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This post is borderline inappropriate, and if it doesn’t get me cancelled, should probably classify me as a boomer. Enh.

The three-box sedans of my youth had well defined shapes, with a long hood, flat roofs, angled rear window, and flat trunk. These days cars have elongated shapes that blend together front to back.

If you compare a sedan from 20 years ago with a modern one, one design element most new cars share is a big butt. What I mean by that is, the trunks are much higher and wider. This shape brings the deck lid closer in height to the roofline, and when you blend those together, it’s creates a very efficient fastback shape.

Everyone is doing it, and you can’t tell where the roof ends and the trunk begins. The line between hatchback and sedan has blurred to insignificance. I can no longer tell a Honda Civic from a Chevy Malibu from a whatever.

This isn’t surprising, because when performance is the driving factor, designs often gravitate towards function. I saw the same thing in skateboarding over the years. Shapes changed from skinny banana boards, then to pigs, then to fish, and now everything is a popsicle.

To get back to the shape of cars, if you look at them from the side, most are shaped like airplane wings, meaning they have a cambered profile. As air moves over the top of the car, it creates lift. The more exaggerated the curve, the longer air stays attached, and more lift the car generates. As such, a low trunk lid keeps air attached longer, meaning less drag, but more lift.

On the other hand, a taller trunk (bigger butt) means a more gradual backlight angle, which reduces drag. In addition, air breaks away earlier on a taller trunk. Both of these factors improve performance.

Big butt genetics

Cars with big butts have evolved because they have advantages.

• Less drag
• Less lift
• More trunk space
• Fucking hot

Like many performance related genes, big butts have their roots in racing. Read any car magazine and you’ll eventually run into these cliches: “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday,” and “Racing improves the breed.”

Historically, NASCAR had great success partially because people could recognize the cars underneath. The bodywork followed the lines of factory cars (more so on the previous generations), and you could buy a semblance of one on Monday. There were of course many changes under the skin, but one of the key external differences NASCAR allowed was that you could raise the height of the trunk.

Similarly, BMW built the E30 M3 to go production racing, and one of the important elements in the design was to reduce rear-end lift. BMW accomplished this in a similar fashion by making the E30 M3 trunk 1.6″ higher than a E30 trunk.

Big butts improved the racing breed, and that gene is now dominant in production cars as well. As this relates to the only car that matters, each generation of Miata has had a trunk that’s higher than the previous.

The first generation Miata had a flat ass, but she was just a kid back then, and it was normal for that age.

The NB grew up a little, and got a lady lump in the middle of the trunk.

The NC was like a Miata who went to college and put on the freshman 15: bigger everywhere.

Now in her dirty-30s, the ND is slimmed down, with a butt that is higher, boat-tailed, and pert.

Get sprung

The first rule of a production car is that it needs to sell, and that’s based more on appearance than function. But the public has embraced that form follows function, and now big butts are the norm.

Here’s some pics from PornHub.

I’m a Miata guy. I like how economical they are. I like how they handle and communicate, and that lets me extract every bit of performance. Miatas are slow, but they punch above their weight, and you can generally pass people in cars that cost 10x as much. If I’m being honest, it’s especially fun to put the hurt on German sports car owners. But this time the shoe was on the other foot. Racing one of the only cars that is slower and more economical than a Miata, we beat 10 out of 12 Miatas in a lowly Toyota Yaris.

Where this shameful event occurred was at the 24 Hours of Lemons race at Thunderhill. Lemons often runs here, combining the 3-mile and 2-mile course using a bypass from Turn 7W to the front straight. That removes Turn 8W, which is a fun right hander that crests a hill and unweights the tires, and two 2nd-gear corners that are about the only place a Miata or Yaris can accelerate quickly.

The one time they ran the full course without the bypass was back in 2014 when they set the Guinness Book of Worlds Records record for most cars in a race with 216 cars simultaneously racing on track. We were in that race, in a Miata of course, and it was as crazy as that sounds.

For this event, Lemons decided to run the entire track without the 7W bypass, and this full 5-mile configuration ranks as my all-time favorite track. Elevation, blind corners, off camber… the layout has everything you could ask for. But Lemons being Lemons, they decided to run the entire course backwards, which nobody has done before. When you run a course backwards, the curbing isn’t in the right spot, the usual reference points are gone, and you end up figuring shit out as you race. It’s exciting, but not exactly safe.

Because stupid is as stupid does, Lemons further decreed that they’d switch to the 3-mile track on Sunday. And run it in both directions. That’s right, they’d stop the race in the middle of the day, re-grid the cars, and run them in the opposite direction.

Because stupid is as stupid does, I booked a flight to Sacto. I packed my helmet, gloves, shoes, and maxed out the rest of my 50-lb weight limit with aluminum street signs, rivets, wing mounts, angle brackets, and various fabrication tools.

Yaris > Yarnis

Ian originally built his Yaris for the B-Spec class, but after one race where a backmarker idiot ran him and another car off track, and discovering the rampant cheating in the class, he gave up trying to race with the SCCA.

The Yaris has only 100 hp, and to make matters worse, the gaps between the gears are so large that the engine falls out of the powerband on every shift. There are momentum cars, and there are momentum cars; this is the latter.

For being a soft FWD car, it handles surprisingly well. What it lacks in power it makes up in being frugal, and burns only 4 gallons per hour. The car once went 2 hours and 42 minutes in a stint, but there were a lot of full course yellows. Still, it’s quite possible to get 2.5 hours out of a 10-gallon tank, and you can’t say that about many race cars.

We themed the car by putting yarn tufts all over the car, like you would for visualizing airflow. Our official team name was Toyota Kazoo Racing, but after theming we were pretty much Team Yarnis.

Tires

I’ve been using Accelera 651 Sport tires as a dual-duty tire for street and mild track use. The 651s have a 200 TW rating, but in my testing I found the performance similar to the 340 TW Continental ExtremeContact Sport. I’ve also raced these tires in Lemons before, and found they were about a second per mile slower than a proper 200 TW endurance tire.

So they are definitely at the slower end of what I’d consider an endurance racing tire, but we’d race on them anyway. Why?

