2006 MX-5 2.0 Option Pack

[Accelebrate]

I've been ticking off a few little jobs during lockdown. I've treated the car to a new set of numberplates and filled an area on the driver's seat bolster with some leather filler. The filler is a sort of thick flexible coloured glue that you build up over many layers. I didn't take any before or after pictures but I'm impressed with the results.

I also ordered a new air filter that claims to add 7bhp . I'm dubious, but I was due a replacement and G19 have reduced them to £40 delivered:

https://www.g19engineering.com/view.php?cat=59&amp...

I'm hoping that if nothing else showing them some interest in NC products might encourage them to finally release the budget turbo kit that they've been suggesting is in development for a while now.


A wooden spoon is essential equipment for removing old filters...



Nice packaging, although it would be nice if they included some information about cleaning and re-oiling. I presume it's the same as K&N and other performance filters as it appears to be the same sort of construction.







I've used the car for an essential journey since fitting. It felt largely the same, but I've driven it so little recently that I haven't really got a benchmark in my head for how it feels after the remap.

[Accelebrate]

I thought I'd been doing a reasonable job of trying to use each of our cars every few weeks for essential lockdown journeys, but my wife's Mini had other ideas and after only two weeks of standing still presented me with this somewhat counterintuitive message...



The internet suggests that a lot of modern BMWs don't bother running the alternator a lot of the time to save fuel. The fun of modern cars. Naturally, if it does need a new battery this requires coding by a dealership, or by a £30 phone app.

This led to me buying a NOCO battery charger, I'd got a basic trickle charger but wanted something that could handle AGM batteries and be left alone without any risk of overcharging.

Not being full of much in the way of modern electronics the Mazda seems to be very happy sitting for extended periods. But access to the battery is a little fiddly and Amazon were selling these handy little LED indicator and quick connectors for £7...







I was meant to be doing a track day at Bedford on Monday, but it was unsurprisingly cancelled. MSV have issued credit for the event so I've rebooked for July, it's nice to have something to look forward to. I need to work out if the front pads have got another day left in them and it's overdue for a decent brake fluid flush.

I've also booked an MOT for early June, hopefully it'll pass the emissions test despite the recent modifications. Oh, I nearly forgot that I made a video of how the exhaust currently sounds, mostly so that I've got something to contrast to if I end up changing backboxes...

Edited by Accelebrate on Thursday 21st May 04:34

[gazzarose]

Our NC was up on block for the first 6 weeks or so of lock down while I did the brakes and some cleaning. I started it a couple of times the first month, but only left running for 10 mins or so. When I finally went to use it after 6 weeks, the battery was too flat to turn the engine over. I had to borrow a booster off a neighbour but it was fine after a short drive. So a booster is on the shopping list, one of those nice little lithium ion ones will be ideal. Also, long turn when the garage is built and the NC is relegated to weekend toy car, I'll have to put a trickle charger on it.

Fingers crossed were out of lock down for your track day my July. I'm in Wales, so we're not even allowed to go out for a drive unless its an essential journey. My wife is working from home for the foreseable, which is a bit tricky with a 3 yr old running around, and now I'm back in work 3-4 days a week, I arranged to go in on Sunday so I can be home and help out more in the week. That meant driving the 20 miles to and from work on Sunday, with the roof down, hoping no-one took exception to it. I had a boot full of tools, so hopefully any bobbies would believe me that I was driving to work.

[Evoluzione]

NCs are well known for flattening their batteries. I think the younger the car the worse they got, my 2010 does about 2 weeks in Winter, older ones do about 6 to 8 weeks.
The best thing to do is either put a solar charger on in Summer if it's in the sun, or just disconnect it.

I've just booked Blyton on 18th July, hoping to take the 2.3 to see what it's like on track.

[MightyBadger]

Lovely exhaust note, do they do a single tailpipe option? Wouldn’t mind one for my S-VT, my standard one has a minor blow so am looking to change it soon.

[Accelebrate]

gazzarose said:

Our NC was up on block for the first 6 weeks or so of lock down while I did the brakes and some cleaning. I started it a couple of times the first month, but only left running for 10 mins or so. When I finally went to use it after 6 weeks, the battery was too flat to turn the engine over. I had to borrow a booster off a neighbour but it was fine after a short drive. So a booster is on the shopping list, one of those nice little lithium ion ones will be ideal. Also, long turn when the garage is built and the NC is relegated to weekend toy car, I'll have to put a trickle charger on it.

