Howdy from central Texas! We're going to try this forum out since we didn't get such a warm welcome over at forum.miata.

My wife decided several months ago that she wanted a fun little car to run around town in because she was tired of having to herd my mega cab dually around. After a couple of months of scouring Craigslist we finally found one that was extremely clean, well taken care of, not ragged out by a kid, and CHEAP. It's a 1993 NA. We bought it in Austin at 9pm on a Friday night, drove it 40 miles home and then got up early Saturday morning for a 500 mile road trip. We instantly fell in love with it!

The Tuesday morning after we bought the car my wife was hit by an Expedition that turned into oncoming traffic. I had to cut a section out of the front bumper that was rubbing the front tire so I could drive it home.

The BMW emblem is from the previous owner. We hadn't taken it off yet since it was covering the holes in the bumper from the missing Mazda emblem. Rest assured, it is off now.









Insurance totaled the car...surprise, surprise. After about a week of arguing with them we finally made a deal for a check for way more than we even paid for the car and they let us keep it. So, since I've been building cars for years I tore it down to assess the damage.

The driver side frame horn was bent. Both fenders, bumper cover, and driver headlight door were also toast.

 

I cut the bent frame section, inner fender, radiator, and bumper support out of the way.



My wife hit the junk yard and had a front clip from the cross member forward cut out of another NA that had been hit in the rear. I measured, measured, and measured then cut the section I needed out of the new clip to fit back into our car.






We picked up both fenders and a bumper cover at another local junk yard and I installed them. We spent a couple of days working on the body removing all of the door dings, hail dings, etc... Then we pulled it back into the garage and sprayed the new color on it. My wife picked out all of the new lights and the color of the car. My only input on it was the panel between the tail lights. I convinced her to paint it satin black.

After all the work here is our final result!






Then we added the style bar and a Flowmaster Super 44 along with 2 1/4" exhaust.




We did all of this in 3 full days and 4 evening which were around 2-3 hours each. All for WAY under $1000.

 

Nice work, wanna do mine?

 

Welcome! Hopefully you find your stay here a lot more pleasing!

Glad to see that everyone made it out of the wreck ok.

I do want to say, I like your fab skills, you seem rather adept and able, I like it!

 

Thank you!

I've been building cars for years. The wife is getting into helping me now. She's the one that put in 90% of the sanding and prep work into this car. All I did was the major body work and the paint spraying.

 

Welcome! Don't you think olive will be even harder to see than the red was, haha!

It looks perfectly straight now up front. And I'm sure you paint a lot better than me.

 

Actually, this color gets A LOT of attention. Everybody on the road looks at it. We love the color. Pics really don't do the color justice. It looks very aggressive in person. When we get the satin black wheels on it I think it'll cap off the look we're going for. We really didn't want to have another red one in town to match everybody else's. We like to be a little "different".

 

I know that feeling for sure, being a part of the red miata club here. but, Im going to stick with it for the time being cause the paint is relatively new. That, and I havent decided what color I want to paint it when I do.

 

I know when I get the funds to do mine I'm going somewhere either candy apple, or the dark red from the 11 mustangs

 

That's some awesome work! I'm amazed you were able to get the car painted up in just a few 2-3 hour stints. Not sure if I'm more jealous of your body work skills, or that you have a wife diggin' up parts for you and doing prep!