MMiskoe

Nah, I'm with Aero Man on this one. The factors that provide the max travel on the shock are moderately varied. Can be the amount of down force, but you don't know where your max travel happens, or how. Could just be a quick bump as you hit the curb at a slightly steeper angle than previous. Seems you would need to do several laps, checking each time, plot the various results, discount the outliers, then go back and try again with the aero. Need to insure the driver is the same each time too. If the car rides on the bump stops at all, the max travel won't tell you much, you'll be looking for data in areas you're not at max travel. If you're trying to measure max travel, yes the ziptie works (do it on my mountain bike all the time), but it isn't a way to measure your downforce.

6 speeds are more robust than the 5's? First I've heard of that. Talking to a sprint race guy he commented he only ran the 6 speed in cars that were allowed to run trans-oil coolers and you expected to have the motor out frequently so doing transmission work wasn't such a big deal (we're talking motor work 6 times in a 10 sprint race season). Diff in the NA6 is never going to cut it. NA8 is OK (but may still say uncle at some point). Considering the hacking and chopping you can do I don't think the weight difference is going to matter at all. Sport model NB had bigger brakes, but they are as good as free anyway.

What about fuel rail and injectors? Swap the motor and intake, but use a modified OE fuel rail and OE injectors so you can retain the OE wire harness & ECU?

Rules required that the fuel cap can't come off until the driver is OUT of the car. Also, once the cap was off, no one touched the car until the cap went back on. I think you'll find more sanctioning bodies for non-pro racing work this way than what Chaump allows with driver in/out while doing fuel. Penalties for spilled fuel, but no minimum time stopped. Even did one race with no speed limit in pit lane - no way to enforce it so they told us at the driver's meeting "be reasonable". I was well into 4th before pit out that day.

We used to have the car stopped for under 2 minutes, not every stop, but it did happen on multiple occasions. No one touches the car while the fuel cap is off, and the cap does not come off until the driver is out. Nothing staged in pit lane before the car comes to a stop. Driver out while the jack goes under and lug nuts start coming off. Fuel cap off, 13 gallons goes in (via funnel). Driver uses this time to take off helmet & gloves. Cap on, driver in, driver gets belted while two tires are changed. Exiting driver helps strap in entering driver. 2 fuelers, 1 fire man, 1 jack, 2 tire changers. Fuelers help buckle in the driver when they were done. Tire change was usually done before the driver had the window net up. Just like the directions for getting to Carnegie Hall - Practice man, practice.

2'x4' white panel with black tape that says "NOW". Also use it to get driver attention from the pit wall when radios don't work. Hold it over your head as high as you can and it's hard to miss. Flip it over and NOW becomes MON. So we call it the "Monday Board". MON means look for further signals. NOW means pit Now. Haven't found a driver yet who has had any problem following those team orders.

Safe to assume you have all the stock access panels installed as they arrived from Japan? If so, I would expect you have the same set up as most Miata's out there. Those panels get screwed in place some may have some foam gasketing, but nothing that would seal against fuel or fire. If someone comes back to say that this is not OK, please state what the upgrade is that is necessary so I can go apply it to my cars.

I've made passes like that but I usually like to do it where there is a full car-width of grass to do it in.

Get a set of custom molded ear buds. They don't fall out, in fact they are hard to remove. But they are comfortable and simply seal out the rest of the world. Biggest problem is the need to turn the radio down when I get in the car, and sometimes I get startled by crew coming on the radio because they start talking inside my head. I feel less tired getting out of long stint in loud cars with them too.

I've raced with SCCA for long enough to watch a few trends get popular, the spending gets big, then the class is no longer as popular as it was. In SCCA, Improved Touring started out as an entry level, low prep way to take your old daily driver and go do some racing. Pretty soon it was really fun with more and more people wanting to be part of it. Then as stated previously, boys will be boys and do anything they can to beat their rival. Pretty soon guys were not blinking at 1000+ hours into a build (do the math on costs for labor, then add parts). Cars were getting really fast and pretty soon the idea of it being "entry level" was a joke. This for one and for other reasons, the fields shrank. The IT rules package is WAY more restrictive than Chaump. This means that as Chaump gets more popular, more people willing (and able) to spend the big bucks will be getting attracted and the cars will just take it that much further. Welcome to the Arms Race. It isn't a question of IF, it is a question of how far will go before something changes. And when that change happens, will there be anyone around to be affected by it?

