{"id":43,"date":"2011-11-27T21:44:55","date_gmt":"2011-11-28T05:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.destinationssm.com\/?p=43"},"modified":"2011-11-27T21:44:55","modified_gmt":"2011-11-28T05:44:55","slug":"bent-frame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.directedconsulting.com\/destinationssm\/?p=43","title":{"rendered":"Bent Frame"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>There’s been no updates in a bit because shortly after the last post, while measuring the radiator area for planning the intercooler setup, I noticed that something wasn’t quite right. \u00a0More careful inspection revealed that a frame-bending accident had been concealed by a previous owner. \u00a0The car had hit something pretty hard with the front right at some point. \u00a0The rad support is bent pretty good (how did I not notice that? sigh.) and looking under the headlight reveals pretty extensively crinkled metal. \u00a0The lower rad support is bent inward too — the radiator is visibly slightly torqued. \u00a0Having found these things,\u00a0I looked around more and found a pretty malformed area in the left of the trunk as well. \u00a0 Well, crap.<\/p>\n

Having bought it from Davin, I neglected to even bother carfaxing it, but a quick Autocheck report showed terrible things in the car’s past. \u00a0 In 97 it was declared a total loss, and somehow came out of it without a salvage title, and then had another accident in 04. \u00a0I thought briefly about trying to get the important part (front corner) fixed, but quickly decided that was a terrible plan. \u00a0Miatas are cheap enough that I might as well get one in definitively good shape to start the build with. \u00a0I’m going to be adding enough metal stress to this poor car that I don’t need to start with one that’s been through 2 accidents and a frame jig. \u00a0The search began.<\/p>\n

The days surrounding Thanksgiving were mostly spent searching all over the country for Miatas. \u00a0At this point, if you’ve posted a Miata for sale west of the continental divide anywhere on the net, I’ve seen your post and have probably emailed you for more info if you’re remotely in the right price range. \u00a0I spent the first several days narrowing down what I want to one of three things:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. 93 CA-emissioned ABS-equipped car — The Unicorn Car. \u00a0Very rare combination of equipment. \u00a0However, it would mean I would need to transplant zero wiring harnesses from the current car to the new car. \u00a0I tracked down several leads only to find people with wrong-year cars or not knowing what ABS was. \u00a0At this point, I’ve basically given up on this idea, not that I’d ever placed much hope in it in the first place.<\/li>\n
  2. 91-93 ABS-equipped car — Much easier to find. \u00a0Preferably with manual windows\/mirrors and power steering, but at this point I can drum up the parts to make any option package work. \u00a0This means I don’t need to transplant the ABS system, rear body harness, or dash harness. \u00a0The front (hard) and injection (easy) harnesses off the current 93 car will need to transplant to retain the sequential injection that I’m using with the RaceLogic traction control setup, but that’s a lot less work than all 4.<\/li>\n
  3. Failing that, any light, correct-optioned 1.6 car will work. \u00a0However, at this point I’d rather spend a little more money on #2 to save myself a lot of effort and time, and after looking at Miatas, I’m not convinced that the options I’m looking for increase the value of the car at all anyway, so I might as well wait for the right one.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The last few days I’ve been narrowing the search for details on a few cars I’m interested in. \u00a0Up until late tonight I had been tracking down one last possible Unicorn car and waiting to hear back from a couple local ads, but then tonight, somehow, everyone got back to me with the info I needed, and I think I found the car I’m going to buy this week. \u00a0I’ll update more after I find and purchase a car. \u00a0In the meantime, I’m stripping Davin’s car down to the frame and disposing of what’s left. \u00a0At least I’ll get a bunch of spares out of this, and I should be able to sell enough parts to break even. \u00a0He with weak mind has strong back. \u00a0And empty wallet. \u00a0Or something. \u00a0C’est la vie.<\/p>\n

    At least research on the project has continued. \u00a0I’ve bought a bunch more parts (RaceLogic Traction Control, OS Giken, AIM Evo4\/MyChron3, and the rest of the internals\/valvetrain for the engine build). \u00a0I’ve collected almost all the \u00a0subframes\/uprights\/etc. that we need for the drop spindles project, and that will kick off in the next couple weeks here with measuring everything and generating CAD models to play with geometry and see what the factory gave us. \u00a0I’ll post in more detail about some of the choices I’ve made as parts start showing up and they start going onto the car. \u00a0For now, I’m focusing on trying to find the right car to keep the project from getting too far behind schedule while also doing whatever research I need to keep that flowing as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    There’s been no updates in a bit because shortly after the last post, while measuring the radiator area for planning the intercooler setup, I noticed that something wasn’t quite right. \u00a0More careful inspection revealed that a frame-bending accident had been concealed by a previous owner. \u00a0The car had hit something pretty hard with the front […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.directedconsulting.com\/destinationssm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.directedconsulting.com\/destinationssm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.directedconsulting.com\/destinationssm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.directedconsulting.com\/destinationssm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.directedconsulting.com\/destinationssm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.directedconsulting.com\/destinationssm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46,"href":"https:\/\/www.directedconsulting.com\/destinationssm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.directedconsulting.com\/destinationssm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.directedconsulting.com\/destinationssm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.directedconsulting.com\/destinationssm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}