Fingers crossed were out of lock down for your track day my July. I'm in Wales, so we're not even allowed to go out for a drive unless its an essential journey. My wife is working from home for the foreseable, which is a bit tricky with a 3 yr old running around, and now I'm back in work 3-4 days a week, I arranged to go in on Sunday so I can be home and help out more in the week. That meant driving the 20 miles to and from work on Sunday, with the roof down, hoping no-one took exception to it. I had a boot full of tools, so hopefully any bobbies would believe me that I was driving to work.

I've technically been working from home for the last seven years, but that's usually been punctuated with onsite meetings, work trips and commuting to an office a couple of times a week to show my face. Lockdown, particularly with a young child around who can't be entertained by baby groups or days out has been challenging and not hugely productive.

A guy who works for a local F1 team put out a request for help 3D printing PPE face shields. Whilst furloughed they were using their time wisely and handling the sanitising, assembly and distribution to local surgeries, hospitals and care homes. I've printed 550 of the things over the last 6 weeks. It wasn't a selfless act - It gave me a good excuse for a drive over to Brackley once a week to drop them off.

I keep meaning to buy one of those lithium jump packs - would be a useful thing to leave in the boot on long trips along with the sticky rubber DIY puncture repair kit.

Evoluzione said:

NCs are well known for flattening their batteries. I think the younger the car the worse they got, my 2010 does about 2 weeks in Winter, older ones do about 6 to 8 weeks.
The best thing to do is either put a solar charger on in Summer if it's in the sun, or just disconnect it.

I've just booked Blyton on 18th July, hoping to take the 2.3 to see what it's like on track.

Now that I've got a reasonable charger and a car that's garaged conveniently close to power I've been researching small/light race batteries and budget LiFePO4 options. It's probably a terrible idea, but it's an interesting research project to pass the time.

2.3 swap you say... Have you documented that anywhere? I'm guessing it's a little more involved than the obligatory but not easily UK-sourced 2.5 swap?

MightyBadger said:

Lovely exhaust note, do they do a single tailpipe option? Wouldn’t mind one for my S-VT, my standard one has a minor blow so am looking to change it soon.

I'm not too clued up on NB exhausts, I'd imagine this is the equivalent:

https://www.mx5parts.co.uk/stainless-steel-exhaust...

The characteristics of mine have changed quite a bit since I swapped the manifold. Whilst we're on the subject, I quite like the idea of this lightweight single tipped exhaust for the NC:

https://www.g19engineering.com/view.php?cat=61&amp...

Although it seems to have been perpetually out of stock since it launched many months ago.

[Evoluzione]

Accelebrate said:

Evoluzione said:

NCs are well known for flattening their batteries. I think the younger the car the worse they got, my 2010 does about 2 weeks in Winter, older ones do about 6 to 8 weeks.
The best thing to do is either put a solar charger on in Summer if it's in the sun, or just disconnect it.

I've just booked Blyton on 18th July, hoping to take the 2.3 to see what it's like on track.

Now that I've got a reasonable charger and a car that's garaged conveniently close to power I've been researching small/light race batteries and budget LiFePO4 options. It's probably a terrible idea, but it's an interesting research project to pass the time.

2.3 swap you say... Have you documented that anywhere? I'm guessing it's a little more involved than the obligatory but not easily UK-sourced 2.5 swap?

I do have a thread running on here if you remember, but it hasn't been updated for a while as there was nothing worth reporting and that car is having a 2.4 in it (components of which are scattered around my workshop waiting for some time).
I also have a slightly contentious blog at DuratecNC which will explain a lot to you. I think you can get notifications of new blogs on it, if not there is also the FB page of the same which sometimes tells you when something worth talking about has happened. I'm specifically writing about the 2.3 now, it'll be published in a few weeks when the car has been finally mapped, CV has held up progress on that until now.
As you'll learn i'm not into pointless mods and there is no shortage of that in the MX5 world. We undid the airbox lid with a car on the dyno so ran it in two modes, one with stock air filter, one with no filter, airbox open; +2bhp at 7000rpm.
We also saw +5bhp by removing an OE backbox completely.

Almost everybody lies about their figures. The problems starts when one does it all the others have to do it too, so you end up with the whole lot being elevated up into fantasy land. It's only when someone takes a car to a tuner who has something like a Dyno Dynamics that you realise just what's been going on and get an unwelcome surprise.

[Marlin45]

Noco make an excellent little battery chargers and I only found them by accident. The usual sources all suggest Optimate/Accutek.

Bought a slightly G3500 larger version a few months ago mainly to keep the m/c battery topped up but it also has a reconditioning function which has already fixed one 'leisure battery' that the other half allowed to run so flat I thought it was due to go to battery heaven. Really solid construction but time will tell?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00E907PWS/ref...

