Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / The Answer Is Always Miata: A What Should I Buy? Deep Dive

Transcript

The Answer Is Always Miata: A What Should I Buy? Deep Dive · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Our panel of break fix Petrolhead are back for another rousing.
• 0:03
  What should I buy?
• 0:04
  Debate using unique shopping criteria.
• 0:07
  They're challenged to find our first time collector, the best vehicle
• 0:10
  that will make their friends go.
• 0:12
  Where do you get that?
• 0:13
  Or what the hell is wrong with you at the next cars and coffee
• 0:19
  for every four out of five, petrol heads surveyed when
• 0:22
  asked, what car should I buy?
• 0:24
  The answer is always Miata.
• 0:26
  Many folks would argue that the Mazda MX five known to many of us as the Miata is
• 0:31
  a great option for a number of reasons.
• 0:32
  It's well-made efficient and is surprisingly affordable.
• 0:36
  Some would say the Miata is one of the most popular roasters of all
• 0:38
  time beating out all the British cars that inspired it, and it's a formula
• 0:42
  that has worked for years with others trying to imitate, but never quite
• 0:46
  capturing the magic created by Miata.
• 0:48
  Is that true?
• 0:49
  Is there more to the Miata mystique than meets the eye?
• 0:52
  What's it really like to be a Miata owner?
• 0:55
  That's right, Brad, in our first ever double crossover episode, we aim to
• 1:00
  answer those questions and more as we chat with returning guest and drive
• 1:04
  through news sponsor Dave Peters from hp d junkie.com, along with Jim Tramontano,
• 1:10
  founder of No Money Motorsport blog, as well as their friend Bill Snow,
• 1:15
  founder of the Late to Grid podcast.
• 1:18
  Welcome to Break Fix, gentlemen.
• 1:19
  How about we get into it?
• 1:21
  Thanks for having us.
• 1:22
  Hey, thanks, so, so this is like podcast inception.
• 1:25
  It's a podcast within a podcast, within a podcast.
• 1:28
  Absolutely.
• 1:29
  I mean, I'm gonna start off with, you know, we talked about
• 1:31
  the answer is always Miata.
• 1:32
  I'm wearing this t-shirt for Blip Shift, which I love that says,
• 1:35
  the original answer is Lotus Ilan.
• 1:38
  Many will say that Miata was born in California, built in Japan.
• 1:43
  We actually had somebody on the show not long ago that was on the original
• 1:47
  design team for the Miata, and that was a super interesting story and whatnot.
• 1:50
  But we talked with him about its British inspiration and he said, oh,
• 1:55
  well it's really a combination of cars.
• 1:56
  They stole from Alpha, they stole from Lotus, they stole from here.
• 1:59
  They stole from there.
• 2:00
  So let's talk about how each of you came into the world of Miata and briefly give
• 2:06
  your motor sports bio, you know, talk about what you do and things like that.
• 2:09
  So why don't we start with Jim from No Money Motor Sports.
• 2:12
  All right.
• 2:12
  Hey, uh, so I'm one of those people that 15 years ago, you would've
• 2:16
  never guessed I'd be in a Miata.
• 2:18
  I, uh, grew up in a muscle car household.
• 2:20
  We had Mopars chargers and challengers, my house, and I had a muscle car.
• 2:24
  And then I got a Mustang, almost got kicked outta my family for it.
• 2:28
  I had it and, uh, started Motorsport with that.
• 2:30
  I started autocross and then one of my buddies bought a Miata.
• 2:33
  And he is like, you just have to drive it, man.
• 2:35
  Like, just, just try it out, drive it.
• 2:38
  Got in the car, drove it, and within like two or three miles was like,
• 2:41
  all right, the Mustang is for sale.
• 2:43
  And that's really how I got a Miata.
• 2:45
  Ended up buying that exact car from him.
• 2:47
  'cause he found another one he wanted to upgrade into.
• 2:49
  That's really how the, the Miata thing started.
• 2:51
  What year?
• 2:52
  Mustang.
• 2:53
  I had two at first, so I got a 95.
• 2:55
  Started Autocrossing in that, but yeah, the last year of the 5.0 sold
• 2:59
  that for an oh five, which is the first year of the retro body style.
• 3:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:03
  Okay.
• 3:03
  So I'm not surprised you got rid of those for the Oh, I don't know.
• 3:07
  I, I miss 'em both though, so much.
• 3:09
  I don't regret selling 'em one bit, but I miss them every day.
• 3:13
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:13
  I, I'm there with some of my cars too.
• 3:15
  200 horsepower of five liters of Awesome.
• 3:17
  Yeah.
• 3:18
  Oh 2, 2 15.
• 3:20
  Two 15.
• 3:20
  Oh, okay.
• 3:22
  Yeah.
• 3:22
  You must have the, the GT model.
• 3:25
  One of the times right before I like decided to sell it, I was
• 3:27
  at a stoplight two lane road.
• 3:29
  No one sight except for right behind me was a minivan, and I
• 3:33
  just plastered, I took off from that light as hard as I could.
• 3:37
  Second gear and I'm halfway through second gear and I look in my mirror
• 3:39
  and the van is right on my bumper.
• 3:43
  It's like, oh, this isn't gonna work.
• 3:47
  From there, just started track days where I had been autocrossing to that
• 3:50
  point, uh, and then basically jumped right into track days with the Miata.
• 3:54
  I started doing volunteering and working with nasa, doing a lot of days with them.
• 3:58
  Really just as time went on, just then I started instructing.
• 4:01
  Then I started time trial, then I started racing just kind of the
• 4:04
  way the cookie crumbled there.
• 4:05
  And through all that, I got into doing track days, like
• 4:08
  right outta college basically.
• 4:09
  So I had absolute mountain of student loans and a teaching job that paid a lot
• 4:14
  less than my student loans we'll say.
• 4:17
  So I started this whole thing on an extreme budget.
• 4:19
  The, with the Miata, I was living in apartments, I was
• 4:22
  working on it in the apartment parking lot and all these things.
• 4:24
  And with that I got a lot of.
• 4:26
  Kind of strategies and tips to really do it on the cheap and do it easily.
• 4:30
  That is where my whole No Money Motorsports thing came out.
• 4:33
  'cause people kind of could see that I was making ends meet and making
• 4:36
  it happen, and I was getting the same questions kind of repeatedly.
• 4:40
  Like, oh hey, how do you do this?
• 4:41
  How do you do that?
• 4:41
  How.
• 4:42
  So that's where the idea for making a whole blog about it came out.
• 4:44
  So as many of our guests may remember, Dave Peters was on our show during
• 4:48
  season one, and he told us about how he started life in a three 70 Z Nissan.
• 4:54
  But Dave, how did you end up in the Miata?
• 4:56
  Again, mine was budget reasons as well.
• 4:58
  The, uh, three 70 Z just, it was hard on the Expendables tires were
• 5:04
  maybe two weekends and they were big 19 inch three oh fives on the back.
• 5:10
  So full set was, I think it was about $1,500 and it was a staggered setup and.
• 5:15
  Brake pads went about as quick, it just wasn't a great track.
• 5:19
  Car had fuel starvation problems and overheating problems, and not of the
• 5:23
  engine, but like the clutch would overheat because the clutch line
• 5:27
  was next to the catalytic converter.
• 5:28
  And, but it really was more about money.
• 5:31
  You know, I did it a couple of times and realized a couple of times a year
• 5:34
  wasn't gonna be enough and I couldn't afford to buy three, four sets of
• 5:38
  tires a year for the Z and you know, of course you see 50 M Miatas at every
• 5:43
  van out of a hundred cars sometimes.
• 5:45
  So I knew there had to be something good there.
• 5:47
  And a buddy of mine got into it and, and he kind of wanted to know
• 5:51
  what car to buy, and I was like, I, I think he wanna buy me auto.
• 5:54
  I mean, it just seems to make sense.
• 5:56
  And he did, and I still had the Z and he let me drive it once and I was like.
• 6:01
  Yeah, at, at first it was just kind of a like, yeah, I, I can
• 6:04
  suck it up and do this and have this little horsepower thing.
• 6:08
  Once I had it on the track and then the more I drove it on the track, the
• 6:12
  more I was just hooked on the way it felt driving it, and yeah, I never
• 6:17
  thought about the three 70 Z again.
• 6:18
  I probably, after the first time I tracked the me.
• 6:21
  Well, maybe not then.
• 6:23
  'cause it broke down the first time I took it out.
• 6:25
  And I think I got three laps in a weekend.
• 6:28
  But, um, that was my own dumb mistake, you know, that that happened.
• 6:32
  So yeah, it really just boiled down to instigation was
• 6:35
  financial once I got in it.
• 6:37
  I, I really don't want anything else you've told me before.
• 6:41
  The more time you spent behind the wheel, the Miata is what inspired
• 6:44
  you to build hpd junkie.com as well, because you were dying to go
• 6:47
  to more events and drive the car.
• 6:49
  I did start the website with the three 70 Z, but again, you know, I, I mean, I, I'm
• 6:55
  an honest guy and the whole reason for the website was to get on the track more often
• 7:01
  and, you know, kind of help the budget.
• 7:03
  Yes and no.
• 7:04
  I, I did have the three 70 Z when I started out.
• 7:07
  I, I probably only had it for a year before I got the Miata.
• 7:11
  Well, we'll attribute the success of h hpv junkie.com, tier Miata, not the Nissan.
• 7:16
  How about that?
• 7:17
  That sounds fair.
• 7:18
  I can live with that.
• 7:20
  And last but certainly not least, bill, tell us about late to
• 7:23
  Grid and your Motorsports past.
• 7:25
  Thanks very much for having me on it.
• 7:27
  It's great to see Dave and Jim again.
• 7:29
  Yeah, so Bill Snow, host of the Late to Grid podcast where, you know, the
• 7:32
  idea is to get people together to, to share stories and inspiration for.
• 7:36
  You know, grassroots motor sports and, um, share the stories that
• 7:39
  might, might inspire some folks.
• 7:41
  And my motor sports background started, um, gosh, probably in in middle school,
• 7:46
  I would get dragged to sports car races and IndyCar races with my dad.
• 7:50
  And, and he was a spectator and really started to enjoy that.
• 7:53
  And I, at one point in high school, I thought to myself, well, shoot,
• 7:56
  I could probably be doing this.
• 7:58
  So my first car was a two 80 ZX and I joined the SECA and I started auto
• 8:02
  crossing and just fell in love with it.
• 8:04
  But then after college and marriage and kids, you didn't
• 8:07
  have fun cars anymore for a while.
• 8:08
  And I got a 76 Triumph Spitfire just a tool around in.
• 8:12
  And, and I had a mini Cooper s that I got back into autocross a little bit, but I,
• 8:17
  there was a time when I was at a corporate meeting and we, and our name tags, we had
• 8:20
  to write a little line under our name.
• 8:22
  Something interesting about us.
• 8:23
  And I, I still remember what I wrote.
• 8:25
  I love small cars, so I always enjoyed, you know, the mgs and
• 8:30
  the Spitfires, things like that.
• 8:32
  The Mini Cooper of course, being a small car.
• 8:34
  So, fast forward to, uh, just a couple years ago, one of
• 8:37
  my employees has a, an amata.
• 8:40
  Of course, he's turbo swapping it, and it's a blue car with a red hard top.
• 8:43
  And of course it's got these 2 25 sticking out.
• 8:46
  He is doing all this other stuff and he runs in these circles.
• 8:48
  I said, listen, I'm getting the itch.
• 8:49
  If any of your friends are selling them, Miata let me know about it.
• 8:53
  Not necessarily saying I could pull the trigger, but, so he comes to me
• 8:55
  a couple days later, he says, Hey, my buddy just got a type R and he just
• 8:59
  bought this Miata from the south.
• 9:01
  He's got mad dog roll bar for it.
• 9:03
  He's got oline coil overs, stainless steel lines.
• 9:07
  He wants to sell it.
• 9:07
  I said, well, all right.
• 9:08
  So I drove it and man.
• 9:10
  Immediate smile.
• 9:11
  All those parts were still in the box.
• 9:13
  So I negotiated to buy the car and I said, you know what?
• 9:15
  Let's work on a deal to buy all the parts too.
• 9:17
  After having it on track a couple times, I'm hooked.
• 9:20
  So what inspired the podcast?
