Recent Posts

Changing Brake Pads on the Porsche Boxster S

The Porsche Boxster S came with brakes that squealed when you drove it to a stop, so it was in desperate need of change of pads. Finally, I spent the ~$400 and purchased original Porsche brake pads from Pelican Parts. Turns out compared to changing the brake pads on the Miata it is much easier to change it on the Porsche Boxster S.

Buying New Jack Stands

Harbor Freight had all their jack stands recalled. I returned all the jack stands I had and took store credit. So I was in the market for new jack stands and wanted something more sturdy that would not have the problems that the Harbor Freight jack stands were recalled for.

So I went with Pro-Lift T-6906D 6-ton jack stands with double locking pins as that would be much safer to use on my cars. This would also enable me to change wheels or brake pads on my parent’s vehicles which are the compact crossover SUVs. This post describes the unboxing of the jack stands that I purchased for a total of $92 on Amazon.

Changing the Front Brake Pads

The Miata had gone two years without any brake changes by me, and having never done it before I thought it would be a good idea to learn how to change brake pads. This would be a skill very useful before going on the track or for an autocross event. In this post, I demonstrate how to change the front brake pads.

Changing the Valve Cover Gasket

The Miata’s engine has an easy to change Valve Cover Gasket, which I chose to replce because I saw some potential oil leak at the bottom of the car. I asked on reddit and the users said that it was probably a bad valve cover gasket and should be replaced, which is what I ended up doing. I am not sure if that has fixed the problem yet but will keep checking. It is quite an easy fix.

Understanding the Torque and Horsepower Curves

How does one plot the torque and horsepower curves for a 1999 Miata ? In this blog post, we explain how to do that using some dynamometer or dyno data from someone else’s 99 Miata. I have not taken my Miata to a dyno yet but this should be enough for an example for your car or for any other car, as long as you have the data.

The rest of the data specific to a factory 1999 MX-5 Miata (base trim and 10th Anniversary Edition) can be taken from here, which I provide as miata99_data_power.csv for download and also shown in the table below.