Ghettocharge or newer shocks? (Page 1 of 2)

I would agree completely, except this is Lemons and the judges hate Miatas.

Show up with nice, firm new shocks and the judges will instantly say "cheater suspension!" 

Show up with bouncy 150,000 mile stock shocks and a nasty-looking ghettocharger, coupled with a top-notch theme... you'll have a much easier time.

For fun factor, and raceability, improving the suspension is the proper course of action... but you'll have a hard time getting through tech without BS laps.  It's likely that you'll actually FINISH in a higher position if you leave the suspension alone and do something goofy and unique with the car to avoid BS laps.

Want a free pass?  Rip out the Mazda engine and fit something like a Chrysler slant-6 in the front.  (note that I didn't say "under the hood")

Yeah eyesore's only runs 4-5psi.  I would lean toward suspension as well, but I wouldn't want to give the real cheater miatas any competition for peoples curse.  We may just leave it as is, because I don't think our theme is good enough to merit an oversight of a turbo on the miata, regardless of cost. 

The judges last year were pretty cool about our car, as it was blatantly in a wire fire in the enegine bay.  A guy who races spec miatas was walking by and told the judges that it was just a crappy miata.  they slapped us on the back, told us to have fun, and said they would have to dock us 1 lap, just because it was a miata.  Sounded fair enough to me. 

From a fabricating standpoint, it would be a blast to ghettocharge it and not have to worry about the looks of it.  We may do it just for the hell of it, even if we don't race it like that.

I'd skip the oil cooler all together.  Just something else to fail IMHO.

But it is one more item that COULD fail. 

Our team struggled with this internally as well.  All the "experts" said that if we didn't install an oil cooler, the motor would die quickly.  We decided not to do it and focus on keeping the underhood temps in check and never saw more than 220° to 230° on our oil temp gauge.

Good luck!

The vents in the hood actually had our car running a bit TOO cold

http://magnumpu.com/body.aspx

i reccomend a front end conversion.  where are you located?  I'm sure there are some awesome cars on craigslist.

if you really wanna do something, do something at least lemony, like put a ford mustang v6/5speed in it, or a rotary that you just rev the crap out of

Have you considered suspension bushings? Cheap, and they let the front end hold a setup....I feel they're great bang for your buck

Instead of ghettocharging or shocks, we recommend that you find a $100 Spitfire and drop the Miata body onto its chassis. That's a Miata the Lemons Supreme Court will love!

I call BS on that one. A non-leaky RX-7 oil cooler runs about $200. Better have a Pull-A-Part receipt, and even then your oil cooler better have some welding on the nipples. The only intact oil cooler I have (out of four) was repaired.

Of course if you were to ghettocharge it the judges would probably look the other way.

Edit: If that's the beehive water-oil cooler you paid too much. Us RX-7 guys throw those away.

You can find plenty of RX-7 oil coolers in self-service junkyards, so we won't have a problem believing a team got one cheap. The ones in Volvo 240 Turbos are much, much easier to remove, though- you don't even need to get underneath the car.

Crown Vic P71s also have pretty nice oil coolers.

We got one for even less than that at a wrecking yard but it is bent, however it still works fine and has survived two races so far.