• 9:23
  So the name is, so like 20 16, 17, and 18, we did, uh, some endurance racing.
• 9:28
  I got the racing for free if I stored, transported and wrenched on the car.
• 9:33
  I mean, there, there were days I was loading the car up on the day we were
• 9:36
  leaving for the track and finishing like simple things like oil changes on the car.
• 9:39
  So inevitably we were getting to the track at the last minute, getting
• 9:43
  through tech last minute, getting to grid, realizing something's wrong.
• 9:47
  Inevitably, I was always late to grid.
• 9:49
  It was my fault.
• 9:50
  So I kind of thought if, you know the podcast, we could kind of maybe
• 9:53
  help people not get late to grid.
• 9:54
  So what are some tips and tricks?
• 9:56
  And uh, you know, we had an episode where, uh, Gabe Gutierrez,
• 9:59
  who races a Mustang in, uh, NASA events, he's all about checklists.
• 10:02
  So he shared all about that, and that's how he's never late to grid.
• 10:06
  Gabe is such a great guy.
• 10:07
  Yeah.
• 10:07
  And I love his wife too.
• 10:08
  Ann Anna.
• 10:09
  I just, I I had to say something.
• 10:12
  No, that's great.
• 10:13
  Yeah.
• 10:13
  So it's sharing stories like that to help people realize, okay.
• 10:16
  You know, part of it is I can do this, I can get on track.
• 10:18
  There aren't a whole lot of obstacles.
• 10:20
  It's somewhat easy to do, but the other thing is.
• 10:23
  What are the tips and tricks that people can share with us to make sure that we
• 10:26
  can get safely on track, not late to grid, and still have a great time at the track.
• 10:29
  We need to test your guys Miata subject matter expertise before we really dive
• 10:34
  deep into this subject, so we have a question that needs to be answered.
• 10:38
  Inquiring minds want to know, is it Miata or MX five?
• 10:42
  And what does Miata even mean?
• 10:45
  I always say Miata, but mine I think was technically still called a Miata.
• 10:50
  I can't remember, but, uh, someone told me it was something middle age, something,
• 10:55
  something, but I can't remember.
• 10:57
  Maybe the guy that was on the design team can has told you and you can fill us in.
• 11:02
  I've always heard it means reward.
• 11:04
  Oh, you're being rewarded for driving Miata by the driving experience.
• 11:08
  I could see that.
• 11:09
  Yeah, I, I could see that you're not rewarded by the horsepower though,
• 11:12
  but that's a whole nother story.
• 11:13
  No, definitely not.
• 11:15
  I think it had some, it has something, one of those names that sounded cool.
• 11:18
  Yeah, I think the NA Miata actually had a Miata badge on it.
• 11:22
  It wasn't MX five.
• 11:23
  It was, it actually was a Miata the Tic-Tac, but I believe it was always
• 11:27
  known internally to Mazda as the MX five, and then it got badged as
• 11:32
  a Miata, wherever that came from.
• 11:33
  We'll leave that up to our listeners to write in and let us know where
• 11:37
  this little bit of trivia comes from.
• 11:39
  You know, as we were just joking, we hear all the time that Miatas are slow.
• 11:43
  So is this fact or fiction?
• 11:45
  And if it is fact, how do we make a Miata faster?
• 11:50
  Well, let's talk about some tips and tricks on thoughts on going faster
• 11:53
  in a low horsepower momentum vehicle.
• 11:55
  Look, they're slow.
• 11:56
  They're always slow, and that's why they're good.
• 11:59
  Uh, once they become fast is the problem.
• 12:01
  But the trick is to not ever slow down.
• 12:04
  Home track to me is New Jersey Motorsports Park Lightning.
• 12:07
  I always tell people you hit the brakes twice on that entire
• 12:09
  track, and like one of those is kind of a lighter breaking anyway.
• 12:13
  Uh, so really the biggest trick for Miata to to go fast is not to add a turbo.
• 12:18
  It's not to add power.
• 12:19
  It's just don't slow down.
• 12:22
  Isn't that the same theory as when you're driving a go-kart?
• 12:25
  Yeah, basically.
• 12:26
  Oh, I have a go-kart, which is much faster than my Miata though.
• 12:28
  So
• 12:31
  that's what I tell people all the time when we're carting.
• 12:32
  Just don't use the brakes.
• 12:33
  What, what?
• 12:33
  Yeah.
• 12:35
  So with that being said, thoughts, tips, tricks, things that people can do to
• 12:39
  take a stock Miata and make it better.
• 12:41
  Number one.
• 12:42
  Seat time.
• 12:43
  That's the only way any driver's gonna get faster.
• 12:46
  I don't care if you're doing turbos, you got nitrous, you
• 12:48
  got rockets, you need seat time.
• 12:50
  That's that's number one.
• 12:52
  Number two is tires.
• 12:53
  So once you get some seat time and you get a feel for what your current tires
• 12:56
  feel like, you put new tires, grip your tires, stickier tires on there,
• 13:00
  you're gonna get a little faster.
• 13:01
  Third brakes.
• 13:03
  If you can go a little deeper, carry that momentum a little bit
• 13:05
  further, just touch 'em and have 'em grab quickly my opinion, brakes.
• 13:09
  Then you can look at steering suspension stuff.
• 13:11
  If those four things aren't putting a huge smile on your face around the track, then
• 13:15
  maybe you start bolting some stuff on.
• 13:17
  But those four things I think will make you faster and let you have
• 13:19
  a lot more fun around the track.
• 13:21
  I thought you were gonna say maybe find a new hobby if, if the films aren't
• 13:24
  working other sports becking, right?
• 13:26
  Yeah.
• 13:26
  But that you actually bring up a really good point, bill.
• 13:28
  When you get to that part of the equation and you're in a Miata and you wanna
• 13:33
  go faster and you start bolting things on, is it really worth bolting them on?
• 13:37
  Or do you do like Jim said, and kind of just walk away
• 13:40
  and maybe buy a different car?
• 13:41
  You know, I got some advice.
• 13:42
  Uh, when I had the Mini Cooper, I wanted to do some Boltons because
• 13:45
  the track where I was going, man, I'm really struggling with this one turn.
• 13:49
  And man, if I could have the supercharger sort of gimme a little bit more power
• 13:53
  more quickly, I can get off that turn faster and have a little bit more.
• 13:56
  He said, you're thinking about this all wrong.
• 13:57
  You have to get more seat time, you have to drive more, you'll get faster.
• 14:00
  You don't need bolt on parts.
• 14:02
  So what did I do?
• 14:03
  I ordered all the parts in both of 'em up
• 14:07
  and uh, it wasn't until years later I realized, you know what?
• 14:11
  He was right.
• 14:12
  It is about seat time.
• 14:13
  If you're not getting faster, not having fun with the basics,
• 14:16
  especially with a car like a Miata, then maybe this isn't for you.
• 14:20
  There's always the, uh, lotus philosophy, add lightness, simplifying, add lightness.
• 14:25
  Um, and, and I, uh, I'm victim of adding power, but I
• 14:30
  didn't do it at the beginning.
• 14:32
  And it's not, it's not boost, it's just more air through.
• 14:35
  It's not a huge game.
• 14:37
  But Eric, you were still faster than me.
• 14:39
  You had a little more horsepower and my car was how much heavier than yours.
• 14:42
  I'm just saying.
• 14:42
  I don't know.
• 14:43
  But you did, but you did have slicks on.
• 14:45
  Alright.
• 14:46
  They used slicks though.
• 14:46
  Used slicks.
• 14:47
  It's true.
• 14:48
  I wanna say, I wanna call it even I think you had, I think
• 14:52
  you had a little more power.
• 14:52
  You, you were gaining like, I don't know, six to 10 feet a lap on me.
• 14:56
  It was fun though.
• 14:57
  That was a good, that was a good run at Carolina.
• 14:59
  It was a fun run.
• 15:01
  One thing also that I, I found for really making the me outta more
• 15:04
  fun, if you're struggling with the power, is go racing with one.
• 15:07
  Or even if you're not going racing, find somebody to really do a session with.
• 15:11
  I personally got to a point where I was starting to burn out a little bit.
• 15:13
  I was like, I was looking at Mustangs again.
• 15:15
  I'm like, I want something with more power.
• 15:17
  And then I got fresh tires and my two of my friends started showing up with the
• 15:22
  same car and just us driving together was like the total refresh that I needed.
• 15:26
  Like, this is so much fun, you know, who cares?
• 15:29
  We're point by Corvettes in the straightaways.
• 15:30
  We are door to door in the corners and it's a blast.
• 15:33
  You just reinforced a misery Loves company, right?
• 15:36
  Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
• 15:39
  And, and I've heard that and, and it's true.
• 15:41
  I've run some Miatas myself.
• 15:43
  We had an SSM here at GTM for many years and it's one of those things that it's
• 15:47
  not that fun when you're the only one at a de and you've got bruises on your
• 15:51
  left arm because you're given a point by constantly, especially a place like
• 15:54
  DIR and Glen and things like that.
• 15:56
  But when it's you and 40 of your best friends that all make 105
• 16:00
  wheel horsepower, it's a whole different ball game, right?
• 16:03
  It's, it's to Bill's point, they're microcar and it's like
• 16:06
  NASCAR on a small scale, right?
• 16:08
  You're all there together, bump drafting.
• 16:10
  And since you've raced Jim, that brings up a good point.
• 16:12
  We'll talk about ev everybody's experience on track.
• 16:15
  With the Miata, but I've heard it said before that a lot of
• 16:19
  the Miata races are nose to tail waiting for somebody to screw up.
• 16:23
  And if you do stick your nose out at the wrong time, you get sent
• 16:27
  to the back of the pack because there's no way to get back in.
• 16:30
  Yeah.
• 16:30
  Uh, that, that's really it.
• 16:31
  I mean the, especially on bigger tracks, if you watch some of the videos from
• 16:35
  Daytona where NASA chance was last year, that actually even more so at Daytona when
• 16:40
  the global MX five cup cars were there.
• 16:42
  So they've got a little bit more power, but they still drive just like ours.
• 16:46
  The last lap on one of those races was three wide three,
• 16:49
  and it wasn't three cars.
• 16:50
  It was three lanes wide.
• 16:51
  No, not that one actually.
• 16:52
  But that was wild too.
• 16:54
  That one.
• 16:54
  That was same way.
• 16:55
  Yeah.
• 16:55
  Well, no, but this was three lanes wide.
• 16:58
  The leading car went from first place to God.
• 17:03
  I think he finished seventh in one corner.
• 17:06
  He just got freight trained by two other lanes, and it was just like, oh, oops.
• 17:12
  It's an extra level of chess that you have to have beyond driving, I'm sorry.
• 17:16
  I mis mistook it for the Seing race because it was pretty much
• 17:20
  the same ending last corner.
• 17:22
  I think whoever was in third came out of the corner in first and
• 17:27
  ended up crossing the line in third.
• 17:29
  Yeah.
• 17:30
  Oh, that was a great, it was milliseconds between the three cars.
• 17:33
  It was amazing.
• 17:34
  In spec racing, there's a lot of still one sixes out there, a mixture of one eights.
• 17:39
  You don't see too many NC or nd third and fourth gen Miatas every once in a while,
• 17:43
  an NC with a penalty and things like that.
• 17:45
  Why is everybody still sticking with the older cars?
• 17:48
  Are they really the best and especially for the racing, or is the spec classes
• 17:51
  just designed around the NA and the nbs?
• 17:54
  Well, spec Miata is only NANB.
• 17:56
  Actually, you can't run the NCS or nds in our class.
• 17:59
  There's a lot of noise, I'll say coming up now about SMX, which is the NC cars.
• 18:05
  There's a traveling race that's gonna be happening this year.
• 18:08
  It was supposed to happen about two years ago, but you know, COVID.
• 18:11
  So we'll really see this summer how those cars take off.
• 18:14
  And if they do, to me it's not the same car, it doesn't
• 18:18
  have the same magic as ours.
• 18:19
  It's very similar, but there's not nearly as many.
• 18:22
  So they won't ever be as cheap parts won't be as plentiful.
• 18:25
  I hope the racing will be just as good.
• 18:26
  'cause our cars are getting older and older by the minute it's, yeah, they
• 18:29
  have their own, their own playgrounds.
• 18:31
  'cause there's other spec series out there, spec E 36, spec E
• 18:34
  46, uh, spec, Boxter Spec 9 44.
