NA MX-5 BRG Project
Discussion
Alright troops!
I'm fairly new to the forum as a member but I'v been lurking on here for a few years now! I'v had my wee NA MX-5 in British Racing Green for almost a year now. It's been an interesting journey so far, with no end in sight, but plenty of emotions, love, hate, despair and hope.
So go make a brew, get a few nib-nobs, and if your sitting comfortably...then I shall begin.
I have wanted an MX-5 since I was 15 (I'm the wrong end of 23 now), and saved from every cra*py job I'v had in the last 8 years, baby sitting, farm laborer, waiter, barman, PR, market research...you get the idea. In March 2013 I finally had enough saved up to get my (realistic) dream MX-5, a 1995 1.8s UK Spec, 100,000 mile, (no PAS, ABS, AC, etc) in British Racing Green.
Here she is just after I got her
As you can see she ws pretty much stock, except from an aftermarket hood, front and rear tow hooks, LED interior light conversion and the blinking headlight mod (for MOT apparently...).
As someone who really started to get into cars in the golden age of Max Power, you can imagine it didn't stay stock for long.
Now for a wee bit of provenance about the car in my ownership. I live in Glasgow and the car I wanted was in Leamington-Spa. All that stood between us was a 14 hour megabus, chocced full of Justin Biber fans. For anyone with young girls, this was the London concert that nearly got cancelled because he was ill (what a shame that would have been...) and this news broke 40 minuets into the journey. You can imagine how quiet and relaxing the next 13 hours and 20 minuets was. Upon arriving into London, our connecting train was cancelled which meant that we were transferred onto a commuter train at 5.30 on a Friday. Which was quiet.
Following a restless kip at my friends house in Oxford, partially due to the excitement of going to see the car, partly due to the suspect stains on my friends flatmate's bed (student), we set off in his MK1 Jetta to go see the car. After breaking down 3 times on the way in the rain, we arrived a few hours late, took a very short test drive and negotiated a fair price for the car and set off for the long drive north.
The first few hundred miles passed with little incident, and I was making good time so thought I'd drop in on my parents in Northumberland to show off my new toy. After a quick brew, I persuaded my mum to come for a wee spin. Not 100 yards down the road I hit what can only be described as a trench masquerading as a pothole, putting a 2" gash in the sidewall of the 1,000 mile old rear left tyre. It was at this point that I discovered the "complete original toolkit" that came with the car was complete, save the wheel nut wrench. Cue me running around what felt like at the time most of Northumberland looking for the right sized spanner. Eventually I found that the one in my mum's 2010 Yaris was a perfect fit. Off with the knackered wheel, and on with the spacesaver. I will spare you the full extent of the rest of the drive back to Glasgow, sufice it to say doing 200 odd miles at 2am , in the rain, in an unfamiliar car, with a space saver on was...interesting.
After a full 24 hour sleep, I rationalized that the ripped tyre was the cars way of telling me that she wanted some new shoes. Who am I to disappoint the lady?
After a quick look round the local forum's, I found these for a very reasonable $40 (the pound key doesn't work on my laptop) wrapped in toyo TR1's with about 6mm left. Rota flight's I believe.
So I fired up to a service station just outside Stirling, met up with the couple who were selling me them and also gave me a hand to fit them then and there in the petrol station, in the snow. Here's how she looked when I got home. Apparently all the kids in Japan are doing this...JDMY0!
As much as I was happy with this look, I was due to go and get measured for my kilt in Jedburgh with my dad, who I knew wouldn't understand the prevailing trends among the Japanese tuning sceen. So I jumped up to a local scrappy, and got a part-work hu-flung-dung/livelong ditch-finder chucked on the stock rim. The boy fitting the tyre had the same diagnosis for the old tyre as me...
As I said earlier, I first got into my cars at the height of Max Power. As a result of this, I have always yearned after a flip out DVD player, so I can play Grand Turismo whilst I wait for the "cops" to be called out to a homicide so we can street race, or watch a wee bit of Still Game whilst the window defrosts, whatever is your preference. I was offered this at a silly price so duly purchased and installed it with one of my pals.
Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one who fancied watching a bit of Still Game in their car...
I'v lived in Glasgow for 4 years and never had a spot of bother, then in the same week, my car got tanned and my bike stolen!
As the more eagle eyed of you will have spotted in the above picture, I also treated her to a new set of shoes, every girls dream.
They arrived at my flatmates work and i went to collect them in the 5. This was the first vaguely practical task I had attempted with the 5, so I was fairly apprehensive. I think she coped fairly well, but I'll let you judge for yourselves.
