Since I’ve learned much from other garage threads myself, I thought perhaps it was my turn to contribute.
Here she is when I first bought her (October 2011):
Negatives: shocking wheel alignment, lousy tyres (sounded like a light aircraft on the freeway), poorly maintained interior.
Positives: Full service history, good body work and no signs of being bent - bumper respray notwithstanding. I decided to roll the dice…
Before collecting the car, I booked it in for a wheel alignment at Heasman’s and new Star Specs from Garry’s Motorsport. No surprises with the wheel alignment, aside from being a little more direct off centre.
The improvement from the tyre upgrade (set from the dealer were mismatched Silverstones and Nexens) was dramatic; huge improvement in steering response, got rid of most of the noise and all vibration disappeared. After taking the car for a spin up the Old Road I found the spark I was looking for, with the MX5 living up to the hype.
Happy that the platform was a sound base for a track car, it was time for the first mods; a set of braided lines and Hawke pads, a hardtop (never been a fan of open air motoring) and BD rollbar. Armed with the new tyres and fresh brakes, the car pulled a glacial 1:15.3 at Wakefield Park. Not too shabby for a something that had 97kw ATW I s’pose, but a little disappointing nonetheless.
Whilst I did some research on the right path to go down (learnt much from reading Lokiel’s write up) I decided to get a set of 15x8” PF01’s shod with NT01’s for the track.
As you can see, heaps of dive under heavy braking. I’m sure there would have been squat too, if the car had any power anyway…
The tyres alone brought the lap time down by a little over 2 seconds with a new best of 1:13.8 followed a week or two later with a 1:13.1. I’m thinking the cooler weather on the day may have been the reason for the improvement.
I thought now was the right to start chasing a little more power and perhaps a little chassis work, thus the bolt-on process started.
Step 1:
Step 2:
Step 3 (all smooth so far):
Step 4 (SNAFU):
This “kit” was an absolute pain in the arse to fit… Pain in the arse, because nothing fit the car without modification; the exhaust didn’t align, the cooler pipes wouldn't clear aircon lines and the cooler itself was fouling on the condenser mounts. After much swearing, grazed knuckles and copious amounts of alcohol, we got there.
The modifications yielded exactly the result I was chasing - probably best to avoid the raw number and instead look at the delta. The end result of these mods and the tune to go with them was an additional 58kw at the wheels. The raw number was 155kw.
The more exciting bit (to me) was the drop in lap times; the first time out with the power mods, I ran a 1:10.5, with the car doing this easily. A month later I was out there again but strangely a little slower with a best of 1:10.8, and the car felt a little more flighty on corner exit.
After a little head scratching I had the rear toe setting changed a tad 2mm in, and found some third-time’s-a-charm luck, finally dipping into the 1:09’s (9.8 ) this time last year. I’ve not been able to get back to this time - thanks to bad weather and worse luck on the few track days I’ve made it to.