• 18:37
  You know, things like that.
• 18:38
  So there's other spec races for people that don't want a Miata that are still
• 18:42
  interested in doing that kind of racing.
• 18:43
  But those classes are some of the fastest, most grueling racing out there.
• 18:48
  To Dave's point, let's talk about some of your experiences with Miatas on track.
• 18:52
  And maybe if they're not, eh, okay, you know, they're all right.
• 18:55
  But maybe some of your biggest oops moments, maybe those learning
• 18:59
  moments, something that the Miata taught you as a driver.
• 19:02
  Something you still carry with you today.
• 19:04
  You know, the first oops moment came at a track day I had with the Miata.
• 19:08
  I pointed by a C eight ducked in right behind him.
• 19:11
  So this track date was supposed to be filtered for people that
• 19:14
  had previous track experience.
• 19:16
  So if you had previous track experience, you could bring anything you wanted,
• 19:18
  you wanted to, except for race car let, you guys came out with c eights.
• 19:21
  They just bought him.
• 19:22
  Point him by, I duck him behind him because now we're at the end
• 19:24
  of a straightaway and he slams on the brakes, the nimbleness of
• 19:28
  the Miata right out of the way.
• 19:30
  I have it on GoPro.
• 19:31
  I, I'm hesitant to, to post it 'cause I don't wanna stir anything
• 19:34
  up with, with the ca driver.
• 19:36
  Um, but I thought, oh my gosh.
• 19:38
  Just, you know, the horsepower difference between the two cars.
• 19:41
  The handling of the Miata was just great though.
• 19:43
  And then I realized, you know what, we're gonna back off a little bit.
• 19:45
  We'll throw a lap away, put some distance the next time around.
• 19:48
  But those ca eight guys gotta talk into at lunch.
• 19:50
  So we didn't have any afternoon.
• 19:54
  Well, yeah, I guess one other quick thing that the Miata has taught
• 19:56
  me about, it's just, it's trying to find the limits a little bit.
• 19:58
  And, you know, getting a feel for that.
• 20:00
  And it's, what I found about the Miata is you can, you get such a great seat feel
• 20:05
  and you can start to feel when things are gonna start to break loose or, or give
• 20:08
  away just a little bit and you can dial it back and try it a little bit further.
• 20:11
  That's true with a lot of cars, but I feel with the Miata, for
• 20:14
  whatever reason, it just, maybe it fits me a little bit better.
• 20:16
  You just get a good feel for yourself in the track.
• 20:18
  Do you find that it translates to other cars?
• 20:21
  Or do you feel that you have to relearn if you take another car on
• 20:23
  track or to a motor sport event?
• 20:25
  Uh, if you're moving to a front wheel drive, you know, there's a little
• 20:28
  bit more adaption to that, but other rear wheels, for me it feels similar.
• 20:32
  We used to race an E 30.
• 20:33
  I feel like the handling is, I won't say similar, but the
• 20:36
  feedback seems similar to me.
• 20:38
  Between the two.
• 20:39
  We call that fun wheel drive, by the way, it is a totally different
• 20:42
  driving style than you guys are.
• 20:43
  I I like that fun wheel drive.
• 20:45
  Yes.
• 20:46
  That's not the one I heard.
• 20:47
  There's another one that I heard.
• 20:50
  You must be referring to the nine 11 drivers that they, you
• 20:53
  wheel drives going backwards.
• 20:54
  Yeah.
• 20:55
  Yeah.
• 20:55
  Those guys, I mean, I can say that I, I definitely think it made me a better
• 20:59
  driver than I, if I'd have kept driving the three 70 z and, and kind of to what
• 21:04
  Bill's saying is, I think what it is that makes it magical is the balance.
• 21:08
  Front to back.
• 21:10
  It does.
• 21:10
  It gathers up super easy.
• 21:12
  You know, you start feeling the the ass end come around and then
• 21:15
  a little flick of the wheel and it comes right back under you.
• 21:17
  I can't really speak for driving other stuff except the ZI.
• 21:22
  Honestly, I think I've just driven another Miata on the track,
• 21:25
  couple other Miatas on the track.
• 21:27
  I've never driven anything else, so never lift really is a big one.
• 21:30
  As you progress to get faster and faster into Miata, you know, it's easy to drive
• 21:34
  a Miata decently because of the low speed, but if you really wanna go fast,
• 21:38
  you need to be on the limit all the time.
• 21:40
  So, full send.
• 21:42
  Full send.
• 21:42
  Yeah, full send all the time.
• 21:43
  I mean, I've got some clips I keep on putting up clips of, mostly turn one
• 21:47
  at NJ Motorsports Park, just sideways.
• 21:49
  Hold the gas car and like, oh, you're good.
• 21:52
  You know, just steer through it and keep your foot planted.
• 21:54
  And that's translated pretty well to other cars.
• 21:56
  I actually, I got to drive at E 30 at Limerock last year, which is really
• 22:00
  exciting to not have a dry session until the race started at a track
• 22:03
  like Limerock, if you're familiar.
• 22:05
  But I looped it.
• 22:06
  My first wet practice session, but you know, you have to find the limit.
• 22:09
  So you have to cross it to find it.
• 22:10
  Things translate, but those cars like to move around on the tail
• 22:13
  a lot quicker than mine does.
• 22:15
  I feel like all the paddock jokes suddenly come out when you say that,
• 22:18
  like what's it like to drive a car with torque, you know, compared to your,
• 22:23
  I was afraid.
• 22:24
  I was like, this car feels like it's got so much power and you know.
• 22:27
  Maybe I had 30 more horsepower than my Miata, but also 300 more pounds.
• 22:32
  But eh, it was fun.
• 22:34
  Bill sort of alluded to something that I want to touch on that comes up at every
• 22:38
  driver's meeting, especially as a coach.
• 22:40
  You hear it all the time, students complaining this and that.
• 22:43
  What are your pet peeves as a Miata driver on track?
• 22:47
  What really gets you hot and boiled?
• 22:50
  Corvette guys, the ca brake check won.
• 22:54
  You know it, it seems to happen to me every time I'm at VIR you chase
• 22:58
  'em from turn one to Oaktree and they should point you by and they don't.
• 23:03
  And then you kind of catch 'em going down rollercoaster onto the front straight.
• 23:07
  They probably shouldn't point you there, but you know, you're
• 23:09
  right back on 'em and turn one.
• 23:10
  And I can remember once probably doing six laps behind the same Corvette.
• 23:15
  I was so frustrated I didn't go pull in for extra space.
• 23:18
  I just pulled in and stayed in.
• 23:20
  The pet peeve is the uh, faster car that that rides you.
• 23:23
  You know, you give 'em the point by they pass you and then you're right on their
• 23:26
  bumper and the turns, I think we talked about this earlier or something like that.
• 23:29
  You chase 'em through a couple turns, they're way ahead and you
• 23:32
  catch 'em in a couple of turns.
• 23:34
  Yeah, just 'cause they have five times more horsepower doesn't
• 23:36
  mean, uh, they're necessarily all that faster on the, the track.
• 23:40
  I think it boils down to egos honestly.
• 23:43
  Um, they don't wanna let the 120 to whatever horsepower Miata get by their
• 23:48
  500 horsepower, whatever, actually, and I shouldn't have singled out Corvette guys.
• 23:52
  'cause it's not just Corvette guys.
• 23:54
  It was just easy to say after.
• 23:56
  Oh no, no.
• 23:56
  It's the Mustang guys and the Porsche guys and the, uh, Viper guys.
• 23:59
  And you can, anybody, anybody with power than me?
• 24:03
  Pretty, pretty much.
• 24:04
  So, and I'll, I'll preface this by saying I've never actually done it,
• 24:07
  but I have very much tried in advanced de groups to push cars outta corners.
• 24:12
  You know, they drive off before I can actually push their bumper.
• 24:14
  But I've tried, I've gotten close.
• 24:16
  There's been two, there's a nine 11 where if there was air between
• 24:19
  our bumpers, I'd be shocked.
• 24:22
  He, he got away from it.
• 24:23
  That is, that is the good side of it, is freaking out the guys with the a hundred
• 24:27
  to $200,000 car by being on their ass.
• 24:30
  That usually will get you the point by two.
• 24:32
  Yeah.
• 24:33
  Uh, if it doesn't, the, the thing that I learned that helps is the next corner.
• 24:38
  Instead of being in their mirror, following them, be
• 24:40
  in their mirror sideways.
• 24:42
  Uh, and then usually you'll get a very fair point by it because, or a black
• 24:47
  or a black flag, one or the other.
• 24:49
  I mean, you know, yeah, it depends.
• 24:51
  Just pass 'em in the dirt hunch stook style and you know, to your, to
• 24:56
  your point, I feel your guys' pain.
• 24:58
  I run a low horsepower car as well and you know, it's a lot heavier
• 25:01
  than Dave's, that's for sure.
• 25:03
  But yeah, you're there, you're glued to somebody, you're like, oh my god.
• 25:05
  And you know, being an instructor, I, you know, I tell my groups,
• 25:09
  especially if I'm a group leader, I'm like, Hey guys, these Miata guys,
• 25:13
  they didn't transport themselves.
• 25:14
  Here they are on you.
• 25:16
  And their foot is to the floor, like get out of the way.
• 25:19
  You know what I mean?
• 25:20
  Be respectful of it and whatnot.
• 25:22
  And a lot of people don't respect the momentum cars and how much
• 25:25
  work it takes to drive one, because we don't have the horsepower.
• 25:29
  We don't have 5, 6, 7, 800 horsepower on demand, like some of these Camaros and
• 25:34
  Corvettes and, and Vipers and whatnot.
• 25:36
  So it is a struggle.
• 25:37
  The struggle is real, but I always like to remind people to be respectful.
• 25:41
  And you know what else?
• 25:42
  Tuck behind the Miata because they are hauling ass and you might learn something.
• 25:46
  That's the other thing I try to remind people, follow their line,
• 25:49
  see what they're doing, see how you can carry more speed because that
• 25:53
  low horsepower momentum car is gonna demonstrate that very, very quickly.
• 25:56
  I've actually gotten a lot of.
• 25:58
  I've given point buys the fast cars coming up on straights and they wave
• 26:01
  it off and they'll follow me for two or three laps and then they'll
• 26:04
  present and go the next straightaway.
• 26:06
  And it's, it's pretty cool that they're trying that.
• 26:08
  The one thing that I have noticed, if you are in a Miata and you're tired of
• 26:11
  not getting point buys, make your car look like a race car, like sticker it up.
• 26:15
  'cause since I've been in the spec Miata, people let me right by.
• 26:18
  I mean, maybe it's because my comfort level for space between cars has
• 26:22
  gotten a lot shorter, but, so I'm, I'm closer than I used to be, but
• 26:26
  I don't really, I haven't gotten hold that held up much lately.
• 26:29
  How many stickers do you have?
• 26:30
  Oh, I can't count.
• 26:31
  There's a lot.
• 26:32
  Let me, there.
• 26:32
  Better be a lot of HPD junkie stickers.
• 26:35
  Well, I mean, if you got how, how much horsepower do you
• 26:37
  Well that, that's my point.
• 26:38
  If he's got like 20 stickers, that's an extra a hundred horsepower.
• 26:41
  You're Oh yeah.
• 26:41
  Immediately faster.
• 26:43
  Oh, of course.
• 26:43
  Yeah.
• 26:43
  Well, they're required alone.
• 26:44
  There's quite a few.
• 26:45
  So
• 26:48
  Dave brought up the a hundred thousand dollars, the $200,000 cars.
• 26:51
  We know that the Miatas, at least maybe in previous markets, not the COVID post
• 26:55
  COVID market, that they were cheap.
• 26:57
  At least that's what we hear all the time.
• 26:59
  So what's the true total cost of ownership really, like for
• 27:02
  HPD and for earth collaboration?
• 27:04
  Um, I, I mean that's, it really depends on what you wanna do with it.
• 27:07
  I think you can keep it really cheap and throw some coil overs and some little
• 27:11
  wider wheel and tire and a roll bar and some racing seats and roll with it.
• 27:15
  But you can be like me.
• 27:17
  Go down the rabbit hole and just do everything you possibly can
• 27:20
  to it, which a lot of it we know.
• 27:22
  And that was part of the hobby for me too, was I didn't really wrench a whole
• 27:25
  lot on other cars working on the miana.
