96 Miata Build: January 2016

January 2016

Tub Painted

My daughters Miata is fixed and back on the road. It needs a door, which I have, but that's waiting for warmer weather. So back to my car.
I've got my wiring harness pretty well sorted and figured out. Time to clean and paint the lower tub so I don't need to pull the wiring back out. I'll touch it up after the cage is in. It looks surprisingly good. I'm pretty pleased with myself on this one.

Power Wiring

I'm retaining the stock relay box under the hood. The fuse box I'm using is a new product from Blue Sea Systems. Model 5032 dual feed box with 6 circuits per feed and a dedicated ground bus. 100A max load, 30A/circuit. This will give me six switched and six always hot circuits available. Plenty for my needs.

I'm putting a heat shield in the transmission tunnel which will hopefully keep the box location reasonably shielded.

Sealing the Firewall

I'm trying to follow SCCA GCR safety requirements wherever possible. They're more stringent than the Solo rules. I have a bunch of holes in my firewall that need sealing. I'm not going to weld them because, well, I suck with the cheapo flux core machine and I'm not ready to fork out for a good MIG just yet. The main harness 2 3/4" hole on the driver side will need to be much smaller. It will only need to support the fan and ABS sensor wiring. I cut 1/8" aluminum plate and riveted it in place. Seam sealer all around with a 1/2" grommet in the middle.

Holes for the heater hoses, speedo cable, and cruise control cable are next. I did a walkabout in the Home Depot and found these nifty powder coated steel shingles in the roofing department for $2. these were cut with heavy duty shears and riveted in place with more seam sealer.

Home Depot Shingle

Cut Out Patches

Pre-apply seam sealer

Inside

Under Hood

Now I can reinstall my pedal boxes and rout the wires for the brake and clutch switches. The starter interlock clutch switch is deleted. The other clutch switch will be used for launch control and flat shift. I'll seal the AC lines on right side the same way when I'm sure I don't want to route anything through there.

Wiring Progress

The wiring is mostly complete. This is a monotonous task......sigh. All my ECU connections are made up except for the alternator pigtail. I need to button up the grounding and wire up the Wideband.

Engine In

I backed off of the wiring for a couple of days. My back was killing me from working inside the car. I cleaned up the detail items on my engine bay and I got my engine into the car. I'd call it a major milestone. My injectors are off to Witch Hunter Performance for cleaning. The should be back in a couple of weeks.