mx5cartalk.com

ok, Pam's too lazy to make her own thread, so it's up to me to do it!

for those who don't know, it's a red 1990 NA6.

it's got a few mods, but I'll leave that for Pam to fill in later since she knows exactly what they are.

anyway, I'm making this now because Pam and I have just got back from a mini photoshoot for the cars.

here's a couple of the shots, basically raw images atm with a bit of cropping. I need to re-install photoshop on my PC so I can do some adjustments to the rest.

enjoy!


the pair of them before a good spray down


Hello seniorita!


the new sticker we had made up


(ignore the odd blobby stuff, I think I had some condensation form on the lens)

You need to visit james and get a set of wheels to finish it off.

Love the Chilled Water sticker!

I have been quite slack on putting a build thread up anywhere. After being prodded by many to do this, I've finally gotten around to it.

Seniorita
As she originally was:





I was searching for 'the right' MX5 for about three years. I had a very good mate up in Brisbane on the hunt as well, as he has had a few. Right when I was in the position to buy, a call came from him. His best mate wanted to sell his MX5, but to the right owner.

I had a few 'wants' for the mex. Top priority, it had to have been well cared for. I didn't care about mileage as long as it had been pampered. I wanted one as stock as possible. A bonus would have been to get a hard-top also (I was living in Preston at the time... with no off street parking. Yeah). The only other thing... I didn't want red or white. I also had an upper limit of 10k.

My mate mentioned me to the seller, assuring him that I'd give his spoiled child a good life. I got a call, and within half an hour of talking to the seller, I had agreed to buy. WTF? That's right, sounds silly. Buying a car registered in NSW, that was actually in QLD, with no roadworthy etc etc. However, it was vouched for by my most trusted friends, so strangely it didn't vex me.

The car I agreed to over the phone came with this list:
- Mania CAI
- Magnecore 8mm leads
- F+R subframe braces
- IL Motorsports short shifter
- NB8B high backed seats
- LSD
- Lowered on Eibachs
- NB8A wheels
- IL Motorsports clear indicators and reflectors
- Twin hoop style bar
- Air vent surrounds
- Roadster scuff plates
- Chrome instrument backing

And a few other things.

The deal was done and she was trucked down in September 2008.

When I took delivery, she had 310,000 ks on the clock.

She now has 389,456. 80,000 odd ks. Not bad to rack up in 15 months. You can blame this on the regular trips I do to Brisbane, and also the ones up to Wakefield, Winton, Shep... it's amazing how much it adds up.

Next step was to get a RWC.

Considering I worked at a major Nissan dealership, I thought I'd get it done there.

But we all know I'm a little stupid.

Long story short, they tried to pull the wool over my eyes. They quoted 3k of work to get the RWC. Including... replacing bushes on my awesome super duper <i>imaginary</i> coil overs. (However, it was fun watching the techy try and wiggle his way out of that one when I pointed out I didn't have coil-overs). There was also things like 'replace rubber accelerator pad' which they wouldn't believe me when I said they don't have a rubber pad on the accelerator.

Off elsewhere, with a big middle finger up to Nissan and RWC, and she was registered.

I wasn't going to change anything on her. Honestly.

This is where it's going to start getting difficult. Remembering things.

Honestly, I can't remember the order I've done stuff, and even what I've done. I can't even remember what I ate 5 minutes ago. (I think it was a sausage roll).

So I'm just going to write up random stuff I have done, mainly just stuff there's photos for.

<b>Up and Down</b>

She's had shocks and springs changed no less than 5 times. I've almost got the swap out down to a fine art now. This is purely because I'm a stingy biatch and keep picking up free ones on the forum, or ones where payment is a case of beer. Qld currency.

She came with Eibach Pros on some random shocks.

Prior to the current height, I had some stock stuff on her. MAN was she HIGH!



But you know? It was awesomely fun. I quite liked being able to swing it around dirt roads and not cringe every time I saw an ant.

However... recently I acquired a set of Mazdaspeed MS-03s from Rupewrecht. I knew it wouldn't look quite right at height she was... so we dropped her down again.



I picked up a set of good condition (for once) stock shocks in Brisbane (case of beer payment. See?) and already had the good condition Eibach Pros, so off the crap, worn out shocks and springs came, and on went the good stuff. Found about 6 useable bump stops around my room too, so swapped the old, worn out ones at the same time to give myself a good set-up all round.

Next time I need to swap suspension out, I'll be getting brand new stuff. However, at the moment, this stuff is all in good condition so I should get at least a year out of it.

I'll get a pick of the MS-03s on at some point, and the new height. I just discovered I don't have any.

It's pretty much perfect height now. Everything that needs to be horizontal is. You can feel the difference, cornering is so much more planted.

The most recent thing I've done is to change the IL Motorsports short shifter... to stock.

I haven't dríven any other NAs, so assumed that the often hard shifts are just normal.

People have commented that mine seemed more difficult than others. I am not surprised. I actually have a doctor's certificate from the first 3 weeks I had her. I tore muscles in my arm from that shifter before I built up enough strength and got used to it. No, seriously. I had to drive my 626 one day in the second week I had her because I couldn't shift.

Anyway.

With DECA this last Sunday, I thought I'd change it over before then, as I'm running out of things to do.

Before:


I have a Skunk2 on there, as the heaviness helps shifting with a short shifter.



Console off. You can see how crappy, torn and oily my upper shift boot is. You can also see the wonderful kink towards the top of the shifter.



Lower shift boot. Awesomely oily. Also awesomely completely ruined.



Took a shot of both levers side-by-side, whilst I had the chance. You can see the definite difference in length (the thicker, black one is stock) and how damaged the short shifter is.