• 27:28
  I felt really comfortable.
• 27:29
  So I just kept doing more and more and, you know, I liked fiddling
• 27:33
  with little fabrication things and so it, it really depends.
• 27:36
  And, you know, as far as cost, I, I paid I think 2,500 for mine, but you
• 27:43
  know what, you could, I would think the same car now would be six grand and
• 27:48
  I've probably put 10 to 12,000 in it.
• 27:52
  But again, a lot of it was, you know, not necessary just 'cause I wanted to
• 27:56
  And it wasn't all in one shot either.
• 27:58
  It was over the course of years.
• 28:00
  No, no.
• 28:00
  It was o over, yeah, over probably five years.
• 28:03
  And, you know, it, it could be anything from hood vents to a different shifter to
• 28:09
  things that absolutely aren't necessary.
• 28:11
  They just make it a little nicer or cooler or whatever you wanna call it.
• 28:15
  If we all look back over time and, and start calculating how much money
• 28:18
  we put into our cars over the years.
• 28:19
  Don't start crying that, hey, that's their boat.
• 28:22
  We don't do that here.
• 28:24
  Yeah, no, but only if you wanna be depressed.
• 28:27
  Even still, you know, 12 grand invested into a track car that
• 28:31
  is fun as hell is still nothing.
• 28:34
  Right.
• 28:35
  Exactly.
• 28:35
  You know, comparatively, you know, you guys can relate 'cause you're
• 28:38
  in lesser expensive cars, but you go to a chin event and every car
• 28:41
  there is a hundred thousand and up.
• 28:43
  Yeah.
• 28:44
  So, you know, you do, you're, you're nowhere near that and you, you have just
• 28:47
  as much fun if not more fun than they do.
• 28:49
  Exactly.
• 28:49
  And, and there's definitely the fun of running one down and kind of laughing,
• 28:53
  thinking what you've spent versus them.
• 28:56
  I've seen Dave's car in person.
• 28:57
  It's very nice.
• 28:58
  So good job.
• 28:59
  Well, thank you.
• 29:00
  Thank you.
• 29:00
  One thing that was wild was my consumable budget for, I think it was
• 29:04
  the two years before I started racing.
• 29:06
  So I was instructing and with my club they had a special where you
• 29:10
  could do time trial for just $50.
• 29:12
  It was like a little, like a bump up for the instructor group.
• 29:14
  There was very few people that would run in my specific class and time
• 29:17
  trial, but there was enough to get.
• 29:19
  Max's contingency and hawk contingency.
• 29:22
  So for two years I didn't spend any money on tires or brakes.
• 29:27
  Nice.
• 29:28
  Um, brake pads are completely covered.
• 29:30
  Uh, and I was only going through a set a year anyway.
• 29:32
  Tires were, so that was 30 bucks, right?
• 29:34
  Yeah.
• 29:35
  Five the better.
• 29:38
  And then the tires was, were given to me too.
• 29:40
  So I would run 'em for a year and then just replace 'em with contingency
• 29:44
  tires and sell off the old ones.
• 29:46
  And it, it worked out, uh, pretty well.
• 29:48
  So I bought mine a little bit over two years ago for the car.
• 29:52
  All the, uh, the stuff that he had new in box and then a set of,
• 29:56
  uh, wheels and, uh, re 70 ones.
• 29:59
  I was still just under 10 grand.
• 30:01
  And the only thing I've had to do in the last two years is we pulled
• 30:03
  the motor over the off season here just to reseal every gasket.
• 30:07
  The rear main was leaking a little bit, the front crank a
• 30:09
  little bit, I mean, so seals and a couple bearings and a new pulley.
• 30:12
  And I did some upgraded voter bounce and upgraded Kevlar timing belt.
• 30:16
  So I'm probably right where David is probably 12 grand total.
• 30:18
  The Miatas, they all come in different colors and flavors like Skittles, right?
• 30:23
  So, but there's like a base setup.
• 30:25
  A lot of people say I run the SSM package.
• 30:28
  Whatever that means, means something to you guys, but I, I don't know, I dunno
• 30:34
  what it means, but I guess the question is like, how similar or dissimilar
• 30:39
  are your guys three miatas, which are, you know, all NA and B series cars.
• 30:44
  What's the setup like?
• 30:45
  What kind of parts would you recommend other people buy and
• 30:48
  where are you getting 'em from?
• 30:49
  Like what's, where's the best place to source this stuff?
• 30:51
  So mine is a spec Miata.
• 30:53
  I have to run what I'm told to run.
• 30:55
  I don't have a choice in it, which I'm fine with the current setup.
• 30:58
  About three years ago, we switched to Penske Shocks.
• 31:01
  And when I say that everyone I see their eyes open.
• 31:03
  They're like, it's a spec class.
• 31:04
  They're so expensive.
• 31:05
  They're actually not, they're $200 each.
• 31:07
  For the shock.
• 31:08
  The total shock to buy 'em the first time with the amounts
• 31:11
  and everything is like 1200.
• 31:13
  And then the full suspension package, I wanna say, including
• 31:16
  the shocks is like 2,500 or so.
• 31:19
  And it, it is absolutely not the best possible suspension for Miatas.
• 31:24
  There's better options out there, but the cost is really low.
• 31:28
  I mean, that's what some people are paying for shocks on BMWs.
• 31:31
  So the cost for the suspension package is low.
• 31:33
  And the good thing about the Spec Miata package, there are thousands and
• 31:37
  thousands and thousands of them running.
• 31:39
  So if you're at a track day and you're like, Hey, my car is handling like crap.
• 31:43
  If you can go talk to a spec Miata guy and say, what, you
• 31:45
  know, what setup do you have?
• 31:46
  What's your alignment?
• 31:47
  What's this and that.
• 31:48
  I mean, you know, it's not gonna be the same if you're on street tires versus
• 31:51
  Toyos or Hoosiers, but you'll be able to have that kind of baseline of knowledge.
• 31:56
  That's really helpful.
• 31:57
  If someone asked me what to buy right now, what I would say is try and
• 32:00
  find an old spec Miata suspension.
• 32:02
  Most of us took ours off.
• 32:03
  We had the Bill Steins where the old style, we, most of us
• 32:06
  replaced it with the Penskes.
• 32:07
  And you can get the bill Steins for so cheap, you still have to pay for this,
• 32:12
  the amounts and the springs and all that.
• 32:13
  But really to get a very, very competent track suspension for very, very little
• 32:17
  money, there's, you can't beat it.
• 32:19
  Yeah.
• 32:19
  I think the best advice is what Jim said.
• 32:21
  You talk to other owners, you walk the paddock at a track
• 32:24
  day and hey, what do you run?
• 32:25
  And you look, you look like you're handling pretty well or
• 32:27
  what advice do you have here?
• 32:28
  Jump forums can be good and bad.
• 32:30
  When I've got asked some advice, I've mentioned one of my employees
• 32:33
  has a Miata, so you know, he's been good to say, Hey, run this, run that.
• 32:37
  A bunch of the parts we just bought.
• 32:38
  We went to Fab nine and X five for a lot of that.
• 32:41
  But I've heard good things about flying Miata as well.
• 32:43
  You know, being track.
• 32:45
  I think it's definitely a whole different ball game than what Jim's doing.
• 32:48
  Bill kind of said it at the beginning, start out with tires.
• 32:51
  I kind of think brakes are probably the first thing.
• 32:54
  Tires, but they're kind of right there together too, is gonna
• 32:57
  make the, the biggest difference.
• 32:59
  Again, it's such a different market between racing and track day.
• 33:02
  It's, you can kind of do what you want or what you can afford or
• 33:05
  what you are able to do yourself.
• 33:08
  And as far as parts, man, I'm kind of all over the place.
• 33:11
  I mean, I, I buy some stuff from Rock Auto, I buy a lot of
• 33:15
  stuff from a spec meato guy.
• 33:17
  I can't remember exactly where he is.
• 33:19
  Somewhere in the central part of the country.
• 33:20
  It's, it advanced, advanced auto Sports.
• 33:23
  Yeah.
• 33:23
  I mean, you know, the way I look at it with him is he might only sell
• 33:27
  one wheel hub type, you know, brand or one break master cylinder brand.
• 33:33
  But I feel like he's probably figured out which one's the best
• 33:36
  and his prices are amazingly good.
• 33:38
  I, I, I got a, um, clutch, the hydraulic part rebuild kit, and I think the
• 33:43
  master cylinder, a stainless steel line and slave cylinder altogether
• 33:48
  was less than a hundred dollars.
• 33:49
  So, you know, he's definitely been a go-to for me, I bought
• 33:52
  some stuff from Flying Miata.
• 33:54
  To me, they're a little more of a street car site, not fully, but to
• 33:59
  me that's the feel I get that they cater a little more to that agree.
• 34:02
  So what's your setup like, Dave?
• 34:04
  What suspension are you running on your Miata?
• 34:06
  You know, I, I have a coil over suspension.
• 34:08
  It's nothing crazy.
• 34:09
  It's a, I would call it an inexpensive, it's a Vmax is, is what I have.
• 34:15
  And I, they have several different levels and I have the
• 34:17
  Vmax Extreme Track Pack and, and actually got those from Fly Miata.
• 34:23
  And at the time, and I think you still can, if you buy Coilovers and
• 34:28
  their Sway bars at the same time, you get a considerable discount.
• 34:31
  They're probably in the 12 to $1,300 range at this point.
• 34:35
  With the sway bar.
• 34:37
  I wanna say I paid nine something, but that's been five years ago.
• 34:42
  And you know, honestly I'd like to be able to speak on, you know, is
• 34:45
  there a huge difference between a a thousand dollars coil over and a.
• 34:48
  I think some, you know, Olins, I think can be almost three grand bill.
• 34:52
  I think you got a lucky score behind that car with a set of olins did.
• 34:56
  But, you know, honestly, I'd really like to, to drive a car with them to
• 35:00
  see is there $2,000 worth of difference in, in these shocks, or, or am I, am
• 35:06
  I a good enough driver to feel the difference in $2,000 worth of shocks?
• 35:11
  I don't think, I don't think I am.
• 35:12
  That's a very good point, and I think there's a, there's a fallacy
• 35:15
  a lot around some of these parts.
• 35:17
  I tell people all the time when they ask my opinion, you know, let's say
• 35:20
  with Volkswagen stuff, I'm like, start with this and work your way up.
• 35:23
  Never build the car past your ability to drive it, because
• 35:27
  that'll get you into trouble.
• 35:28
  So yes, there is some, why spend the money three times.
• 35:32
  But I'm also telling you, don't waste your money on these 12 things.
• 35:35
  I've already wasted my money on those.
• 35:37
  Yeah.
• 35:37
  Here's 11 of them suck and there's one of them that's.
• 35:40
  Good.
• 35:41
  Go start with this one.
• 35:42
  Right?
• 35:42
  Go from there.
• 35:43
  So it is a progression and a lot of people just want to go to finished
• 35:46
  product and then the car is undrivable.
• 35:48
  And it kind of leads me into another question about the
• 35:51
  different kinds of types of Miatas.
• 35:53
  I've seen 'em all right.
• 35:54
  From the track cars to the ssms to the stance bros with like negative
• 35:58
  12 degrees of camber and bags.
• 36:01
  And then you've got the square Miatas.
• 36:03
  For a lot of people that don't know what that is, tune into our autocross episode
• 36:07
  where we talk to a mi autocrosser where he's running like 2 55 square on an nb
• 36:13
  and it's like, how is that even a thing?
• 36:15
  They're all, oh my, we had 90 fives.
• 36:17
  I mean it's insane, right?
• 36:18
  They'll get steam rollers and they stick out eight inches from the body,
• 36:21
  but they're all set up very different.
• 36:23
  But it also seems like the community's very tight and there's
• 36:25
  certain things to get and not get.
• 36:27
  My question coming out of this very long ramble is can you build
• 36:31
  a Miata that does everything?
• 36:33
  Is there a combination that works for the track for CROs for the street?
• 36:37
  So you can have one car and not three.
• 36:39
  I know you end up with three Miatas over time, but I have a, I'm sure
• 36:44
  you could answer they, yes, every Miata can do all of these things.
• 36:49
  When I started doing this, I had a bone stock Miata.
• 36:52
  All it had was a front sway bar.
