Cus' NA6

[Cus]

Greetings Humans!

I am Cus, I own a Red 1990 NA with daisies, it has a hard top. We are in love. According to my parents I'm from right here on Earth (Bendigo in fact). According to most people that know me, that seems to be a cover-story. I'm a computer nerd, most of my upper body strength is confined to my clicking-finger. I had very little interest in cars until very recently, I get the basic suck-squeeze-bang-blow concepts of engines, and I'm starting to get the idea of suspension, and soon, I'll have opinions on these things. Then nobody will talk to me..... Until then...

Hi! I'm Cus (or Lucas for long).
And I'd like to take a minute,
Just sit right there,
I'll tell you how I became the owner of a car called Lil Red.

Sorry, no more fresh prince, I promise.

I decided about 6 months ago I was going to buy a new car. My first two cars were Magna Wagons, the only difference between them being the colour, and the second one had tinted windows and factory mags. So my new car had to be faster, and handle better than a boat with a drunken crew - My sister has a 2012 XR6T that I got to babysit for a week, which opened my eyes to the things that happen in a car that's not completely crap by design.

I found my car, a twin-turbo liberty. 9G's, in melbourne, recently resprayed, serviced, all the good things according to the ad. I arrange money, then call the bloke to have a look at it. "Sorry mate, that sold a couple of days ago"

Damn.

Looking further into the Subaru world, I discover that they are indeed a lot of fun, but once they break the solution is to just empty your wallet and kick the money around your back yard until your new bits magically show up, or you sell the car.

Back to the drawing board: I want a toy! As much as a Magna wagon is a horrible driving-car, it is an excellent for commuting-car, I've transported a server rack in it with the back seat folded down, and even been camping in it several times. The toy has to be somewhat reliable so when I want to play I can without fear of breaking something, and be easy / cheap to fix when things do break, and I'll keep the magna, or possibly sell it to someone I can borrow it off if I need to. But that's another scheme for another day.

I start looking at XR6Ts - I wanted a BF MkII (I like the headlight layout), preferrably an F6 (they're the ones with the most factory-installed killerwasps) ... That meant I was going to need more money, and I'd budgeted for $9 as an absolute ceiling between savings and the money the bank were kind enough to give me, I did find one, but it was a little too far into the 'too good to be true' category, so I avoided it, and no XR6T for me. While looking at videos of XR6Ts that'd been modified to go fast in a straight line, I stumble on a video of an MX5. I recall years ago having a conversation with a co-worker that went something like this:

"you can put a v8 in one of those" *co-worker pointing at someone's NB in work's carpark*
"yeah, but it's still a girl's car"

The car in the video had a lot of work done, it was fast, and didn't look like a girl's car. Very Interesting.

Queue Montage Music! Research-research, look-look, I decide I do definitely want an MX-5, close to stock with a hard top (my magna had been broken into in my *back yard* a couple of weeks earlier) I discover that you can indeed convert an MX-5 to a v8, they're fun to drive, they're easy to work on (If you've ever worked on a Magna, you probably know a thing or two about using swearwords as punctuation), they made a shipload of them (Lots-o-parts), they're fairly bulletproof, and everyone that has one loves it more than their kids. Always fade out of a montage....

I find a white NA6 in melbourne with a body kit, roll bar and a hardtop: 5G. Call the bloke. "Sorry mate, that sold a couple of days ago"

All of the eastern MX5s are priced a little high for my liking, and already have most of the "work" done. Somewhere along the line I'd decided that I wanted a stock toy that I could mod as my ability to drive the thing grew. Widening my search, I find a silver one in WA, and a red one in SA, both for 5G. The WA one has been in storage for a while, where as the SA one has recently had a service, and gets used infrequently. After a debate with my sister, it's decided if I'm going to buy either of them, it should be "Little Red".

I get in contact with the ad person, who gives me his father's number, and I call the bloke. THIS ONE IS NOT SOLD! *Fist Pump* I convince my sister to wake up at 3am to drive me to the airport, and I fly to Adelaide at 9am (after stupidly missing my first flight at 6am) where I meet a great bloke called Trevor who picks me up from the airport in Little Red, and we drive around for an hour, he gives me the service history for the last few years, and a run-down on things I need to know about the car, the workshop manual and a wordier "Find it Fix it Trick it" book. half a day later I give him 5G, pull out of Trevor's driveway, and call a mate that lives in Adelaide: "Help! I've got no idea where the fluffy-duck I am!" I'd never been to Adelaide before, and at this point I had been in Adelaide about 6 hours, utterly lost the entire time in what I think was the northern suburbs? maybe? This reporter still does not know.

ANYWAY, back to the story: Conveniently the mate in question mate owns a worked RX7, and suggests we get peterol and go for 'a little drive through the hills to see if anything falls off'. By sundown, if I'd had to give the car back, it'd still have been the best 5G I'd ever spent. The car really does not go fast. It does however go around corners better than anything I've ever dríven (admittedly, not a lot). I stay the night at my mate's, and the next morning he escorts me to the edge of Adelaide, and I drive back to Bendigo pressing all the buttons on the dash just to see what happens. Sadly there is no eject-a-seat installed in Little Red, nor rockets or laser beams.

