mounting the wheels to the car to 'sand' them, is you can jack up the rear, put it in gear and simply hold sand paper - ghetto auto-spinner. haha

[Drock30]

Looks good ! Might have missed it but any pictures of the bay.

I'm thinking about wire tuck too

Never did do a full tuck on the bay due to a friend not letting me borrow his welder plus I ran out of money so I just started putting everything back together.

Looking good - I'm sure getting everything labelled made re-assembly much easier.
Good thing about mounting the wheels to the car to 'sand' them, is you can jack up the rear, put it in gear and simply hold sand paper - ghetto auto-spinner. haha

Auto spinner = Quick and easy sanding.

Almost done with it. I just need to polish them. Update soon

[M.Doban]

Don't get flares! Just my opinion. I think a nice stretch and a small fender pull/roll will look SO much better.
Nice work too!

[Drock30]

Spent some time polishing the lips and they came out pretty good. They aren't superb great but they'll do for now. Only polished 2 lips since I may be using 3" lips for the fronts now.

This method worked out great.



My radiator also came in so I tackled the timing issue along with installing the rad.



Too bad It didn't solve my overheating issue so more work needed to be done.
After some diagnosing, I was able to get trace the problem down and I ended up replacing a few parts to get it to work.

Cooling Fan fuse was busted so I got a replacement


Still didn't work so I found that the Rad Fan relay was bad


Fan turned on at this point but not when the car was warmed up so I replaced the Cooling Thermoswitch


FINALLY! after spending the entire day running back and forth to the parts store, I was able to solve the overheating issue and now she drive close to 100% now

[brsteinbach]

Awesome, glad you were able to figure out the problem.

[Naters]

looking good! doing some great work

[Drock30]

Small Update:

I've been enjoying Vanilla these pass few days with some small tweaks here and there.

Finally gave her a wash after about 8 months. Didn't seem like it made much of a difference but she's cleaner now. Need a paint job bad though.


Next I installed my fire extinguisher which took some thought of how I was going to get it to stay. Finish product was perfect, cheap, and I love it.

Never too safe


GarageStar 2.75" shift extender came in as well and GOT DAYUM! It's so awesome. I swear it makes driving a Miata much better.

Planning on powder coating it to match the interior.

[brsteinbach]

Moar!