Partly because the 651s go on sale occasionally for half price, and the first set has free shipping and a 30-day money back guarantee. Ian purchased a full set for $260 to his door. In addition, the importer, Tire Streets, has a racing program which awards free tires for winning in a recognized racing series. A win gets you four free tires, second gets you a pair, and third gets you a single tire. So not only were the tires cheap, depending on where we finished, they might even be free.

We’d run the Accelera 651 on the front, because the rear tires were already chosen. These are old-stock (as in 6-7 years old) 205/55r16 Maxxis VR1s. Ian got these on closeout and bought a pallet of them. The tires are 25″ diameter (compare with 23″ front tires) which required jacking up the rear shocks for clearance. The combination of tire diameter and coilover height gave the car extreme forward rake, putting way more weight on the front tires than is necessary, and way too little on the rear. But the car looks really cool this way, like a Hot Wheels car, and that is super Lemony.

To recap our amazing tire strategy: the fronts are an off-brand low-grip, $65 tire; the rears are the wrong size chosen primarily for looks, and were $59.95 each. That’s a performance-first strategy right there.

Aero

With all of that extreme forward rake from the mismatched tire sizes, I knew that we’d have to add rear grip or the car would rotate too much in fast corners. The easiest way to add rear grip at speed is to use a wing.

Ian’s teammate Mike did a really nice job making a double wing from two cheap single wings, but I felt it was mounted too close to the roof. A wing needs about a chord length under the wing so that it can create suction, and if you mount a wing too close to a trunk or roof, the low pressure region collides with the high pressure region, and you get a spoiler, not a wing.

So I made new wing mounts out of splitter plywood and bolted them to the hatchback. These wing mounts allow the wing to move forward and back, so we could theoretically adjust front/rear aero balance via leverage, independent of wing angle.

Ian also had a 9 Lives Racing wing, but hadn’t welded on the wing mounts I gave him. So I riveted on some mounts and we’d test that wing on Sunday. With rear aero addressed, the next thing was to add more front grip and reduce drag.

For the front, my specifications were the following:

• Flat undertray with 12-degree ramps (diffusers) dumping into the wheel wells.
• Removable splitter, adjustable for length, with cutouts for the diffusers.
• Radius the underside of the front splitter edge and bevel the trailing edge upwards.
• Spats in front of the tires.
• Duct the radiator and put an extractor vent in the hood, to make sure no air from the engine compartment could get below the splitter.
• Vent the front quarter panel to extract any air in the wheel arch.

The next thing to address was drag reduction. The Yaris has enormous windows, and when opened, turns the rear of the car into a parachute. Mike rounded the B-pillars with sheet aluminum, which would help extract some of that air. He also added rear wheel covers to reduce drag. We also reduced the openings in the front of the car by more than half, blocking off the bottom grill, and reducing the radiator opening by 1/3.

That all went mostly to plan, but it took more than the single day I had set aside, and so we were building aero in the pits all weekend. Whenever the car was not racing, it was getting cut, riveted, ducted, and otherwise transformed. I didn’t get a chance to make barge boards, they were pretty low on the list anyway.

With all of that aero work happening in the pits on Friday, we missed our early tech spot, but we got classed in C with zero laps. We also missed our chance to test the car on track, or see what the track looks like in reverse. But we’ll figure that all out in the race tomorrow. We have four fast drivers and I feel like we have a shot of winning our class. The question is, can we stay out of the penalty box?

Attention circle

The Yaris has done well in past Lemons races, and should have won Class C by now. But the team keeps getting too many black flags from exceeding the limits of the “attention circle”.

A driver’s attention circle is a lot like a tire’s friction circle. A tire that is being used 90% for cornering has only 10% left for braking or acceleration. If you ask for more than that, you slide out. The attention circle is the same. If you have 90% of your attention on going fast, you have 10% left for watching flag stations, monitoring the car, and avoiding other idiots driving like idiots.

Unfortunately Ian’s teammates spend 95% of their attention on beating each other, and so they exceed the limits of the attention circle and get black flags regularly. From watching their progress over the past couple years, I’d guess they average about four black flags per race.

Let me just get on my high horse for a minute here…. In the past 11 years I’ve done 26 endurance races and have accrued three black flags: One was a blend line violation when I was avoiding another car; One was when I hit a car because I was driving like an idiot; And one time when I got hit from behind by someone else driving like an idiot. All of them are my fault. When you drive the car, you put yourself into situations where things happen. If you’re in the car and lighting hits it, it’s your fault; you put yourself in that situation.

Those incidents aside, I have never spun, put four off, or made a pass under yellow. Yet. I’m sure those things will happen, because that’s racing. But I also know that in endurance racing, my primary job is to take care of the car for the next driver. I won’t put the car in a compromising situation, I won’t flat spot the tires, I’ll watch the gauges and mirrors, I’ll see every flag station, and I’ll stay the fuck out of trouble.

Driving with all of those things in my attention circle means that I’m not concentrating so much on going fast. I lift when I should be flat footed, I don’t steal apexes or defend my line, I point people by, and I drive like a gentleman. I’m not the fastest driver on the team; I’m occasionally the slowest. But if you do the math, I generally come out up top.

The math is this: A black flag is at minimum a 5 minute penalty, and for the Yaris on the the 3-mile track, it works out to just over 6 seconds per lap. That’s right, whatever your best lap was, add 6 seconds to that one, that’s your fastest lap. And add 6 seconds to every other laps as well. The fact is, one black flag makes you the slowest driver on the team.

If you get a second black flag in a Lemons race, they will start to hold you longer, and as you rack up more and more BFs, they will park your car for an hour and/or make you do stupid and embarrassing shit. The organizers made sure to mention this in the driver meeting, that longer penalties would happen at your second black flag. You can probably tell I’m going somewhere with this….

I keep telling Ian there is no learning without consequence, and he should fine his drivers for black flags: $100 for the first offense, $200 for the second, and so on. Get four black flags and you’re out a thousand bucks. That’s a teachable moment right there.

