I just ordered these lovelies -
I’ll be picking these up at the event next week! I’ve been dying to get these and I don’t know why I’ve taken so long to order them, but this is such a cheap mod while improving the stiffness of the car noticeably. From Flyin’ Miata’s website – “These braces slide over the factory frame rails and stiffen the car dramatically.” Sounds good to me.
Look for the installation and results in a couple weeks =)!
In an attempt to spiffy up Roy for the upcoming event I decided to have some cosmetic changes done – repaint the hardtop and front bumper. Originally, the hardtop was Montego Blue and while it was an okay match at night, during the daylight the blue-green was quite the contrast to the rest of the car. I settled on having the hardtop repainted with Sparkling Black Mica (color code 35N), a black with gold metallic flakes; this color is found on some of Mazda’s cars, such as the RX-8, Mazda 6, and CX-9. As Justin put it – I was staying within the family. For the bumper, I stayed with Brilliant Black and waived to keep the holes for the emblem.
I took Roy to ProTech, managed by Anthony, to have the work done.
Here is the new Roy:
From a distance the hardtop looks pretty swell and acceptable, the subtlety of the gold metallic flakes and lighter black is a nice balance and I think stands out well. With that being said, getting up close, I noticed some imperfections with the paint /sad face. I think having rushed the job and not giving enough time for the paint to completely harden and dry led to a quarter-sized burn in the paint and swirl marks from having the hardtop polished. As a courtesy, Anthony had asked me if I wanted it polished and I agreed not knowing that the painted needed more time to dry! So off to Pro Tech to have the paint re-done!! Argh. At least I still have about 1 week before the big weekend and that should give enough time for the paint to dry.
On the other hand, the bumper looks so much better with a decent paint job. I’m not sure what happened with the previous owners, but a shitty job was done and the paint never really matched the body and an unsightly “pig nose” where the emblem was. I opted to not have the Garage Vary front lip painted – would it look cleaner if it was painted?
Unfortunately, this past weekend I took a drive down to Davenport and the bumper collected a bunch of bugs…there goes a brand new bumper! Hopefully this doesn’t affect the paint too much since I think the paint hadn’t completely hardened/dried – I might have embedded bugs…boooo!
Well, here’s hoping that 2nd time is a charm and the Sparkling Black Mica is perfect!
My inspiration:
(Silver hardtop with metallic flakes)
Today was a highly productive day – firstly, I want to thank Brian and Justin for helping and doing most of the dirty work; it’s always nice to have competent pals 
. Roy and I are very appreciative of your help and glad that nothing broke or went wrong! Cheers!
The agenda was to install new front brake pads, coilovers, and wheels. Sounds like a big day of sweat, blood, and tears – doesn’t it? I guess the perk of having people who know what they’re doing (ya know, doin’ it right) is that things will get done quickly. I would say from start to finish it took less than three hours and this was done without air-tools! Again, the nice thing was that nothing broke! I was stuck with doing the easy stuff like jacking up the car, removing and replacing the wheels, removing nuts and bolts…I think that was it (hah!) – even though my tasks were simple in comparison, I learned and gained a little bit more experience with working on my own car…plus the satisfaction that it was all done at home.
Before Brian arrived I put Roy on jack stands using a brand new rapid pump low-profile jack from Harbor Freight. Just a quick review of the jack – at 45lbs this thing was heavy lifting out of the box, but maneuvering it around the garage was really easy. Our older Craftsman jack could really only go forward and back then to have it go sideways we kind of had to drag it left and right. With the HF jack, it glided really easily back and forth as well as side to side…it really didn’t feel like 45lbs once it was settled on the ground. Overall, it has a very sturdy and reliable feel to it. The pumping wasn’t exactly effortless, but each pump got the car higher quicker.
Here’s a snap of Roy teetering on the stands. This made me really nervous. What if one of the stands failed?!
Moving on – Justin and I decided to install new brake pads for the front. The pads that I used were the Performance Ceramic by Hawk. I didn’t lend a hand for this, but it must be an easy process if it was done quickly even before I could ask about the status of it.
These are the original brake pads – they look like they’ve got a lot of meat left! However, the Hawk pads are so much more responsive and braking feels a lot more solid now. I’m a lot happier now with how the braking feels much more secure and reliable (this is coming from a person who has nightmares of not being able to stop >_<).
Once Brian arrived, the real dirty work began…
I was assigned to remove the nuts from the trunk and rear shocks. Here you can see the Bilstein shock.
I was told that the bushings were in pretty bad condition, along with the dust boot and the spider webs -__-;. A few months back I bought a set of bump stops and dust boot for these guys, I may just replace the old with the new since they’re off the car and incase I want to put them back on Roy.
Tein Flex coilovers on! Now time to put the goodies on…
RS Watanabe 15×6.5 front 15×7 rear +35 (I think…).
I think I want the ride height a little bit lower and he would look perfect. What do you think? Like? Hate? Ricer? Awesome?
Justin ordered these for me from Japan! OoOooO JDM =P I can’t wait to have these put on…
Roy’s wishlist:
My goal with Roy is to improve what Miatas are known for (among other things) – handling. My hope is that with the above parts, Roy will stay planted in the ground through the twisties while I’m being tailgated by a car with far more power ^_^;; I think I’m on the right track.
My humble wishlist:
Tracy Reese Printed Silk Shift Dress
Marc by Marc Jacobs Totally Turnlock Natasha Bag, Black
Since Roy is more important than myself, my wishlist is a bit smaller, although way out of my budget! The MMJ bag I don’t necessarily need, but once it’s gone it is GONE! I hope to get one of these items soon because checking online everyday for sales is not healthy 
.
