Project #4. "tiny giant" na miata journal

[1badg35]

thanks everyone for the kind words.

on that note a few more goodies arrived.. was going to model and waterjet cut a few of these pieces myself, but decided why not place the order with another company putting out nice products for these cars.

garagestar na rad guide and upper cowl both shot in textured black



oh and the molded tray is something that will get explained a little later


these will be going in the pile with the other parts for spring time. no reason to install when its 9 degrees out and snow and salt is on everything

I also put aside a pair of black oem floor mats to go along with the black/tan interior sequence thats happening in there. I am considering stripping the entire interior and seeing if someone would swap the oem tan carpeting thats in the car for some oem black, but its going to be kind of random to make that happen. Would love for the only things on the interior in tan to be the lower parts of the dash and the door panels ideally.



-seats.... so far have been a huge struggle. And I still don't have a decided seat. i put forth a teaser picture of probax lotus elise seats - which were purchased and supposed to be in transit, but after 14 days without shipping from washington state to NY, i asked the seller what happened and he said he had "another offer on the seats".... this being 2 weeks after i sent him full payment at a number we agreed to haha. still feel dumber as a result of those dealings.

example of such seats



example of the seats in a miata






so while looking for more black leather probax '06+ pairs, i started widening up the search a bit.

found these





made an offer on a super rare and racing history packed carbon fiber fixed back ferrari challenge stradale Sabelt seats, markings for car number and driver / co- driver still on the seat backs. I am a sucker for things like this, vintage race history always gets me going.
-with these came a few negatives. 1. seats were dirty.... nothing that couldn't be fixed or recovered, but they are borderline filthy from use
2. seats are carbon fiber, but red... yeah how in the hell is that going to work in the tan interior
3. seller won't budge on price which is more than I would pay for them.... I made a solid offer, and all I got was a "NO." so apparently this means the seller doesn't really want to sell them, or is just a tool thinking that the ferrari badge adds a few zeros to the value of them...

which leads me to today.. still trying to figure out something unique that carries the following needs

1. supportive seat - not sure if need for ability to fit 5pt harnesses or not, but i guess that cant hurt- the elise probax seats don't allow for harnesses for example.
2. ability to get the seat lower so i can gain room in the car
3. ability for the seat to be comfortable for a daily driver- by comfort, i mean supportive but not sitting on a rock that you cant get out of after a few hours of driving..
4.ability for this seat to bolt up and come out when the miata gets replaced by a new daily down the line. this is key, probably wouldn't be feasible to ask premium on super expensive seats when selling a miata, so the stockers would likely go back in if this was to happen down the line. I definitely wouldn't mind being able to keep a pair of quality seats and dropping them into the next 4-5 or so daily drivers. fabrication of brackets isn't a big issue to me.

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[1badg35]

a few small updates and a quick test fit for the hell of it. this is the rear wheel 15x8.5 with 3" stepped lip thats part of a set for sale.







shocked a 3" lip wasn't a big stretch for this car at all. obviously lack of installed coilovers didnt help the massive gap, but it wasn't hard imagining this work with a big tire and no camber.... very surprised to say the least



up front, the same went for the 15x8 with 2.5" stepped lip... no work needed to get it to fit

-- now none of this really matters as bbs RS will not be going on the car. more info coming soon on what will be: heres a quick teaser of a part of one of the technical drawings in process after a bunch of research, design, and adjustments to the design. best part about it.... faces are going to be out of 7075 t6.... should weigh in under 4lbs. and be far stronger than the 6061 that is current industry standard..






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and a few small parts made it onto the car. the two air guides and the door sills all shot in wrinkle black for the no maintenance look.



sorry don't mind the crappy picture. sun was too bright although it was only 25deg out.

[RocketSled]

Buys miata as temporary daily driver, Designs custom wheels for it. lol

What you do is amazing, man

[hinrichs]

I don't know what your price range is for seats, and I know comfort is subjective.....but I was quite happy with my recaro pole poisiton I had in my m3, but it fit me perfectly which I know can be an issue due to the harness holes with a lot of people. I could be in that seat for hours with no discomfort unlike the stock seats.

[1badg35]

yeah I love pole positions. personally i wanted to find a used set of seats to keep costs to a minimum, but honestly i don't want to end up with a cheap seat that I don't want to sit in.

i was considering (in an attempt to keep cost down) getting the passenger a black leather oem seat, and a pole position for the driver... a little weird but i guess not horrible as a temporary fix

[hinrichs]

I don't think that would look bad for a while at all. I went cloth for the m3 but that was more availability and cost more than anything, plus finding cinnamon leather for the centers turned out to be very hard.

Stable Energies in Garfield, NJ is where I went to get my seat, not sure what they have in stock anymore but they do stock recaro, sparco, and a few other brands I think.

[DER E30]

-- now none of this really matters as bbs RS will not be going on the car. more info coming soon on what will be: heres a quick teaser of a part of one of the technical drawings in process after a bunch of research, design, and adjustments to the design. best part about it.... faces are going to be out of 7075 t6.... should weigh in under 4lbs. and be far stronger than the 6061 that is current industry standard..