Similarly to what others have asked. Most of these cars are speeds less than 100mph for most turns, 130mph top straight line speed. 200WHP or less. Based on this, what provides more gain? Making the the car more slippery in air with air dams and flat bottoms or adding splitters, wings & diffusers? Pretty generous of you to offer this advice. We're all basing our efforts on guesses and "well, it looks faster".

Not sure if yours reads the same as mine, but anything less than 10% on any one cylinder and I question running the motor at the next event. My motors tend to be 98 over 100 on the two gauges, or better. A few things I've learned - the higher the pressure you can put to it, the more differential you'll get on the guages, thus the easier to read (5% on 20 is a smaller number than 5% on 100), I try to max the high pressure guage at 100psi - at 100psi on the cylinder, if you're not at TDC, that sucker is going to spin, use a LONG handled breaker bar and pay attention - hot leak downs are difficult at best because "how hot is hot" and how do you replicate it on a motor that is on the re-build stand? - Do it in a quiet environment (no heaters, air compressors, radios etc). Put your ear to the tail pipe. Then to the throttle and then open the throttle. Pull the PCV and listen. Then you'll find out where its leaking - Don't get discouraged when the numbers are low but you can hear it through either the intake or exhaust. Pull the valve cover and give the valves a tap while the pressure is on. Not uncommon to have a bit of carbon make a valve hang up a bit. With 100psi on the cylinder, tap the top of the valve/rocker/lifter stack and you'll get a "WHOOOP" noise and usually the second gauge comes up some. - if it is a valve issue start checking your valve adjustment before you take it apart - If it is out the PCV, use a tube as a pipette and dump some light oil down the bore. Spin it over a few turns and try again. If it gets better, you have a ring issue. I'd do it again, or maybe twice and see how you get different variation before you start pulling things apart.

Depends on the car Miata '16 Thompson - RF tie rod failed when clobbered by E30 ("I was faster, you were supposed to get out of my way") '17 VIR - Alternator, then Cam angle sensor '17 Nelson - Pirouetting Honda's who couldn't find the brake pedal, who then used us to try their hand at an A-Team flip by driving over us at T3 (Mike would not let us go ask what their plan had been) '18 Thompson - both tie rods, both LH wheels, both LH lower control arms when run off the track by another Miata that was 100 laps down to us ("but we didn't have any damage") Mustang Brakes, suspension bolts, brakes, tires, brakes Here's hoping to '19 being a better season.

Any chance there will be test time on track Friday April 12? I don't see anything on the track's web page, but I'm pretty far from being local and don't know what options might exist.

Lot's of generalities here. But one that is missing. When you've just given it all you have to save a spin and are now a passenger, do you really know which way the steering wheel is pointed? Do you know what part of your spin you'll be in when the car scrubs off enough speed for the tires to hook up? Not likely. Because you don't know where the car is going to go when it does regain traction, not having your foot on the brake makes it a game of Russian Roulette. It will roll in what ever direction the wheels are aimed which is not necessarily in the direction it had been heading. If the brakes are locked, you may do a series of pirouettes off into the weeds, but you'll do them in a straight line. Cars moving in straight lines, or cars that are stopped are infinitely more predictable than cars that have the potential to change direction w/o notice. Does not matter if it is mid-engine or has the weight balance of a wheel barrow. Does not matter if we're describing someone's first time on track or a Kimi Raikkonen level of skill and experience. In 25 years of wheel to wheel racing I've never had contact with a spinning car (mine or the other guy) that went two feet in. In 3 years of Champcar I've had the pleasure of 3 cars spinning in front of my car, not going 2-feet-in that resulted in body work and trips to the frame shop. I guess I'm just biased.