mx5cartalk.com

Hey guys!!
Been on the forums for a bit now reading up and decided i would make my own thread

Ive had an Na6 mx5 before this one, but i felt that it was a little run down and sold it in search for one that i felt was in little better condition for my plans for it.

na6 mx5 by lol mx5, on Flickr

$_20 by lol mx5, on Flickr

anyways lets get on with it..

I recently (In August) got myself a 1994 Mx5, it was located in Tas (Im in NSW) and by the looks of it was what i was looking for. So i book the next convenient day to fly down and take a look. i thought a nice big road trip and a ride on the spirit of Tasmania would be great fun. Got there and was greeted by a very nice old couple, they showed me the car and from the looks of it was a very solid car, except for slight damage to front quarter (dent in bottom of the guard). I made an offer and off i was back to Sydney.

I arrived the next day after a nice big drive, was a great drive tbh as soon as you hit NSW roads become smooth and awesome views!!!, but as it was that big drive also showed most of the cars weak spots.

Shocks felt very bumpy and brakes were a little squeaky and in the rain the car would not grip at all. car ran well didnt eat any oil and from almost 10hrs of driving only cost me around $75 in fuel to drive it up here

But with a full service history and only 165 000kms on it i didnt mind the extra work.


14151862_1835222470044456_1749597510_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

14151688_1835222426711127_1588523642_o by lol mx5, on Flickr



will update you guys soon on what ive done so far

Ok so lets get started the, My plan for this mx5 is to have a clean and nice look more of a factory style, the car already had the original nardi wheel and factory radio so interior was almost done just need a clean really.

i started the interior first, it had this really sh*t looking gear boot around the gear still ill see if i can find a pic from the for sale post but it was bad. got a new boot leather from mx5 mania and put it on had to q-bond some of the broken plastic where the screws go in but after that it was fine (q-bond is actually the best ahah), also bought new floor mats from mx5 Mania as well (had supercheap auto ones before).

Before (Sorry for sh*t pic didnt know i was gonna make a thread)
$_20 (5) by lol mx5, on Flickr

After
nice shot by lol mx5, on Flickr

interior came together really well. i do plan to take out the seats and carpet and give them a good clean and maybe black dye to help them, but the seat foam still feels good.

while i was doing the gear boot i found my shifted boots to be ripped and just worn so i replaced them pretty straight forward. also changed the fluid in the top (i was black) quick run to mx5 mania for new parts had it fixed in no time.

14647178_1857949774438392_127389089_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

14699693_1857949767771726_909771388_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

14689061_1858524154380954_1631699053_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

14689913_1858524127714290_2094084109_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

I also noticed when driving it home that the speakers as so bad. So i quickly got some of my favourite speaker Alpine type s speakers (had these in other cars i owned) and installed them, it had blown aftermarket speakers that sounded terrible. Also had some pretty bad soldering so i re did it.

14699661_1860874120812624_1100745017_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

14725309_1860869370813099_930088399_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

While i was working on the interior i found a bunch of wiring the look to be for an alarm system. is i followed and found the car to have central locking. i didnt have keys for that and it didnt seem to work so i removed it (might put a better one in later but for now it had to go.

14429200_1846729205560449_21971832_n by lol mx5, on Flickr


More to come, ill post more tonight

Good to see you tidying up the car!
I really need to get around to buying the new shift boots as mine are even worse condition than yours were

Love those speakers, have the same in my 5

jordan.k wrote:Good to see you tidying up the car!
I really need to get around to buying the new shift boots as mine are even worse condition than yours were

Love those speakers, have the same in my 5

Thanks man, haha yea thought i would do as i had everything off

Can never go wrong with alpine ahha

ok more updates, as said before, i found the ride to be really bounce in the mx5 and also had excessive body role in corners, had a look at the shocks and saw they looked original, i found this a bit wired because by the looks of it, i thought it was lowered a bit. Turns out with more investigation shocks where blown, with the car up on jack stands i could put the jack under the rear control arm and it would compress the shocks, later after taking them out i could compress them slightly in my arrms. I found someone here on the forums selling mx5 SE bilsteins with less the 20 000kms on it for a decent price so i snagged them up and installed them not only did the look amazing but felt alot better.

