BFH miata
08-15-2008, 12:40 PM
Since everyone else is doing it, I figured that I would join in on the car history fun. Sorry that this is so wordy!
My name is Scott, I'm 32 years old and I've been a miata fan since they first came out. HOWEVER, it took a while before I finally bought one. I have a bad habit of being "thrifty," thinking I can build something for cheaper than I could buy it... you'll see what I mean as I post more pictures of my "projects." Some turn out, others don't... I've also been playing around with some Tshirt designs under the BFH Garage name. There is a link to my site and store in my signature.
My first ride, inherited from my parents, was a 1980 Chevy Citation 4 dr hatch back with a 4 speed tranny and 145k on the clock. I drove the crap out of that little car and then purchased a the closest thing to a miata that I could afford, a regular cab Mazda B2200 pickup. (a long shot, I know). At the time, I worked at a truck accessory store, so of course I spent too much time and money on the truck. With a sunroof and a sliding back window, it was like a miata with a bed on the back! I'll try to find pictures of the to scan later.
While in college, the Neon came out and I saw a lot of people having fun racing them. I picked up a base model coupe, with intentions of doing some sort of performance driving/racing, but ended up spending more time and money on stereo equipment than performance parts. After I graduated from UGA and had a "real" job, I sold the Neon to my dad and I purchased my 1995 miata in 2000. The car had about 45k on the odo when I bought it, no it is up to 111k. It played the daily driver role for 5+ years, now it lives in the garage and we take it out on nice days.
When I bought the miata, my friends all thought I was crazy because I was in my "adrenaline rush" loving whitewater kayaking phase. I was at a river every weekend and everyone thought I should buy an subie or an suv instead of the miata. I knew the miata wasn't the ideal car for outdoor activities, but I had a solution in mind. I designed and built a trailer to make it the "sport activity miata." You can only imagine the looks you get when you go hauling *** past someone with the top down and a trailer loaded with a kayak and a mountain bike!
http://www.gadrivers.net/~kayakmiata/Random/turbotrailer.jpg
My miata has gone through a lot of DIY modifications, some good, some bad. I seem to have a history of starting and then not necessarily finishing projects. On most forums, I go by GTS miata, because I have a bit of an unhealthy fettish for additional lights on cars. My Neon had large hella lights on the front (for those late night runs to a river) so I wanted to continue the theme on the miata. Additional influence came from the c5r corvettes:
http://www.bfhgarage.com/public/random/c5-r.jpg
Knowing that I might screw it up, I bought an extra bumper for the miata and started cutting…
http://www.bfhgarage.com/public/random/GTS-lights1.jpg
http://www.bfhgarage.com/public/random/GTS-lights2.jpg
In the end, I couldn’t get a piece of plexiglass or lexan to cleanly bend in multiple directions to cover the lights, so I put my original bumper back on. Once the Hella light phase was over, I had the car repainted the subie black with the subtle gold flake in it.
Earlier this year I took a swing at a DIY turbo. After months of research and purchasing I got everything installed. I had a home brew manifold, Volvo T3 turbo and a home brew down pipe that I bought off someone on miataturbo.net. I also installed a saab intercooler, DIY pipes and a megasquirt plug and play. I got the car running but I ran into a water temp problem. The gauge in the cluster kept wanting to move towards hot the moment I headed into boost. I tried a few things to fix it, but ultimately ran out of funds. (My wife’s back in school working on her doctorate, so there isn’t a lot of free cash laying around!) After a few months of screwing with it and not finding the problem, I started to really miss driving the car so I pulled everything out. Now I’m back to NA and loving it. During my brief time with the turbo, I’ve decided that I’m more of a supercharger kind of guy, so if I try again I’ll be playing with a supercharger. Since going back to NA, I’ve had no issues what so ever, I’m still not sure what the temp issue was with the turbo. Here is the one picture from the build that I could find:
http://www.bfhgarage.com/public/turbopics/3-18-08f.jpg
I’ll post more pictures of other “projects” later…
My name is Scott, I'm 32 years old and I've been a miata fan since they first came out. HOWEVER, it took a while before I finally bought one. I have a bad habit of being "thrifty," thinking I can build something for cheaper than I could buy it... you'll see what I mean as I post more pictures of my "projects." Some turn out, others don't... I've also been playing around with some Tshirt designs under the BFH Garage name. There is a link to my site and store in my signature.
