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AJC's 88 Si

19K views 63 replies 20 participants last post by  Gotin 
#1 ·
Finally on the road! On 'borrowed' wheels for now.





Maybe not the best use of $1600 but so far so good.
 
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#5 ·
It's purty because I put up pictures of the drivers side. The other side has the krinkled front fender so I'll keep those pictures to myself.
 
#6 ·
LOL, I sent a mock up of my tach installation to a buddy of mine. I ended up retaking it 20 times trying to get the tach and dash in view without seeing my neglected dead-grass-piece-covered floorboards
 
#7 ·
Driveway's a little crowded here, and this isn't even everything. Parked on the street on the other side of the driveway is the 4Runner, and the MGB is hiding inside the garage.

 
#10 ·
BECAUSE RACE CARS

Can't believe I'm trailering a car to an event five miles from home



Ignore the krinkled fender. Better yet, sell me an unkrinkled one.
 
#14 ·
Yesterday was taking-apart-dashboard fun trying to see what kind of torture I was in for later when I get around to changing out the stereo



Like that carpet? I had enough of it being dirty so the seats came out and the vacuum cleaner went to work.



So here's how it sits now, back on its stock wheels. The wife's Miata wanted its RPF1s back.

 
#16 ·
Took the CRX to our local club's autocross "play day", which some used as serious test & tune time and others just wanted to finish off this year's tires before getting new stuff in the spring. We brought four cars and ran them all to see which was best.



The best of the bunch is the green/white Miata. It's not a surprise, it has the most go-fast pieces under it, development time, etc etc. Both me and the missus put up our best times in that.

Second best was the black '99 (second from the right). I started my day in that one while it still had its 400 treadwear all-seasons, which was entertaining at first but then was just painful. I put the shaved Toyo R1R from the '93 on the '99 and it just came to life. Just enough power to be entertaining, predictably tossable, sounded great, drove great. I started having dirty thoughts about running it in STR next year. Now that I look at the times and see it wasn't even faster than the STS car, those thoughts have disappeared.

Third was the CRX. It took a few runs to figure it out and eventually I know how to get it to put up decent times. Basically you have to drive the piss out of it. You have to be mad at it and it'll reward you with a good performance. I got it going well enough that it got my fourth-best time of the day on full-tread R1Rs.

I tried improving the CRX by putting two shaved R1Rs on the front (I've been led to believe that my 7.5" 6ULs will interfere with the rear suspension so I did not try swapping those on). The increased grip up front was great but the car was no longer balanced, and the rear couldn't keep up with the front in the high-speed slalom. Shaved R1Rs on 7" RPF1s in the back would probably help but I have none.

The Mazdaspeed Miata brought up the rear. Theoretically it should be a lot better but it has two strikes against it. The power delivery is very peaky. It's basically a regular Miata up to 3500 RPM or so and then boost happens. Half a second after you get boost in second gear, you're on the rev limiter. If I had my act together I'd go to third gear for the long run into a fast slalom, but all bets were off if I'd still have enough faculties to brake enough while downshifting back to second for the tight right-hander after that slalom.

It was a fun day despite it being cold and windy. I got 29 runs in, the wife put in 37, and we got a couple other drivers to jump in our '93 and give us some feedback on its setup. It's probably the end of our autocross season so we're slipping into hibernation and mulling over possible changes for 2013.
 
#17 ·
AJC said:
Third was the CRX. It took a few runs to figure it out and eventually I know how to get it to put up decent times. Basically you have to drive the piss out of it. You have to be mad at it and it'll reward you with a good performance. I got it going well enough that it got my fourth-best time of the day on full-tread R1Rs.
Those two sentences couldn't be more accurate in my experience. They will run like a banshee if you keep the prod jammed into its rear end. :biggrin: Which is honestly my favorite way to drive. Granted I've never done any cone dodging like you but I have had some road course time and your statement is applicable there as well.
 
