Tomorrow is a fun day for the Mirage. As I hinted at in my last post, the orange econobox gets some aero enhancements and a little something extra!
There’s the pieces modifying the body of the car. Some carbon fiber front bumper canards and some lovely JMF billet rear bumper diffusers that are ironically meant for a 1G DSM.
But there’s more too. Last weekend you all got to see (and seemed to enjoy) the hand fabrication of my chromoly strut brace. This weekend we are building something truly awesome, a rear torsion/sway bar to solidify the twist beam rear suspension. 7 foot of solid chromoly hit the shop floor yesterday. Tomorrow the magic happens.
We have our work cut out for us, but once done it will totally change the manners of the car. The one that went on the Veloster I built made a world of difference. This one shall do the same.
Future plans only get crazier from here. As many of you know, I’ve hinted at boosting it and doing a manual swap. That is all still very much on. As far as handling and chassis goes we are going wild. Mirage owners have picked up some strut braces from us and the torsion bar has generated crazy interest. We are working on a 4 or 6 point chromoly brace to fully solidify the subframe and tie that together.
Over winter when the interior gets pulled out for wiring of the stand alone engine management, we’ve decided we’re taking big steps. We are literally going to seam weld the chassis. For those not familiar, this is a huge practice in racing cars and rally cars. The factory seams are spot welded and definitely get exploited as a flex point as suspension and tires get really good. Seam welding the chassis just ties the whole package together and offers a very large increase in rigidity. I’d wager nobody has ever done this on a newer generation Mirage and it’s a step I’m excited to take.
I’d worked with a large coilover manufacturer and have thrown a deposit down, and my custom coilovers come in 6 weeks. I’d settled on 6.8k front springs 4.8k rear. The shocks and struts are going to be progressively valved as well. This will pair perfectly with the R compound Advan tires going on next summer.
The stock seats suck in terms of bolstering, but the Sabelt GT3 bucket seats should nicely alleviate that issue. Based on the interior measurements I’ve taken, they’ll fit wonderfully. Space is tight in this small car, so I need to be very careful about that constraint. Sabelt is world recognized as one of the best, and the weight and price perfectly fits what I’m shooting for. The idea here is to use top quality components with a focus on weight savings.
There’s so much more to come, I’m just dropping a preview on you. You’ll want to stay tuned, trust me ;) nobody else is doing anything quite like this, and I’m just ridiculous enough to take this all the way.