Well this car has been a project since 2001. School and work caused it to be slow for years! I have finally had some time to get the car to a rolling state and the fabrication is almost done on the car.

Since we have in the books a future project (tube chassis + 20B PP), I figured I use my miata/protege engine for this project.

Engine has all the goodies and it will be running the BorgWarner EFR 8374 and looking at 575HP.
Transmission is a T-II. Rear end is 8.8 from a Police Interceptor Crown Vic.

Rest is mostly custom and not much left of the original car.

I post updates frequently on my site @ Laman Racing | One checkered flag at a time! and there is a gallery at Gallery | Laman Racing.

I will post more updates here from now on!

 

nice project.

looks like a lot of work has gone into it.

 

Oh yeah! You can say that again...

Thank you!

 

why'd you keep struts?

 

Well it was changed to a FC front subframe about 10 years ago. Now we have a Bilstein custom suspension from AWR for another project which never got used, so figured why not use it.
I just want to get it done. The front will get changed next winter (2013-14) to double wish-bone for sure!

You can see a shot before all the bars were added:

 

Mounted the rear shock top tab! Waiting on brackets to do the diff side.

 

Some people just don't understand what goes into building a proper race car "oh why didn't you ________?" well why didn't you show up to help me or pay for it?

Nice project, looks really good so far, have fun building it!

BigAl...

 

Hehe, he had a good point! Have to stop before it goes overboard (already too late, haha)!

Thank you BigAl!

 

Wow, awesome build

 

Thank you!

Pretty much all the parts I need to finish the car are ordered. The mail man will be busy the next couple of weeks. Pictures to come!

 

That tube frame is crazy. I don't have enough posts to see the links in your sig, so forgive me if there's a link to a catalogue of how it was built. Did you build it yourself or did it come with the car?

 

Built it myself. Here is the link: Laman Racing | One checkered flag at a time!

 

I did some sheet metal work to make the wing mount fit the chassis better.

Also started to figure out the muffler location and where the exhaust tubing would run outside the cage. Ordered all the piping, so waiting for it to show up.

 

car looks great! have fun keeping that engine together. one of our drivers has a 300hp miata he tracks, and it doesn't blow up, but it wears really fast.

 

Thank you! I have been running the Mazda engines (1.8L) in my street cars for a long time with over 400hp. If everything is done properly on them, they can run around the track at high horsepower numbers with pretty good results. As it goes with anything high power, cooling becomes important and of course there is extra wear and tear! The engine is built for 600HP other wise!

 

yeah you should see marios car, its all scoops and vents and stuff.

 

That's odd since at 300hp these engines are barely working hard. Is he running a 1.6? What turbo and how much boost.

 

your tube chassis design has breathed new life into my rusty SA, all my rot problems would be eliminated in your design

 

It sure won't leave too much factory sheet metal behind, yet alone rust!

 

The aero parts are here. First the wing and I will mount the mirrors and the rest tomorrow!

 

And the mirrors are on as well!

 

Another piece of the puzzle showed up today!

 

awesome thread, i look forward to updates.

 

Yay for Racepak stuff. I've got an IQ3 as well!

 

1.8 with a disco potato @20psi, road racing. engine life is short (it went 2 years and needs rings, which isn't bad), cooling is an issue.

in a 2000lb car its beyond nuts though