#19 ·
y49si said:
looks pretty good for $1600 to me! What are your plans for it?
The plan is to drive it till it dies.

It's part of our plan to cut down on debt. It's replacing a 2010 Mazda3 as the wife's primary commuter. Not only do we lose that car payment but insurance is half the cost. There's the bonus that instead of risking a nearly-new car in the unforgiving door-ding factory that is the DC Metro system's parking lots, our already dinged-up CRX can be parked care-free. As long as the car remains reliable and the wife doesn't totally hate it, we'll ride this payment-free time with it as long as possible.

I don't intend on spending any money on this car with the exception of a set of tires (the current ones are dated 2006) and a better head unit with bluetooth so the wife can call on her way home from work so I can get dinner started. Other than that, I'll maintain it, fix whatever breaks, and wait for the inevitable day when the wife says she's sick of the punishing ride, lack of heated seats and air conditioning, etc etc. When that happens we'll get a Scion FRS or whatever catches our eye at that time and I get to make the CRX my track rat until I ultimately stuff it into a tire wall at Summit Point.
 
#20 ·
Some random pics from the last month or so

Getting a piggy-back ride home from the above autocross play day


Next to a BRZ, which is smaller than I expected


I only bring loose wheels to tire shops to avoid the monkeys there screwing up and/or overtorquing lugnuts. So this is how the car spent an afternoon while new tires were getting installed


Oh yeah. These oughta last forEVER
 
#23 ·
AZCRXSI said:
Any pics of the MGB? 8) :twisted: Purty please!


I bought it for $850 in 1987 when I was 19. It was pretty ratty then and just got worse. Drove it summers through college with brief pauses to rebuild the engine (twice), patch the floors (twice), and slap more Bondo on the body and paint it.

I got rear-ended by a kid in a pickup with a snowplow mount in 1993. Got a body shop to write up a repair estimate for $1600 and somehow it didn't get totalled, and I got a $1600 check from the kid's insurance company. Me and my dad pounded everything smooth, painted it, and kept motoring.

Every year this thing was an adventure to get through Massachusetts' annual safety inspection, and got to the point where it needed a serious front suspension overhaul. So I put it up for the winter in a family friend's barn after the 1999 summer season and just kind of left it there. Fast forward to spring 2011, family friend is retiring to Florida and selling the farm, come get your POS. so we went up and got it and I've been looking at it for the last year and a half much to the wife's chagrin.

Realistically, I could probably have this running and driving in three days and $200. One day to drain the old gas out, one day to figure out why the brakes don't work on the left rear, and one day to replace the collapsed flex line from the clutch master cylinder. The car turns over fine and the rest of the brakes work.

I can register the car as "Historic" like my '90 Miata, which means the registration cost is half and it won't be subject to inspections. Insurance is dirt cheap. Een though the car is a mechanical basket case, I'd like to get it running and enjoy one more summer with it, just puttering around town to get ice cream. After that, maybe sell it, or keep it till the next (inevitable) mechanical disaster. It looks good but realistically needs a lot of work so maybe I could find someone who wants a project to buy it, who knows. Obviously it hasn't been a big priority here (with four other convertibles that start every time and can not get run over on the Beltway, what's the rush?).

Maybe it'll be my winter project assuming it's not a brutally cold winter. You just never know.

But I digress.
 
#24 ·
AJC said:
AZCRXSI said:
Any pics of the MGB? 8) :twisted: Purty please!


I bought it for $850 in 1987 when I was 19. It was pretty ratty then and just got worse. Drove it summers through college with brief pauses to rebuild the engine (twice), patch the floors (twice), and slap more Bondo on the body and paint it.

I got rear-ended by a kid in a pickup with a snowplow mount in 1993. Got a body shop to write up a repair estimate for $1600 and somehow it didn't get totalled, and I got a $1600 check from the kid's insurance company. Me and my dad pounded everything smooth, painted it, and kept motoring.

