So, in talking to Meathead at the MSX show (which was awesome and everyone should attend), he believes (he said he reserves the right not to be truthful, but I believe him ) that a well developed 1.6L is ultimately faster than a 99-00. Buras (or was it Lamb?) proved that a couple of years ago in a Drago prepped car and recently a Summit Point hot shoe won with a 1.6L. With that, Meathead renewed my faith in my car. His words, not mine, were roughly "The 99 is the Ron Popiel of Miatas, just set it and forget it. The 1.6 needs to be constantly fiddled with."
I thought it may be worthwhile for us 1.6L guys to collect a list of items that must be optimized in order to maximize the 1.6L. I'm not including driver skill or motor builds. I'll assume that the motor is not an issue (a dyno can tell you that) and that the driver has worked on his own skill (a weak area for me). The idea is the non-routine-maintenance stuff that can cause our cars to perform sub-optimally.
Two things I know that I need to work on are:
1) an AFM that is data logged and adjusted based on each track to be kept at optimum.
2) fuel pressure regulator - does this actually help or just a nice to have?
I'd respectfully ask our ever-present peanut gallery to either contribute usefully to this thead or just observe. Also, this is not a parity thread. It should be ideas that actually work based on the current ruleset.
Fire away....