• 36:54
  'cause it was initially by the previous owner built for estock autocross.
• 36:58
  That was it, front sway bar.
• 37:00
  And I tracked that car for two years and daily drove tracked
• 37:03
  with the occasional autocross for two years and it was perfect.
• 37:07
  It was amazing.
• 37:08
  I mean, I was scraping my mirrors.
• 37:09
  It was leaning so hard in the corners, but that was good.
• 37:12
  I learned how to drive in that car.
• 37:14
  Short answer, yes, they can leave it stock.
• 37:19
  So what are some of the best life hacks for Miatas?
• 37:21
  Things that you've learned?
• 37:22
  Make waste to cut corners and save money and, and bring down
• 37:25
  the total cost of ownership.
• 37:27
  One thing that I do, that I get a lot of hard looks for is the biggest weak
• 37:31
  point on our cars is the front hubs.
• 37:33
  The more grip you have, the more likely they're to fail.
• 37:36
  It's not an if, it's a, when I'm looking right now at my shelf, in the
• 37:40
  garage, I have six pre-packed hubs.
• 37:42
  'cause I bring at least three of the track with me.
• 37:44
  Sounds familiar.
• 37:44
  My hack for that is buy the $25 hubs.
• 37:49
  On the GMB hubs.
• 37:50
  They're junk, but they're all junk and they're all gonna fail,
• 37:53
  so you might as well buy 'em and repack 'em with good grease.
• 37:56
  And then in the meantime, once you have those, keep your eyes out for
• 38:00
  cheap deals on OEM hubs that are old off desert cars, off part out cars.
• 38:06
  If they're still good, if they don't have movement in 'em yet, you can
• 38:09
  still take 'em apart and repack 'em.
• 38:10
  That's my one hack 'cause that's worked out well.
• 38:13
  Uh, I have a.
• 38:13
  A pile of hubs.
• 38:14
  That hasn't been an issue in quite a while for me.
• 38:16
  Now, the other street hack was actually kind of fun.
• 38:18
  I, you know, I wish I had a picture that I could hold up to the screen
• 38:21
  here, but Miatas get very hot and a lot of us take the air conditioning
• 38:25
  out or the air conditioning is junk or it's, doesn't work anymore.
• 38:29
  I took a, a gutter downspout, the little 90 degree turn from a gutter pipe.
• 38:34
  And attached it right after my sail window.
• 38:37
  'cause even when the windows open, no air gets in this car and I had it
• 38:40
  attached there, so it would take air from right behind the mirror and throw
• 38:43
  it right at me in the driver's seat.
• 38:46
  I swear it saved my life on hot days and I'm talking street track, whatever.
• 38:51
  It's, it was a, it was great.
• 38:54
  All for $4.
• 38:56
  It made me think of, I love when I can buy something from
• 39:00
  my car at Home Depot or Lowe's.
• 39:02
  I don't know.
• 39:03
  I get such a charge out of it.
• 39:05
  One hack is something Jim brought up earlier.
• 39:07
  You know, there, there's such a huge racing community and such a huge car
• 39:10
  culture around me is there's always gonna be a good deal on something used.
• 39:14
  Or a part out car.
• 39:16
  And no matter where you live, you know, you're in the Facebook
• 39:19
  groups, there's constant, Hey, I'm looking for this, and 10 people
• 39:22
  chime in with, Hey, I, I have one.
• 39:24
  Or just part out.
• 39:25
  Yeah.
• 39:25
  Being able to, you know, get stuff from the spec racing community
• 39:27
  or from the car community.
• 39:29
  And you bring up a really good point, bill.
• 39:30
  Where are some of the best online communities or forums for miana
• 39:34
  owners if people are looking to get in for the first time?
• 39:37
  Obviously if you're in the know, you're in the know, but where, what's
• 39:40
  some great resources for folks?
• 39:41
  So, I'm in Ohio and there's a couple good Facebook groups, um, Miata Owners of Ohio.
• 39:46
  To me, the Facebook groups are a little bit better than the forums these days.
• 39:49
  It's just, it's, it's more real time.
• 39:51
  It sometimes I think it's easier to search wherever you are.
• 39:54
  Do a couple of searches for some Facebook groups.
• 39:56
  That, uh, are Miata focused and geography focused.
• 39:59
  I don't know if I'd call it a hack, but there's a myth about brake rotors that
• 40:03
  you need slotted or drilled or whatever.
• 40:07
  Don't spend bunch of money on your brake rotors for a Miata Rock Auto,
• 40:12
  $80 for all four shipped to your door.
• 40:16
  Um, that's all you need.
• 40:17
  That's it.
• 40:18
  It kills me when I hear someone say, yeah, I'm gonna go get the
• 40:20
  big break package, and I'm like.
• 40:22
  Please don't, please don't do it.
• 40:25
  You know, your, your stock breaks become the big brake package when
• 40:29
  you take 500 pounds out of the car.
• 40:31
  Absolutely.
• 40:32
  If anything, upgrade to the, uh, I have the sport brakes on mine, which
• 40:37
  are a little bit more break than what Jim probably has on his car,
• 40:41
  but I mean, they're more than enough.
• 40:43
  But what is this?
• 40:44
  I, I thought Miata owners didn't have brakes.
• 40:46
  They, they never use them putting money into them.
• 40:49
  We use them very briefly.
• 40:50
  That's in front of us.
• 40:51
  We have to use It's an brake.
• 40:55
  Yeah.
• 40:56
  Yeah.
• 40:56
  I mean, what good or breaks?
• 40:57
  All they do is slow you down after exactly whatever.
• 41:01
  You know, as Miata owners, longtime Miata owners, now in some cases,
• 41:04
  what's the best and worst parts?
• 41:07
  Outside of the driving experience it, it can be either or.
• 41:09
  So what are the best or worst parts about owning a Miata now that you know?
• 41:14
  Oh, honestly, think of a bad, anything bad.
• 41:17
  I mean, I mean, I'm sure there is the best is just, it's so fun to drive.
• 41:21
  It's cheap.
• 41:22
  Everything's cheap for and plentiful and.
• 41:25
  I guess the downside is they are getting more expensive.
• 41:28
  If you wanna get into a Miata, price has definitely gone nuts.
• 41:32
  My call for the best part is I wouldn't be able to afford doing
• 41:36
  this if I didn't have a Miata.
• 41:37
  I don't know if there's any car that had, I can get a consumable budget
• 41:40
  this low and a parts budget this low.
• 41:42
  The worst part is that coming out of every tight corner, I can't just drop my foot
• 41:47
  and go completely sideways and be a hero.
• 41:49
  Like, I, I really want that on like a de day if I, you know, going for a ride or
• 41:53
  if there's, you know, look around, there's nobody on track and you want to have fun.
• 41:56
  I do wish I had a car that could do that, but the trade off to me is
• 42:00
  still not worth it, not happening.
• 42:02
  The best part, always fun to drive, always puts a smile on your face no matter what.
• 42:07
  And there's always the people that wanna talk to you about your car.
• 42:09
  You'll be.
• 42:10
  Pumping gas.
• 42:10
  Oh, I remember I had a Miata or you know, so and so had a Miata.
• 42:14
  Is that your girlfriend's Miata?
• 42:15
  You know, all those sort of things.
• 42:17
  It is, did you just come, did you just come from the Haircuttery?
• 42:20
  Yeah.
• 42:21
  You know, all the jokes, but the, uh, the worst part is, it kind of
• 42:26
  goes in line with what Jim just said.
• 42:27
  Yeah, you'll be on the freeway and, and I'm not advocating for street racing
• 42:30
  or saying this would be street racing.
• 42:32
  You are on the freeway and you know, a charger challenger or an STI rolls
• 42:35
  up next to you and you're like, man, I, I wanna play a little bit.
• 42:39
  And you can't hang with them if they drive you, I wanna do some MythBusters.
• 42:44
  Um, but it's probably directed more at Jim.
• 42:47
  So in a lot of these racing series, there is a conspiracy theory that in
• 42:52
  order to be competitive and to win all the front guys are, they're, they're,
• 42:55
  they're spending a lot more money than the people at the back of the pack.
• 42:58
  Is it the same for the SM and SSM guys?
• 43:01
  Is that part of the game?
• 43:03
  You're Mr. No money Motor sports.
• 43:05
  Are you competitive racing and are the front runners putting in more
• 43:09
  money than the back back markers?
• 43:11
  Bradley are, are you, are you referring to this mythical 1.7 liter
• 43:15
  Miata that doesn't exist anywhere?
• 43:18
  One point not.
• 43:19
  I would like to invoke my Fifth Amendment rates.
• 43:22
  That is the best question.
• 43:24
  That is not just a good question.
• 43:25
  That is the best question.
• 43:26
  That's kind of been my own personal journey.
• 43:28
  This is my fifth season racing now.
• 43:30
  I've always been doing it very cheaply, but each year I kind
• 43:32
  of ramp it up a little bit more, or prep or what I'm doing.
• 43:36
  Last season we average 19 cars a. And I ended the season in, was it either
• 43:44
  fourth or maybe fifth for points?
• 43:46
  I didn't win any races yet, you know, well I had I think a couple thirds this
• 43:52
  year and a lot in the top five, top six, uh, which kind of stinks was a lot of six
• 43:57
  is because that's right out of to bucks.
• 43:59
  But, uh, I was able to stay right up there in the front of the pack
• 44:04
  on the engine that came in my car when I bought it six years ago.
• 44:08
  One set of sticker tires per season doing alignments.
• 44:11
  Basically myself, my friend David t and Z Auto did my alignment like two years ago,
• 44:15
  and that's the last shop alignment I had.
• 44:17
  If you spend more money and more prep on these cars, you
• 44:20
  will be able to go faster, but.
• 44:22
  Having the spec series, the spec roles, and the prep, you get a lot
• 44:26
  less advantage spending more money in spec miana than you would if you're
• 44:30
  spending money in an open class like a, like an ST class or an unlimited class.
• 44:34
  So it still makes a difference, but not nearly as much as anywhere else.
• 44:38
  We are at Watkins Glen in like three weeks for our first race of the season, and I
• 44:42
  just bought a new engine, new used engine.
• 44:45
  So ask me this question again at the end of the month, now that I'm
• 44:49
  making power, that should be right up with the top boys and girls.
• 44:52
  We'll see how I can hold up.
• 44:54
  We'll see if that extra 10 horsepower is worth the money.
• 44:57
  What's the displacement of that motor?
• 44:59
  Did you say It's uh, I believe it's 1.9 liters now.
• 45:01
  Oh.
• 45:01
  Oh, okay.
• 45:02
  It is actually an overboard, you know, 1.81 and I have to take a, a 15
• 45:07
  pound weight penalty, which is good 'cause I already did that with COVID
• 45:10
  and how I learned how to bake bread.
• 45:12
  So I've been preparing for this.
• 45:17
  Congratulations on being like right in there with the, with the top guys.
• 45:20
  That's, it's pretty admirable.
• 45:21
  Thanks.
• 45:22
  Five years of racing.
• 45:23
  That's, that's really good.
• 45:24
  It's an alternate universe.
• 45:26
  The Miata, the MX five does not exist.
• 45:29
  What do you drive?
• 45:30
  Everything else being equal.
• 45:31
  What is your track weapon?
• 45:33
  Your race weapon?
• 45:34
  Ooh, that's a really good question, Brad.
• 45:36
  I'd probably go E 30, E 36.
• 45:39
  I've only tracked an E 36, but we raced an E 30.
• 45:41
  It just, I really, really enjoyed it.
• 45:43
  Plus, although the E 30 pricing's going through the roof like everything
• 45:46
  else and parts, but you know, E 36 or even E 46, they're everywhere.
• 45:51
  Parts are available everywhere.
• 45:52
  They're somewhat reliable.
• 45:54
  So that's what I would go with.
• 45:55
  I like how you emphasize somewhat.
• 45:57
  That's good.
• 45:57
  Yes, they're reliable.
• 46:00
  Yeah.
• 46:01
  I'll tell you what really makes me curious for some reason, is the B-R-Z-F-R-S Toyota
• 46:06
  86 i, I had driven one on the street.
• 46:09
  My dad had one for a little while and it was a nice driving car, but that was
• 46:14
  prior to me ever driving on the track.
• 46:16
  So I don't feel like I really drove it.
• 46:19
  I'm very curious about those cars.
• 46:21
  So that might be my choice.