Instead, Ian removed the Rumblestrip lap timer from the car, feeling that this should remove the incentive for a fast-lap competition. In addition, Ian said there would be a competition for whoever gets the best gas milage. That’s pretty clever, and he thought it might keep Danny and Mike from competing against each other for once. Unfortunately, I’m the only one who followed team orders.

Saturday

95 cars registered for the race, but I believe only 88 cars actually started. This is normal for Lemons, some cars never make the starting grid. There was a Lucky Dog race at Sonoma the same weekend, which pulled some of the attendance away, and so weren’t going to get anywhere near the 216 cars we had when we set the record. Which is fine by me, that was too many cars. With 88 cars it works out to 17.6 cars per mile, which should leave everyone plenty of room for racing.

I drove the first stint. There was no time to test all the aero changes we’d made, so my sighting laps were the only testing I’d get. Unfortunately I got stuck behind a really slow car and had a train behind me, so I couldn’t get heat into my tires. Going just half speed I lost the rear end in T7, then again had to save a spin in T1W and T7W. The extreme rake on the car meant there was very little weight on the rear tires, and even with repetitive braking couldn’t get any heat into them .

I did one full lap, and about half way through my second lap, on the west-east connector, they threw the green flag. So I started the race about 2 minutes away from the starting line, which wasn’t very good luck, but as I picked up the pace I felt the rear tires come in, and was able to push a bit.

You’ll recall that the strategy was to get the most MPG, and so I hypermiled my way around the track, short shifting and coasting into braking zones. There’s no economical way to take the 2nd-gear corners on the West side, but it was fun to out accelerate some cars. That’s really the only place that can happen.

I drove a clean stint for two hours and 27 minutes, making a lot of safe passes and bringing the team up to 24th place overall and 2nd in class. I didn’t light the track on fire, but it was a solid effort averaging 15.3 mpg. Unfortunately I set up the Aim Solo incorrectly, and Ian forgot to turn on the video cameras, so all I have are my memories from this stint.

Mike got in the car next and after a few good laps suddenly went four off in Turn 5. This is a tricky, blind, tight corner, and I saw several people go off here. But I’m not going to make excuses for Mike – there’s no reason to go off the track when you’re all alone and you’re competing for who can get the best gas milage.

Mike caught another black flag for a blend line violation exiting Turn 1. The organizers warned about this in the driver’s meeting, and said to treat all blend lines as walls, and yet at least a dozen people got black flags for this. Mike said he was going three wide there and had to cross the blend line to avoid traffic, but since he put himself in that situation, he’s 100% at fault.

That second black flag cost us a bit more time, and we discussed throwing in the towel and using the rest of the weekend for testing. I lobbied to stay the course, because other teams could also have drivers with poor judgement, or mechanicals, or simply bad luck. So with about 20 minutes in penalty time already in the bank, and knowing the next flag would park us for an hour, Mike got back on track and ran some quick, clean laps to finish out his stint.

Danny drove next and did some very fast laps that got us back to fourth place in class, and then Ian drove a short stint to close out the day. His Achilles tendon hasn’t fully healed, so he didn’t want to risk that, but wanted to get in some hot laps on this unique reverse 5-mile layout. Mission accomplished.

Saturday evening we continued on aero until the sun went down, adding more venting and spats on the spitter in front of the front tires.

Sunday

Before the race we discussed strategy and reckoned we were still in for a podium if we could avoid black flags and skip a pit stop. If all three drivers focused on economy and not lap times, we’d make the whole race on only two pit stops.

I drove the first stint again and settled into hypermile mode, netting 16.3 mpg in a 2 hour and 28 minute stint. I drove a pretty boring race, but mixed it up with a GTi and a RX7 in the following clip. They have more top speed, but our aero works around Turns 8 and 7, which makes Turn 6 my passing zone (recall we are running it backwards, so the turns are descending in order). I get by the GTi and then get on the RX7, who gives me a point by on the front straight, right into a waving yellow! I back off and then make room for a second-gen MR2 to blend onto the track, which puts the RX7 out of touch for a bit. But I get by the MR2 and RX7 eventually.

A lap after I pass the RX7 I see the IS300 of the team pitted next to us. He’s closing fast but I want to show him a little of what the car can do, and I break out of hypermiling mode for a single lap and do a 1:28.14. (This is at 1:44 in the video if you care.) It doesn’t matter, the IS300 catches me and I point him by just before the front straight

I got us back into the podium positions and handed the car off to Danny, who’s job it was to drive economically and finish out the reverse direction, stay in the car for the switchover, and run the tank dry in the forward direction. It wasn’t necessary to drive flat out, since our strategy relied on skipping a fuel stop. In fact, the only way the strategy would fail is if we had to fuel an extra time. After watching Danny’s full stint, I don’t think he heard a word of the race strategy, and just went out there as usual driving with aggression and trying to make passes, not distance.

Here’s a single lap of me and Danny doing about the same lap time, compare the driving styles and notice how many steering corrections he makes. Everyone has their own driving style, but I have to think mine is easier on the tires and gets better economy. Indeed I did beat him by 1 mpg.

Just after noon was the switchover, where they stopped the race, re-gridded the cars, and put the cars back in the regular forward direction. Ian and I were in the tower watching when they threw the double yellow, and as we looked across to find Danny, we watched him pass another car going up to Turn 8. We hoped the judges didn’t see that, or we’d have earned ourselves another black flag.

Danny got lucky because the judges missed that infraction, and he got lucky again by avoiding a big pile up on the front straight:

Our last driver was Mike, and on his first lap had to return to the pits immediately for a black flag. It turns out it wasn’t for Danny’s pass under yellow, but a 4-off right before entering the pits. Jesus.

After that Mike got back on track, ran some decent (but I wouldn’t say economical) laps, and then picked up another pass under yellow at Turn 14 or 15. That one was pretty hard to see, and even the organizers felt a bit sheepish about it.

So now with four fucking black flags (shoulda been five), we’ve blown our four lap cushion, and now Anal Probe Returns to Earth are only a lap down on us. To Mike’s credit, he put in some fast laps and kept us out of danger. But turning fast laps uses more fuel, and the only way this race strategy would work is if we conserved fuel.