My first ride, inherited from my parents, was a 1980 Chevy Citation 4 dr hatch back with a 4 speed tranny and 145k on the clock. I drove the crap out of that little car and then purchased a the closest thing to a miata that I could afford, a regular cab Mazda B2200 pickup. (a long shot, I know). At the time, I worked at a truck accessory store, so of course I spent too much time and money on the truck. With a sunroof and a sliding back window, it was like a miata with a bed on the back! I'll try to find pictures of the to scan later.
While in college, the Neon came out and I saw a lot of people having fun racing them. I picked up a base model coupe, with intentions of doing some sort of performance driving/racing, but ended up spending more time and money on stereo equipment than performance parts. After I graduated from UGA and had a "real" job, I sold the Neon to my dad and I purchased my 1995 miata in 2000. The car had about 45k on the odo when I bought it, no it is up to 111k. It played the daily driver role for 5+ years, now it lives in the garage and we take it out on nice days.
When I bought the miata, my friends all thought I was crazy because I was in my "adrenaline rush" loving whitewater kayaking phase. I was at a river every weekend and everyone thought I should buy an subie or an suv instead of the miata. I knew the miata wasn't the ideal car for outdoor activities, but I had a solution in mind. I designed and built a trailer to make it the "sport activity miata." You can only imagine the looks you get when you go hauling *** past someone with the top down and a trailer loaded with a kayak and a mountain bike!
http://www.gadrivers.net/~kayakmiata/Random/turbotrailer.jpg
My miata has gone through a lot of DIY modifications, some good, some bad. I seem to have a history of starting and then not necessarily finishing projects. On most forums, I go by GTS miata, because I have a bit of an unhealthy fettish for additional lights on cars. My Neon had large hella lights on the front (for those late night runs to a river) so I wanted to continue the theme on the miata. Additional influence came from the c5r corvettes:
http://www.bfhgarage.com/public/random/c5-r.jpg
Knowing that I might screw it up, I bought an extra bumper for the miata and started cutting…
http://www.bfhgarage.com/public/random/GTS-lights1.jpg
http://www.bfhgarage.com/public/random/GTS-lights2.jpg
In the end, I couldn’t get a piece of plexiglass or lexan to cleanly bend in multiple directions to cover the lights, so I put my original bumper back on. Once the Hella light phase was over, I had the car repainted the subie black with the subtle gold flake in it.
Earlier this year I took a swing at a DIY turbo. After months of research and purchasing I got everything installed. I had a home brew manifold, Volvo T3 turbo and a home brew down pipe that I bought off someone on miataturbo.net. I also installed a saab intercooler, DIY pipes and a megasquirt plug and play. I got the car running but I ran into a water temp problem. The gauge in the cluster kept wanting to move towards hot the moment I headed into boost. I tried a few things to fix it, but ultimately ran out of funds. (My wife’s back in school working on her doctorate, so there isn’t a lot of free cash laying around!) After a few months of screwing with it and not finding the problem, I started to really miss driving the car so I pulled everything out. Now I’m back to NA and loving it. During my brief time with the turbo, I’ve decided that I’m more of a supercharger kind of guy, so if I try again I’ll be playing with a supercharger. Since going back to NA, I’ve had no issues what so ever, I’m still not sure what the temp issue was with the turbo. Here is the one picture from the build that I could find:
http://www.bfhgarage.com/public/turbopics/3-18-08f.jpg
I’ll post more pictures of other “projects” later…