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PostPosted: June 14, 2012, 10:02 pm 
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I had the good fortune of having to travel back to SLC on business the other day. I of course had to find my way over to my folks house and take the little beastie out for a spin. It fired right up with no protest. ( I have it on good authority that my dad is keeping the battery "charged up" and the tires "rotated") ;)
I drove her up and over traverse ridge as well as a jaunt up the canyon to Snowbird. What a blast. Man I miss that car!
I can't wait for the house to be done here so I can bring it down!

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PostPosted: September 24, 2012, 3:26 pm 
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The house is finally done! We moved all of our hud in last Saturday. The third bay is currently full of all my tools and all the boxes marked 'shop' by the packers. I made sure everything else ended up in the double garage in an attempt to make sure the third bay becomes a true shop, not a storage bin.

I booked a ticket to fly back to SLC to pick up the 7! My dad has graciously agreed to co-drive on the way down. As much fun as it would be to just solo it in the 7 that's just not going to happen. The moving co. wouldn't take my argon tanks, propane tanks, chemicals etc. so we will be loading up the truck and trailer to haul it all down.

I can't wait! - And the weather here is finally cooling off to where it one could conceivably drive more than 30 seconds without an air conditioner going at full blast!

There was one casualty on the move. The mold just didn't make it. With the heat in storage the bondo shrunk enough that the thing warped pretty bad. I think it would be more work to go back and fix it at this point than to start over. - IF I do it again, I think I'm going to use plaster. We'll see. I think the first order of business is to make a bikini top so I don't fry in the sun.

Updates to follow. . .

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PostPosted: October 11, 2012, 1:04 pm 
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The little beast is finally here. I flew in to SLC in the evening and spent the night. The next morning my very gracious uncle brought his Gigantic Dodge Cummins Turbo Diesel truck complete with a slick big-tex dual axle trailer over to the house. We used some long glue lam beams to make the ramp angle and loaded the little beast. It was a perfect fit. There was about 6” of clearance on each side and about 10” front and rear. It’s almost like the trailer was made for the car.

The truck was an absolute towing machine. It barely noticed there was a load back there at all. I’m quite sure the trailer weighed more than the car! LOL. It had a deep pedal but we kept it very conservative under the “It’s not my truck” school of thought. I may have hit 72 coming downhill out of Flagstaff but that was it. It was a Big Thirsty Horse. We averaged about 13 mpg on the way down and my Dad crept up on 15 mph on the return (unloaded) trip.

My dad had the fantastic idea of unloading the car in Southern Utah for a little pleasure cruising. –He’s had some great ideas in his day, and this was one of them. We unloaded at Highway 20 and went up and over the Dixie range to the valley where 89 runs South past Bryce Canyon and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. It was absolutely fabulous. The pic below is outside Bryce. It made me want to schedule another road trip in the 7 up through some of those Southern Utah parks. Amazing country. I got the long end of the stick for sure. My dad tailed me in the truck/trailer.

We holed up in Kanab for the night and got OK barbeque at a local joint. The drive from Kanab to Page is also pretty amazing. We traversed that in the morning and made a quick stop at Glen Canyon Dam. – Always fun to see. Not as impressive as Hoover, but still amazing. Lake Powell has to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth. I can never get enough.

Loaded up we drove UP to Flagstaff (7,000+ feet!) and dropped down 17 into Phoenix. My dad crashed at our place for the night and high-tailed it home in the AM. He was a trooper and saint. It was actually quite fun even considering the slow progress we made while loaded. I'd do it again in a heart-beat. I love this kind of thing.

I do have to observe that the car is like a completely different animal here at 1,000 ft elevation. I remember a similar boost in performance the times I took my RX-7(s) to California. You wouldn’t think the increase in air pressure would make a significant difference, but it does! SLC is on the order of 4,500 ft and the mountains I often drove through were obviously upward from there. If I do my math right, in Phoenix the little mill is getting around another 2 psi of pressure on the way in. It was fast before, but now it’s an absolute blast! In SLC it occasionally (mostly when cold) could stumble at WOT similar to the effect you got in the old days with an engine that was over-carb’d. Not here. It just goes and goes and goes. All 7,000 of those RPM’s are just begging to be used! I'd equate it to the difference between how 1.6 and 1.8L stock Miatas feel.

I have a ton of work to do before my shop is put back together here. It will be a while before I take on many more projects on the car, but I did successfully get AZ plates on it. – and after all, why would I work on it when I can drive it!?

- Thanks again to my Uncle for letting me borrow your truck and trailer. It was ever so kind and trusting of you! I hope the short spin in the 7 you took in some way helps to make up for it!


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PostPosted: October 12, 2012, 7:37 pm 
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Not going to lie but I am a little envious. With scenery like that you would be a fool to not unload the car and go for a spin.

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PostPosted: October 13, 2012, 2:08 am 
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Yeah, that's a pretty inspiring photo.