• 46:22
  I have a two part answer here.
• 46:24
  So for racing it would be 30, got to race the Specky 30.
• 46:27
  It was a blast.
• 46:29
  I didn't rush this sell by Miata after doing it.
• 46:31
  But they're a lot of fun in my opinion.
• 46:33
  They're more fun to drive, they're slightly less fun to
• 46:36
  race, if that makes sense.
• 46:38
  Just 'cause the handling characteristics I've known at all.
• 46:40
  Yeah, right.
• 46:41
  But if for a, for tracking the 86 cars all the way.
• 46:45
  The B-R-Z-F-R-S, the 86, I mean, that to me is about as close as
• 46:49
  you're gonna get to a modern Miata.
• 46:51
  I know they still make Miatas their formula's a little
• 46:53
  bit better, in my opinion.
• 46:54
  I mean, to not have to worry about a roll bar that you can't even
• 46:57
  really easily put in a new car, a new Miata, the glass transmissions
• 47:00
  that they put in the new Miatas.
• 47:02
  Right now I'm leaning towards the 86 cars, plus there's so many that they're selling.
• 47:06
  That might be our next big spec class.
• 47:08
  Do I get a vote?
• 47:09
  Brad?
• 47:09
  Can I throw one in?
• 47:10
  Uh, you cannot say E 36.
• 47:12
  You've down that road before.
• 47:13
  It's not gonna be a BMW, that's for sure.
• 47:15
  I'm gonna, I'm gonna stick to my roots and I would say no,
• 47:18
  no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 47:20
  I would say 9 44 for God, all previous reasons stated 50 to 50 weight
• 47:26
  distribution, the whole nine yards.
• 47:28
  And they're quicker than E 30 technically.
• 47:31
  So I, I think I would go with the 9 44.
• 47:34
  See, we've, I could see that being an option every time
• 47:36
  that I've seen one on track.
• 47:38
  I mean, there was a two year spread where every time one showed up
• 47:41
  for our race group, I was like, when's the red flag gonna happen?
• 47:48
  And that's how we feel about it was a terrible joke because it was like,
• 47:51
  oh, there's, there, he, uh, he's out of the car, but it's on fire.
• 47:55
  Oh, there it is.
• 47:56
  It's parked over here.
• 47:57
  It's just like, ah, man.
• 48:00
  To dovetail off of what Brad said and bring it back into reality a little bit.
• 48:03
  If you had to start all over again, would you stick with the Miata you have
• 48:08
  or would you do something different?
• 48:09
  I wanna pop up headlights.
• 48:13
  I definitely would not do anything different, you know, obviously
• 48:16
  didn't know then what I know now, but I think I made the right choice.
• 48:20
  I would do the same exact thing, street me out for a while,
• 48:22
  then suck me out when I can.
• 48:24
  Two of you having nbs and one of you having n na, I have to ask the question,
• 48:28
  are those the best generations?
• 48:30
  The original two?
• 48:31
  Do you have any love for the NC and the nd?
• 48:33
  If not, why not?
• 48:35
  Let's talk about the newer ones as well.
• 48:37
  We don't, nobody seems to really focus on them.
• 48:39
  I'd like to drive.
• 48:40
  I'd like to drive both.
• 48:41
  I, I've ridden in an ND on the track and it's, it, you know, it
• 48:46
  seemed pretty cool, but driving in riding's two different things.
• 48:48
  And I don't even think I've been in an NC on the street, but I'd be
• 48:52
  very, very curious to drive both.
• 48:54
  I do like the NA and NB styling.
• 48:56
  I know the NC isn't too much different.
• 48:59
  Some people say, I just don't necessarily like the lines of the NC or nd not
• 49:03
  say anything negative about 'em.
• 49:05
  But the one thing is, um, I'm a fan of simplicity and the
• 49:08
  more complicated a car gets.
• 49:10
  The more expensive it is to repair, the more things that can
• 49:13
  break simple, to me is better.
• 49:15
  Bill kind of nailed my, uh, why I like the NA MDs so much.
• 49:18
  They're so simple.
• 49:20
  They're reliable.
• 49:21
  They're so, the NCS had some early engine issues.
• 49:24
  The nds are having transmission issues.
• 49:26
  They're still great, fantastic cars and maybe it's just me
• 49:29
  sticking with what I know.
• 49:31
  I would love to get in one.
• 49:32
  I'm not ruling them out for the future as our cars get older.
• 49:35
  We might have to start moving up sometime soon, if nothing else, just to keep up
• 49:39
  with the, the general speed of track days.
• 49:41
  'cause they both have a good amount more power.
• 49:43
  They're great cars.
• 49:44
  I, I would love to track 'em and street 'em, but I'm definitely
• 49:48
  not selling mine anytime soon.
• 49:49
  I hear you on that.
• 49:50
  I got, I've gotten the opportunity to run a couple prepared NCS on
• 49:54
  track and I really like them.
• 49:55
  I would choose them honestly, a because they're, look, they're a
• 49:58
  little bit more comfortable, they're bigger, but the swap potential, if
• 50:02
  you've got that mentality is huge.
• 50:04
  You could put a 2, 2, 3, 2 5.
• 50:06
  There's a lot of power options for the NC NC turbos they have over Europe,
• 50:11
  you know, make it 300 plus horsepower.
• 50:13
  I, I just like that chassis and having driven the older ones as well.
• 50:17
  When I got in the NC it was a little less twitchy.
• 50:20
  Because it's a bigger car.
• 50:22
  Which actually leads me into my question to you guys about maybe
• 50:25
  your gut reaction to the ND because it went smaller again, right?
• 50:29
  The NC is the largest Miata by far.
• 50:31
  Mm-hmm.
• 50:32
  But then they went backwards and they said, let's go back to the original size.
• 50:35
  So when that car debuted and you guys got to put eyes on it, what did you think?
• 50:39
  And what do you still think about it today?
• 50:41
  Really lot.
• 50:42
  I liked it.
• 50:43
  I mean, I like the, I like the way it looks.
• 50:46
  I mean, not stock right from the showroom.
• 50:48
  I think the wheels look a little funky and a little small on 'em.
• 50:51
  But I like the lines.
• 50:52
  And you know, like Jim was saying, I've thought about the NC and ND option as
• 50:59
  the future of what happens when you can't find anymore NAS or N Bs, or God
• 51:04
  forbid IB mine up, would I go that route?
• 51:06
  So, yeah, I'm curious about 'em, Barry.
• 51:09
  The only hard stop I have for really the ND I think over the NC is the roll
• 51:14
  bar is so tough to put in those cars right now the only solution I, and I
• 51:18
  could be wrong here, but I believe the only solutions are like over $2,000 for
• 51:23
  a like one specific company that makes a roll bar you can go on track with and
• 51:27
  it's not ready for that compromise yet.
• 51:29
  Um, what about the rc, what about the RC edition?
• 51:32
  You have to have a roll bar in those too.
• 51:33
  Yeah, it looks like it's a regular target car, but the back of the car actually
• 51:38
  lifts up to put the target underneath.
• 51:39
  So it's, there's no fixed roof portion.
• 51:41
  I've heard just recently heard that some clubs do let you on track with that.
• 51:45
  I wouldn't feel comfortable really wheeling a car like that without
• 51:48
  some sort of protection in it.
• 51:49
  Yeah, because to your point, some clubs allow the NC two, the one
• 51:53
  with the convertible hard top to be run just with the factory hoops.
• 51:57
  Yeah.
• 51:57
  Instead of a roll bar.
• 51:58
  So that's kind of interesting 'cause the NC one and NC two soft top to
• 52:01
  hard top, all that kind of thing.
• 52:02
  A friend of mine just bought a, um.
• 52:05
  Nd, what do they call 'em?
• 52:06
  Rf.
• 52:07
  Yep.
• 52:08
  And he bought it specifically to track it.
• 52:10
  And evidently when you put a roll bar in one of those, the
• 52:14
  top never goes down again.
• 52:16
  You have to actually, you know, disconnect it.
• 52:19
  It is what it is.
• 52:20
  It's track cost.
• 52:20
  Yeah.
• 52:20
  Why spend the extra money for the fixed roof when you look so good though?
• 52:25
  He did have, I think there was something that the chassis better, or it handles
• 52:31
  better or there was a reason, and honestly, oh, I know what it was.
• 52:35
  If he bought a soft top, he wanted to put a hard top on it.
• 52:38
  And the hard tops for them are like.
• 52:40
  Insanely expensive.
• 52:42
  He kind of did the math and figured out that, well, I might as well
• 52:45
  just buy an RF and go that route.
• 52:48
  Yeah.
• 52:48
  I was glad to see that it came back to the closer to the original size.
• 52:51
  You know, if you look at the mini Coopers lately, you know, if you took, you know,
• 52:54
  an R 50, R 53 when they came back in early two thousands and looked to at where they
• 52:58
  are today, they've gotten fatter, the maxi, that's what we call 'em around here.
• 53:04
  Um, see, I haven't, I haven't been up close to one.
• 53:07
  I haven't been in one, so I can't, I can't speak to that.
• 53:09
  But, um, I was glad to see that it kind of returned back to
• 53:12
  the original idea of, hey, it's supposed to be a, a small, nimble.
• 53:15
  Car.
• 53:16
  So that leads into a another variant of the Miata.
• 53:20
  I, I often call it the Fiat, and that's the Fiat 1 24 Barth, which is very
• 53:25
  similar in some ways to the NC Miata, although it shares the ND chassis,
• 53:30
  it's actually physically larger.
• 53:32
  It's more comfortable to sit in and things like that.
• 53:35
  So what do you guys think about the 1 24 spider?
• 53:38
  It's ugly blasphemer, you know, it's, to me, it's almost like they tried to copy
• 53:46
  an nb, definitely lines that look like an nb, but then especially the back.
• 53:51
  Yeah.
• 53:51
  Yeah.
• 53:52
  But then there's some lines that just look like they're slightly out of place.
• 53:55
  To me, it just.
• 53:56
  I don't like it, but I think that it's just very minute things that
• 54:00
  they did that make me not like it.
• 54:02
  So let me ask you this, if they re-badged it, changed the sheet metal and
• 54:05
  brought it back as an Alpha Rome male, hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
• 54:10
  Would that change your opinion of the fiat?
• 54:12
  No, definitely.
• 54:13
  I mean, it, it really, it's a, it's an aesthetics thing.
• 54:15
  I'm, I mean, I just don't like the way it looks.
• 54:18
  And, and then it's got what, a 1.4 turbo in it.
• 54:23
  One's gotta be faster or drive better than the other.
• 54:26
  But I, I really don't know.
• 54:27
  So I've read in the tests and even they did a review on the grand tour.
• 54:31
  Richard Hammond drove one and basically, because the fiat weighs more than
• 54:35
  the nd but it makes more power.
• 54:36
  They're basically equal.
• 54:38
  But the difference is the tunability of the fiat is huge because there's
• 54:42
  people like Euro compulsion that make turbo kits for 'em and things like that.
• 54:45
  You throw 'em on, suddenly you have 300 horsepower.
• 54:47
  You have a rocket ship, right?
• 54:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 54:49
  So I think the flexibility of the Abarth motor is great.
• 54:53
  If you want to go back to what we were talking about earlier in the episode where
• 54:56
  it's like, I want that need for speed.
• 54:58
  I want to fulfill and satisfy that, but I don't want something
• 55:01
  that isn't a Miata, right?
• 55:03
  To me when I was, I was looking at some of the pictures again before the call.
• 55:06
  You know, it kind of looks almost video gamish.
• 55:08
  I don't know why.
• 55:09
  And a lot of the renderings I saw, I read an old article from 2016
• 55:12
  Road and Track or MotorTrend or something that did a comparison.
• 55:16
  And just like you said, Eric, they came out about even, I have
• 55:19
  not seen one on the road though.
• 55:20
  Have you guys, anyone seen?
• 55:21
  Oh, they're all over the place here.
• 55:23
  Yeah.
• 55:23
  Yeah.
• 55:25
  Not here in Cleveland.
• 55:26
  I, I fell into that love with it, or I guess out and in the first time
• 55:30
  I saw one in person, I was at New York Auto Show and I was not a fan.
• 55:34
  But then when I started to see 'em, I, I like it.
• 55:36
  It kind of has that old Fiat Roadster look, which is like a little bit awkward.