For those of you that are interested, which I assume is all of you as you are reading this, they are 15" Team Dynamic Pro Race 2's. They came with 2 x Hankook v12 and 2x hu-flung-dung's, which were promptly swapped for the TR1's on the Rota Flights, et voila!
However, all was not plain sailing. Being the first time that I have put aftermarket alloys on a car, it did not occur to me that I would need to change the wheel nuts to provide enough clearance for the torque wrench. A lot of head scratching, a brew, more head scratching, another brew, quick post on Nutz and I had the answer. 24 hours later these came through the door, courtesy of the lovely chaps at Driftworks.
Here she is with her new shoes (please excuse the Land Rover impersonation, this will be remedied in due course.
I took the car back down to Northumberland for a wee run and also to see my pal who was home for a week after being out in Dubai with RJN Motorsport. I took advantage of both his and his dads vast engineering skill set and dream garage to do a particularly complex task...that's right, we fitted an OFFSET NUMBERPLATE BRACKET!!!! (good for another 25kw for those of you that watch Mighty Car Mods)
I also decided to go for some pressed plates at the same time, as the original plates were still on the car and were looking tired. Nice simple mod that tidies up the car in my opinion.
I also ended up on t'Bay after 1 too many shandys and bought a pool ball gear knob with the number "5" on it, cool right? Right?
I also got the most practical mod on the car so far, probably ever, a cup holder from a Mazda Bongo, which is a straight swap for the ashtray. Nice.
The next stage was to "de-bling" the car, which in reality meant taking off the chrome MX-5 parts style bar and replacing it with a nice BLACK (one for the MCM fans aain
.
Wee artsy one via Instagram
All was going well, until I decided I would like a hardtop for the pending winter. Found a OEM Mazda one with the all important HRW for a decent price, went to pick it up and...
Turns out the roll bar wasn't designed to be compatible with a hard top
.
I got bored one Sunday afternoon, so did a budget "lazy eye" conversion.
At this point it had been a few weeks since I had bought her a present or 2 (3 actually) well 4 technically.
A new (to me) deep dish wheel and appropriate boss kit.
A JDM (YO!) Strut brace from an Eunos.
A harness bar as I had removed the style bar after the window incident.
A milled brass gear knob and handbrake sleeve.
Turns out the cheep pool ball gear knob from t'Bay wasn't as easy to remove as it was to fit.
2 hours later...
That's it for this typing session, I hope you all enjoyed it, there's still a few bits to type up to bring you all up to speed before she comes out of storage on Wednesday. I can't wait.
I'm fairly new to the forum as a member but I'v been lurking on here for a few years now! I'v had my wee NA MX-5 in British Racing Green for almost a year now. It's been an interesting journey so far, with no end in sight, but plenty of emotions, love, hate, despair and hope.
So go make a brew, get a few nib-nobs, and if your sitting comfortably...then I shall begin.
I have wanted an MX-5 since I was 15 (I'm the wrong end of 23 now), and saved from every cra*py job I'v had in the last 8 years, baby sitting, farm laborer, waiter, barman, PR, market research...you get the idea. In March 2013 I finally had enough saved up to get my (realistic) dream MX-5, a 1995 1.8s UK Spec, 100,000 mile, (no PAS, ABS, AC, etc) in British Racing Green.
Here she is just after I got her
As you can see she ws pretty much stock, except from an aftermarket hood, front and rear tow hooks, LED interior light conversion and the blinking headlight mod (for MOT apparently...).
As someone who really started to get into cars in the golden age of Max Power, you can imagine it didn't stay stock for long.
Now for a wee bit of provenance about the car in my ownership. I live in Glasgow and the car I wanted was in Leamington-Spa. All that stood between us was a 14 hour megabus, chocced full of Justin Biber fans. For anyone with young girls, this was the London concert that nearly got cancelled because he was ill (what a shame that would have been...) and this news broke 40 minuets into the journey. You can imagine how quiet and relaxing the next 13 hours and 20 minuets was. Upon arriving into London, our connecting train was cancelled which meant that we were transferred onto a commuter train at 5.30 on a Friday. Which was quiet.
Following a restless kip at my friends house in Oxford, partially due to the excitement of going to see the car, partly due to the suspect stains on my friends flatmate's bed (student), we set off in his MK1 Jetta to go see the car. After breaking down 3 times on the way in the rain, we arrived a few hours late, took a very short test drive and negotiated a fair price for the car and set off for the long drive north.
