I have gone and bought a thing! This is a 2001 Mazda Miata in Sterling Silver with the LS package along with 242k miles on the chassis. One might say, that’s a lotta miles! But the motor only has about 110k on it and I have a literal book full of maintenance history dating back to early 2001. I bought this car from the original owner, it has been in Socal since late 2001, it has been meticulously maintained, there is no rust, the paint is decent, no accidents, and it went for $4200. I already used a headlight restoration kit and fixed the stuck window which were the only pressing issues. Now I’ll show some nice pics just before sunset near Malibu!
So while these photos generally show a spectacular paint job and actually look quite nice, there are definitely some rough spots in dire need of attention. Faded paint on the hood, around the windshield, on the mirrors, and on the rear spoiler. It’s pretty bad in all of those spots but everywhere else is quite clean with minimal scratches and only a couple of small dings and chips. For an 18 year old car that’s been driven quite a bit more than 200k, it’s quite nice. The interior is a bit worse for wear but the new carpet installed and decent seat covers sure add to the niceness of it though. I need to replace the rear carpet but I’ll have a better idea of what shape that’s in when I do my roll bar install. One other thing was the fogged up headlights but I’ve already gone ahead and fixed them up a bit. The passenger headlight came out quite nice although the Driver headlight could still use some work. Leagues better than before though!
Before:
After:
The car definitely could use a nice clay, polish, and wax as well. It will certainly bring out the shine of the paint and give me a better idea of what I’m working with. The hood and windshield surrounds are probably just going to stay faded as is but I’d like to wrap the mirrors and spoiler in black anyways so that should work fine.
Immediately on my list of things the car needs are a shifter rebuild and shock replacement. Also the end links make all sorts of racket and there’s an exhaust heat shield rattling around a bit. But those will be easily solved within the next week. My FM coils and front sway bar will go in ASAP since stock handling is trash, even aside from the 242k miles on the ORIGINAL shocks. I just can’t stand the body roll, it’s like a broken roller coaster.
Then my list includes my Roadstersport exhaust and all of the other racing goodies like the roll bar, seat, and harness. I’ll order another shifter rebuild kit ASAP and also start looking into better coilovers. The car has brand new tires on pretty new wheels but they are crap no seasons on cheap 16 inch wheels. So I’ll use me to daily drive but eventually I’ve gotta take my 15 inch stockers I have on the other car and get a proper set of 200TW tires back on there once the mods are complete. Even though I have Toyo RR for the track days, I still want aggressive Street tires for the canyons.
That number makes me laugh every time I see it. It’s a proper Miata with that many miles and I hope to add many more in short order. None of those will be easy miles. Driving home gingerly just in case something went wrong before I gave it a once over on fluids and such, that was probably the easiest it will ever get driven again. I didn’t even get it to 6k until about the end of the day. Once the exhaust is in, I’m sure I’ll be back to beating the piss out of the car, just to hear that sweet sound again.
Hoping for a lovely inaugural weekend with the car, taking a drive up the coast and reveling in the top down adventures soon to begin again. I'll enjoy a single weekend of driving the car around stock, followed by a mad dash to rip apart the other car and make this one whole, hopefully in time for Laguna Seca in June! Ideally any "gremlins" will come about ahead of time and I'll have it all sorted for the track day.