Body Wrap - OGK debut

Vinyl body wrap

I asked Mike at All Pro Stickers in San Diego how long he would need the car to do the wrap. "A day or so. Can you leave it over night?" My answer: "What can you do in say, half a day?". He said he'd give it a shot, being his first Miata and not having complete artwork ready. Towed it down to his shop in the shadow of Qualcom stadium, we both worked on it ( I mostly got in the way I think) and this is the result.

I must say, even with some of the graphics not aligned with the body seams and a few other little things, I'm really happy with it. When I have time to leave it with him for two days he said he can redo a few panels and get it 100% dialed.

Action pic courtesy Brian at Cali Photography. He's the resident shooter at WSIR, karts, bikes vintage, drift, he covers it all.

Streets of Willow, CW -blowpass, Speedventures Oct 24

Having been too busy with other stuff to work on the car since the last event at Buttonwillow, the car was pretty much the same. I did have time to put a new steering wheel on. The cheap ebay wheel I was using was flexy so I swapped it for the rock solid Momo Monte Carlo off the turbo (280mm). I also switched the front pads from XP10's to XP12's, upgraded to steel lines and performed a long overdue flush and bleed. I love the XP12's in front but now I need more rear bite. I ended up running the proportioning valve wide open and just barely having enough rear brake. So I'll switch the rear XP8's for XP10's. Yes William, you were right.

Went out for session 2 , about 55° ambient. Being kind cool I started with fairly high cold pressures but it ended up being too much. The tires went off about halfway through the session. That's a bit of a learning curve for me. The old version of the car with stock 1.6 engine didn't put heat into the tires like this motor does. So starting pressure, way too much front brake bias, damping adjusted too soft front and way too soft in rear. Managed a 1:26.210 anyway. 3rd session I had everything dialed in but the ambient had climbed to about 85°, managed a 1:25.882. That was a bit of a surprise. As far as I can tell, that's only .5 sec off the S2K lap record for race tires on that config. Yowza.

So if I do a little supposition, CCW is usually about .5 faster for the fast cars. The wings, dyno time, finish building and tuning the suspension and a cooler 55~60° day, I could conceivably nip into the high 1:23's on NT01's. 1:22's on Hoosiers. That is 997/Z06 on race tires territory. I'm having to rethink all my benchmarks.

OGK = Orange Giant Killa :)