[Accelebrate]

Mine is a Genius 5, which I think is a relatively new model. Despite it's diminutive size it's 5A. I was swayed by Halfords having it in stock (unlike the equivalent Ctek). I think it was about £50 with the much-abused Halfords trade card. Seems good - the Mini is happy again, as is my Volvo, and the weedy electric start on my lawnmower. I did try and revive a dead battery that I'd got lying around with it without much success, but it did at least report that it was dead.

[Accelebrate]

Evoluzione said:

I do have a thread running on here if you remember, but it hasn't been updated for a while as there was nothing worth reporting and that car is having a 2.4 in it (components of which are scattered around my workshop waiting for some time).
I also have a slightly contentious blog at DuratecNC which will explain a lot to you. I think you can get notifications of new blogs on it, if not there is also the FB page of the same which sometimes tells you when something worth talking about has happened. I'm specifically writing about the 2.3 now, it'll be published in a few weeks when the car has been finally mapped, CV has held up progress on that until now.
As you'll learn i'm not into pointless mods and there is no shortage of that in the MX5 world. We undid the airbox lid with a car on the dyno so ran it in two modes, one with stock air filter, one with no filter, airbox open; +2bhp at 7000rpm.
We also saw +5bhp by removing an OE backbox completely.

Almost everybody lies about their figures. The problems starts when one does it all the others have to do it too, so you end up with the whole lot being elevated up into fantasy land. It's only when someone takes a car to a tuner who has something like a Dyno Dynamics that you realise just what's been going on and get an unwelcome surprise.

Ah yes, now you mention it I do remember your thread. I’ll keep an eye open for your next update. Please forgive me for buying an ‘updated’ dipstick at some point in the past!

UK MX5 specialists/tuners seem to be an interesting bunch in general. I’m not an active member of any marque-specific forums but just through the process of researching things I’ve read through an amusing amount of trash talk between different outfits. I don’t doubt for a minute that all claims should be taken with a healthy dose of salt. I’ve witnessed the lack of any perceivable performance gains first-hand when a popular aftermarket intake solution was tested on a dyno. I think Mazda got a lot of things right with the stock airbox.

[Accelebrate]

MOT day this morning, I could have claimed an extension but was rather keen to see if I'd need to do any work to get it through after the recent exhaust changes, and with little else going on now would be a good time to discover that.



It passed! It failed the first emissions test but passed on the second. I suspect it now needs to be warm to pass, I'd taken a long route to the test centre and had booked the first appointment of the day but the tester left it standing for a while before running the emissions test.

I also picked up the first advisory in about 7 years for a slightly split front droplink boot. Probably for the best, the MOT history was starting to look suspiciously clean for such a tatty high mileage car!

I'd swapped the front droplinks when I fitted the RX8 ARBs in Feb 2018, they were suspiciously cheap from the eBay store of an MX5 specialist. You get what you pay for, although in this case over two years is probably beyond fair for the £12 that they cost.

I guess this means that my welding is up to MOT standard, not that that probably means much!

[Evoluzione]

I didn't know you'd done any welding, is it in this thread? The split boot depends on how many miles you did on it, you can't complain something only lasted 2 yrs, but did 100,000 miles. That aside it's a bit poor and FWIW on a part like that i'd be putting some kind of glue or sealant on it.

[Accelebrate]

Evoluzione said:

I didn't know you'd done any welding, is it in this thread? The split boot depends on how many miles you did on it, you can't complain something only lasted 2 yrs, but did 100,000 miles. That aside it's a bit poor and FWIW on a part like that i'd be putting some kind of glue or sealant on it.

The welding is on the previous page for me (#17).

I've done about 15k in that time. I think from memory I wanted to order Febi droplinks for the front to match the rear, but couldn't find stock at the time so I ordered something cheap with the intention of replacing them at a later date... Of course that never happened. I've ordered some better replacements, they're a cheap enough consumable in the scheme of things.

[Evoluzione]

Accelebrate said:

Evoluzione said:

I didn't know you'd done any welding, is it in this thread? The split boot depends on how many miles you did on it, you can't complain something only lasted 2 yrs, but did 100,000 miles. That aside it's a bit poor and FWIW on a part like that i'd be putting some kind of glue or sealant on it.

The welding is on the previous page for me (#17).

I've done about 15k in that time. I think from memory I wanted to order Febi droplinks for the front to match the rear, but couldn't find stock at the time so I ordered something cheap with the intention of replacing them at a later date... Of course that never happened. I've ordered some better replacements, they're a cheap enough consumable in the scheme of things.

