Alex's white NA8 build.

[speed]

Hahaha.

There are a few good ones floating around.

I've finally managed to sort out the gearbox issues in the mother in laws VR6 and am pleased to say that it no longer goes into limp mode!

A pic for the sake of it



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[Alex 2550]

Hahaha.

There are a few good ones floating around.

I've finally managed to sort out the gearbox issues in the mother in laws VR6 and am pleased to say that it no longer goes into limp mode!

A pic for the sake of it

i told you that you were becoming Sydney's VW specialist lol.

[speed]

Yep, to the point that people stop out the front of my place and ask me questions about VW's!

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[Alex 2550]

Yep, to the point that people stop out the front of my place and ask me questions about VW's!

hahahaha bound to happen eventually lol

[Alex 2550]

Warning long posts coming up and lots of updates.

I’ll give a bit of a background as to why I have been quiet.

So it’s been a long time (couple years) since I added to this build because mainly life has been hectic so I thought I should do some updating today because I have some time. (At home with Man flu, first sick day in 7 years)

Now it’s not that the little MX hasn’t been receiving some love and upgrades it’s just been lower on priorities.
I do that, I’ll go from project to project but I still love the little car and I still work on it or Aquire parts weekly just don’t post it.
I still look on the forum here nearly everyday.

I also work on a dairy farm with a 2am start and manage a furniture store where some days I will work 9am till 8pm but generally knock off about 6.
Last Monday till saturday I worked 84 hours, not a standard week but gives you an idea of why I can be time poor or get to the end of the day and want to stop.

So a non mx side note.
last year I spent a bit of time and money working on my Patrol it’s highly modified in just about every way and that took time and money away from the MX, in short the patrol puts out around 160kw and over 1100NM of torque from lots of mods but mainly a GTX Garrett and a highly modified pump running big boost which is put through a custom Isuzu truck clutch which is amazingly light it’s brilliant.
But due to this power I was having a few problems in regards to heat so in short I got a custom made truck fan and clutch bolted to the front of the motor sealed gaps around radiator and went from a front mount intercooler to a top mount intercooler with fan.
This dropped my water temps about 30 degrees average, my EGT about 100 degrees and my inlet manifold temps about 20 degrees average.
It’s no race car and best way to describe how it drives us a big V8 with a mild cam.

The patrol is the holiday vehicle for the wife and I with our Ultimate camper (that’s the brand) and takes us to really remote areas so it has to be ready for anything and reliable so if something needs doing it gets done.
in short if you can think of an iconic remote area in Aus it’s been there except the Kimberly, that trip is in a few years.
The patrol has nearly 500,000km on it with nothing but racing valve springs internally added but have done oil, air and fuel filter with anti wear additive since new and still has awesome compression.



I also decided to get back into motorbikes after being off them for about 10 years, well around home and work I use bikes and quads but I mean as a recreational thing and mode of transport
So I picked up a DRZ400 used.




And turned it into this



A lightweight adventure bike to go camping off.

Anyway again this took time and money away from the MX.
Now with motorbikes there is a golden rule, RUBBER SIDE DOWN!!!

I unfortunately forgot this on Christmas Day last year and had a fairly decent stack resulting in broken ribs, shattered knee cap and lots of missing skin, the bike got a few injuries but not many because I broke it’s fall and was under it,
Anyway that’s bikes.

So while mending up I went back to focussing more on the MX

Now as I said earlier I haven’t ever stopped working on the MX it’s just not always the focus and below I will start putting some updates up.
Now some of these are from a couple years ago and I’m just using pics from my phone so I’ll try keep the order correct but you may see some overlap, also the pics aren’t the best of quality because I took them to show friends ect not chuck on here but if you need better please let me know.
Thanks for taking the time to read through.
Updates to come.


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[Alex 2550]

So with the updates.
Firstly from earlier posts you will see I got a 323 Astina rocker cover well that didn’t take long to get painted up and fitted while there I added a little more bling in the way of a Jass performance dip stick handle and carbon miata retro oil cap.
While there I also made up a COPs bracket and got some used MR2 coils from the states and wired it all in.
I also did the mx5 unleashed rocker cover catch can mod so the baffles in the rocker cover have a steel wool in them and a drainback and fitted braided hose for the breathers and a right angle pcv valve that also got a paint.
Here is the rocker cover catch can link

http://mx5unleashed.com/tech/valve-cover.html

I also fitted a set of NB8A fuel injectors I got from Manga_blue.
The result is a smoother idle from the more modern injectors and coils but also at partial throttle the car is less....... jerky if that makes sense not a major change just a small improvement.






