Spec Miata … Wreck Piñata, same difference. 😉
After taking a bit of an extended break for parts to arrive and schedules to align, work on Steve F’s Piñata has continued. The big work was the installation of a rollbar and the removal of the soft top. The headache continues to be the seats which, when installed are too tall and forward for anyone taller than a midget.
The majority of the work has taken place at Steve’s house near York, PA. While the facilities are first-class, Steve doesn’t have a very large selection of tools (yet) – for those of you who have a large selection of tools, you may want to consider bringing the job to you rather than you to the job. Nothing is more frustrating than needing a tool that you own BUT left at home because you didn’t realize you’d need it for this job.
For once I made the drive to York relatively early in the day, arriving before dark!! Removing the seats and the soft top were relatively quick tasks. The seats are secured by 4 bolts each that hold the seat rails to the floor. The soft top is a bit more involved but after removing all the carpet pieces and raising the top, there are a few nuts that secure the mechanism to the unibody – six comes to mind but I’m not certain. After that, the soft top fabric is secured to the body using 10mm speed nuts around the rear tub.
The seats in this car were the “speaker seats” that have small speakers installed in the headrests. This was always a bit of a joke until I obtained a set for my own Miata. The speakers are tiny and their output isn’t earth shattering BUT they are great because they offer enough sound to keep from having to turn the radio up to “kill.” Now I can listen to my Old Time radio shows, books on tape and my beloved Classic Country without offending occupants in the cars beside me at stoplights. The other benefit of the speaker seats is for a gaming system – think built-in game speakers…
Back to the Piñata…
With the seats and soft top removed, we set about removing the factory carpet. While it wasn’t in bad shape, race cars don’t have carpet for weight and fire reduction. Once it was removed, there wasn’t a need to save it so off to the trash it went. Fortunately Mazda understood how their little Pinatas would be used and there is no additional sound deadening under the carpets like most cars. This also reduces the need to scrape and chisel off anything further unlike the average Kraut car.
The rollbar installation is surprisingly straight forward and took much less time than anticipated. The factory seat belts must be unbolted but the designers of most bolt-in rollbars (in this case, a Harddog Single Diagonal) accounted for retaining the factory belt system. They include the hardware to secure the rollbar to the Piñata as well as modifying the seat belt mounting points.
The most difficult task is cutting the bulkhead around the fuel tank for the rear supports. This takes 2 people because the bar is awkward and having one person hold the bar while the other marks the areas to cut is a time saver. While the idea of cutting the unibody is daunting, the actual work isn’t too bad. I used a set of tin snips that made short work of the Piñata sheet metal followed at home with a cutoff wheel to smooth the cuts and flatten the sharp edges. The size of the holes is somewhat variable especially since the addition of the rollbar adds enough rigidity that the sheetmetal becomes superfluous. Depending on individual, one can leave a large hole in the package shelf or replace the screw-on fuel tank cover, cutting it to accommodate the rollbar.
Once the package shelf was modified for the rollbar, it was placed in the car and the location of the mounting holes was noted. The old adage of measure twice (or more) and drill once is crucial – to help our accuracy, we drilled one hole using the bar as our template. Drop a bolt into that hole and drill the next hole and so forth – That way the rollbar can’t “walk.” The only caveat is to check the backside of the mounting locations. In one situation, the mounting hole was spot-on BUT on the underside, it was flush against a body panel and required a new mounting hole in the plates AND the body in order to fit. Lastly – do yourself a favor – BUY NEW DRILL BITS!! Yes, there are only 12 holes in sheet metal but struggling with a dull drill bit is the absolute worst. Don’t forget when drilling to use a bit of lubricant (WD-40 or 30wt motor oil) to keep the drill bit sharp and to help eject metal bits from the cutting area.
Once the mounting holes were drilled, it was just a matter of installing and securing the rollbar and it’s backing plates. The new rollbar is designed with a harness bar in mind so the previously installed 5-point belts were re-wrapped around the rollbar. The last task was to install the seats – a job that was so epic that it has it’s own separate article…
More to come, stay tuned for more “Project Wreck Piñata” updates.
