A few fellow OKS'ers and I will be participating in the LeMons race at Eagle's Canyon in 3 days! > Heaps in the Heart of Texas - 2011

We will be driving a '96 Miata, and they have a tendency to overheat due to a design flaw in the routing of the coolant system.

To help alleviate that, some creative (well not really) redneck engineering was employed...

Supplies:

Corrugated cardboard
Sharp cutting utensil
Copious rolls of your favorite duct tape
Beer (your quantities may vary)

Procedure:

Place cardboard over holes and cut to shape with the sharp cutting utensil.
Apply liberal amounts of tape to ensure (or hope) the cardboard stays in place and is protected (hsugh) from the elements.
???
Profit

The Results:







For a little added flare - Cold Air Intake:

 

Wow if you had kept going on the bottom you would have created a whole undercarriage aero package
Why didnt mazda think of this?
Shear genius! Good luck in the race.. keep it turning laps.

 

Good job but let me recommend going 1 step further and adding a heat extractor to the hood.





Under $10 from Lowes. It made a HUGE difference on our Lemons Prelude, even in the oppressive southern summer heat, we never get to 200°

Good luck and like the poster above said, keep turning laps!

 

Awesome.

We're already on the roster for the February event, so that could be a project for over the next couple months!

 

bad picture, but it is all i have.

i used corrugated for sale signs as a diverter for the intake as well as the radiator. for the intake, i would have rather had the whole filter surrounded, but the size of the filter didn't allow for such measures.

 

looks good, I just hope nothing gets too hot out there like that cardboard..... :fire:

 

We finished the car up last night.

Ready or not...

It went from this >







To this > (in about a week)











...and as of last night >





We are ready to roll. Heading out early tomorrow...around 4:00A

 

Doood you should totally roll that station wagon in the background!
Indestructable!

 

Mental (the guy's garage we built the car in) is running that in the 2012 Babe Rally > www.baberally.com

Also a $500 car, but it has heat/aircon and a radio! lol

 

I really need to find these $500 Miatas people keep find laying around. Would love to have one as a beater car in the summer to zip around town in.

I still don't believe over half the cars are true $500 cars at a LeMons race. Saw a pristine looking 944 there. Really? But other stuff where the shell alone would be $500 I can't see someone selling a whole car for the price.

To be honest, our car was $1 only because we knew the guy selling it to us, it hit a deer and sat on his lawn for a couple years. Just needed a new radiator. Body work wasn't perfect, but that car could have drove perfectly fine with a new radiator and sold for more than $500 IMO.

Edit: I still want to build a Honda that's HC and LeMons legal. Would pretty much swap out the suspension for LeMons and everything else would be the same. Just need to find a dirt cheap final drive to make the project.

 

Yeah, but just because it has value to others, doesn't mean it has value to the owner.

This same group that I'm going down to Texas with bought a '93 Lincoln MkVIII for $560 that was "track-prepped" by a guy just to prove a point to his racing buddies.

He built the trans and put together a static suspension package to replace the air ride and took it racing.

The engine and suspension by themselves are worth more than the money we bought the car for, but that's what he wanted for it. I'm a little sad we never LeMons'd the car like we intended. ...but I did get to autoX it >

 

You miatas always have crappy themes! That wouldn't fly in california ! Judge phil and jonny would penalty lap the he'll out of you guys ! Or they would spray paint your car with the good old "theme sucks"

 

Did you guys melt your brakes like team tetanus?

 

Nope, the Carbotechs and Primewell Z900 took the abuse like champs.

Never had brake fade or greasy tires. ...or even a soft brake pedal and we were just using NAPA DOT3.

I'll get a full recap of the weekend posted up as soon as I get it put together.

Also, Jay ultimately threw down on our theme/penalty laps and he was cool with it, so ...yeah.

 

With only 57 entries that can't be bitchy!

 

Kind of funny you mention that. Judge Phil said he likes the theme...just would like to see it taken a little further.