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[Alex 2550]

Now as you can probably tell from above I did an order with Jass performance and carbon miata but I’ll get to that.
I got some new wheels for the car, I really like the RPF1’s but at the price of them it was hard to swallow but to be honest I was going to get them regardless.
That was till I saw a set of SSW peaks for sale brand new at a local tyre shop in 15x7, I’m sorry I can’t remember offset but very MX5 friendly.
I took scales down to weigh them and they came in at 5.8kg each so pretty light. Now this is still more than 1kg heavier than the RPF1 but the shop ordered them and the customer never came to get them so I got the set for $500 brand new.
I put my old Bridgestones on them and the car felt much better maybe due to less mass, wider rim or new part love
Anyway some of our Zoom Zoom where you can see the wheels



I also wanted to try colouring in the writing on the tyres because they were due to be replaced and figured if I don’t like it it won’t be there for long.




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[Alex 2550]

Now the very observant will notice with our Mazda’s lined up that the MX has driving lights in the mouth.
This was because there is plenty of wildlife around here and I think it adds to the look of the NA.
I don’t have any great photos of them but all they are are Supercheap auto lights that I pulled apart and resprayed all the black powder coat with a satin epoxy because well.......... there powder coat sucks, I also painted all bolts and screws so they don’t rust and look like bollocks in no time.
I wired these to the high beam with a relay and pulled power from the back of the alternator.
I ran the wires through factory loom and mounted the relay, fuse ect all up under the drivers side pop up so you can’t see any extra wires in the engine bay and with the pop ups up you really need to look hard to find it.
So with those and writing on the tyres the car now looked something like this.



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[StanTheMan]

so hold on when is this ?....it seems like a few years ago? I was under the impression your Mx5 was in pieces. and you had some loveley pieces lying around,

cause if your back on the road I'm sure i can get a few gusy from sydney to come down your way & have a bit of a christening run for your 5
or we could meet halff way somewhere.

whatever if your car is back , I'm keen. would be awesome to meet Phil in person as welll.

[Alex 2550]

Now all these node happened years ago so bear with me, I did plan to do a fair amount of track work so I organised tow hooks from Jass performance and some tow stickers and battery diamond locally.
While I was there I got him to knock me up some racing mate clovers to add a little to the retro feel of the car I was chasing.
I also got some side stripes from Canada with the old Mazda logo on them so the car now looked like this.




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[Alex 2550]

so hold on when is this ?....it seems like a few years ago? I was under the impression your Mx5 was in pieces. and you had some loveley pieces lying around

Yer mate this is all a couple years ago I’m working through the updates, I promise I have a photo with all the lovely bits you refer to coming up later today, there is much much more to be shown before that I’m trying to keep it in order but my super lovely (“super lovely”? Wow this is getting JDM isn’t it) part is very shortly.

The car is currently together with the lovely bits in a box behind it but getting closer, your spoiling the surprise lol.

As for a Sydney run this could be on the cards at some point.



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[Alex 2550]

So when I purchased the car it had a MOMO competition on it and though not the worst wheel I had two problems.

One, the diameter made it hard to heel toe because my knee would hit the wheel when I rolled my foot.

Two, my knuckles aren’t the smallest so when I was driving the car spiritedly I would turn the indicators and wipers on by accident because the wheel was to close to the sticks.

So I went with the timeless Nardi deep corn 330mm, actually my wife got it for me and I absolutely love it!!

Before

After



It can also be seen in that photo that I changed the shift knob, it is a 480gr weighted knob, I cut the shaft down slightly and tapped the thread lower to get it to sit nicer with my new leather shift boot and also not seen there leather handbrake boot.......... did anyone notice the quilted leather below the sills?


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[StanTheMan]

Sydney run? whatever maybe you & Daffy could co-ordinate so you are both in Sydney at the same time. Imagine the ecstasy of having your car & Daffy's car in Sydney on a run at the same time. Ha.

[Alex 2550]

I will get on to leather goodness shortly but I wanted the car to have a flow to it, if you notice the wheels are similar to the rocker cover in colour and I found these from the land of the rising sun and the Roadster badge is nearly identical to my rocker cover in colour, these still had the plastic protective film on them and I picked them up for $80 delivered. I have not seen a second set with this colour writing.

Crappy photo but you get the idea.
Also notice the speaker grills are on........




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[Alex 2550]

Sydney run? whatever maybe you & Daffy could co-ordinate so you are both in Sydney at the same time. Imagine the ecstasy of having your car & Daffy's car in Sydney on a run at the same time. Ha.

I would really like to make that happen mate, to be honest probably next year sometime.


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