I was up in the tower for the end of the race, and knew there were only a couple laps left; all we had to do to get 2nd in class was cross the line without pitting for fuel or running out of gas. Then I see Mike come across the line with his index finger up, meaning he’s coming in next lap, so I run down to the hot pits and find Ian and Danny, who are planning to do a fuel stop and driver change! I yell that we can’t do that, we have to send Mike right back out again, there’s only one lap left!

Like a nightmare, we see Mike pull into the pits on the last lap, and we yell at him that he has to go back out and if the car runs out of gas, so be it. If we pit, we lose 2nd place. So he goes back on track, makes it around for a lap, and returns on fumes. We get 2nd place in class after all. Phew.

We got 13th place out of 88 cars, and like I wrote too many words ago, we somehow beat 10 out of the 12 Miatas in the race.

The team that won C class had slower lap times than we did, and yet they beat us by 8 or 9 laps and placed 9th overall. They drove a clean race and deserved to win. They also deserve to be in B class in the future, because they’ve won C class 3 times now. The Yaris is also arguably a B class car, but as long as the team keeps shooting themselves in the foot, they belong right where they are.

All in all, it was a great race weekend. I had Mexican food every day, got in 5 hours of racing, did a ton of aero work, visited family, and made new friends. That the racing didn’t work out exactly to plan is normal, and it honestly went better than it should have.

We have some ideas for the next race (or possibly a test day), setting the car back to a normal ride height, corner balancing, using better tires, faster fueling, and better coms. And of course more aero.

I’m standing in a puddle of my own shit and piss. I have it on my arms and legs, and I’m reflexively spitting because I got some in my mouth. I think to myself, maybe this is a sign?

Let’s rewind the clock a couple weeks. I’ve been preparing to race the 24 Hours of Lemons race at NJMP Thunderbolt. I’ve done Lemons races on the east coast and in California, but none in this Miata.

The first hurdle was passing tech. Most people think about 24 Hours of Lemons as cut-rate racing, and in some ways it is, but they cut no corners on safety. The Lemons cage rules are more stringent than any other series, and my car, which has passed tech in AER, Champcar, NASA, and SCCA, won’t pass Lemons tech. Whoever built my cage put the back stays in at a 29-degree angle, and they need to be 45 degrees, give or take.

I called my friend Tom Pyrek, whose minivan I race in 24 Hours of Lemons, and he agreed to help me out. Except that he didn’t have a lot of time, and things got pushed back a few days right when I was crunched for time. That was a headache I didn’t need, but that’s how these things go. Anyway, it gave me more time to work on the theme.

Most people these days don’t bother with a theme for Lemons, but I still think it’s an important part of the series. I wanted to do the famed Ferrari Breadvan, an iconic race car from the 1960s. Other people have done this theme (and probably better than we would), but I wanted to do it mostly to try out the aero.

Our plan was to serve pizzas out of the back in the evenings, and so I wrote “Pizza is always the answer” on the side of the car. We were even going to deliver a pizza to the judges in the penalty box at some point during the race. If we didn’t get a penalty, we were going to do it anyway, just to recreate this moment.

Fast forward and it’s the Friday a week before the race, the new back stays are welded in, and we’ve just started the car for the first time in a while. There’s bit too much white smoke for my liking, and so we check the compression numbers: 165, 130, 130, and… 60. We put a bit of oil down the plug holes and the numbers come up, and so we knew it was rings.

Humph. Not terrible, but that one cylinder is concerning. The last time it ran was at PittRace, and we were the fastest non-swapped Miata. Alyssa was doing 2:03s on well-worn RS4s (faster than the Spec Miata record). We all felt the car was running well, so it never occurred to me to check if the engine was still healthy. There’s a mistake I won’t make again.

At this point I have three options. A) Run it as is and probably blow it up at some point during the race. B) Pull the engine and install new rings. C) Pull the injector and plug on one cylinder and run it as a triple.

Option C isn’t as insane as it sounds. In fact there are a whole group of motorcycle racers in the Pacific Northwest that neuter one cylinder of a 600cc four and effectively make a 450 triple out of it. They call these “Cripple Triples,” and it allows them to compete with 650cc twins on equal footing.

Now this option is so Lemony I want to do it, but when we try it, it’s super slow. I run it down the street and the engine feels like it has 50 hp. Somehow that missing cylinder, even with only 60 psi, is very important. So we decide to do option B, and rebuild it. Or at least throw in a new rings, hone the cylinders, and put in new seals. No problem.

The race was in a week, and so I ordered all the gaskets and a piston ring set from Auto Zone on Friday. I thought that should be plenty of time to pull the engine and assemble it, and in fact most of the parts came the next day. Except the piston rings. Monday came and still no rings. Fed-X said they were supposed to be there yesterday, and the new tracking info said Wednesday. Feeling queasy about that, I ordered another set from NAPA, this time next day air via UPS. I paid the price in rings for the shipping alone, but I wanted to cover my bases.

With the engine out of the car, it occurred to me that I had another block sitting on a shelf up at Berg Racing. That engine overheated and I’m sure the rings relaxed, and so it needs new rings as well. May as well do them at the same time. So I drive up and gather it, and we start the surgery of taking that one apart on the bench as well. I’ve got nothing else to do.

Tuesday comes and still no rings. Next day air, my ass. But I’m not sweating it, we can get the engine in quickly. I tidy up other things on the car and finish the theme.

Wednesday no parts, either by truck or by air. I went to Auto Zone and Napa and made them call the manufacturer and find out what the problem was. In both cases the shipper hadn’t picked up the packages yet.

Are you fucking kidding me? The manufacturing plant in Tennessee says the parts are right there waiting for pickup, but neither UPS or Fed-X can be bothered to actually get them? I’m feeling like this is a sign or something. We are also having trouble getting rear brake pads. I ordered them a week ago, and they still haven’t arrived.

Around this time my support vehicle (Honda Element) started making belt noises. We use the Element for bringing extra tires and spares, and I really don’t need it to break down on the way there, or the way back. We mess with the belts and the noises go away, but then it throws an engine code. Bad omens or what?

And then my RV, which is race headquarters and also my tow vehicle, throws engine codes for a misfire. And then the brand new tire that I just replaced is slowly leaking. FUUUUUUCK! Everything was falling apart at the same time!

