Mx7? rx5? Newbies build thread begins

[Steve-A]

ARSE!

I dropped the car off at the exhaust shop this morning, and all was looking well. Was so nice to be behind the wheel again, even if I was being towed!

Just had a phone call to say they\'ve tired as much as they can but they cannot fit the exhaust to my specifications in without further subframe modification. My welders on holiday for the next fortnight, and it\'ll mean stripping the car right back again. Not cool


Gonna set me back 6+ weeks I think.

Ah well, I cant go on any longer in the Punto though, so will probably be spending my exhaust fund on a cheap mk1 mx5 or something.

[kiwimazda]

Or you could but they FC I have for sale and then you have a good parts supply

[Steve-A]

I cant say the idea hadn\'t crossed my mind....

[Steve-A]

Though thinking about it, I need a daily drivable car, so cant start nicking bits off it for the project

[Steve-A]

So after a week of moping and grumbling, Ian came down and we got on with some wok on both 5s.

On the new 5 we:

• Borrowed wing mirror from old 5
• oiled the rusty throttle cable
• removed the rattling exhaust heat shield
• removed the massivly heavy TSW wheels
• sorted out a few loose trim panels
• oiled electric windows
• adjusted handbrake
• fitted a working door speaker

Feels much more \'like a 5\' to drive now, much happier, though still cant wait to get back in the proper one!
Then we set about the project 5.

We put her back no the drive in her home, safely at the top by the house, and got the front up in the air. Ian\'s enjoying a nice cold Vimto there, many were needed across the day.



Front suspension out and subframe out.



This is the offending engine mount lump. Gonna ask bill to cut it back, possibly even kinda invert the lump to give the exhaust guys as much room as possible.



That done we sorted the oil cooler, one of the last things save for electrics and exhaust, to do. Take one old FC rx7 oil cooler...



Measure up some brackets...



Get a maniac with a hacksaw... (me)



Paint the brackets a silly colour



Test mount it in the car



Straighten out the fins as best as possible and give it a quick blast of silver



Good as new I\'m hoping to get Bill to sort out the subframe for me week after next. In the mean time I\'ll finish the MS mods and loom, and so once the subframe and exhaust are done then it\'ll basically be turn the key time!


Finally Ian\'s thought for the day:

Engine crane, known as Big Red,  good



TSW Alloys weighing 1 metric ton each, bad

[evans.I]

Wahey, not long now till completion! If you want a hand this coming Saturday afternoon with any of it give me a shout.

Big red: GOOD!!!
1990\'s tsw lead anvils: BAD!!!

Ian.

[Steve-A]

Bit of progress today, nothing much to see though.

Over the last week I\'ve been fixing the Punto (again, head gasket this time), much hammering and swearing was required. (In picture I\'m resorting to hammering an 11mm socket over a 12mm nut thats rusted itself into a round to remove the exhaust)



And I\'ve also been helping a friend with his MX5, turns out the big ends were ruined .

On the plus side, I dropped the subframe off with Bill today and he\'s gonna asses what he can do with it over the next few days then I\'ll have a time scale to re-book into the exhaust shop.

I\'ve also spent some time this evening working on the Megasquirt. Started like this...



Ended like this.....



Thats the Zeal daughter board that has the twin VR conditioners required to decode the Rx7 CAS. I\'ve also now wired it up to the main Megasquirt board, which was easier said than done! The thing that slowed me up the most was working across 4 sets of instructions (megamanual, the miataturbo note that i used originally, my original install notes and the rx7club MS install notes) to work out what things I had to change from the configuration needed for my 1.6 turbo.

[Steve-A]

Made some reasonable progress yesterday.

Mid week I got the subframe back from Bill. As you can see from the pictures he\'s been able to add quite of lot of extra space for the exhaust to exit the block. Fingers crossed its enough!




So to start yesterday off I fitted a new wing mirror to my 2nd 5.



In an attempt to make it feel more eager earlier in the week I changed the air filter out for a fresh one and did the 14 degree mod. Still not feeling quite right, yesterday I swapped the AFM out for my spare one, and cleaned up the contacts.




Result is an engine that feels much more like it should

So onto the projects car... Ian and Ross came over and we put the subframe back in and the suspension back on.




Looks like there should now be enough clearance. Its booked back in at the exhaust shop for monday 26th July. I\'ve little work on next week so gonna push to finish a bunch of those little things that are easily forgotten as well as finalise the loom in an effort to get the a point where I can turn the key for the first time only a day or two after she comes back from the exhaust shop.

