Project TMB Diary 3: The Project Pivot

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Do you know what kills a project? Some might say lack of passion. Lack of time. Significant other. But the true answer?

Money.

In my case, I have too many vehicles. At this point, I have enough vehicles to drive one Monday – Friday before I would have to drive one a second time. It may sound fun, but it can be a headache sometimes and it is very impractical. I was already considering thinning out my fleet before I got the NB. After acquiring and realizing the amount of work it was going to take to get it to my personal level of spec, I began to really start crunching the numbers for my project budgets.

One fundamental fact remained constant: I did not have the funds to be able to do all of these projects properly. Some of them would have to be sold off and the funds added to the project budget.

Tough decisions were made.

Bye Bye NA

It was hard letting this one go…

 I wrestled with this decision for a couple days. I had already put so much work into it and I was very close to being able to finish up and get it running. But when compared side by side with the NB, it came up short for a couple of reasons. First, the rocker panels on the NA weren’t too bad, but they were definitely going to need to be replaced. I don’t mind doing bodywork, but it is not my favorite thing to do.

This is why I don’t like surprises…

Second, when I was tearing down the car last summer, it had some unreported body damage (the passenger side bumper support was smashed in, as well as the passenger side fender being a replacement) that I wasn’t aware of/told about when I purchased it. The body panels for that side don’t exactly line up the way that the driver’s side panels do. I am not sure that the chassis was damaged, but that would be more money to diagnose/fix.

I was also looking at a rewiring job (the motor is a NA block/NB cylinder head hybrid and I wanted to run the NB sensors) to get the engine up and running, so maybe I did lose some passion for it. The more I compared the two, the more it seemed like the best possible decision was to sell the NA.

But what about all the parts I have already bought for the NA? 

The neat thing about the NA/NB Miata is that a lot of the parts are interchangeable between the two. Some bolt directly on without any need for modification. This is what ultimately led to the decision to sell the NA, because about 90% of the things I had already bought could be used/bolt directly to the NB. The things that can’t will be sold and the money added back into the project budget .I did have a tough time letting the NA go though. It was my first Miata, it had pop-up headlights and was fun car to learn on and fix. But there is a bright side to letting it go… 

I am getting some serious deja vu feelings, I swear I have done this before…

My turbo motor build drops right into the NB…

-R