Work Moves On

We got a fair bit done this morning. It was a mixture of cosmetic and more important work. Katy was working on this car and her own too, so we got stuck in together. (Which is what this project is really about! :-) )

Here is what went on today:

• Removed the Lazy Eye mod equipment for resale.
• Removed the under engine bay tray, sprayed the engine and underside with degreaser and jet washed.
• Changed the gear stick boots and refilled the empty oil reservoir.
• Removed the windscreen wiper arms. Refurbished the flaking paint by sanding back, priming and repainting. Looks great!
• Removed door cards and sorted sticky electric windows with plenty of silicone grease.

Lazy Eyes

A modification that some people quite like is to tweak the 'pop-up lights' so that they only come up a part way. This is done using a little device that, as far as I can imagine, works as a resistor in the circuit and stops the motors fully lifting the lighting unit. For example in this image pinched from an eBay sale:

I'm not keen on this modification, so on finding that the car contained a Lazy eye unit tucked behind the dash, I removed it. It's been offered for sale to a guy from the MX-5 forum, so not all bad:




Under Engine Tray


Under the engine bay is a plastic tray that keeps stones and water out of the engine bay. As the problem with the engine is an oil leak, I've removed this tray so that a) I can clean up inside the engine bay properly and b) I can tell where the oil is dripping onto the floor, giving me a chance to hunt down the leak.

It's a pretty easy task to remove the tray - as long as the nuts haven't been rusted in place and/or rounded off. Oh.. Yes. Yes, they had. The're supposed to be 10mm but, a couple had rounded right off. I solved this by using a old 3/8in socket and a hammer. This essentially cut a new nut head, allowing me to extract the nuts. A good trick!



Having removed the tray - which was very, very oily! - I could easily get up into the engine bay from beneath. I was able to spray copious amounts of degreasant into the bay from on top and below. (I did remove the manifold heat-shield too to improve end top access). The was left for ten minutes and then jet washed off. I'm hoping that this will leave me a much cleaner engine bay ready to see where the leaks develop.

Change Gear Lever Boots


The little blue car was very smoky in the cockpit. This was due to the oil burning off in the engine bay - hope we've sorted most of that now. The smoke was rising into the cockpit through the ruined gearlever boot. Changing these should improve this situation and also the gear changes!

The original upper boot with not much rubber left:



Showing the lower boot:



Gear shift removed from the car:



And the hole left behind... any oil in there? Nope!



Removed the old boot by cutting it off:



New kit ready to go on:



It's a real challenge to get the lower boot over the shaft. You'll probably want to oil it to help.

And back in the car:



(We're missing a photo of the replace upper boot - will have to take one.)

Refurbishing Wiper Arms

The MX-5 seems to be notorious about having poor paintwork on the wiper arms. All three of ours have suffered with this, so we've decided to refurbish them. It's a simple job to remove them, although it's a little tricky to pop them off the splines.

Then, a little sanding:



Followed by Red-Oxide primer and finally gloss black:

Engine Clean

Today, I needed to pop to a shop that's about two miles away. I decided to take the Eunos to see what it sounded like. It seemed to drive pretty well, despite the awful noises coming from the engine bay. It still pulls really well...



Anyway, I let the car cool down a little on my return and then sprayed a liberal coating of Three-In-One Degreaser. After a few minutes, I jet washed the engine clean. I repeated a couple of times on tough areas and the engine now looks a lot cleaner. That means less oil to burn off... And the main idea was to find were oil now leaks from when I drive the car.

Let's see shall we?

Edit: I forgot to say. While down at the shop, a woman in her fifties stopped me and asked me what my car was. I said "A Japanese imported MX-5". "Oh. I just wanted to tell you it has a great sound." "Er, thanks!" -- a great sound? Really?!

Strip Out Begins

Katy and I spent a couple of hours stripping out the insides from the car, including seats and carpets. We wanted to look at the state of the body work beneath...but also, the carpet was just pretty crappy.

Removing the drivers seat:


Pulling up the carpet:


After a lot of fiddling about behind the space where the radio fits:


And some weight saved!


A boot full of bits to go back on shortly:


We found this behind the dash..

It controls the height of the lights so you can make a 'lazy eye' modification. I don't like this mod much and the device is coming out. I've already promised it to a chap from the MX5 Owners Club forum.

Smokey Joe

So, what's wrong with her? White smoke on start and lots of oil coating the engine bay. Hmm.

Project Begins

This is our blog about our MX-5 Race Car...
(Or at least it will be a race car as it is slowly and surely turned into one over the next few years.)

Initially, we're aiming to turn our MX-5 into a decent track day car. Neither Katy or I are seasoned racing drivers by any stretch of the imagination, so we'll start gently and get the car prepped for track days. Then, once we've got a few of those under our belts, we'll know what type of racing we'd like to take part in... Perhaps we'll just stay doing track days, or maybe we'll progress to something else. Who knows right now? The plan is to get the car up and running properly and see where it leads us.

So, what have we got now? For a small amount of cash, we picked up a Mk1 Eunos Roadster from eBay. We actually picked it up from Milton Keynes on my birthday, so it felt like a bit of a present! I have a feeling that the MX-5 (or Japanese import Eunos) is about to become a lot rarer. There are a lot of people breaking these cars at the moment. Because of this, parts are cheap, but the cars will become dearer as there are less and less of them in good condition.

Ours is in need of some love. She's been abused for the last couple of years, frankly. The previous owner let her overheat, causing head gasket problems. According to the eBay listing, these have 'been fixed at great expense'. I'm not convinced, and have asked for documentary evidence. The car sounds like a bag of nails, although got me back from MK to Reading ok, despite having to stop for oil! The trip home was interesting as she smokes an awful lot. When you stop at lights, she is burning off white oily smoke from beneath the bonnet. Not good really.

The car is also leaking water (through the slash in the window part of the hood.) This I can fix I'm sure - I'll get a replacement zip in part or a cheap hood. We'll see what is the cheapest way forward. To be honest, as she is going to live in a garage soon, it's not a big problem as long as we can dry her out.

First aims are:

• Strip out the carpet and seats, to discover what is beneath.
• Compression test on the engine.
• Clean the engine with gunk and jet wash, Do a few miles and see where she leaks.
• Get the engine checked out by a local garage.
• Pay what needs to be paid (either parts and/or labour) to get her fixed.
• Do a track day.

Katy has already stolen some parts for her MX-5, including the rather lovely white powder coated wheels. I'm going to get the replacement wheels (from Katy's MK1) media plasted and powder coated in yellow. A secondary concern of course, is how she looks. Engine and suspension first. Roll cage and bucket seats next and then ancillaries.

So, here she is:

And from the back, with her wheels transplanted onto Katy's Mk1: