Mazda MX-5e Tesla Powered
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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 
The backend is pretty much complete now. We have freshly powder coated subframes and suspension parts, new coilovers, new polybushes all round, new bolts and alignment bolts. We have a 3.6:1 Super Fuji LSD with upgraded internals by McNeill Engineering and welded diff casing arms by G19 Engineering. We have refrubished as new brake calipers, new discs and pads. We have refurbished uprights with new wheel bearings and new bushes for the ARB parts, which have also ben powder coated as new. It's all looking very shiny but, should be able to withstand the 215hp / 400Nm torque now.
The car is now back on the ground. We will torque everything up but it going for a full geometry set up soon.
Currently designing the HV battery pack. It looks like we can fit 32kWh in this space quite easily and if using Svolt batteries the battery pack would be about 135kg + cooling plates and enclosure. We have space where the fuel tank was and if we used this as well could probably get the range closer to 200 miles but, our focus is on light weight. This is a fun weekend car and we don't need more than 120 miles range.
Edited by robcollingridge on Wednesday 22 May 14:22
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