For the past few weeks this has been happening in little subtle ways. I’ve been looking at all these signs, portents, and omens and patently ignoring them. But I pressed on for good reason: My brother was flying in from California; My buddy Chris was flying in from Detroit for his first ever wheel-to-wheel race; And I don’t believe in omens. So I was going to make this happen, my dog spinning upside down on the ceiling and speaking latin backwards, or not.

I then went to dump out the RV tanks at a local state park. I was doing this on the down-low, without paying the sewage fees, so trying to be a bit sly and get it done quickly. Well, some genius (ahem) left the guillotine valves open last winter, and so when I unscrewed the cap to attach the sewer line hose, my own shit and piss sprayed out all over me. Yep, I literally shit all over myself.

It was at this time, standing in a widening brown puddle, my arms and legs covered, no longer the least bit stealthy about dumping my waste tanks without paying for it, reflexively spitting and wondering how sick this shit would make me, that I began to believe in omens. I stitched together all those signs and portents and finally figured it the fuck out. I contacted all my teammates and told them we were done. We aren’t racing. As my brother put it “when the shit hits the man, it’s time to reassess the situation.”

And Yet, Lemonade

Instead of racing, I invited all my teammates to Pineview Run. They were all coming east anyway, it was the least I could do. We spent the day hooning and gather data, and fun was had by all.

Ian drove my wife’s Honda Civic. We didn’t use it much because the VSA really overwhelms the brakes. (See my blog post Autocross N00b for the 10-step procedure to turn that off.) It wasn’t fast or fun to drive anyway, and Ian got in a lot of other cars.

Clayton drove his NB, and both Ian and I got to drive it and compare notes. I’ll follow up on this data in another post, it’s rather interesting to see how differently we drive the same car. We also got to see how Clayton drives, and while he’s off the pace, his instincts are really good. He’s a natural driver, and will keep getting better.

Jim brought his 240 hp turbo 1.6 Miata. I didn’t get a chance to try it, but I’ve driven it on the street and it’s a blast. Turbos are not my choice for track cars, but street cars, yes please. Unfortunately the charge pipe kept coming loose, both on the track and on the drive to and from, and by the end of the weekend Jim had replaced every hose and clamp.

The front end of Jim’s car is called a Wizdom. It wasn’t exactly an easy fit, but we made it work. I also made a custom undertray and left it long in front to make a splitter, and added a hood vent. It’s a bitchin car all around.

Chris brought his Veloster N, which is an impressive car and I regularly think about buying one. He fitted Falken RT660 tires, and while his car isn’t set up with lot of camber, he wisely got the tires heat cycled from Tire Rack before delivery. Meaning, the tires didn’t delaminate, which is what they do when run without heat cycling and with less than ideal camber.

I ran a 1:15.565 in the N, exactly two tenths of a second slower than the all-time FWD record lap time (CRX on A7s). On A052s or Hoosiers, I’d own the FWD record. In a bone-stock car. I need to make this happen.

Ian also got to drive the Veloster and I was thankfully faster than him, but only by half a second. He’s a FWD expert, and I’m a Pineview expert, but I sure as shit was not going to lose to my brother on his second ever visit to the track! Phew.

I drove my 1.6 Miata mostly on 14-year old NT01s (I shit you not), and they still grip, and wear imperceptibly. I also finally got a chance to try some take-off 245 R7s. Oddly I didn’t go any faster than I did on 205 R7s (1:14.5). The steering effort was absurd, and I overall didn’t love them. I’ll have to play with pressures and stuff and see if I can get them to work.

Honestly, it was a fantastic day, maybe even more fun than racing because we were all on track together, with five cars instead of one. Yeah, I had to eat the Lemons entry fee, the NJMP practice day, all the parts and labor to prep the car, and $800 worth of track fees at Pineview. So I lost over $3000 on this “race” weekend, but I guarantee it would have been worse if we had gone to Thunderbolt. Something bad was going to happen. Every force of nature was against me, every step of the way, I just wasn’t listening. I am now, tho.

My wife says, you win or you learn, and education costs money. It reminds me of the old joke: Do you know why divorce costs so much money? Because it’s worth it. Missing this race was oddly worth it; we made lemonade out of Lemons.

The Punchline

Saturday afternoon, the day we were supposed to be racing in New Jersey, I got a phone call saying that the rings arrived at NAPA (five days late). The next day, Auto Zone called to say the other set of rings arrived (seven days late). In the race of rings, UPS next-day air beat Fed-X freight by a day. But they are both fucking losers in my book.

Last weekend I went through the MSF Level 2 course taught by Hooked on Driving. It’s an amazing program, I learned a bunch, and now I can right-seat coach for a lot of HPDE organizations. That means more track time, and more aero testing!

The first thing I want to test is different wings at different tracks. For low speed, I’ll go to Pineview Run, where I have a membership and can go whenever I want. For high speed, I’ll go to Watkins Glen, which is 20 miles from me. Finally, for medium-speed tracks, there’s NYST and PittRace, which I’ll go to a couple times each.

All the wings need to use the same mounts, and I’ll make sure they are all optimized for angle. Then I’ll record min speeds through a few important corners, max speeds on straights, and of course the overall lap time. The wing contenders are the following:

• 9 Lives Racing – I have their 60″ wing. Most Miata people order 64″ (body width on NA/NB), but I was going to eventually mount mine from the end plates and so it’s a bit shorter. With welded mounts and end plates it weighs 13.8 lbs, and has an area of 546 square inches.
• APR GTC-200 – This is a 59″ wing in a 3D shape, carbon fiber, very light, just 5.2 lbs with end plates and all. I modified the wing slightly to fill it with lightweight expanding foam and I made new end plates because the old ones were seized inside. The 3D shape is wider in the middle than the sides, and has an area of about 442 sq in.
• Areyourshop – This wing is sold under numerous names on eBay, Amazon, etc. It’s a single 53″ extruded aluminum wing with adjustable brackets underneath. I reshaped the bottom and set the mounts at 41.5″. I bought mine for $60, but they’ve gone up in price since. I threw out the mounts and end plates and made my own. It weighs 5.8 lbs with end plates and a small Gurney flap, and measures 297 sq in.
• Mophon Double – Another MIC wing, this one I’ve had for a while, also sold under a variety of names. I’ve done a couple blog posts on this one already, it makes downforce, but too much drag. I’m trying to reduce drag this time and left off the top Gurney flap. I made new end plates and re-set the upper wing angle to 35 degrees. It weighs 8 lbs and has about 424 inches of total area.