As the lower shift boot on the stock shifter was in fantastic condition, we put that one back on. The upper boot still needs changing, but I need to wait until Saturday to get that. Until then I am enjoying the air-conditioning effects that come with a torn upper shift boot when driving around in Winter.

It took a while to get the stock shifter back in, as I had to work out which pieces came with the short shift kit, and which pieces should be there but weren't. Finally worked it out. There's a hidden metal ring that needs to come out, once that's out the stock shifter works a treat. I changed the oil whilst I was there. Mmmm. Grey.

Shifting is amazingly different. I will never put a short shifter back on a mex. It is so unnecessary. The short shifter wasn't terrible; I quite liked it. However, it really was a hinderance to good shifting. As Nik has said, it actually made shifting slower, as you had to make sure you were precise. With the stock, you don't even think about it.



I have the hugest thing for really long levers... an extension is coming.

Happy days.

I present the ridiculous but strangely decent footrest:

The giant fire extinguisher of doom.

Because if you can't put out the fire, hit it on the head and make it pass out.

Last post for the night before I pass out (I'd go out for a smoke and write more, but I'm pinned in by cats).

Roll bar and random painting.

I managed to score Teruo's MX5 Plus Torque Box roll bar.

I have the single diagonal version. For reasons I'm not entirely sure about, it was too expensive to maintain production (something to do with CAMS certification I believe) so only a limited run was done. I like parts with history.

Mounting:

Its old home:



Anyway. A couple of weekends ago we painted it.

Before.

After:

Harness:



6 point to replace the 4 point OMP I had in.

Found a couple of photos from the weekend to show current height and the MS-03s.





They also nicely show my disintegrating undertray. New one this weekend.

That's alright. It just means that QLDers die later!

Bored at work so I'll do another update now.

<b>Always a lightweight</b>

Most people remove things from a mex to save weight. I removed things just because they were either stuffed or I was bored!

<b>Air-Con</b>

Long story short, it was stuffed. It broke the weekend before an exceedingly hot track day up at Winton (high 40s), where everyone then got the chance to remind me about their working air-cons for the drive back.

Thought it was just the belt, so grabbed a new one and headed round to a mate's where he was finishing off a gearbox swap. Installed new belt... started her up... and we had smoke. Lots of smoke.

I was just going to leave it until I had time to get a new compressor... but my friends are bad influences.

It was dark by this stage so it's easy to say I 'slipped' with a spanner... and out fell an aircon system. hahah.

We got the main stuff off, put the radiator back on and refilled it that night. Over the next few days I took out the rest of the piping. There's still stuff up under the dash, but that requires a lot more effort than I can be bothered with.

With the air-con gone, it meant I got move my CAI down. To mount the strut brace that Daz had given me, the CAI needed to move down an inch for clearance. See? Removing parts for happiness. It is tilted at an angle, however I've never had any problems with that and there has been no ill effects.

Strut brace is mounted and rests slightly on the CAI. We have tape around the strut brace to protect it and the CAI from rubbing on each other.

<b>Soft-Top</b>

Put simply, my soft top was pretty knackered. It had a few holes in it (tape FTW), the latches were coming apart (one should not have to screw their latches tight whist driving), it was leaking like a sieve and there had always been a tear around the zip on the back plastic, which eventuated into a gaping chasm on the recent QLD trip.

I hardly ever use the soft-top as I'm a big fan of the hard-tops. I do, however, use beer.

I swapped the soft top including frame for a six pack of Asahi from Wun A win all round. I didn't have to take it to the dump, he got a toy, and I got a refreshing beveridge.

So now I run just the hard-top, and don't regret it in the least. I'll probably put a soft-top back in down the track when I see a decent one come up cheap, but for now, hard-top is awesome.

<b>Carpet</b>

It rained on the recent QLD trip. Rained hard. I had the back window down, as I couldn't see anything out of it otherwise, which let water in obviously. I didn't really care though, as I was planning just to dry the carpets out when I got to sunny QLD.

Due to the tear in the zip, putting the back window back up was a right royal PITA. So when we parked in Bris and it was still raining, I couldn't be bothered zipping it up so left it overnight.

Next morning. we came back to a miniature swimming pool for toy poodles. The car had a good 2 inches of water in the footwells. Seriously, if you have never dríven a car barefoot with a lake around your ankles, you are missing out.

I'd been tossing up removing the carpets for some time, as I'm a big fan of the ghetto look and spill things regularly. With the addition of an above ground swimming pool, I decided to go ahead with it.

Removing anything from a mex is ridiculously easy, so it was a pretty straight forward task. The only thing you have trouble with is that the carpet reaches around up under the dash. The easiest way to remove it (if you don't care or don't mind buying new carpet) is just to slice it away. That's really the hardest part.

I also scored some parcel shelf carpet and the carpet that goes behind the seats from an NB (a lot nicer carpet) from a seller of some parts I was buying up in Brisbane whilst I was there, to hide the increasingly stripped out look from interested cops, so it's not 100% ghetto now.

I'm wanting to weigh it soon. With the soft-top, air-con and carpet gone, I'd be tempted to see how much I've lost. Unfortunately we had to miss the weigh-bridge day as we were in QLD removing carpet weight. :-D

Photos to come.

Nice to see you updating your thread Pam.

You "Mex" looks menacing with the way you've got her set up.

Is your console 100% CF or is that CF look decals? Whatever it is, it looks very smart. I wan't one.

Looks like that Vinyl stuff, looks very nice Pam!

good read

Hi Pam,

Car is looking great.

I also love the carbon fibre look on the centre consol. Roll bar looks a lot better painted black too.

Rob

Oh no! You didn't park it @ the dodgy part of town did you?