Yellow NA6 Roadster Race Car

rascal · Postby **rascal** » Thu May 31, 2012 2:03 pm

KIJIMA wrote:John, I'm looking forward to passing darrin on the outside (while he is on a cool down) and getting a photo of it. As you know, a picture is worth a thousand words, and my words will be telling a very tall story if I get that photo. ;)

Just go through the 12 items or less aisle when he is in a normal aisle and you'll pass him easy..

d-mag · Postby **d-mag** » Thu May 31, 2012 8:04 pm

LOL! Wanker!

:lol:

lightyear · Postby **lightyear** » Thu May 31, 2012 10:54 pm

Nice and relaxing motorsport without the pressure to perform like WTAC or Tarmac Rally. I think that's the part I'm going to like the most about this car.[/quote]

You still have to outperform the likes of rob downs... So the pressure is on.

KIJIMA · Postby **KIJIMA** » Fri Jun 01, 2012 10:46 am

Not out to compete with anyone but to enjoy myself. Have a nice day at the track and kick back and drink some frothies afterwards. :beer:

emex · Postby **emex** » Fri Jun 01, 2012 11:27 am

Nice car, congrats! Dont mind the colour either

KIJIMA · Postby **KIJIMA** » Sun Jun 10, 2012 10:31 pm

So I decided to play with the five today, more weight loss was on the cards and with that a fair whack more was pulled out of the car from what is already a light car I reckon. Pulling bits and pieces out like removing the rear tow points which were heavy made up a big chunk of it, and replacing them with a single tow strap should get me out of trouble. The rest of the jenny craig diet came courtesy of the angle grinder cutting off dead weight.

The car is now down to 873kg which I'm pretty happy with. That's with a full tank of fuel and a roll cage. I will be adding some weight back into the car, but it'll be minimal.

Next step for me was removing the foot plate that covers the ECU on the passenger side footwell. Most of the NA's I've seen usually have rust on the foot plate, namely because of the furry sound deadener that tends to hold water, that and the carpet not helping either so they end up rusting up the bottom of the plate pretty good.

Being that all the carpet has been stripped out so the rusted foot plate was fully exposed and on show, I had to do something about it. So, I removed the foot plate and sanded off all the surface rust, then prepped the rest and gave it a few coats of satin black. Then the final finishing consisted of applying some grip tape. All in all, it's not a bad thing. Much better than a rusty foot plate that's for sure.

That's it for now, plenty more to come. ;)

Postby **Okibi** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 2:18 am

Great work Dan, you guys did well to remove so much weight from an already light MX-5!

evil_weevil · Postby **evil_weevil** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 11:25 am

nice!

and where was this dead weight cut from with the angle grinder?

I think I need to attack mine at some stage!

KIJIMA · Postby **KIJIMA** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 11:40 am

Every bolt that could do with being a little shorter, every non essential bracket, every non essential part has been unbolted or cut and promptly removed. Still have a heap of things to pull out of the engine bay, for instance the carbon canister is there. Everything under the bonnet is 100% stock so there is a few more kilos to remove before it's finished at jenny craig. Then I'll be adding weight, but it'll be the good kind of weight.

lightyear · Postby **lightyear** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 4:04 pm

If you don't use seat belts, remove the seatbelt towers. Lots of weight there.

KIJIMA · Postby **KIJIMA** » Tue Aug 21, 2012 12:29 am

Havent had much time for my own projects with our campaign at World Time Attack this year, and then only days after that I was back at the creek because of another car we had entered into MOTOR magazines Hot Tuner Challenge. However, between preparing customers cars for motorsport or doing services and/or upgrades I did manage to find some time to track down some wheels for the MX5.

Not light, but I love em.

KIJIMA · Postby **KIJIMA** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 1:41 pm

Quick update: 17-9-2012

The 'yellow peril' as it's been named by facebook has finally turned a wheel in anger, although not with me driving it... :roll:

One of my mechanics was invited to go to winton on Sunday on a Nissan Melb S15 day, and with his dirty nissan needing some attention I offered up my little yellow roadster. So a quick change of engine, diff, gearbox and radiator fluid changes were carried out before sending it to the track, although we did need to bolt in a fire extinguisher, apply a battery sticker and a secondary bonnet catch (it currently only had pins) and then off it went to winton.

Unfortunately it went without a much need wheel alignment, and forgetting how kind an MX-5 is on tyres (I've had my head in Evo's so long now I forgotten alot about MX-5's) I was expecting it to rape the horrible KU36 Kumho road tyres. Fuel was another thing too, I'd forgotten how little they use. The damn thing had 3/4 of a tank when it got to the track and as it sits now in the carpark it still has 1/4 of that same tank. If that had have been an Evo I would have been feeding it 2025 litres per session!

With the only modification being a significant weight reduction and with everything on the car being 100% stock like the intake, exhaust, etc and with the power output on our inhouse mainline dyno also saying it's only 65.8kW I think i'm safe to say it's bone stock. With that being said the car managed a 1:52 something which isn't bad considering there were a lot of firsts for the car.

Firstly my mechanic Brad had never dríven an MX-5 till then, so that's one first and a big one at that. It was the first time the car had been dríven on a race track since it's change in ownership and specification, in fact it was the first time the car had seen a race track.

So the car is a good thing, and the shakedown has shown up what we already knew, the car needs the following:

Wheel Alignment
Lowering hub to guard (currenty you can do a spocker and a shocker simultaneously between the tyre and guard)
An LSD (probably of the MIG variety right now)