All four contenders. End plates from street signs, $1 each.

There’s one final contender, but I’ll only use it at Pineview because it’s going to have so much drag it won’t be funny. Well, maybe a little funny. This is a triple wing made up of the two made in China wings.

The main wing is the single MIC wing, and the other wings mount via the end plate. First I drew out how to mount them on a scrap piece of plastic, which was a great way to get the angles.

Then I transferred these holes to aluminum (street signs) and cut out a shape that felt pleasing to the eye. I put most of the end plate area low and forward, because that’s where the low pressure zone should be. I have a digital manometer and may verify this later, but I’m not sure how much it really matters. This is mostly a conversation piece, anyway.

All assembled this wing weighed exactly the same as the 9 Lives Racing wing, 13.8 lbs, with a total wing area over 720 inches. Like I said, this will be for Pineview and autocross speeds only, I have no illusions that this would work on a big track.

What am I doing for front aero? You’ll just have to stay tuned. 2021 is going to be a fun year of aero testing!

This blog post is going to sound like a pissy rant. Fuck it, I’m due one.

Social media has created a dangerous situation where opinion is more important than fact. It’s almost like whoever yells the loudest and most often wins. And this brings me to a tired topic on Trackable Miatas. What’s faster, a 205, 225, or 245?

It’s a circular topic. At some point someone will chime in that it depends on power. Someone else will say you have to put a 205 on a 8″. That only lasts until someone says 205 is better on a 9″. Then another will say that 205s are proven to be faster than 225s or 245s on California tracks. As if tracks are different there? I’ve raced at Laguna Seca, Willow Springs, Thunderhill, and Sears Pt and they are no different than WGI, PittRace, NJMP or other east coast tracks I’ve raced at.

Next someone who is sick of being tread on will say, where’s the data? And all those people fall back on “it’s a proven fact,” without showing any. Honestly, I had to leave Trackable Miatas for a while because it’s the same people shouting the same nonsense without a shred of data to back it up.

It really is a bunch of hooey, and I’m just getting in a groove. First off, the notion that 205 tires are faster is flawed by the very fact that 205 tires aren’t all the same width. A 195 RS4 is wider than a 205 RE71R. A 205 Hoosier is wider than a 225 NT01. What 205 tire are you talking about? And then there’s the whole wheel width variable, as if offset, weight, tire pressure etc, weren’t factors to consider. And then some tracks are high speed and some are more about cornering.

I really have to question if any of the people that claim 205s are faster have done back-to-back testing using the same compound tires of different widths? Have they swapped wheel widths (same weight, same offset) on the same tire? If they have, they aren’t sharing the data.

Well, I can understand that, I haven’t either. But I’ll open the door just a tiny bit and shed some light on this.

Last Memorial Day four of us got together in Miatas and tested tires. Me, Alec Fitzgerald, Alyssa Merrill and Davey Thai got together in four Miatas and tested 10 sets of tires. We divided up the tires so that there would be some crossover.

• Alyssa tested Hoosier A7s and R7s in 205, Maxxis RC1s in 245 and Hankook Z214 C51 in 2o5
• I tested 225 RS4s on 8″ and 9″, and 245s on 9″, RE71Rs, and both Hoosiers
• Alec tested RC1s, Z214, R7, and 245 RS4s.
• Davey tested 205 Conti ECS, VR1, RE71R, 225 RS4s on 8″

We did this as scientifically as we could, recording air, track and tire temperatures, set optimal pressures, and ran multiple redundant sessions to gather data. I’m not going to share the lap times and data with you because information like that isn’t free. But I’ll give you this chart: same driver, same corner over 200′ of distance at 20′ intervals, two runs averaged, 225 RS4 on 8″ and 9″, 245 on 9″, and some other tires mixed in.

Years ago there was a site called solomiata.com, and it was the best resource for people who wanted to tune their 1.6 Miatas. Later the author added information for 1.8s. The site was down, it was back up, it was down, and now it lives over here.

The Solomiata recipe for cheap horsepower was:

1. Advance the timing 4 degrees, for about + 2 hp.
2. A cat-back exhaust, for about 4-5 hp.
3. Replace the AFM with a larger flapper valve from a RX7. The standard Miata flowmeter is too small to flow at high RPM, and so this added 5 hp above 6000 RPM.
4. Aftermarket header for another 3-4 hp.
5. Add a programmable ECU, larger injectors, and an adjustable fuel pressure regulator.
6. Shave the head .010″ for about 4 hp.

All of that would get you a maximum of 115 hp at the wheels. I think a more realistic estimate is 108-112 hp based on most stock 1.6 Miatas dynoing around 92 hp stock, and our cars being a lot older at this point.

The modern Solomiata formula

That was then, what do people do now? Swap in a VVT 1.8. A bone stock NB2 motor will put out similar horsepower as the Solomiata formula, and way more torque. I drove Napp Motorsports’ VVT swap back to back with my well modified NA6. My motor has only 5 hp less, but the torque difference was astounding, like it was a completely different car. It was the lightbulb moment where I was like “I made a huge fuggin mistake.”

However, if you aren’t ready to take the motor swap plunge, here’s the modern Solomiata formula for a 1.6 Miata.

1. Standalone ECU. I got a Megasquirt PNP2, which is about $800, but these days you can buy a Speedy EFI unit for half that. It even comes with a variable TPS (the 1.6 Miata has an on/off throttle position sensor). A standalone ECU combines steps 1, 3, and 5 from the Solomiata formula.
2. Cold-air intake. If you want to keep the stock airbox, get a cowl intake (Randall or DIY a snorkel). If not, find someone to 3D print you an intake.
3. Cat-back exhaust. There are many to choose from. Optionally replace the catalytic converter with a high-flow cat for another 1-2 HP. Your OEM cat is worth over $100 at any scrap yard, so that will defray the cost.

