Is the answer always Miata? Even in Lemons? (Page 1 of 2)

There are several judges on this message board.  chaase is one, our grand poobah Eric Rood is here, I am also one.  Let me take a stab at addressing the topics you brought up.

First, the $500 rule does not apply to anything safety related.  Also, we recognize that actual $500 cars are getting difficult to find.  If you bring me an old and crusty NA, I'm not going to demand to see receipts.  If you bring me an ND, different story. 

As for Miatae in general, where do you live?  As a very general rule, Miata are class A cars unless you demonstrate you and the car are tragic.  Things like stock and worn out suspension, 600TW tires, crap like that.  Absent that, I'm sticking you in A until you prove me wrong.  At the same time, I'm not going to give you laps, especially your first time out.  Class A with laps is usually only for cars that are stupidly-obviously-over-the-top cheaty and/or cars that have won several prior races.  Bring me a well sorted 1.6 or 1.8 NA and I'll put you in A with zero laps. I have seen some decently nice stock 1.6L Miata as class B on the west coast, but as a rule of thumb you will be A.

A Miata may be considered "boring", just like any flavor of BMW 3 series, but there's a reason you see a shit ton of them.  They are damn good and the easy button.  Want to bring a non-bastardized Miata?  Have it at.  Theme well and we'll welcome you with open arms and a good natured ribbing.  Theme poorly and we'll still welcome you with open arms, but we'll give you a ton of (in fun) shit about hitting the easy button AND being boring.  You still won't get penalty laps.

Wanna rotary swap something?  Fabulous!!!!  I love it.  Overbuild the hell out of it and underdrive the hell out of it.  You don't see many rotary cars in Lemons...for a reason.  Spinning doritos tend to blow up in a blaze of glory at endurance races.  There are some teams that have found a secret sauce to making them live, but most spend a good part of the weekend in the garage swapping an engine.

Regardless, we want you to come join us and have a good time.  That's what this is all about.  As I said, unless you bring us something that is wildly over-the-top cheaty and fast, we aren't going to give you A with laps.  Have a great sense of humor, a great attitude, DRIVE SMART, and theme well.  Even if you bring a plain NA Miata we'll still be happy to have you.

Precisely.  You're a new team.  I could put you in C0 or A100 and it really doesn't matter.  You're going to be there to learn and most importantly have fun.  We will class the car based on the cars' potential, so if you bring a decent Miata expect to be in A, however it's irrelevant.  You're not going to win, or come close.  The Miata doesn't need to be super crusty to fit in, clean it up as much as you'd like.  As I said, theme it well and have a great attitude.  You'll fit in just fine.

It's awesome you love the rotary.  If you want to use it, do it.  We'd love to see it.  Just have realistic expectations that your odds of spending more time wrenching than driving are MUCH higher than if you have a conventional piston engine.  The RX7 chassis makes for a great race car.  What generation(s) do you have?  My team has an FC with a 3.8L GM V6 swap.  It just won overall this past weekend, its second win this year.

I have an FB with an efi conversion for my part time daily driver, for the last year I’ve been driving it about six months out of the year while I was rotating major upgrades/repairs between the FB and my daily driver subaru. I also have an FC convertible, which was my first car about seven years ago, and has since gained a 66mm turbo and a very brappy idle from a peripheral port 13b. My friend has two FCs, one totally stripped and quite rough, and one complete but sketchy T2 swapped GXL.

We are all pretty determined to rotary swap something just for the experience of it, and if we do in fact make it to Lemons that’s a huge plus. But if this ends in disaster (not unlikely) we all still intend to have some fun with this whole project.

That would be great, I used to see those mislisted all the time on Craigslist as RX7s.
Attempting to post pics of the Miata in question now.

Wow. Talk about long story short.

No one cares how much you put into your rotary.  About the only engine inspection has been them opening the hood asking "still rotary?, yup, slam".  Don't get me wrong, you can make them last.  I just wasn't willing to spend the money needed to make a modified one last.  Once I got away from stock porting is when I ran into thermal management issues and reliability went into the toilet.  But fast is fun, yo.

Also if you blow up, the only care they have about finding a second engine is how sketchy of a deal you make to get it.  Did you steal it out of your team mates daughters daily driver? Did you see a car in front of a crack house and knock on the door? They love that stuff for their wrap up videos.

The smart move is to bring a whole spare parts car.

That FD is exactly why I was asking these questions

That FD is exactly why I was asking these questions

That FD is exactly why I was asking these questions

It doesn't matter how crusty your miata is.... your generally bound to A class. Our miata chassis is banana shaped from a passenger side t-bone and we'll never get into B class. A rotary swap will probably get you into B but I don't see why you would... there's so many cheap cars out there that are already crappy.

As kinda touched upon, it depends on your goals. Want to drive, stay out there, and have fun? Run the miata and leave it stock. Want to race in Lemons spirit? Flip the miata and use that money to help launch your team. We did a couple fix and flips to help fund our startup costs for the team... they add up quick and NA miatas are worth may more than they should be right now and would be a great financial start.

Sit down with your team and have a serious discussion on what you want out of a weekend. We went with a miata because everyone on our team has miatas, we are in love with how they drive, and we really really like our seat time. We don't care about winning, but we wanted something that is reliable and we knew we could fix quickly to keep us out on track. If you wanted the full Lemons experience, cleanup that NA, sell it, and fund the rabbit hole of running a Subaru. it sounds like you have a choice between the Lemons A class experience or C class experience. Theres no wrong answer here.