Jesters Collection - Mazda 3MPS/RX8 R3/RX7/MINI Cooper S

Probably looks a bit neater with the wiper delete...50 year old kid here

I notice the 309 has a nice collections of leaves, does it not get the same love as the rest of the fleet?

I have tried to encourage my darling wife to take an interest in basic maintenance and checks to help keep the car road worthy, but sadly she is not that way inclined. Only a month or so ago she told me that her drivers floor mat was wet but wasn't too bothered. I went to check, and underneath the mat was a sea of water. So I got her outside with the wet vac while i removed the wipers and scuttle and cleared all the drains (which were clogged with a huge amount of detritus).

Oh I most definitely watched that vid as I quite enjoy MCM content. It was a brilliant video, I still love how proud the Mazda engineers are of the rotary engine. I'd love to visit the museum as the 787B made me swoon.

At least she noticed the carpets were wet!

Looking forward to your Rocketeer updates in 2023

So the RX7 and I went into battle....again.

Feeling smug that I had cured the source of the leak I went out to rotate my silica bags and check the car out.

Oh look at that, spare wheel well nicely rippling away with a bit of water in it. The plus side of this was that the top of the boot carpet was still dry, which means it is less likely the water is coming in the wiper plug and straight down onto the carpet. So that fix may be doing something.

So I stripped alot of the rear trim off in the name of science and it does seem like the water is coming in the back left hand side of the boot which nicely points to the plastic nylon plug thing, that you screw some trim into. So I popped it out and found....



Well that washer is doing sweet FA.

Here are some that I prepared earlier.



Along with a liberal smear of silicon sealant to give it a helping hand, in popped the new one.



Before anyone asks, yes I did do the other side as well. The irony of fixing one side so that the other one can start to leak was not lost on me.

While I was at it with the rear lights popped off I smeared some sealant on these little light retaining clips as in the US a few people have reported water gets in here.



Not pretty but it will give the old girl a fighting chance.



I popped some of the foam trim tape on some of the trim that I have pulled out and I have made a start on the hatch trim pieces too.

The pillowballs have arrived from Japan, so I have everything required for a full bush refresh.

Rocketeer

As I have been brutalising my work schedule by doing as much overtime as I can get my hands on and starting to wonder why the heck I am doing it.

Bruce from Rocketeer drops me an email Friday evening to let me know a donor car has been sourced and if I want some photos. Yes please says I. But at time of writing I haven't got any yet.

1994 1.8 Auto in pretty good condition has been found. So in the next day or 2 hopefully I will have some photos of that old girl.

The spec doesn't matter at all for the restomod as all the manual gearbox and diff are just retrofitted. The main stipulation is that the bodywork isn't a complete rot box as even though it will be stripped right back to bare metal Rocketeer don't want to have to save a lost cause.

I am also hoping the donor being an automatic might have been a tad cheaper than buying the equivalent manual

So small Rocketeer update on the donor car.

I asked for some pictures, as you do. Bruce must have a phone from the early 00's as I recieved the following .









As I mentioned before she is an early 1.8 (NA8) car, auto. Completely original with just 20k miles on the clock. One of the important things is that she appears to have a hardtop! Which is always a good start. Almost a shame to pull apart an original car, but it is an auto, so that is fine.

Timelines are going to be slipping as Rocketeer have been affected by delays in getting chips for ECU's. But that doesn't bother me too much as it gives me time to save some more money!

To be honest, at least she isn't being butchered then scrapped. The whole shell is obviously being kept and providing a base for the conversion.

It has been a bit slow the last month or so with regards to car updates. I've been away with work on training and had some family duties to attend too!

But I inadvertently have some for today!

MPS

Popped out to take the mileage reading as car insurance was sorted today, a whole £30 cheaper than last year, which is nice. Decided to do a few checks and fired the old girl up and she roared to life without batting an eyelid and settled down nicely. Checked under the bonnet, cleared some leaves and general detritus out. Checked the boot......oh look a leak



Bottom right hand side of the boot under the tail light had a nice little puddle by it. Now in MPS land leaks in the boot area are usually one of a few things. Leaky rear lights, rear wiper bung, spoiler grommets. In some outside cases it can be the rear window seal pealing away. All of these are mainly down to age.