The first few hundred miles passed with little incident, and I was making good time so thought I'd drop in on my parents in Northumberland to show off my new toy. After a quick brew, I persuaded my mum to come for a wee spin. Not 100 yards down the road I hit what can only be described as a trench masquerading as a pothole, putting a 2" gash in the sidewall of the 1,000 mile old rear left tyre. It was at this point that I discovered the "complete original toolkit" that came with the car was complete, save the wheel nut wrench. Cue me running around what felt like at the time most of Northumberland looking for the right sized spanner. Eventually I found that the one in my mum's 2010 Yaris was a perfect fit. Off with the knackered wheel, and on with the spacesaver. I will spare you the full extent of the rest of the drive back to Glasgow, sufice it to say doing 200 odd miles at 2am , in the rain, in an unfamiliar car, with a space saver on was...interesting.
After a full 24 hour sleep, I rationalized that the ripped tyre was the cars way of telling me that she wanted some new shoes. Who am I to disappoint the lady?
After a quick look round the local forum's, I found these for a very reasonable $40 (the pound key doesn't work on my laptop) wrapped in toyo TR1's with about 6mm left. Rota flight's I believe.
So I fired up to a service station just outside Stirling, met up with the couple who were selling me them and also gave me a hand to fit them then and there in the petrol station, in the snow. Here's how she looked when I got home. Apparently all the kids in Japan are doing this...JDMY0!
As much as I was happy with this look, I was due to go and get measured for my kilt in Jedburgh with my dad, who I knew wouldn't understand the prevailing trends among the Japanese tuning sceen. So I jumped up to a local scrappy, and got a part-work hu-flung-dung/livelong ditch-finder chucked on the stock rim. The boy fitting the tyre had the same diagnosis for the old tyre as me...
As I said earlier, I first got into my cars at the height of Max Power. As a result of this, I have always yearned after a flip out DVD player, so I can play Grand Turismo whilst I wait for the "cops" to be called out to a homicide so we can street race, or watch a wee bit of Still Game whilst the window defrosts, whatever is your preference. I was offered this at a silly price so duly purchased and installed it with one of my pals.
Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one who fancied watching a bit of Still Game in their car...
I'v lived in Glasgow for 4 years and never had a spot of bother, then in the same week, my car got tanned and my bike stolen!
As the more eagle eyed of you will have spotted in the above picture, I also treated her to a new set of shoes, every girls dream.
They arrived at my flatmates work and i went to collect them in the 5. This was the first vaguely practical task I had attempted with the 5, so I was fairly apprehensive. I think she coped fairly well, but I'll let you judge for yourselves.
For those of you that are interested, which I assume is all of you as you are reading this, they are 15" Team Dynamic Pro Race 2's. They came with 2 x Hankook v12 and 2x hu-flung-dung's, which were promptly swapped for the TR1's on the Rota Flights, et voila!
However, all was not plain sailing. Being the first time that I have put aftermarket alloys on a car, it did not occur to me that I would need to change the wheel nuts to provide enough clearance for the torque wrench. A lot of head scratching, a brew, more head scratching, another brew, quick post on Nutz and I had the answer. 24 hours later these came through the door, courtesy of the lovely chaps at Driftworks.
Here she is with her new shoes (please excuse the Land Rover impersonation, this will be remedied in due course.
I took the car back down to Northumberland for a wee run and also to see my pal who was home for a week after being out in Dubai with RJN Motorsport. I took advantage of both his and his dads vast engineering skill set and dream garage to do a particularly complex task...that's right, we fitted an OFFSET NUMBERPLATE BRACKET!!!! (good for another 25kw for those of you that watch Mighty Car Mods)
I also decided to go for some pressed plates at the same time, as the original plates were still on the car and were looking tired. Nice simple mod that tidies up the car in my opinion.
I also ended up on t'Bay after 1 too many shandys and bought a pool ball gear knob with the number "5" on it, cool right? Right?
I also got the most practical mod on the car so far, probably ever, a cup holder from a Mazda Bongo, which is a straight swap for the ashtray. Nice.
The next stage was to "de-bling" the car, which in reality meant taking off the chrome MX-5 parts style bar and replacing it with a nice BLACK (one for the MCM fans aain
.
Wee artsy one via Instagram
All was going well, until I decided I would like a hardtop for the pending winter. Found a OEM Mazda one with the all important HRW for a decent price, went to pick it up and...
Turns out the roll bar wasn't designed to be compatible with a hard top
.I got bored one Sunday afternoon, so did a budget "lazy eye" conversion.
At this point it had been a few weeks since I had bought her a present or 2 (3 actually) well 4 technically.
A new (to me) deep dish wheel and appropriate boss kit.
A JDM (YO!) Strut brace from an Eunos.
A harness bar as I had removed the style bar after the window incident.
