Oct 11 2009

Update 10/11/09

Just a quick progress report since the last post.  At the Grissom AFB auto-x the ambient temps were down in the low-mid 50s and although the car felt fine I did notice that there was an overall lack of grip.  Also the previous 33/34psi setup did not work very well (possibly due to the high grip on the surface), causing some rolling beyond the wear bars on the tires.  I upped the pressure to 35/36psi and it prevented roll on the sidewalls.  There may be some issues with running these tires in such cold conditions without any chance to warm them up, hopefully at a trackday this won’t be as much of a problem.

Had some nice weather this weekend so I took the opportunity to finish off some of the work I had planned on doing to the car.  This included a valve cover gasket change and an oil change.  Used some Mobil1 5W-30 as it has worked well up till now, and went with a longer M1-110 oil filter (stock is M1-108) as per recommendations from a lot of the Miata forums community.  Unfortunately I spaced out a bit and completely forgot to take a camera for pics.  The only thing left to do is schedule an alignment job and get the pre-inspection sheet filled out before the trackday.  Can’t wait, but hope that it’s a bit warmer than 50F out there…