[clive]

Good to see this is still on course O/K Steve, sooooooo many projects get this far and die, but I can see this ones gonna get there :Thumbsup!

[Steve-A]

Its gonna happen

Its gotta happen, cos I\'ve already got my rotorstock ticket and I cant go urning up in a piston engine car can I !

The list of things left to do is basically:

1. Exhaust
2. Few bits on loom like swap the injector connectors over to the rx7 shape from mx5 shape and change connectors for the oil pressure sender.
3. Fuel lines, possibly need to modify the hardlines depending on the exhaust
4. Fit all new vacuum hoses / assemble intake manifold (which has all been test fitted)
5. Get some jubilee clips of cooling system and various other clips and things.
6. Turn key and start mapping the megasquirt!

So really considering how far its come this is the home straight.

The only stumbling block I\'ve got right now is getting hold of a couple of the plastic intake bits I\'m missing, mainly the injector baskets/mixing plate/ whatever they are called for the secondaries and the plastic section that goes from round section to the air filter to triangular section to bolt upto throttle body. I\'m keeping an eye on the for sale section though

[Steve-A]

Not much to show for it, but I spent most of my day tidying up the loom. I removed as much of the obsolete sections of the loom as i could without going nuts and puling it all out of the car. I then changed over all the connectors that needed changing and extended wires that needed it. Then wrapped and tidied it up. The engine bay electrics are now done! (did some more after the photo was taken). Basically just gotta wire up the wideband inside the car and plug the ECU in and thats the electrical side complete.

[rossonza]

Theres nothing in there! ahha

[Steve-A]

Its been a busy couple of days.

Yesterday morning started like this:




Bens mk2 started making horrid noises after its first oil change. A bit of investigation showed that the bottom end was buggered Looks like somewhere along the line someone tried to cover this up by filling it with extra thick oil, whether this was the dealer he bought it off, or the guy who part ex-ed it with the dealer we\'ll never know.  :wallbash: :wallbash:   Either way it was time for a new engine!

A few hours later and lots swearing and starter motor bolts later:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X28TblIhqBY


Good stuff. Though I sound like a prat. Bens dad said off camera \'its much quieter than before\'.

So today we set about working on my car. First task of the day was to try and tuck some of the fuel and brake lines out of the way of the exhaust routing. Time will tell if its enough, I\'m not wanting to take any risk of fire! so if needs be I\'ll have to have new hard lines made. Unfortunately I forgot to take a before picture, but this is the after one.... You can see the fuel lines and the rear brake line tucked right over to the lefthand side of the picture, as far fro the exhaust run as possible.



Whilst doing the fuel lines I noticed a rust bubble under the car So out came the hammer and screwdriver...



The dent is from 6 months ago when the jack jropped much faster than I expected onto a axle stand I really gave it a good battering/poking, and it was only that small section thats gone, but still better get it done soon!

Next up, fit the earth strap I knabbed from Ben\'s old block ( lost mine somewhere long the line!), made sure ot sand back the paint to get as good a connection as possible.



So then Ben and I started on the internal wiring.




A couple of hours later the wideband was all connected up, and the modifications to my MX5 loom were complete.




So that took us to 5pm or so. Now boredom had kinda set in, and thats normally bad news.......

My bootlid has had a hard life. Shortly after I bought the car I reversed into a collapsed fence, which I couldn\'t see in the dark, whilst parking at my girlfriends house. A fence post dug into the boot lid, folding the corner over and bending the whole thing up. So I hammered it flat and bent the corner back and drove around like that for a year. One day I was feeling frustrated by it looking crap so following my success with smoothing and filling motorbike bodywork I had a go at sorting it out.

I did my best buy the skin of the boot is very flexible and I struggled to get it fully flat. Then the paint I bought turned out to be a totally different red to my body colour And so its been a not quite smooth, off red boot lid for the last year or so.

Enter today... Now I could pick up a red boot lid from a breakers for £30-40, but thats no fun. I\'ve been tempted to do something silly with it for a while. So here we go.....

Take some bits from the scrap pile left over from this project....



And some random cans of paint from the garage....



And you end up with.....





I cant quite work out whether its worked quite well and is a bit fun and different, or if it just looks ridiculous. I\'ll have a think over the next few days, and if I decide no I\'ll go get a red boot from that brakers....

[od404]

Haha, loving the paint work Steve :mmmm

You still coming to Rotorstock?  Will be cool to catch up!

[Steve-A]

Yeh, Ive got my ticket booked. Fingers crossed the car will be ready in time!