My car with only a MS PNP2, cone filter, and cat-back exhaust pulled 106 hp on a Dynojet. I hadn’t decked the head at that point, but if I had, I’d be right in the Solomiata ballpark.

All of these mods can be done cheaper and easier than a motor swap, with about the same result. You won’t have shit for torque, but you’re used to that, right? You might have noticed I didn’t add a header to this list. The reason being, that’s specifically a 1.6 part and won’t work on a 1.8. You can do all of the mods above and still come to your senses and do a 1.8 VVT motor swap.

Up to this point you won’t need to dyno tune your car, either. You can use the ECU’s base map, as its programmed for mild bolt ons. But if you modify the car further, you’ll need to tune the ECU. And that’s where things get difficult. Not the tuning itself so much, but because the 1.6 head doesn’t flow well. Quality control on these heads wasn’t great, and there’s a lot of core shift between different heads, and the port geometry could be improved (and later was).

You might think that the shorter stroke means you could go after high RPMs, but if you do that, then the oil comes out of the hydraulic lash adjusters. So there’s a low ceiling on how far you can tune a naturally aspirated 1.6, both bottom end, and top end.

This is a smart place to stop modifying your normally aspirated 1.6 and look for a junkyard NB2. Unless you need to replace a head gasket or remove the head for some other reason, this is a smart place to stop reading.

I don’t care, I’m tuning a 1.6

If you’re going to modify a naturally aspirated 1.6 Miata any further than this, then you’re already beyond reason. If logic worked, it would have worked already. But misery enjoys company, so thanks for joining the club.

OK, so let’s do this. The next thing you need to do is pull the head. An older engine may need a valve job, and you can get a lot of things done at the same time.

1. Number all the valves and their locations and remove them (socket and hammer trick.) Clean up the ports with a Dremel tool. It’s free HP for a bit of your time. Remove casting flash, smooth any hard edges around the plunge cut, and blend the web between the ports. Polish the exhaust side, but leave the intake side a bit rougher.
2. Take the head to a machinist and have them measure the valves and springs. Make sure to order new OEM valve guide seals. You might consider +1mm intake valves, this will add about 4 hp and torque. In any case, have them do a valve job.
3. Have the machinist deck the head .040″ to bump up compression by one point. I’ve heard of people safely taking off more than that, but on Premium pump gas, you really don’t want to go much further. This will also retard cam timing a few degrees, which also helps. FWIW, there’s no bigger bang for the buck than decking the head, it cost me all of $50. If you need to replace a head gasket at any time, just deck the head and start using premium gas. I’d do this even on a bone stock NA Miata.
4. Next is cams. The cheap way is an exhintake cam, modifying a MX-3 cam and putting that on the intake side. This gives about 8 hp when properly tuned. Or you can get a Kelford cam and double it. I went with a 203-B cam, which is about max for the street. A larger cam will have a rough idle, and you’ll need to replace valve springs, retainers, etc.
5. With all that work into the 1.6 head, put on an aftermarket header. I have a Racing Beat in my race car and a Raceland in my street car. One of the welds failed on the Raceland, and the header was replaced for free. However, it was a hassle, and when you look at the difference in quality between Racing Beat and Raceland… well, you get what you pay for.
6. Tuning is a must at this point. Reprogramming the ECU can range from free (your laptop) to $600 or more (dyno operator).

This is pretty much where my car sits right now, with 129 hp on a Land and Sea dyno (which reads like a Mustang). This equates to about 145 hp and 122 ft-lbs on a Dynojet. An NB with all the bolt ons will have slightly less horsepower and more torque, and overall similar performance.

If you’re wondering how this car stacks up against a K24 Miata, there was this one time, on a short track, where the little 1.6 came out on top.

Where next, NA6?

OMFG you’re still reading? The smart people left the room a while ago. They swapped in a NB2, Honda K motor, Ecotec, or used forced induction.

Speaking of forced induction, the Miata 1.6 engine was originally designed for a turbo. Back then people would complain about turbo lag, but modern turbos with standalone engine management offer instant throttle response, fat torque, and a top end rush. My teammate’s turbo NA6 turbo is in my garage right now, so I know what a good turbo feels like.

But I don’t want a turbo. I can’t answer that logically. Somehow I’m keen to get a supercharger, even if it’s not as good. And then part of me just wants to see how far I can push the normally aspirated 1.6 envelope. I guess I’m a glutton for punishment and disappointment.

So let’s say we continue this normally aspirated experiment, just as a thought exercise. Where do we go next?

• Intake manifold. The NA6 intake manifold is a single cast piece, so you can’t pull it apart and polish the runners or add volume with a plenum spacer. There are some things that can be done here. None of it is money well spent, but that ship sailed a long time ago. You can also use a NB6 manifold (JDM, EUDM), which gives you the ability to use the larger 1.8 throttle body, or even upsize to the Skunk2 throttle body.
  • Extrude hone. This is basically forcing liquid sand through the manifold, which polishes the places you can’t reach. I would expect at most a 5% gain in power for $500.
  • Manifold spacer. A piece of phenolic machined to the dimensions of the intake manifold runners would help lower intake temperature and provide longer runners. I’d probably have to space things out in the engine bay, and install longer studs in the engine. And there’s the issue of the injectors now being further from the port which might not be good for atomization.
  • Skunk2. The Skunk2 intake manifold is available only for the 1.8 block, and adds 5-10% more power on the top end. Could this be adapted to a 1.6 with a manifold spacer? Cylinders 1 and 4 would need the ports angled 6mm in, and the injectors would have to be welded into the manifold (they are in the head on the 1.8).
  • Log manifold. These are primarily for boosted cars, but might unlock some N.A power. The one from RZ Crew is beautiful, if nothing else. The intake runners don’t wrap around the bottom, and might be shorter than stock, which wouldn’t help.

