All posts categorized Miata

SFI Padding and Vinyl Cover for Blackbird Fabworx Rollbar in Miata

In the previous post I wrote about getting the Blackbird Fabworx rollbar professionally installed on the 1999 Mazda Miata. But if you want to drive the car on the street, you also need SFI padding on the rollbar to reduce the chances of the driver getting a concussion or worse in the event of an accident.

Bethania Garage, that sells the competitor HardDog rollbar, also sells SFI padding and custom stitches a cover for the Blackbird Fabworx rollbar. However, they do not advertise that on their site. You have to email them.

Blackbird Fabworx Rollbar in Miata

In September of 2019, with great fanfare and urgency, I purchased the Blackbird Fabworx rollbar for my NB Miata MX-5.

Now, after more than 3 years of the rollbar sitting around in my garage, I finally gave up on installing it and went to T&Z Auto Service in South River, NJ run by Mr. David Deerson and paid him to install it professionally.

His pricing was acceptable and now I finally have a beautiful rollbar in the car and am ready to go to the track for an HPDE event. Below are some pictures.

First Autocross in the Miata in 2022

I went for an autocross in the Miata today in the Norther New Jersey SCCA (NNJR-SCCA) club at Metlife Stadium.

I found the course to be more difficult than the earlier courses and it had several sharp turns. My performance (Figure 3) was not as well as I had hoped as I came last in my class.

Installing Brake Pads and Bleed Brakes

In a previous post, we had replaced the rotors and brake calipers in the Miata, and this one describes changing the brake pads and bleeding the brakes. You need to bleed the brakes if you change the calipers. You must buy DOT-3 brake fluid, 2-3 cans just in case, from your local parts store.

Details on the front brake pads change can also be found in an earlier post.

Installing New Rotors and Brake Calipers

In an earlier post, we had done a front brake pads change in the Miata, but while doing that change realized that one of the bolts slipped because the threading in the calipers was damaged. So we ended up doing a complete front and rear caliper replacement using remanufactured stock calipers from RockAuto. The good thing about these new calipers was that they were painted red which would look great on our car. In this post, we demonstrate how to go about removing and installing calipers. This work was done in August 2020, but we only found time a year later to write this post. I spent hours editing the photos.

This post outlines the installation of new rotors and brake calipers for both front and rear of the car, and it has a lot of pictures. You may find that installation of the front calipers may have been demonstrated on Youtube but it has not been done for rear calipers.

The next post outlines how to do the brake pads, and bleed the brakes.