A milled brass gear knob and handbrake sleeve.
Turns out the cheep pool ball gear knob from t'Bay wasn't as easy to remove as it was to fit.
2 hours later...
That's it for this typing session, I hope you all enjoyed it, there's still a few bits to type up to bring you all up to speed before she comes out of storage on Wednesday. I can't wait.
Cool car, an mx-5 is on my shopping list right now for a "wee summer car".
Where abouts are those roads in this picture, near Glasgow?
http://s1280.photobucket.com/user/aliztoe/media/E1...
Where abouts are those roads in this picture, near Glasgow?
http://s1280.photobucket.com/user/aliztoe/media/E1...
The style bar was only marginally too tall so it cracked about 5 seconds after we had done up the catches.
Aye it's a road to a MOD facility just off Loch Lomamd, can't remember where exactly though as iv not been out there in 6 months. Going to try find it on Thursday though when I get my coilies on
Aye it's a road to a MOD facility just off Loch Lomamd, can't remember where exactly though as iv not been out there in 6 months. Going to try find it on Thursday though when I get my coilies on
The style bar was only marginally too tall so it cracked about 5 seconds after we had done up the catches.
Aye it's a road to a MOD facility just off Loch Lomamd, can't remember where exactly though as iv not been out there in 6 months. Going to try find it on Thursday though when I get my coilies on
Aye it's a road to a MOD facility just off Loch Lomamd, can't remember where exactly though as iv not been out there in 6 months. Going to try find it on Thursday though when I get my coilies on
Got a few more things to bring you all up to speed and a few things iv done in the last week after getting her back on the road.
First up was sourcing a replacement soft top for winter, nothing flash, just needed to be watertight. After hunting around for a while I got offered a tan OEM Mazda hood for £50, alright it had a window that was held together with gaffer tap and a broken support arm, but what do you expect for £50?
The more eagle eyed among you will have noticed the car looks a lot lower than in previous pictures. This is due to me finally getting around to installing the KYB AGX + Eibach set up I have had knocking about the garage for a few months now. This was the most complicated mechanical job I have ever undertaken on a car, and just so you know what my base experience is, its none. I'v fitted a few speakers into a Mk5 Fiesta but that's about it.
Suffice it to say after watching the Driftworks video on youtube I was pretty confident that I could have it done in an hour. How very wrong I was. It took me a cumulative total of about 4 weeks of evening's to get the buggers on, but I have to say I am very happy with the results. The back and doesn't skit and wobble all over the place anymore and it looks the tits, even if I do says myself!
This was the last job I did before taking her off the road for the winter. This is the last pic I took before throwing the car cover on.
And with the cover on, not that there is anything interesting to see but I have the photo, may as well post it!
On the way down from Glasgow to Newcastle I noticed that my suspension swap had made the front end far too low for real world use, the front tyres kept catching on anything more than 50% lock and i scraped the front a few times coming over the border
Fortunately I was able to source these shock spacers from a MX5 specialist. They sit between the top hat of the suspension arm and the body of the car. I chose the 10mm ones and I have to say they are fantastic! They have made the car useable again and were a bargain £30.
First up was sourcing a replacement soft top for winter, nothing flash, just needed to be watertight. After hunting around for a while I got offered a tan OEM Mazda hood for £50, alright it had a window that was held together with gaffer tap and a broken support arm, but what do you expect for £50?
The more eagle eyed among you will have noticed the car looks a lot lower than in previous pictures. This is due to me finally getting around to installing the KYB AGX + Eibach set up I have had knocking about the garage for a few months now. This was the most complicated mechanical job I have ever undertaken on a car, and just so you know what my base experience is, its none. I'v fitted a few speakers into a Mk5 Fiesta but that's about it.
Suffice it to say after watching the Driftworks video on youtube I was pretty confident that I could have it done in an hour. How very wrong I was. It took me a cumulative total of about 4 weeks of evening's to get the buggers on, but I have to say I am very happy with the results. The back and doesn't skit and wobble all over the place anymore and it looks the tits, even if I do says myself!
This was the last job I did before taking her off the road for the winter. This is the last pic I took before throwing the car cover on.
And with the cover on, not that there is anything interesting to see but I have the photo, may as well post it!
On the way down from Glasgow to Newcastle I noticed that my suspension swap had made the front end far too low for real world use, the front tyres kept catching on anything more than 50% lock and i scraped the front a few times coming over the border
Fortunately I was able to source these shock spacers from a MX5 specialist. They sit between the top hat of the suspension arm and the body of the car. I chose the 10mm ones and I have to say they are fantastic! They have made the car useable again and were a bargain £30.
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