build diary

March 11, 2007: Another track day - but this one wasn't in the Seven.
Instead, it was the debut for the Flyin' Miata Westfield that I've been working on. The engine fired up last Sunday, the car moved under its own power for the first time on Thursday, so the obvious thing to do was to take it to the track on Saturday. Less than a week from the first noise to full throttle down the front straight? Of course.

The car was amazingly good out of the box. It's very comfortable to sit in. There are no squeaks and rattles when driving around, and the suspension does an excellent job of suspending. Amazing. We did have a few little teething problems such as a clunk in the front suspension and an odd behavior caused by a short in the engine management computer that was fixed by removing the backside of the case, but by the time we'd had lunch it was up and running happily.

So, how does it feel? Not bad at all. The steering (the optional quick rack) is very well done and the car responds pretty well to anything you ask. The front track is narrow relative to the rear and Westfield recommended very little front camber, and the result is that hard cornering is ruled by the need to get the front to stick. This means a more cautious approach to entering a corner to make sure you've got front-end grip, and the balance in fast sweepers is dictated by controlling understeer. With some shock adustments and a slight 10mm bump in front track, it got much better. We're going to dial in a bit more front camber (it's currently at about 0.2-0.3 degrees negative) to see if we can get some bite. Westfields are known for handling like this from what I understand, but it could be improved. It didn't stop me from hanging out the tail in a couple of corners and from obtaining a fairly neutral stance in the fast turn 1 sweeper. It just took a different driving style than in my car.

There's also the matter of the brakes. I don't think the rears are contributing much at all and the right front wheel locks fairly easily. We'll do some cornerweighting to the car and see if I can adjust the proportioning front/rear somehow.

Overall, Bill and I are very happy with the car. The two of us went out to play and found that the car was very closely matched with Janel's little Miata. The 1.6 Miata has a supercharger (about 150-155 at the wheels, I'd estimate), upgraded suspension and my poor abused Toyo RA-1s. The Westfield has a bone stock 1.6 with a Link ECU for engine management (perhaps 95 hp) and my old set of Falken Azenis RT-215, a slipperier tire than the Toyos. The Miata is very well sorted, the Westfield had only just come off the build stand. I think there's good potential there.

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