front right by lol mx5, on Flickr

While the car was in the air i decided to have a look at the squeaky brakes, after taking a quick look i couldnt see anything wrong. I ended up taking them apart and finding sliders to be a little stiff and brake pads to be worn unevenly. so with a quick trip to mx5 mania got myself new brake pads and rotors all around with new fitting kits and also cleaned and lubed up the slides.

with this little work i thought i would be worth wild to paint the brakes while i had them apart. i decided to get that cleaner look that i would have to go with silver or black. i ended up with getting black.

after some sanding and masking off i had them painted and ready to be reassembled back on the car.

Before:
14725349_1859832480916788_1742335158_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

14625671_1859194897647213_1952523615_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

14699527_1859197064313663_1098175369_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

14646844_1859603004273069_1066425163_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

finished product:

14647382_1859832594250110_1310647547_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

left rear suspension by lol mx5, on Flickr

now that the car was gonna handle better i felt it was time to tackle the wheels and tyres. i really wanna try find a set of the original factory option BBS wheels that were offered in the JDM market but for now. i decided stock wheels were the way to go and new tyres as the ones on the car are so old, they where installed in 2003 they were hard and just really bad. i got the tyres removed and then decided to freshen up the wheels bit. I fix all the gutter rash and repainted it a oem style silver.

after bogging and a lot of sanding wheel were finished and i think they look awesome havnt got tyres yet tho so cant drive it for a bit.

14466433_1850817008485002_2094957561_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

14466448_1850816985151671_636213994_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

let me know what you guys think and if you have any suggestions on what i should do bet leave a comment

Very nice.

Nice work mate, your doing a great job and you have a better handling, safer and neater car for it.
The wheels came up great and credit to you, I have a set of NA wheels in the shed and a set of NB8a wheels that I have been wanting to tidy up but haven't got around to, the repair on the lip came up really well.
Also another Alpine type S fan here and I have them in the 5.
Also when I painted my brakes I went the black as well, not sure if you wanted to go to the effort but I also painted the centre of the brake rotor and the outside edges black as well, basically anywhere on the rotor that the pad doesn't touch so rust wouldn't show there.
I'm looking forward to how your build progresses because so far it's going great

StanTheMan wrote:Very nice.

Thanks man, more to come

Alex 2550 wrote:Nice work mate, your doing a great job and you have a better handling, safer and neater car for it.
The wheels came up great and credit to you, I have a set of NA wheels in the shed and a set of NB8a wheels that I have been wanting to tidy up but haven't got around to, the repair on the lip came up really well.
Also another Alpine type S fan here and I have them in the 5.
Also when I painted my brakes I went the black as well, not sure if you wanted to go to the effort but I also painted the centre of the brake rotor and the outside edges black as well, basically anywhere on the rotor that the pad doesn't touch so rust wouldn't show there.
I'm looking forward to how your build progresses because so far it's going great

Thanks man , yea the wheels took some time but it ended up look really good, cant wait to take it for a drive soon once everything is done (have a bunch of parts on order). Painting the rotors is a pretty good idea might do it just depends on my time available, im pretty sure the front ones are already painted silver (ill look into it)

also looking to get headrest speakers i think that would be an awesome addition to the car, along with the alpines

So today i decided that the brake pedal and clutch could use a nice treatment of fresh dot4 fluid. Got some Castrol fluid and made my own 1 man brake bleeder. actually pretty easy. get a bottle and some tubing. put a hole big enough to get the tube thru it and get some used fluid in the reservoir and fill the bottle up a bit so the bottom of the hose is in water. place the other end to the brake or clutch nipple and make sure there are no kinks in the line.

press the brake and watch the old fluid cycle until the new stuff comes in. you can also see the air come out of the system. not to much air came out of the brake system but SOOO much air came out of the clutch. after the bleed the clutch felt so much better and worked alot better.

14803116_1863150207251682_1487210207_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

14800294_1863150083918361_492525312_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

Sneaky shot of the engine bay
Engine Bay by lol mx5, on Flickr

Next on the list of things to do:

Full major service (in the process of sourcing all the parts, got water pump and pulleys left to get (tring to get all genuine stuff but might not for these))
got most parts ready so will be doing that soon, also gonna give it a treatment of the Subaru upper engine clean. Thought it would be a good thing to do while giving a major service.