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PostPosted: October 13, 2012, 4:14 pm 
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Sounds like your having a blast! :-)

JR

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PostPosted: October 3, 2013, 11:47 am 
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Good morning gents. It’s been almost exactly a year since I last posted. The little car has been so much fun to drive (and life has been so busy) that I really haven’t worked on it much in the last year. A little maintenance here and there, but nothing major. Folks keep asking me when I’m going to “finish it”. By that they mean “when are you going to paint that awful mismatched body to one color?” - It’s an easy question to ask when they don’t know how far it’s come. When you build a car from scratch, and you get to the point where it’s registered, insured, reliable and a hoot to drive, in my book that means: It IS finished! Anything else is just improvement.

Anyway… The diff has been leaking. It’s gotten progressively worse over the last year or so but it’s been way too hot to spend any time in the garage investigating. My fear was the slight drive-shaft misalignment I have was tearing apart the front seal and bearing on the diff.

I finally crawled under the little beast last night to investigate and the good news is, it’s not the front seal! It was dry as a bone. It looks like I’ve got a leak from the passenger side CV seal, and possibly the lower drain plug.

The bad news is it looks like she’s leaking from the rear main seal. I distinctly remember buying a new rear main seal, but looking back through the build log and searching my internal memory banks, I come up empty. I obviously never changed it out. Talk about a self inflicted wound! Why didn’t I change it when I had the engine and trans out in the open (They sat there for what, two years!?) I have to pull the engine and tranny to get at the seal. There’s really no other way around it. I packed it so tight there’s no other option. – So, I think it’s just going to leak for a while longer. I’m not ready to tear it down, just as driving season is starting up.

The other thing on the list is tires… She really needs tires. I’m torn because I’d like to step up to some nice lightweight 15x7 wheels (like RPF01’s) partially for looks, partially to open up the tire options. – Cost and weight are the two main factors. I don’t want to add a bunch of weight, but I don’t have bunch of cash to throw at it either. – So, I think I’ll find another set of stock 14” miata size tires and move on.

OK, enough blather and ramble. I realize this wasn’t much of a build log update. I could move to the ‘completed builds / locost lounge” area, but I kinda like having it all in one place. So all my junk will stay here.

rusty

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PostPosted: January 14, 2014, 8:53 pm 
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Miscellaneous 'oat and aboat' pic.

EDIT>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Doh! it helps if you view your post before you log off... The photo was right-side up in my phone... (I guess.) Anyway. Now it's fixed.


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Last edited by rust_bucket on January 14, 2014, 11:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: January 14, 2014, 9:25 pm 
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Is that location Az or Oz?!?? :lol:
Seriously, good lookin'!

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PostPosted: January 14, 2014, 10:28 pm 
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Haven't you taken this lightness thing a little too far?

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PostPosted: January 15, 2014, 1:50 am 
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That car on a nice warm Arizona night. ...... Man, that's priceless 8)

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PostPosted: November 11, 2015, 3:04 am 
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It's been a VERY Long time. Life has been busy.
The car has been pretty reliable for the last 5+ years or so. I've driven it a lot, but the cooling system finally started asking for some attention. The cheapo radiator cap I had started leaking and I finally stopped ignoring the tiny weeps that would occasionally show up at some of the hose connections. It was the last system to go in the car and I really did kind of cobble it together with stuff I had on-hand. There really wasn't much Engineering that went into it.
So, I tore the front end apart to work on the cooling system, and immediately fell down the rabbit hole known as "Well, as long as I've got it torn apart this far, I might as well... (insert a million side projects here)" I'm extremely susceptible to those kinds of rabbit holes.

I always planned to put ARB's on the car,
SO while the front end was torn apart anyway... I installed the front bar.
AND since you can't just do one end, I tore apart the rear and put one on the back...
AND since the back was torn apart I broke down and rebuilt the A-Arms to give me a little more adjustment in the fore-aft placement of the wheel. (The not-quite centered in the wheel well look was a serious eyesore to me every time I saw it.)
AND since the A-Arms were off I decided it was high time to machine stainless steel bushings for the attach points rather than relying on the stacked washers I have been using to allow for suspension adjustments.
AND since the engine was drained, I figured it was a good time to do the timing belt, water pump and seals,
AND THEN I finally started working on the cooling system. I'm still in the throes of that adventure. I'm trying to come up with something that's a little more robust, you know, since I live where there are only two seasons, Hot and BLAZING Hot.

Here's one shot of the front ARB in process. It's been painted since. I'll dig up some more pics here shortly.
I'm anxious now to get her back on the road since the weather is finally cooled down.


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PostPosted: November 11, 2015, 6:24 am 
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Nice job. I have some of those Mcmaster ballstud joints too. Did you use miata rear bars? I'd like to hear about the driving impression with the improvements.

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PostPosted: March 4, 2017, 1:30 pm 
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rust_bucket wrote:
Sorry for the crummy cell phone picture but here's a snap of the E-brake handle.. The sore thumb is gone!

What do you charge for one of those shifter rings?

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