Now using the supreme leak detection powers that I am gaining, Wiper and left hand light I can rule out as the water is down by the right hand light. Spoiler looks less likely as I know this had to be resealed by the bodyshop after the respray so likely this bit is fine. So it does look like the right hand light is the culprit.

Now in the spirit of going completely overboard. I stripped most of the boot out.





This was just to try and make life as easy as possible, to try and dry everything up and make sure nothing looked too compromised. Also as we all know as soon as one side starts to fail the other one cannot be that far behind so now both lights came out. Super easy with 2 nuts off, 2 plugs off and off she pops.





I have stuffed some bin bags in the rear light apertures as some ghetto waterproofing while I get the lights sorted.

Now the rear light gaskets look something like this.



They are both soaked and looking rather weathered, so I've tried to remove one as gently as possible, cleaned the material off and used some glue remover. My plan is to make my own gasket and have ordered some material to make it happen.

Both lights have been cleaned, as much of the dirt and mould removed from the clear sections around the edges and popped by a radiator to start to dry them out. The right hand light has also got condensation and water droplets inside it which also points to this being the source of the leak.

The reverse and fog lights which are in the boot hatch will be next on the list to pop off, clean up and reseal. All of this was a job I was intending on getting round too, but hand has been forced.

As an extra precaution I have ordered a rear wiper blank from killallwipers.com as I will now remove and plug the wiper up. Over the years it has been painfully obvious that it is quite a useless wiper.

RX7

The good news is that the dehumidifier has been doing a stellar job and I have got nearly 1L of moisture out of the car.



The boot has remained dry, the hatch skin is all dry, No wet carpets I actually feel like I may have won.

In my confidence the spare wheel is back in the car for the first time in quite a few months.



I have also finished foam taping all of the boot plastics that I removed, so in the next week or so I'll pop them back in. Then she is a wash away from being ready to roll out and back up to TPS for rebushing, diff brace install, steering rack refurb and some tarting up.

RX7

As we have started Easter, I have managed to finally get some time to pop the 7's interior back in.



Only one missing clip, which I managed to source from a Mazda Bongo spares supplier!



I was sat in the boot while doing this. It was the easiest way! Everything going back easily and refreshing any interior trim clips that looked weathered. The foam padding making everything a nice snug fit.



I think I mentioned I had my suspicions that the rear wiper had been removed before and while sat in the boot and putting the last trim piece I noticed that the rear washer nozzle was missing something quite critical......the washer pipe to the reservoir



Quite satisfying having everything back together. Fingers crossed thats me done chasing leaks in the 7.

In other news the 7's drop off at TPS has been delayed a few weeks due to woek backlog and Easter. A shame but just one of those things.

MPS

MPS leak work has been going well! Apart from having to remove the drivers side rear light again as it didn't seem to dry out properly. The fog and reverse light in the boot hatch have been cleaned and popped back in.



Rear light and reverse light looking much cleaner.

I've also bought another dehumidifier that is currently doing its work inside the MPS. The one in the 7 has been really good so felt like it was worth getting a second.

Another little bit of scope creep is that while I am doing all this work at the back I decided to replace the boot struts with fresh ones from SGS. Pretty cheap and definitely worth the little effort needed to replace them.



I know these aren't the most exciting updates, but it's the little things that count at the moment.

Very enjoyable thread and very nice cars. I'm looking forward to updates on the rocketeer MX5, I remember Alex Kerstens from Car throttle, he loved it, the noise was amazing. I've been tempted to get one. 🙂👍

Soooooo came home today thought I would check on the 7 as we have had some rain and hey presto, a bit too much water came pouring out from the hatch trim on the drivers side.

So I had to have words with the car which resulted in boot plastics out and this.....



Cleaned up the areas where spoiler interacts with bootlid. Improvised some neoprene washers from other clips I had lying around and applied a liberal amount of silicon sealant to the areas of concern then bolted her all back up. The only clip I have my reservations with is the push clip part of the spoiler as you don't secure it from the bootlid like the others, so you cannot double down and seal it from underneath.

Now we wait.....