Just bought a lightly modded '99 base, any of you own this before?

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Hello guys and gals, I just bought a somewhat modified '99 base model in Houston on Saturday and I was just wondering if anyone on here owned this car before.it has a hard dog rollbar, stainless clutch and brake lines, ebc greenstuff pads, slotted rotors, some type of upgraded clutch, 55mm koyo radiator, konig heliums with toyo tires and a nice kenwood stereo in it.  My wife and I took it to an autocross yesterday (after owning it for about 16 hours, lol) and did about a dozen runs.  It performed beautifully other than the fact that I'm pretty sure the rear shocks are totally blown.  
This is the 2nd miata that I've owned, I had a POS '94 that was smashed on virtually every panel when I bought it, but it was mechanically perfect.  I had it for about a month and sold it to buy an e36 M3, but after driving the M3 for 6 months I got pretty tired of the costs associated with owning a 14 year old BMW.  I sold it Saturday morning and turned around and bought this miata.
My plan for it is to replace/upgrade the suspension (suggestions?) and get an LSD rear end for it.  Eventually it'll get either a blower or a turbo kit, but that probably won't happen until this winter.

nice wheels and stainless clutch line and brake lines which is what my next mod is.
nice good looking car.
oem exhaust manifold on 99-00 miata is a piece of crap

yeah, I read on here that the 99-00 exhaust mani is garbage.  Do you get a pretty decent gain in power by swapping to a newer or aftermarket manifold?
I don't really care about power right now because I'm still unsure if I'm going with an s/c or turbo.  I don't want to get a full exhaust and then have to ditch it if I decide to go with a turbo.  Mostly I'm just worried about getting a non-fail diff and better suspension.
what's the best bang for the buck suspension setup?  This is basically going to be an autocross toy and fun car for the twisties.

yeah i can feel the difference when i installed a jackson racing header and i also have roadstersport 3 muffler. i am going supercharger soon.
as far as suspension. tein is pretty good but pricy
i am still running with oem bilstein shocks which is standard equipment on 10ae.

well, I think this car would handle just fine with better shocks/struts, stiffer springs and bigger swaybars.  I had Tein coilovers on my 240sx, but I think they'd be a bit overkill for what I'll be using the car for.

I put a header on mine and connected it to the stock exhaust,worlds of difference.I read that the cast manifold held the car back but I could not believe the improvement.
  By the way nice car...


Originally Posted by ManchesterMiata1
I put a header on mine and connected it to the stock exhaust,worlds of difference.I read that the cast manifold held the car back but I could not believe the improvement.
  By the way nice car...

i cant believe the differences too besides my jr header is about 9 pounds lighter than stock oem iron cast header+oem down pipe

If you are looking for a solid suspension setup, either go with the FM Stage 1 setup and go from there, or just get the RB front and rear sway bars if you're looking to save money.

If you want better but still simple I'd suggest about any sort of aftermarket shock.  Koni's are popular as are Tokico, Tiens, and many others.  Springs and swaybars are also a reasonable idea.  If you want to change the springs I really reccomend getting something like Ground Control adjustable coilovers so you can corner balance the car.  
Otherwise, driving practice will help as much as anything.  Looks like you bought a nice one.

I was thinking about the FM stage 2 setup since it has shocks, springs and sways for less than a grand.  Reviews on that seem to be pretty positive, too.  I had tokico illuminas on another car and they were great.
I'm not going to do any kind of hardcore racing or anything so I don't particularly care about corner balancing.  If it gets to a point that I feel I need to do that, I'll burn that bridge when I get there.  
thanks for the positive comments, guys.  This thing is a million times better than my NA ever hoped to be.
here's pics of my NA:

I was looking at the same one did you check out the blue one aswell? If so why did you pick this one up over it?


Originally Posted by NBMiata
I was looking at the same one did you check out the blue one aswell? If so why did you pick this one up over it?

the blue one wasn't in as good of condition as this one.  The tires had more wear on them, as did the seats and carpet.  Plus, it was bone stock and didn't feel nearly as good as the black one.
considering they were the same price and the black one had over $1000 worth of stuff on it, it wasn't a very hard choice to make.
plus, black on black is the best color combination