It has to be much more work than this before you can print new faces right?? How many hours do you estimate to make a set of faces from scratch?

[1badg35]

Yeah this is one of the several 2d scale drawings for proportion and dimensions once I decided on the actual design. The solidworks models for the turned forging and the full model are in process which is what gets 3d printed at scale to make sure I like all of the dimension of the 3d face and it's ins and outs, and then turned over into mastercam to prepare for any actual machining. Before that I usually have my engineer convert the files and test any of the 3d models I make for stress points, then try to remove any unneeded material on the model where it's over engineered , then back for some testing, etc. it's quite a process most won't understand. Then blank forgings get turned into the overall shape based on one of the solidworks models and finally patterns get cut into the forgings.
I am an architect and industrial designer, after the sketches, this is always my next step before bringing anything into 3d. Proportions are huge in getting something that looks right and can be then engineered correctly and checked for tolerances

Hard to say how many hours, it's not exactly that simple. Just was a teaser image of one of the 2d flat drawings. The section drawings show a lot as well as it's purely based on the brake clearances front and rear after quite a few measurements but I won't be showing those yet. I will say the inside of the face will clear he brake caliper by a hair..

[DER E30]

That's really neat that you run structural analysis on the parts so you can make it as light as possible! My sister's BF was showing me some of the neat things solidworks can do but I'm sure that doesn't even scratch the surface...

If you make the brakes that close will that rule out any BBK options or do you mean clears a specific BBK by a hair? OR Miata weighs nothing so BBK is stupid and more unsprung weight?

[Pedro'z]

Always had a soft spot for na Miata! Especially the clean one like yours! However, I feel like you should keep this a bit more oriented on the driving experience! By the way, I also bought GarageStar products last month, Ken seems like a pretty cool guy!! Cheers!

[1badg35]

That's really neat that you run structural analysis on the parts so you can make it as light as possible! My sister's BF was showing me some of the neat things solidworks can do but I'm sure that doesn't even scratch the surface...

If you make the brakes that close will that rule out any BBK options or do you mean clears a specific BBK by a hair? OR Miata weighs nothing so BBK is stupid and more unsprung weight?

yeah, don't want any issues down the line with anything, structural testing things for weak points is huge in this process .. as for bbk, no real need in this case, plan on putting some race fluid and some stoptech pads as its a very light car and already stops abruptly. I know this from some mishaps already with overzealous female SUV drivers. also will allow me to maximize lip size while still being able to run a meaty tire.

There will be a lot more info on the blog shortly (once a little more progress on the set is done) but things like this are the main purpose of the new wheel line invitational.spinfab. Its the exact opposite of a mass produced item, its catered to only a few hand chosen who have inspiring builds. The car is then studied, designs are sketched and rendered to fit the style of the build, then it gets more serious, engineering, spec drawings, models, 3d prints, and then the machining of the final faces... some may then go on for a small production run, others stay one offs. as is true of the case of the invitational #001 below which will be staying a one off set




the miata is in no way deserving of the invitational spinfab set #004, but honestly any way to get the idea out there is helpful, and the car might see a few shows this coming season after some time appropriate things happen to it. And its hard not to want to design something when you have a small new project in front of you coming together.

this process mostly started out of frustration that a vintage jdm set of wheels was wanted, but most are 13" which is far too small even for a miata. so lots of research, scouring through the thousands of pictures i have saved of old jdm wheels, and then lots of sketches like these i found last night

Always had a soft spot for na Miata! Especially the clean one like yours! However, I feel like you should keep this a bit more oriented on the driving experience! By the way, I also bought GarageStar products last month, Ken seems like a pretty cool guy!! Cheers!

the whole purpose of this particular car for me is driving experience. main focus of the build, as I said earlier in the thread, the wheels and tires will be meaty and the suspension component upgrades will be the bulk of the upgrades being done to the car. in my opinion, the 1.6 isn't worth fooling around with being that its such a low mileage original motor and it won't make the power i would like without forced induction (not going to bother with this one), so the main concern is suspension and the ability to be able to throw the car around as often as possible.

[HenzPowell]

some more with cup for scale so you can see the shifts are unobstructed with this new location





this is 5th gear - well knob isnt screwed on but you get the idea






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Best. aftermarket part. ever.

[1badg35]

^yeah if you saw it right now, you'd be shocked... pictures to come soon. i hacked it up

[1badg35]

when you need parts on a miata, you can either get the part or buy a second miata. I chose to do the latter.
more to come. and lots of parts will be available if people need something


I have to say, this thing has been spectacular all winter. 14" blizzaks and some driving technique adjustments and this thing has had zero issues in any weather whether ice or a foot of snow. never though that would be the case but its been far better than any of my previous quattro cars or bmw x... and much simpler to deal with as it doesn't have random electrical things crapping out every week. And I'm not kidding when I say this, I've put almost 4k miles on the car this winter, and have not gotten stuck a single time. hoping to keep it that way








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[_e90]

I was just thinking about this thread yesterday. Great to hear that it's been doing well in the snow. Hopefully the snow stops soon though, so you can start putting in work!