Technobabble – Monkeypower Redefined
Technobabble Monkeypower Redefined by Dave Coleman In my continuing quest to right the wrongs of the modern automotive world, I hereby propose the retirement of the…
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Dave Coleman
101 posts
Project Sipster Part 6 – Faster Sipster
Project Sipster Part 6 Power to the Peeps by Dave Coleman Ok, Power to the Peeps was my original title, but it got changed to something more meaningful,…
Technobabble – The Garden Sprayer That Won 2 Championships
Technobabble – The Garden Sprayer That Won 2 Championships By Dave Coleman Ten years ago, I moved into a hundred-year-old Victorian house in Orange, California. Splitting rent four ways, virtually…
Project Frankenmiata – Salvaging the Chassis
Project Frankenmiata: Salvaging the Chassis by Dave Coleman Like every good story (assuming Star Wars is every good story), this one started in the middle, ran through to…
Frankenmiata Dyno Secrets Revealed!
Frankenmiata: Dyno Secrets Revealed For The First Time! by Dave Coleman One of the best things about LeMons (and there are a lot of great things…) is the complete engineering…
Project Sipster – Part 5 – Safer Sipster
Photography by Jared Holstein and Christopher Gifford Safer. Yeah, that’s why we put coil-overs on it! If it sounds like we’re trying desperately to justify cool racey bits on…
Project Sipster Part 4: California or Bust
Project Sipster Part 4: California or Bust by Dave Coleman Part 4 of Project Sipster marked the first time I ever actually saw the car, and what a…
Wrench Tips #21 – Always Use Lube
Wrench Tips Tip #21: Always Use Lube by Dave Coleman This seems simple, but so many people get it wrong. If you're drilling or cutting metal, you should ALWAYS…
Wrench Tips #20: Tape Your Nuts
Wrench Tips Tip #20: Tape Your Nuts by Dave Coleman If you’ve never had to start a bolt that was out of reach, you’ve probably never owned a wrench.…
Wrench Tips #19 – Get a Straight Cut on a Hose
Wrench Tips Tip #19: Get a Straight Cut on a Hose by Dave Coleman If you’re the kind of guy who buys things that fit, or builds things from kits,…
Project Sipster part 3: Optimism Meets Realism
Project Sipster Part 3: Optimism Meets Realism by Dave Coleman If you've ever done a project car on an urgent gotta-achieve-something-significant-every-single-week schedule, you'll realize that just building this car was a…
Project Sipster Part 2 – The Road to Regina
Project Sipster Part 2 – The Road to Regina by Dave Coleman I finally found the second installment of Project Sipster. My only copy was a…
Wrench Tips #18 – Cut a Slit to Tweak a Tube
Wrench Tips – Tip #18: Cut a Slit to Tweak a Tube Sometimes the tubes just don’t end up where you want them to. I’ve scratch-built a single-digit number of…
Eyesore Racing’s brush with internet fame
A few months ago, Eyesore Racing stopped by Adam Carolla's CarCast for some hot, podcast action. We got to see Adam's man lair, which looks just like any other guy's…
Wrench Tips #17 – Election Day Ductwork
Wrench Tips – Tip #17: Election Day Ductwork by Dave Coleman Yea, that’s right, all the Frankenmiata‘s raidator ductwork is made from free coroplast. Only this free coroplast came from…
Remember Project Sipster?
Back when I got a magazine paycheck, the dark, looming locust cloud of the internet held promise of more than unemployment. It promised permanence. When a new magazine issue comes…
Project Miatabusa Part 5 – De-Powering the Steering Rack
Project Miatabusa Part 5 – De-Powering the Steering Rack By Dave Coleman That's right; this installment of Project Miatabusa has nothing to do with putting the engine in…
Wrench Tips #22 – Clean Splices
Wrench Tips #22 Making a Clean Splice by Dave Coleman Splicing two wires together is the most basic of wiring tasks, and yet most people seem to do a crappy…
Project Miatabusa part 7: Mounting the Gauges
Last time we looked at cramming the Hayabusa's instrument cluster into the Miata housing, it proved to be a shockingly good fit. There was a very large unresolved issue of…
Project Miatabusa Part 6 – The Wiring Job From Heck
Yea, well, it wasn't really the wiring job from Hell, but it was damn near the wiring job from Purgatory, considering how long it took me to get around…
Project Miatabusa Part 4.3 – The Intake Manifold
This week's half step toward 11,000 rpm Miata madness is a good solid head start toward making a workable intake manifold. Starting from virtually nothing, the fertile mind and ghettofabrication…
Project Miatabusa part 10 – Tubular Subframes and Engine Mounts, Oh My!!
Project Miatabusa Part 10: Tubular Subframes and Engine Mounts, Oh my! by Dave Coleman In July, 2010, we posted Part 2 of Project Miatabusa and proclaimed, in a very carefully…
Project Miatabusa part 4.2 – Hacking the Hayabusa Harness
Next up in our pile of partially finished projects is making the Hayabusa's engine harness fit properly in the Miata. The Hayabusa is fuel injected (not always an obvious thing…
Project Miatabusa Part 4.1 – It goes to 11(,000 rpm)
Project Miatabusa is progressing on several fronts, with wiring, fuel delivery, induction, exhaust and subframe projects all happening in parallel. With three guys spread across so many projects, none…
Project Miatabusa Part 3 – Let the Weight Weenieing Begin
Project Miatabusa Part 3: Attack of the Weight Weenie by Dave Coleman Project Miatabusa's theoretical claim to Awesomeness doesn't come from power alone, but from the unique combination of…
Technobabble (blog) – Help Us Help You Avoid Tetanus!
Technobabble (blog) – Help Us Help You Avoid Tetanus! by Dave Coleman 6 themes, 9 races, over 150 hours on the track, and our bucket of bolts is only…
Wrench Tips #16, The Homebrew Rubber Lathe
Wrench Tips – Tip #16: Cutting Rubber Bushings by Dave Coleman You might find this hard to believe, but from time to time, I try to put together things that…
Project Miatabusa Part 2 – The Engine Is In!
Project Miatabusa – Part 2: The Engine Is IN! by Dave Coleman A few short months ago, when we introduced project Miatabusa, (part 1 is here) it was little more…
Wrench Tips #15 – Grip Dip For Your Screw Tip
Wrench Tips – Tip #15: Grip Dip For Your Screw Tip Say you’re trying to remove the air filter from a Hayabusa air box so you can figure out how…
Wrench Tips – #14: Put Your Studs to Work
Wrench Tips – Tip #14: Put Your Studs to Work Haven’t seen a wrench tip in a while? That’s mostly because moving my garage has meant no wrenching lately. No…
Tire Test, LeMons Style: Falken Azenis RT615-K
The typical new tire introduction goes like this: The new Pazoosy Jaberwoky XR 745 Ultra R Super Star uses triple-inverted diagonal ply Inconel belts and a directional, asymmetrical tread pattern…
Technobabble – A Practical Guide to the Nurburgring
Technobabble – A Practical Guide to the Nurburgring by Dave Coleman A few months ago, Kojima told you what it's like to do the Nurburgring like a rock star. Now…