• NB6 head – In the USA, the 1.6 was last sold in 1993, but in Europe and Japan, they continued to sell the smaller motor. When the 1.8 went from NA to NB, so did the 1.6. The NB6 got the better port geometry, solid lifters, and I believe there’s a square-top NB6 intake manifold as well. I have the cam for the NA6, which has a different profile for the HLAs, so I’m probably not going down this route. But if someone were starting from scratch, this is a better starting point for 1.6 insanity.
• Ram air. I’ve actually built one of these airboxes, and it worked out to 1% power gain hp at 100 mph. At less than 100 mph, and at partial throttle openings, there was no change in manifold pressure. But, pinned WFO doing the ton, I watched 4″ of water drop (intake manifold pressure change). This was later verified on a dyno with a leaf blower, adding 1 hp. My intake has gone back and forth, and is currently not a ram intake, but I might go back to it again if I go to Watkins Glen regularly and desperately need 1 hp.
• ITBs. Some people have used Toyota AE101 intakes, other have used a more plug and play version from Jenvey. There’s a long thread on Club Roadster where a guy threw everything at a 1.6 including Jenvey ITBs and got 158 HP IIRC. My research says this is worth about 10% more power, and that’s after a lot of dyno tuning.
• Displacement – There’s a cheap stroker kit, it’s called a 1.8 swap. So what options are there for boring the block? Most of the aftermarket big-bore pistons are low compression, meant for boost. On the other side are 12:1 pistons that would now be 13:1 on a decked the head. Yikes! Somewhere in the middle is a unicorn big-bore standard compression piston with my name on it.
• The little things. I haven’t fooled around with cam timing yet. I might need new injectors. People say coil-on-plugs will do something more than nothing. Mathematically, the throttle body flows enough, but maybe boring it out would help, or switching to a NB6 intake manifold for the same reason.

In reality, it’s unlikely I’ll do any of these. My money is better spent on anything else. Just the same, stay tuned, I might venture further down the path of disappointment.

A friend and his dad are just getting into track driving, and building up their NA8 Miata for that purpose. It got me to thinking, if I was in that situation, knowing what I know now… what would I do, and in what order?

Phase 1: Track Ready

The first thing is a car that’s track-legal, and safe. It’s also never too early to start collecting data.

• 4-point Rollbar – Most tracks and HPDE organizations require this.
• Brakes – StopTech 309 pads and high temp brake fluid. The StopTechs don’t have a lot of bite, but are great on the street, and handle track temps OK. Their big selling point is price, sometimes I find them for less than $40.
• Tow straps – Baby teeth are fine, but if you removed them, you need something to attach a tow hook to, front and rear.
• Data – If you’re just getting started, a phone app is fine. You’ll want to add a 10 hz bluetooth antenna eventually, or better yet, get an Aim Solo or similar device made for motorsports.

Phase 2: Mechanical Grip

Drive the car like that for a few events. Resist the urge to put on sticky tires; All-season tires and stock suspension are learning aids. But once you can slide the car through every corner, it’s time to get more mechanical grip. This is a big step, and requires several things at once.

• Tires – A Miata on sticky tires is what momentum driving is all about. I like Hankook RS4s for their predictability and durability, but they aren’t super sticky. At the other end of the spectrum are take-off Hoosiers and Toyos from Spec Miata racers, which is an economical way to go fast. And there are a lot of 100-200 TW tires in between, the tradeoff is always between grip and longevity.
• Wheels – The stock wheels will hold you back. A 15×8 +35 wheel and 205 tire will fit with no modifications. If you roll the fenders, you can use 15x9s and run 225s, which is the current go-fast formula.
• Hubs – Sticky tires break stock hubs. The fronts are usually the ones to go, but my race car broke at the rear. I have BroFab hubs on my street car and Miatahubs on my race car. There are other options, and some people simply throw out the OEM hubs every year.
• Suspension – Shocks with stiffer springs and NB top hats. Coilovers so you can corner balance. Stiffer front sway bar and a bracket so you don’t tear the mount. If your car has a lot of miles, it might need new suspension bushings. Ugh.
• Alignment – You’ll probably need extended lower ball joints to get enough front camber, otherwise you’re going to wear the tires out. Get a proper track alignment.
• Seat and belts – At this point you’re going to be thrown side to side more, and a race seat is nice. You might also want a 5-7 point harness, and with that comes the requirement of a Hans device.

Phase 3: Hurt Machine

Bolt-on power and areo are next on the list.

• The usual suspects – A cold-air intake, header, and cat-back exhaust will each unlock about 5% power, which is still doable on the stock ECU. You might bump the timing a few degrees and do other minor tuning tricks if you haven’t already.
• Maintenance items – Some performance gains can be had if you’re replacing parts. If you need a clutch or throwout bearing, then do a lightweight flywheel at the same time. A 10-lb reduction in flywheel is worth about 7 hp in 1st gear, 3 hp in 2nd gear, and 1.5 hp in 3rd gear. If you need to pull the head for any reason, deck it .040″. That’ll cost about $60 and you’ll have to use Premium gas, but it’s the best bang for the buck. A high-flow catalytic converter will get 1-2 hp, but you can sell your OEM cat for almost the same price.
• Front aero – Airdam, undertray, ducted radiator, and hood vents. You have to do all of these at the same time because they are related. Brake ducts are optional, but easier to do that now than later.
• Rear aero – For a car that does more street than track, I like the looks of a spoiler. It needs to be at least 4″ high, preferably 7-8″. For a dedicated track car, use a 9 Lives Racing wing and add a splitter to the undertray.
• Misc aero – Fender vents, side skirts, flat bottom, diffuser, etc., are all worthwhile. Just say no to vortex generators.

At this point the car is the Trackable Miata build many people aspire to, and it’s a damn fast car. The engine is still basically stock, and you can beat on it all day. You can also beat on average drivers in Porsches, BMWs, etc. This is a machine that can hurt a lot of feelings.

But if you want to run with a well-driven Porsche, Corvette, or whatever, you need more power. This is the point where you decide if you’re going to NA tune the engine on a standalone, swap the engine, or go forced induction. Those decisions are like diets, religion, and politics: you don’t bring them up in pleasant company. And so I’ll leave my opinion out of it, except to say that anyone tuning a normally-aspirated 1.6 deserves their beatings.