I found it, don't know how I missed it before. It all looks very familiar! A couple of pics of the rear and underside of that area below, I use thicker steel for repairs as it makes welding easier and lasts longer. Your fabrication skills are very good, possibly even better than the guy in the link you posted.

[Accelebrate]

Evoluzione said:

I found it, don't know how I missed it before. It all looks very familiar! A couple of pics of the rear and underside of that area below, I use thicker steel for repairs as it makes welding easier and lasts longer. Your fabrication skills are very good, possibly even better than the guy in the link you posted.

Thank you, I guess I had the benefit of not being on the clock. I probably should have gone thicker than standard, it would have made the welding a lot easier. That patch panel looks good!

[Accelebrate]

The MOT tester wasn't fibbing about the droplinks...







As previously mentioned they were very cheap, but it's mildly amusing that rubber can look this bad after 2yrs on a car that's garaged and not really used in the winter.

I'm not really sure where Delphi fall quality-wise in the world of aftermarket parts. I spotted after purchasing that Opie Oils sell Febi droplinks for the front for a good price, I probably should have ordered those instead.





Easy job when there are no rusty nuts involved!

[Halo in reverse]

Ive really enjoyed reading this thread (I'm considering a NC or MR2 mk 3)

You're obv handy with a spanner & a MIG - keep up the good work !

[Craikeybaby]

Halo in reverse said:

Ive really enjoyed reading this thread (I'm considering a NC or MR2 mk 3)

Having owned both (at the same time for a few weeks) I can definitely say that the NC is the better car, but the MR2 Roadster is the better sportscar.

[Accelebrate]

I've been attempting, without much success, to buy a rollbar for the NC. Given what I've been doing with the car this is probably something I should have done sooner, but better late than never I ordered a rollbar back in May directly from the fabricators website. I didn't receive a confirmation email at the time so after a few days of not hearing anything I sent an email to check that he'd received my order ok, this went unanswered. After another week or so I gave him a call, I didn't push for a delivery date I just wanted to check he had my order but I was informed that it would be with me later that week. Excellent.

That week came and went, so the following week I called again and was told it would be the end of that week. This cycle repeated itself throughout the rest of May and all through June. The bar was supposedly stuck at the powder coaters, then was all ready to be sent out along with many promises about how my order would be prioritised, before being back to mysteriously being held up waiting for powder coating, again, a few weeks later. Every week I was told it would be with me later that week, even when I pushed back and suggested that I just wanted an achievable delivery date the answer didn't change and of course nothing arrived.

It's a pity because the man involved appears to make one of the nicer products for the NC, and to his credit he's nearly always answered the phone and has been polite and pleasant enough, however it's become clear that any promises made are complete fabrication (sorry).

So, assuming I can extract a refund without too much hassle (this might be optimistic) it's probably time to look at the alternatives.

I want a rollbar that will still work with the factory soft top in place. Here's what I attempted to order:



A company called 5Race make a very similar looking bar, at first glance they appear almost identical:



The rear bracing is a different design though, instead of picking up on the rear suspension turrets it requires a couple of holes and a rather weedy looking spreader plate to be bolted into each rear wheel arch. It's manufactured from 44.4x3.2mm E220 wall-in steel tubing, rather than MSA-spec ROPT510. I'm not an engineer, so maybe this is all fine, but I question how much protection it would provide if rolled.

It is however £130 cheaper, and might actually arrive.

The only other option I'm aware of is an Irish company called MRC, who produce this bar - https://www.facebook.com/commerce/products/2378982...

It appears to be a bargain at first, but by the time you've altered the spec to match the photos, had it powder-coated and paid for it to be shipped to the UK the price is similar to what I originally ordered. It boasts higher rear braces than most other bars, but apparently still allows the soft-top to function. It looks promising, but I'm slightly put off by the lack of provision for things like the soft top release catch and looking at the photos it possibly prevents the seat from being set back as far as I currently have it. It's a bit of an unknown in terms of feedback from other owners.

I'm not aware of any other rollbars apart from offerings from US companies, the shipping costs seem to rule most of them out. It looks like TR Lane who produce a range of popular NA/NB rollbars briefly offered a design for the NC, but it appears to have been discontinued. If anyone is aware of anything else then please let me know.

[MagicalTrevor]

GCF and TR Lane are the two, that I know of, that build roll hoops that fit with the factory soft top. I'm pretty sure I know which one you had trouble with so maybe try the other? They don't list it on their website but they definitely do one.