Every year this thing was an adventure to get through Massachusetts' annual safety inspection, and got to the point where it needed a serious front suspension overhaul. So I put it up for the winter in a family friend's barn after the 1999 summer season and just kind of left it there. Fast forward to spring 2011, family friend is retiring to Florida and selling the farm, come get your POS. so we went up and got it and I've been looking at it for the last year and a half much to the wife's chagrin.

Realistically, I could probably have this running and driving in three days and $200. One day to drain the old gas out, one day to figure out why the brakes don't work on the left rear, and one day to replace the collapsed flex line from the clutch master cylinder. The car turns over fine and the rest of the brakes work.

I can register the car as "Historic" like my '90 Miata, which means the registration cost is half and it won't be subject to inspections. Insurance is dirt cheap. Een though the car is a mechanical basket case, I'd like to get it running and enjoy one more summer with it, just puttering around town to get ice cream. After that, maybe sell it, or keep it till the next (inevitable) mechanical disaster. It looks good but realistically needs a lot of work so maybe I could find someone who wants a project to buy it, who knows. Obviously it hasn't been a big priority here (with four other convertibles that start every time and can not get run over on the Beltway, what's the rush?).

Maybe it'll be my winter project assuming it's not a brutally cold winter. You just never know.

But I digress.
Awesome! Love it! Please get it back on the road! I love old British sports cars! In the family we had a '59 Bugeye Sprite and a '56 Austin Healey 100/M BN2 (from the factory). Actually went to the AH Trust in England and requested certification of the car and when it was produced. It was neat, received a certificate back on production dates, color, options (M included) etc. We had 2 engines, 2 transmissions and a boat load of SU carbs to rebuild and get going.

Neat stuff…

Then my pops sold it… $12k and it sold less than 8 hours (non functional and non running).

Friends of the family had a Cooper (998), Cooper S (bored to 1375) and a Cooper pickup. Our friend's current project is a 1947 MG Y Sedan.

Good luck on it and I hope you get it up and running. Very cool cars…
 
#25 ·
My dad has always had British cars going back to the '50s. One of each of the big Healeys (100-4, 100-6, 3000)... Sunbeam Tiger, and a couple Triumph Spitfire race cars:



After his racing days he had a couple of his own MGBs, including one he restored and painted the exact same color as mine (WHY OH WHY). I'm guesstimating this photo is from 1997ish based on where I was living at the time:



He also tackled a couple ill-fated Tiger restorations since then and successfully finished someone else's half-done restoration on a 100-6 not too long ago. He put two years into that, got it on the road, drove it maybe 25 miles and decided he didn't really like it, so he sold it.

For his fun cars these days he has his own Miata, a red-on-red '62 Corvette, and a Factory Five Cobra kit.

 
#26 ·
Since I'm going back in time and posting some old pics

1991ish: my MGB and my fourth old Civic, a '79. I carried this picture folded in half in my wallet for years.


1994: I'm about to move out of mom & dad's after college. I'm leaving their yard littered with that old Civic, which is now dead (internal combustion engine suddenly became external combustion) and the MG which appears to not have an engine in it. I had recently picked up the '87 CRX Si and that was my moving van


1990ish: I'm in full MG geek mode at a car show at an MG museum somewhere in Vermont. The mullet is there but not nearly as strong as it got later.


I really liked this car. It cleaned up nice considering it was a rebuilt wreck


Outside the office at my first 'real job'


I was a trendsetter in 1992! Black wheels with polished lips wouldn't be taken seriously till ten years or so later. These were steel wheels with aluminum trim rings, and pretty much everybody hated when I painted the wheels black.


My MGB spent a LOT of time like this. I couldn't maintain the car mechanically worth a crap (this time it came apart because the throwout bearing broke), but I always made sure my wheels were clean and freshly painted. We got to the point where we were pretty good at yanking the engine out of this thing and could have the motor swinging from the frontyard tree in a matter of hours.


OK that's enough memory lane for one day.
 
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