Tasklist as of Dec. 7th 2009

Tasklist Summary:
1. Seat 2. Exhaust 3. Shocks 4. AFM

Last track day, I realized I am forgoing some time because my body is being used to hold myself in the seat. For example, at the high-speed sweeper leading onto the longest straight, I am propping myself up with my left elbow against the door as I drive out of the corner. I am sure I can attack it more if I did not have to do that.

My friend Chris, "Punk Phenomena" Cullen told me, I should be more aggressive on corner exit.

Seat
So I've planned to purchase a race seat, mounting bracket, and a set of harnesses and mounting hardware when I am done with exams. Too poor to buy a nice fiberglass or kevlar seat. I am not comfortable with the idea of a back brace with an aluminum seat, unless someone can build me a very nice back brace with plenty of bracing surface area on the cheap! So I will be running a tubular seat. For now, Corbeau Forza looks like a good option. It used to have FIA rating for bottom mount, and the mounting brackets are very economical also. Having a past FIA rating must be better than never having a rating right? I hope it was just because they did not update it to new standards, or they decided it was not worth renewing the certification. Downside is that it is 19 lbs instead of the 17lbs-ish aluminum seat+brace package.

I got some more things I will do shortly:

Exhaust
My rear bumper is getting more and more burn damage. I can just weld on a tip, but I think I will use this opportunity to upgrade the exhaust system. Cost is a big issue in selecting an exhaust. From what I've researched, most performance tuner exhaust setups seem to have been designed with a lot of consideration in the sound and appearance. Although I am sure most of them have very similar performance gain, since most of this gain will be from the larger pipe diameter and a better bending of the tubes. Sound and appearance is not important to me as long as I can pass reasonable sound restrictions. So what does my selection come down to? Weight.

I settled on the Mazdaspeed Competition Exhaust for spec miata. This is a one piece unit made of stainless steel. A couple of my friends have this exhaust and I can live with how noisy it is. The pipe and can look pretty minimal so I believe this will be the lightest exhaust I can get on the cheap. Cost is about 195 dollars through Mazdaspeed support program.

Shocks
I have a set of stock R-package Bilsteins from my friend's wrecked 1994. Traded it for a new radiator. Good trade, huh?

I plan to get these guys revalved for road racing. I have a complete lack of data in this area. I will probably just take it to a road-racing shock tuner and just give them my spring rates. This will be slightly more expensive then just shipping it out to Bilstein in San Diego. Although, I will try and find out how much experience and data the San Diego shop has to work with; if they do, they might be able to give me a revalve just as good as a mid-priced race shop.

I thought about running them with my current springs since no doubt these shocks are better than my stock, blown shocks, but it will throw off my laptimes and it will be hard to gauge my improvement. So hopefully, when I go to a different spring rate I will be driving more consistently.

RX-7 Air Flow Meter
I got this tip from Solomiata.com. Apparently the stock AFM only measures up to 165CFM, and the 1.6l engine flows about 178CFM @ 7000rpms. The RX-7 unit can measure much more than that, and it plugs in. Check out the website for more information.

I got a used one sitting in my garage. The inlet is rectangular, and I've been thinking about how to mate this up with an intake filter. I will probably have someone make an aluminum one that goes from round to square in a reasonable smooth manner. I don't want the simple adaptor that is sold on ebay because I think the transition is too abrupt around the sharp edges of the inlet and the meter will probably end up measuring very turbulent air.

Finals exams are finished in Dec. 18th. I will take a short vacation with my girlfriend and get to work!