• 55:41
  But it works.
• 55:42
  It definitely has that look.
• 55:43
  Personally, I am not a fan of turbo cars though.
• 55:46
  I mean, I know I'm gonna have to change my opinion 'cause
• 55:48
  everything is turning into turbos.
• 55:50
  I'd rather have the normally aspirated Miatas and then I know the ND two Miata.
• 55:55
  I think they bumped it.
• 55:55
  What, like 40 horsepower.
• 55:57
  Maybe not four.
• 55:58
  They there was a huge bump for the second generation of the nds.
• 56:02
  I like them and used car market.
• 56:04
  I'm not gonna say no to one, but I'd still rather stick with the Miata version.
• 56:07
  It's a pizan thing.
• 56:08
  We get it.
• 56:09
  You know the whole,
• 56:12
  yeah.
• 56:12
  So you didn't see the guy off camera holding a cannoli saying,
• 56:15
  you better say you like the fiat.
• 56:17
  Yeah, right.
• 56:18
  As a Chrysler person too.
• 56:19
  A Mopar guy.
• 56:20
  I have to like the fiat, you know?
• 56:21
  Right, exactly.
• 56:23
  Amen to that.
• 56:23
  Amen to that.
• 56:24
  I've got a lot of texts.
• 56:25
  Why are you racing mes when you could race that?
• 56:27
  I can't though, but you're close and the price on those things is, has gone nuts
• 56:32
  to, oh has to Brad's point earlier, used car market going through the roof and
• 56:37
  things like that and, and you know, when you start looking at what a used six speed
• 56:41
  fiat would cost, you can buy a rag out Alpha four C and have a mid engine fighter
• 56:47
  jet more power and all that kinda stuff.
• 56:49
  So it's kind of this weird balance when we start talking
• 56:51
  about again, what should I buy?
• 56:53
  How do I spend my money in today's market when a used car
• 56:56
  from five years ago is 30 grand?
• 56:58
  You're like, well, do I buy.
• 57:00
  You know, I'll Mach E for 40 and it's a brand new EV and
• 57:04
  get all excited about that.
• 57:05
  Or do I buy an SSM for that price?
• 57:08
  'cause a lot of ssms, you know, especially you want a front
• 57:10
  runner, they're expensive, right?
• 57:11
  So there's a lot of different things to consider when you get into that.
• 57:14
  That being said, since you guys are in the community, any rumors.
• 57:19
  About a fifth Gen Miata coming out.
• 57:21
  I mean, the nds getting a little long into tooth as well.
• 57:24
  It's been around now five, six years.
• 57:26
  I haven't heard anything.
• 57:27
  There was talking of an ng, wasn't there?
• 57:30
  Yeah, it's rotary powered.
• 57:31
  It's never gonna happen.
• 57:33
  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:36
  If you know me, you know my opinion on Rotaries and I've, I've hurt some
• 57:39
  feelings, but I've been very Right.
• 57:41
  I'm, I always say if the Germans thought it was a good idea, they
• 57:45
  wouldn't have given up on it.
• 57:46
  Right.
• 57:48
  Just, just let's take the nine 11 as an example.
• 57:50
  Yeah.
• 57:51
  Well,
• 57:54
  what I've heard is that everyone that blew up, they just were driving it wrong.
• 57:58
  And it's simple tricks that you'd have, oh wait, they just blew up.
• 58:00
  It's a two stroke.
• 58:01
  Yeah, a hundred percent.
• 58:03
  So I'm really curious to see what the future of the Miata is like.
• 58:06
  I mean, we're talking about now, it came out in 19 89, 9,
• 58:11
  although it was as model year.
• 58:12
  Yeah.
• 58:13
  As we talked to one of the folks that was on the design team for the Miata.
• 58:16
  They were developing it years earlier.
• 58:19
  Right.
• 58:19
  And we joked on another episode.
• 58:20
  It's one of those cars that was designed in the eighties, came out in the
• 58:23
  nineties, and now has lasted forever.
• 58:26
  We're talking a 30 year run, and so it's, we'll be curious to see
• 58:30
  what the next decade looks like, especially as we move to EVs.
• 58:33
  Do you think there'll be an electric Miata, or is the
• 58:35
  Miata maybe on its way out?
• 58:37
  It'll definitely be an electric version of some sort.
• 58:40
  I'm excited for it.
• 58:40
  I'm about 10 years before I can really get behind electric stuff.
• 58:43
  Maybe five years.
• 58:44
  But I'm excited for that too.
• 58:45
  That'll be fun.
• 58:46
  You just want the e torque.
• 58:47
  Yeah.
• 58:48
  Well, the only thing is I also wanna be able to do a 35
• 58:50
  minute session at the Glen.
• 58:52
  Through, but, we'll, we'll see.
• 58:54
  That actually brings up a, a great question.
• 58:56
  Best Giata swap you've ever seen, or one that you lust after?
• 59:01
  There's always that guy that's got the, well, I dunno that that's on you, right?
• 59:06
  It's subjective.
• 59:07
  Yeah.
• 59:07
  I mean, the best Miata swap I saw was an NC that had a two five in it.
• 59:11
  And, you know.
• 59:12
  I think like most track day Miata guys, you go through the like,
• 59:16
  oh, I'm gonna put a turbo on it.
• 59:18
  And then No, I've decided I'm gonna supercharge it.
• 59:20
  No, I'm gonna do a, a ecotech swap.
• 59:23
  No, I'm gonna do, and you know, I kind of went through all that and went
• 59:26
  back to, I'm not doing any of that.
• 59:29
  'cause every time I see one, they're broken.
• 59:31
  I wanna try a k swap me out.
• 59:33
  I wanna drive one because my daily driver is KI love to drive one
• 59:36
  too, but you know, to do a K swap, it's just insanely expensive.
• 59:40
  It's too much money.
• 59:41
  We have somebody in the club that's got one Ah, perfect.
• 59:44
  Send it my way.
• 59:46
  Yeah.
• 59:46
  My daily is at oh seven Civic.
• 59:48
  I, I have that K every day and I love that engine.
• 59:51
  I just, every time a minute I hit B Tech.
• 59:53
  I'm like, I wish the Miata had this.
• 59:57
  So, no, no LS or coyotes or five oh, it lost too much.
• 1:00:01
  Too much for the chassis.
• 1:00:02
  It's way too much.
• 1:00:02
  Why a Corvette?
• 1:00:03
  But you see guys doing it all the time, right?
• 1:00:06
  Fire breathing, dragon V eight.
• 1:00:08
  Miatas.
• 1:00:08
  Right.
• 1:00:10
  Do a lot.
• 1:00:10
  They're always part the panic.
• 1:00:12
  Yeah.
• 1:00:13
  Jim, cover your ears.
• 1:00:14
  I have a collection of, of Rx sevens, which will end up,
• 1:00:19
  it's still a pile and, uh, but, but I'm gonna end up with extra rotaries.
• 1:00:24
  I always thought, man, love the stick of rotary in there.
• 1:00:27
  Why not?
• 1:00:27
  I've seen a miana with a rotary and I'm trying to remember when and where it was.
• 1:00:31
  I mean, it it, it's closed on the side of the road.
• 1:00:33
  No, no, it was actually, it was a robing and it did break down.
• 1:00:38
  I mean, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna argue with Bill.
• 1:00:40
  It's cool.
• 1:00:41
  Yeah.
• 1:00:41
  But it's sort of like other people's kids like, yeah, I'll play with you for a
• 1:00:45
  while as long as I get to give you back.
• 1:00:47
  You know what I mean?
• 1:00:47
  Like that's me and Rotary.
• 1:00:49
  I'm all good, man.
• 1:00:51
  That sounds like one of my projects then.
• 1:00:52
  Yep.
• 1:00:53
  Yeah.
• 1:00:54
  I do think though, the coolest I've ever seen, and I'm sure you guys
• 1:00:57
  remember this one, it was out of Southern California where they put
• 1:01:00
  the Hellcat engine in the Miata.
• 1:01:03
  Dude, that thing, I've seen that.
• 1:01:05
  Awesome.
• 1:01:06
  Let's see.
• 1:01:07
  That car went into a ditch shortly after it was built, and
• 1:01:10
  I haven't heard anything since.
• 1:01:11
  Yeah, there's no more videos about the Hellcat Miata, but it was
• 1:01:14
  cool for all of eight seconds.
• 1:01:16
  Yeah.
• 1:01:18
  Wow.
• 1:01:19
  We have somebody in the market for a Miata.
• 1:01:22
  They're six, four and 300 pounds.
• 1:01:25
  What Miata do you recommend you did?
• 1:01:27
  You pulled this on me the first time around
• 1:01:32
  four.
• 1:01:32
  Alright.
• 1:01:33
  I got on it an NA or an NB because you can drop the floor, there's a
• 1:01:37
  ready made kit, you drop the floor two and a half inches and you just get
• 1:01:41
  an aluminum seat on the floor back.
• 1:01:43
  Planet Miata claims they built one for a six foot eight driver.
• 1:01:47
  Were his feet coming out the popups or what?
• 1:01:50
  Right.
• 1:01:51
  Well, it really, it depends.
• 1:01:52
  6, 6, 4 might fit depending on how your torso size, the 34 engine zine.
• 1:01:57
  I do not fit in a, in an na in stock trim.
• 1:02:01
  If you come to one of our events, I want you to try and sit.
• 1:02:03
  Oh yeah.
• 1:02:03
  Not stock.
• 1:02:04
  There's a car too you might fit into.
• 1:02:06
  There you go, Brad.
• 1:02:06
  You could wear, could wear it.
• 1:02:08
  Find one event.
• 1:02:09
  You can, you can wear that Miana.
• 1:02:11
  The latest accessory, my friend has one, he, he built, he's got a drop
• 1:02:16
  floor of the seats on the floor all the way back and he built a eight or
• 1:02:19
  nine inch steering wheel extension.
• 1:02:21
  'cause it was the only way he could get his knee.
• 1:02:23
  The arch in his knee is to fit.
• 1:02:25
  He's very comfortable in the car drive with T-Rex arms, like, yeah.
• 1:02:28
  Oh yeah.
• 1:02:30
  So that said, Brad, I think we should do maybe some lightning
• 1:02:32
  round pit stop questions.
• 1:02:33
  What do you think?
• 1:02:34
  Sure.
• 1:02:35
  Let's go for it.
• 1:02:35
  I'm gonna, I'm gonna start with my favorite, so I'm gonna ask.
• 1:02:38
  Bill sexiest car of all time.
• 1:02:42
  Uh, late sixties GT 40 oh oh.
• 1:02:45
  Dave, you, you got me on.
• 1:02:47
  This is a s Are you testing me?
• 1:02:50
  Uh, it was Ja The answer is not Miata in this case.
• 1:02:52
  No, no is not.
• 1:02:53
  It was, it was Jaguar XK, E, hard top.
• 1:02:57
  Nice.
• 1:02:58
  A type B Jag.
• 1:02:59
  Yeah, Jim, I've got, so it depends on my definition of sexy that day.
• 1:03:04
  Honestly.
• 1:03:04
  I always go back to my 1969 and a half Super bee in the green.
• 1:03:08
  The bright green metallic.
• 1:03:10
  Woo.
• 1:03:11
  One of these days.
• 1:03:12
  Mopar, man.
• 1:03:12
  So see that leads into the other, the other pit stop question of favorite, a
• 1:03:16
  classic on this show, which is what we call the million dollar man question
• 1:03:20
  or the million dollar garage question.
• 1:03:22
  So since you started with the Super Bee, you have a three bay garage,
• 1:03:25
  what do you put in the other two bays?
• 1:03:27
  Oh, that's easy.
• 1:03:28
  Two spec Miatas.
• 1:03:29
  Because
• 1:03:32
  if I have that kind of cash in the beginning.
• 1:03:35
  There's no way I'll make it through a weekend without crashing one of
• 1:03:37
  the spec Miatas, when you have a second one in the garage, you will
• 1:03:40
  win a lot of races knowing you have a second one in the garage.
• 1:03:45
  It's called No fear.
• 1:03:46
  Yeah.
• 1:03:46
  Oh yeah.
• 1:03:47
  Dave, what do you put in the other two bays in your garage?
• 1:03:49
  I really want a. Spec spider, you know, uh, that's a five 50 spider copy.
• 1:03:55
  I just love that car.