Nb soft top (Still need to source a good one if anyone has any recommendation on where to get a ome style nb soft top new or used let us know)

Also found a oem style front lip that i snagged up for cheap and i think make the car look alot better with it on, still need to make holes and bolt it down but here it is just mocked up to the car.

14724293_1861022277464475_635560171_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

To get the car to pass its Blue slip since its an interstate car i needed to address the exhaust. it wasn't too load or anything but had holes in it. had an aftermarket remus exhaust that im sure when it was new sounded great. it was old tired and had holes in it metal was so weak it was braking apart, been welded multiple time but the looks of it. Removed it and found that the cat bolts were missing and striped. Got that repaired at castle hill exhaust for $20 good as new, found a used factory mx5 exhaust that i put in its place for blue slip with plans for a better exhaust for the future.

14787089_1863751417191561_880724427_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

Im keeping the bumper off for a while until i give it a good clean because i don't like how dirty it is ahah but good news it it looks all original under there

this is the exhaust i took off dont have a good pic but it had a square tip and was really rattly. had that chemical exhaust seal everywhere and was just not a great note. factory exhaust bolted right up with no problems or leaks. look alot better.
14796121_1863751453858224_487668417_o by lol mx5, on Flickr

Thanks guys for reading and viewing, still pretty new to mx5s, (im a Subaru/Vw guy ahah) if theres any tip or tricks you would like to share it would be greatly appreciated will be back soon for more updates

Makes me happy to see a 5 get so much love. That old brake/clutch fluid was properly gross.

Replace the CAS oring when you're doing the major service. It is probably leaking or at least weeping some oil at the moment. The part is cheap as chips and it's slightly easier to do with the valve cover off.

Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk

lolmx5 wrote:So today i decided that the brake pedal and clutch could use a nice treatment of fresh dot4 fluid. Got some Castrol fluid and made my own 1 man brake bleeder. actually pretty easy. get a bottle and some tubing. put a hole big enough to get the tube thru it and get some used fluid in the reservoir and fill the bottle up a bit so the bottom of the hose is in water. place the other end to the brake or clutch nipple and make sure there are no kinks in the line.

Presume you mean "bottom of the hose is in fluid"
A good tip is to mount the bottle above the level of the calipers, which keeps the whole 'system' full of fluid. That prevents sucking air in around the bleed nipple threads when you release the pedal.

smy0003 wrote:Makes me happy to see a 5 get so much love. That old brake/clutch fluid was properly gross.

Replace the CAS oring when you're doing the major service. It is probably leaking or at least weeping some oil at the moment. The part is cheap as chips and it's slightly easier to do with the valve cover off.

Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk

Thanks man, Yea i already ready your thread and planed to do that as well ahah, nice car btw

RS2000 wrote:

lolmx5 wrote:So today i decided that the brake pedal and clutch could use a nice treatment of fresh dot4 fluid. Got some Castrol fluid and made my own 1 man brake bleeder. actually pretty easy. get a bottle and some tubing. put a hole big enough to get the tube thru it and get some used fluid in the reservoir and fill the bottle up a bit so the bottom of the hose is in water. place the other end to the brake or clutch nipple and make sure there are no kinks in the line.

Presume you mean "bottom of the hose is in fluid"
A good tip is to mount the bottle above the level of the calipers, which keeps the whole 'system' full of fluid. That prevents sucking air in around the bleed nipple threads when you release the pedal.

Thanks for the tip, Yea im pretty sure i did that ahah didnt write it down tho, pedels feel alot better now cant wait to get tyres and drive it again

So today did a bit of work, changed my washer fluid lines. they were brown and well i wanted it clear. also drained the dirty water and cleaned the tank.
I have some spare Vw washer fluid (nice blue fluid)

Untitled by lol mx5, on Flickr

Untitled by lol mx5, on Flickr

Untitled by lol mx5, on Flickr

i broke one of the clips on the hood the keep it up the line, Ordered new one coming soon.

more updates and parts to come soon