Pontiac Grand Am

^^ NOT A PHOTO OF MY CAR

The first car I properly “had” was a green Pontiac Grand Am. I’m not sure what year it was…

I inherited the car from my oldest brother when I needed something to get me around in college. It wasn’t in the greatest condition, but it worked for what I needed.

I drove it around to and from school until the transmission started to give me trouble in late 2013. It started to leak transmission fluid and constantly needed to be topped off. Rather than get the transmission serviced, my dad decided to pick up another car he found online for a great price.

Volvo S40

The second car I ever owned was a 2006 Volvo S40 with a 5 speed manual transmission. This car is still my daily driver.

It came from Arizona, and had about 85,000 miles on it. It had absolutely no rust when we got it, but it did have a few engine codes that prevented the ABS and cruise control from properly working.

The codes were due to chewed wires in the engine bay. I was able to fix the wiring harness by patching in clean wires to replace the chewed ones. The codes immediately cleared, and best of all, the car’s cruise control was fully functional!

The car hasn’t given me any major issues since, but it introduced me to working on cars.

Turbo Miata

After having the Volvo for a few years, I wanted a real project car. My brother picked up an NA miata a few years prior, and ever since I had the itching to get one of my own. The car was so compact and looked like a blast to drive. I remember watching Youtube videos of people V8 swapping and turbocharging their Miatas; I simply couldn’t wait to have one of my own and begin modifying it.

I shopped around on Craigslist for about a week before quickly purchasing a 1990 Mazda Miata 5-speed for $2750.

The car had 205,000 miles on it, but it looked like it had been very well taken care of. The body was in great shape, and it came with some nice wheels, suspension, a roll bar, and some chassis braces. You could tell the car had seen some motorsport action in its past!

I started to modify the car shortly after moving to Maryland and starting my first job as an engineer. I started with a custom turbocharger kit, and eventually worked my way up to a full suspension system and tire setup for Super Street Modified class in autocross. I’ve been racing the car in mostly that condition for the past 3 years or so.

Rotary Miata

The first Miata project started to stagnate and I wanted something else to wrench on. Something that I could really go crazy with and learn a lot while doing it. Boy did I get myself in over my head…

I picked up someone’s 13B rotary swapped miata off of Craigslist. He had the engine and trans in the car, but it needed an exhaust, drive train mounts, and rewiring. The car also didn’t run…

I got the car running on a megasquirt ECU pretty quickly, but I struggled to tune it. I eventually blew the motor on the car for what I think ended up being a bug in the megasquirt’s ignition control code. I didn’t figure that out until after I finished rebuilding the engine…

I ended up selling the car last summer (2020) before I moved to Florida. I sold the car for a little more than what I paid for it, but I gained priceless knowledge from working on that car over the years.

Here’s a video of me driving the car a few days before I sold it.

I plan on writing a whole page about this car in the future.