Mazda MX-5e Tesla Powered
Discussion
Yay! We have finally finished restoring the underside of the car. It has been stripped back to bare metal, any rust treated and then painted with Buzzweld glass reinforced primer and WAR underseal. It's been a massive job and very time consuming. Hopefully this car will now see out another 30+ years on UK roads.
We have been stripping the old sub-frame and will soon be sending all the parts off to be powder coated. We have quite a few parts ready to go on the MX-5e though.
Getting the old drive shafts out has been a bit of a nightmare. We eventually managed to get the driveshaft nuts off with a larege impact driver. We have now bought a 10-ton bench press to get the last stubborn driveshaft out. Our 'new' driveshafts have a different sized thread but fortunately the new bearing kist come with both sizes.
We are fitting new brake pipes and hoses, so we have a quality brake pipe flaring tool to do a proper job. We have bought new suyspension bolts from MX5 Parts as the old ones were too rusty to refit.
We have been stripping the old sub-frame and will soon be sending all the parts off to be powder coated. We have quite a few parts ready to go on the MX-5e though.
Getting the old drive shafts out has been a bit of a nightmare. We eventually managed to get the driveshaft nuts off with a larege impact driver. We have now bought a 10-ton bench press to get the last stubborn driveshaft out. Our 'new' driveshafts have a different sized thread but fortunately the new bearing kist come with both sizes.
We are fitting new brake pipes and hoses, so we have a quality brake pipe flaring tool to do a proper job. We have bought new suyspension bolts from MX5 Parts as the old ones were too rusty to refit.
With the second drive shaft finally removed from the rear hub, we set about cleaning up the hubs and hub carriers, then adding a primer coat.
Whilst doing this, we realised that we reached a milestone today. We have now taken off every single nut, bolt, bracket, pipe, clip, wire, bush, bearing, hose, etc. on our MX-5e whilst restoring it and preparing it for the EV conversion. The only two nuts we have not undone are the two front hub nuts, because we don't need to. We have even taken off the doors and had them apart to fit new electric window cables and guides. From here on in, we are only putting stuff back on the car
robcollingridge said:
Whilst doing this, we realised that we reached a milestone today. We have now taken off every single nut, bolt, bracket, pipe, clip, wire, bush, bearing, hose, etc. on our MX-5e whilst restoring it and preparing it for the EV conversion. The only two nuts we have not undone are the two front hub nuts, because we don't need to. We have even taken off the doors and had them apart to fit new electric window cables and guides. From here on in, we are only putting stuff back on the car
That's a great achievement - I'm in awe of this project.tight fart said:
Looking good but you could have cut the exhaust hangers off 
No. It was very tempting to save a little bit more weight 
But ... the DVLA wants the chassis and bodywork to be unmolested when it comes to registering the car as EV and drilling holes and cutting bits off is not a good idea. Maybe later 
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