• 1:03:57
  And, and it's attainable.
• 1:03:58
  Not at the moment, but I think at some point I could afford one.
• 1:04:02
  And then, um, I don't know, I probably want a late seventies, early
• 1:04:07
  eighties Porsche nine 30 or 9 35, something like that when I was a kid.
• 1:04:12
  That was the car to me.
• 1:04:14
  You guys reminded me.
• 1:04:14
  I totally forgot about the Alpha four C. I think it's a, it's a
• 1:04:17
  fun car to see on the street.
• 1:04:19
  It sounds awesome.
• 1:04:21
  And, and I'm not one of these guys that's gotta have a million dollar car.
• 1:04:24
  So throw one of those 50, 60 grand in the garage and then again, not looking
• 1:04:28
  at crazy expensive, but something I would love to have is a GT three 50 R.
• 1:04:33
  Which year though, like our late sixties.
• 1:04:37
  Oh gosh.
• 1:04:37
  Um, no newer, sorry.
• 1:04:39
  Yeah, good point.
• 1:04:40
  And the third bay full of tires.
• 1:04:42
  Right?
• 1:04:43
  I was gonna say, well he's got 'em suspended over the cars, you
• 1:04:46
  know, he's got a loft up there.
• 1:04:47
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:04:48
  Tires and fuel tanks.
• 1:04:50
  Yep.
• 1:04:51
  Ugliest car in the world other than the fiat.
• 1:04:53
  I was gonna say, I already told you.
• 1:04:57
  No, that I don't feel that madly about it.
• 1:04:59
  Matador.
• 1:05:01
  Oh, Matador.
• 1:05:02
  I haven't had, I haven't had anybody pull that one.
• 1:05:04
  That's a good, that was the ugliest car ever.
• 1:05:07
  The wheels were like a foot in from the fenders.
• 1:05:11
  Um, and it just had no style whatsoever.
• 1:05:14
  Had that long, got kind all of those two-one trying to, it wanted to be a
• 1:05:20
  Buick Riviera, but it didn't know how.
• 1:05:22
  Right, right.
• 1:05:23
  But it was an a MC.
• 1:05:25
  Terrible.
• 1:05:27
  Yeah.
• 1:05:27
  One of my neighbors is a kid had one and yeah, I just remember that
• 1:05:30
  being, so that's, that's, that's, uh, that's 10 points to Dave for the pull,
• 1:05:37
  I, I can't remember the model number, but it's a Hyundai.
• 1:05:40
  It's got a weird front nose.
• 1:05:42
  It's got a weird rear end.
• 1:05:44
  I think you're thinking of the one where they were like trying
• 1:05:46
  to copy a Mercedes Jag look.
• 1:05:49
  Yes.
• 1:05:50
  Yeah.
• 1:05:50
  I don't know the number of it either, but yeah, those are really ugly.
• 1:05:53
  That's what comes to mind for me.
• 1:05:55
  Oh, it's like the Genesis G 80 or something like that.
• 1:05:58
  The big one.
• 1:05:58
  No, it wasn't a genesis.
• 1:06:00
  It was like nineties.
• 1:06:02
  Oh, that far back.
• 1:06:03
  The size of a cord.
• 1:06:05
  I thought, I thought you were gonna say like the veloc, the funky one with the,
• 1:06:09
  the weird slope back and the, well, that's pretty funky exhaust in the middle too.
• 1:06:13
  You know, all that stuff.
• 1:06:14
  Not that one.
• 1:06:14
  The wish.com.
• 1:06:16
  Jaguar sonata, the wish.com.
• 1:06:18
  Jaguar.
• 1:06:20
  Yeah, right, exactly.
• 1:06:21
  It looked like, it looked like, you know, you've seen some of
• 1:06:24
  those Chinese knockoff cars.
• 1:06:25
  Yeah, they try.
• 1:06:26
  That's kind of what it looks like, a knockoff jag.
• 1:06:29
  Especially when Jag went to those smaller Ford bottom and they went to
• 1:06:33
  those smaller jags, but they tried to keep the same headlight look.
• 1:06:36
  That's what that Hyundai looked like.
• 1:06:38
  I know.
• 1:06:38
  I know exactly the one you're talking about, bill.
• 1:06:40
  Yeah, it's a Hyundai Sonata.
• 1:06:42
  Is it a Sonata?
• 1:06:43
  Maybe it was the first years of those, yeah, early 2000.
• 1:06:46
  I just did a quick web search of Ugly Hyundai Endi and that's what
• 1:06:52
  you had to go through.
• 1:06:52
  50 pages.
• 1:06:53
  The one he was talking about.
• 1:06:55
  That's awesome.
• 1:06:57
  That must be a popular Google search.
• 1:06:59
  It's still loaded.
• 1:07:00
  Hold on.
• 1:07:01
  It's still loaded.
• 1:07:03
  You got that A OL working.
• 1:07:05
  So did Jim give us his answer or did he go, I did that.
• 1:07:07
  Oh, I've got so many good answers for this.
• 1:07:10
  But I'm gonna stick, if I wanna go modern, just give myself some criteria.
• 1:07:13
  The new WRX.
• 1:07:15
  What are they doing?
• 1:07:18
  They're not bringing STI I copy of the Honda.
• 1:07:19
  Yeah.
• 1:07:20
  Each generation of that car has just gotten uglier and uglier since what?
• 1:07:25
  Like the Oh, sixes.
• 1:07:27
  The last year they look good and it just, but doesn't everybody say that
• 1:07:31
  about every Subaru that's come out with, with the bugeye came out, they were
• 1:07:34
  like, oh, the one previous was better.
• 1:07:36
  And then the one came after the bugeye.
• 1:07:38
  The bugeye was so great.
• 1:07:39
  This new one's awful.
• 1:07:40
  Yeah.
• 1:07:40
  But the 2.5 Rs was a nice looking car.
• 1:07:43
  It it, yeah.
• 1:07:44
  But that was 30 years ago.
• 1:07:46
  No.
• 1:07:47
  Yeah.
• 1:07:47
  Yeah.
• 1:07:48
  Oh, it was.
• 1:07:51
  I do have a two part question.
• 1:07:52
  Dave might be exempt 'cause he's already probably answered it,
• 1:07:55
  but any car on any racetrack.
• 1:07:58
  Do I have a reset button in my life?
• 1:08:01
  Sure.
• 1:08:01
  Like if I do an F1 car at Monza or Spa, we'll say like, as long as I can
• 1:08:06
  reset when I crash at 195 miles an hour, I, yeah, this is, this is Forza
• 1:08:11
  and you can hit the rewind button.
• 1:08:13
  There's my answer.
• 1:08:14
  Yeah, that's what, that's what mine was on the previous Formula One car F1
• 1:08:17
  car in Mon in, uh, in Monaco or Monza.
• 1:08:19
  Yeah.
• 1:08:19
  I don't remember which track I said, but F1 car, uh, I bought one of the
• 1:08:23
  Mazda DPI cars at, uh, road America.
• 1:08:26
  Ooh, nice.
• 1:08:27
  That's Good.
• 1:08:27
  Road America.
• 1:08:27
  A nice track.
• 1:08:28
  Yeah, that's a good one.
• 1:08:29
  Yeah, that would be mine.
• 1:08:30
  That's a great segue into our final Miata question, which is if you could drive
• 1:08:35
  your Miata on any track that isn't one of these ones you already mentioned,
• 1:08:39
  what's your like bucket list track to take your Miata to and go run it?
• 1:08:43
  VIR Patriot course.
• 1:08:52
  I'd probably, I've never been to Watkins Glen.
• 1:08:54
  Yeah, you have to go.
• 1:08:56
  So you got mid Ohio in your backyard.
• 1:08:58
  I'm jealous.
• 1:08:59
  And I'm 35 minutes from Nelson Ledges too, so that's great.
• 1:09:02
  You only break in one turn at that track.
• 1:09:05
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:09
  Thunder Hill really has gotten like interesting to me and I really didn't
• 1:09:13
  pay much attention to it till maybe last year and, and part of it was seeing how
• 1:09:17
  many events are held there and I was like, there's got to be something great
• 1:09:21
  about this and watched a couple videos.
• 1:09:23
  So I'd like to, I'd like to do a full like cross country tour at some
• 1:09:27
  point and hit a bunch of 'em, but that would definitely be on the list.
• 1:09:30
  I'm probably gonna have to say Road Atlanta.
• 1:09:33
  We have a little sim league that we, and we do a lot of road Atlanta and
• 1:09:36
  that just seems like a really fun track.
• 1:09:38
  It is scary.
• 1:09:39
  We've done it.
• 1:09:40
  It's awesome.
• 1:09:40
  It's awesome.
• 1:09:41
  Yeah.
• 1:09:41
  Don't put hair on your chest, that's for sure.
• 1:09:43
  Oh yeah.
• 1:09:43
  Call, call.
• 1:09:43
  Scary.
• 1:09:44
  You mature quickly as a driver at Road Atlanta that, that's a hundred
• 1:09:47
  percent, but I would say I would drive any of y'all's Miatas at Brands Hatch.
• 1:09:52
  That's my vote right there.
• 1:09:54
  I need something low horsepower.
• 1:09:55
  So Miata would be perfect for a track like that, but on that bombshell.
• 1:09:59
  Guys, I can't thank you enough for coming on here and sharing
• 1:10:02
  some of your Miata expertise with our audience, with our listeners.
• 1:10:06
  So if you're out there and you're looking for more information about Miatas,
• 1:10:10
  I think you just put Miata into the Google and tons of things will come up.
• 1:10:14
  But if you want more than that, you can tune into Late to Grid, which is a podcast
• 1:10:19
  about motorsports and getting on track.
• 1:10:21
  Bill Snow, our guest interviews, guys and gals who work hard all
• 1:10:25
  week to be weekend warriors.
• 1:10:26
  He also interviews professionals in the Motorsports community that
• 1:10:30
  can help you and your racing.
• 1:10:32
  His audience includes members of SECA and nasa, which is the National Auto
• 1:10:37
  Sports Association, and those that participate in track days, HPDE and
• 1:10:42
  Endurance Racing Bill's Goal is to share the stories and inspiration that
• 1:10:47
  will continue to help grow our sport.
• 1:10:49
  You can search for their show on all your favorite pod
• 1:10:51
  catchers or on social media at.
• 1:10:54
  Late to Grid.
• 1:10:55
  Jim Tramontano created No Money Motor Sports a site with the primary goal to
• 1:10:59
  get folks on track as much as possible by spending as little money as possible,
• 1:11:03
  which is near and dear to my heart.
• 1:11:05
  He started auto crossing in 2007, started track days by volunteering
• 1:11:09
  with NASA in 2012, and moved up to HPD ranks in his daily driver Miata.
• 1:11:13
  He's in his fifth year racing spec Meto with NASA Northeast
• 1:11:16
  and you can check out his work over@www.no money motorsports.com.
• 1:11:21
  And last to Grid, but certainly not least a shout out to Dave Peters
• 1:11:26
  and the folks over@hpdjunkie.com for deciding that something needed to be
• 1:11:31
  done to promote high performance driving events H HPEs across the country.
• 1:11:36
  So he created a website with a goal of turning HPDE into a household name.
• 1:11:41
  And now HPD junkie.com is the most inclusive and most current listing of
• 1:11:46
  HPDE track days and open track events for the United States and Canada.
• 1:11:51
  You can check out H HPD junkie@hpdjunkie.com or follow
• 1:11:56
  them on all your favorite social media platforms at HBD Junkie.
• 1:12:00
  And you can chat with Dave Peters also over on Garage Riot.
• 1:12:04
  So we wanna thank Bill, Jim and Dave for joining us tonight on our episode.
• 1:12:08
  What should I buy?
• 1:12:09
  The answer is always Miana and wish you guys all the best in the 22 and 23 season.
• 1:12:16
  And by the way guys, what should we buy Miana
• 1:12:20
  seat time.
• 1:12:29
  If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to
• 1:12:32
  check us out on www.gt motorsports.org.
• 1:12:36
  You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports.
• 1:12:39
  Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call
• 1:12:43
  or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief@gtmotorsports.org.
• 1:12:51
  We'd love to hear from you.
• 1:12:53
  Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here.
• 1:12:56
  We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted
• 1:12:59
  to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal
• 1:13:05
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• 1:13:09
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• 1:13:37
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• 1:13:41
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