UnderdogHey, y'all!
Looks like I've not posted here since March 2021. No, it's not you, it's me!
When COVID hit, my autocross club (the one that I actually operated) canceled all of our events. After a couple months, my business partner and I came to the conclusion that while we missed the ACTIVITY of autocrossing, we didn't miss the "herding cats" aspect of putting on events, and the prospect of trying to put on autocross events with COVID protocols in place did not appeal to us at all. So, we shut things down. (we did offer to let anybody who wanted to step up and take over... and there was some interest, but no follow-through)
Somewhere along the line, I quit keeping up with a lot of automotive forums, this one included. Sorry 'bout that. I've been keeping busy improving my ukulele playing skills, and doing a little bit of bicycling. (bought a cool recumbent bike, and then put 750W of power on it to make my rides more interesting)
What else? Well, my Mirage barely gets driven. It's parked outside, I had my Miata (bought it to autocross when I quit autocrossing the Mirage, 2.5-3 years ago) in the garage. And neither of them get driven because I drive a Driver's Ed car (2018 Elantra) for work, and I don't go a lot of other places. Just short trips a couple times a week, maybe.
One of my regular trips is a weekly dinner meet with some car guys. It's about a 4-mile tripe, and I hypermile the heck out of it. Can usually get over 45 mpg on the way there (traffic), and bring that average up to 55-56 on the way home, or if I reset for the return trip, I can get 60-63 on the return trip with a LOT more coasting. Cheap entertainment, right?
But, I've sold the Miata (see: "not driving it" and "not autocrossing") and now I want to sell the Mirage. Partly because I'm bored with it. Partly because my son wants to buy it.
My son bought My Mom's Mirage for his GF from/through me when she died a few years ago. GF has been driving and loving that car, and why wouldn't she? So, he's interested in buying mine for himself... because mine has a MT and the coilover kit.
With an eye towards selling it, I finally got around to taking some of the "trick" autocross suspension parts off of my Mirage, and also reinstalling the back seats and seatbelts. Now it's just one front-end alignment away from being "totally street ready". If my son doesn't buy it, it's sellable.
FWIW, I'm thinking seriously about a Smart EV to replace the Mirage. For how I've been using the Mirage, it would work quite well... short trips, and I'd only have to charge it every 3 weeks or so! That car checks so many of my boxes. It's tiny! It's cute! It handles reasonably well (especially with all that battery weight down low). It's comfortable and has good AC. It's economical. A little bit pricey, but... at least it's something different.
Lastly... (I'll do a for-sale post for this stuff if nobody jumps on this right away) The parts I took off of the car... if you or anyone you know is a serious autocrosser, or racer, or just very seriously hard-core into making their Mirage handle better... you might be interested in these parts.
Lower Control Arms - Stock replacements, modified to accept a threaded (70's Chrysler upper style) ball joint and be 1/4" longer for more negative camber. Fitted with QA-1 extended ball joints.
Outer Tie-Rod Ends - This is a custom "bump steer correction" kit using standard race car parts and a custom machined aluminum adapter to thread to the Mirage tie-rods. It all fits quite well and is adjustable (with spacers) to get the tie-rod angle where you want it. They are open spherical joints (heim joints, rose joints, whatever you want to call them). High quality parts, nice and tight and responsive, but they require regular oiling. If you don't do so, they SQUEAK! This is why I wanted to get them the heck off of this "street car" before I sell it.
Those two sets of parts are great for a significantly lowered car. When you lower a car, you change the lower control arm and tie-rod angle. The extended ball joints bring that angle closer to level. (and the only way to fit extended lower ball joints on a Mirage is to modify a LCA to fit them) The bump steer correcting tie-rod ends do the same for the tie rod.
What all of this accomplishes is "lowering the roll center" and making the steering less affected by bumps or body roll. (more consistent steering) Lowering the roll center has the delightful effect of mechanically reducing the car's desire to body roll! It's an effect that can absolutely be felt! It's sort of like fitting stiffer swaybars, but you're not actually making the car stiffer... just putting more of your cornering energy into the contact patch rather than into body roll. There's still plenty of body roll, mind you, but this helps. It was a really fun experiment to research how all that works, put it all together and feel how it works! There may be a thread here on the forum about it.
Also worthy of note, extending the lower ball joint brings the end of the control arm down and this particular setup will NOT clear the factory wheels, and it will NOT clear all 15" wheels. (some do, some don't, depends on how the "barrel" of the wheel is shaped) 16" wheels or larger shouldn't be a problem. I ran 15x7 Advanti Storms and presently 15x6.5 Konig Heliums with no problems. 15" RPF1's are known to NOT fit, as well as some stock Miata wheels.
Might be good to email me rather than PM if you're interested. I don't want to sell them separately, make me an offer.
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My Mirage
Basic
Ninja Turtle
the snowball
Originally Posted by Basic
Pushy traffic on the way there, rain on the way back.