On the drive home an almost undetectable rattle that'd been in the car has worked itself up to being flat-out annoying. I ask people, most of them say "it might be the cat" so Little Red goes off to a local exhaust place, they pop it up on the lift, hit things with a mallet and tell me everything behind the cat now has bits of cat in it, and the whole lot needs to be replaced. Damnit, that was my rollbar money - but it does need to be done for roadworthy, so into the shop it goes. $700 later, I pick the car up. The rattle is gone, but it's louder. Much louder. I am not happy with this. It sounds like a fart machine.

The car has a pod filter, and VicRoads require an airbox, so I buy an air box (and headlight surrounds) from the forums, in she goes, and fail she does. "Exhaust exceeds 90dB" it says on the report. Nothing else knocked, all I had to do was the fix the exhaust and swap the pod filter out for the airbox, everything else was as dríven from SA, pretty happy! Back to the exhaust place we go, and the soundbyte is "You had to take it to the only place in town with a dB meter" ... <insert rant about car going in to pass roadworthy, not become 'fully-sick'> ... ANYWAY ... I get a mid-car resonator installed at cost, and we pass roadworthy, and make a mental note to do more research before spending money next time.

Lil Red is now officially Victorian! Trevor had agreed to let me drive the car until it's Vic registered on his SA plates, "just don't get knicked". I ended up having to post the plates back, the SA transport dept refused to belive the car was now registered in another state. VicRoads didnt care, I said the previous owner was going to cancel it after I got it rego'd here, they were cool with that. (It was first thing on a monday morning, so they may not have been awake enough to seize the opportunity for extra paperwork)

In the (almost) month I've owned the car I've done nearly 5000kms. I've washed it more times than my current magna (14 months old), polished it, gazed upon it lovingly, and even made it a smiley-face sticker on the vinyl cutter.

I somehow managed to break the driver's side lock - The barrel fell apart (bits of tumbler are visibly not attached to anything inside the lock) so I swapped it over with the barrel from the passenger's side, and made a mental note to get the passenger's side lock fixed before the driver's side breaks again.

Next up on the list is a wheel alignment (the alignment is not bad, but the camber is very wrong though, the car has NB springs) then I'll need to replace some of the rubbers on the hard top / door sils / etc as some of them are not as youthful as they once were. Then I need to find someone to re-weld the tops of the extractrs, as there are cracks appearing on 2 and 4 at the head end. And a heatshield. Or pipe wraps. Or relocate the intake to not be over the top of the hottest part of the car. I ended up putting the podfilter back on it because it was better fuel economy (9.1L/100k vs 8.5L/100k) and the airbox took up a place in dad's shed in the event Mr Plod does want to tell me off.

The car itself has had various bits of work done to it over the years, the short-nose engine had been changed with a big/long/not-short nose 1.6, there's actuators for central locking inside the doors (I haven't followed those to see where they go yet), the rear bumper has been cut to fit what I assume was the biggest tip in the exhaust shop at the time, and most bits of wiring in the engine bay show signs of a story untold. It would like a re-spray, the front bumper indicates it's been parked "in" something (the metal behind it appears OK though) but none of these things worry me because I cant see them from the driver's seat. Sometime in the (possibly distant) future there'll be a bodykit going on it (or posibly just a lip), I'm very keen on a turbo, but not until after everything else - 15's, bigger stoppers, roll bar, some kind of slightly lower, completely awesome and/or adjustable suspension, maybe a decent set of speakers, something that connects to my phone for music ... I estimate I'll have a turbo in about 5 years if I'm lucky, I think I've settled into a long-term relationship with this one.

Thus concludes tonight's presentation. Please ensure you've taken notes, there will be a test.

___

Questions for the Gurus:

I checked to see if there were any error codes in the ECU by connecting GND and TEN and turning the ignition on - it said there were none, but I've also never seen the CEL on at all - do they stop working? or at least turn on when you hit the ignition? or what's an easy (and reversible) way of causing an error that'll light it to check?

The inside door lock mechanism is stiffer on the driver's side - is this a matter of pulling the mechanism apart and spraying some lube around, or is there another trick one needs up their sleeve first?

[gslender]

NA6 don't have a CEL light

[GTR4N]

Neither do NA8 (no CEL)

[Rolley]

Welcome aboard!

Great opening post but needs more jpg

[Cus]

*small voice* "but my book said..." haha explains why I've never seen it!

There will be jpegs, as soon as I have my own internet again, millions of jpegs!

[Cus]

Ok, so the "find it, fix it" book was the one that mentioned the CEL, the workshop manual refers to a Mazda device that plugs into the diagnosis connection in the engine bay.

It does have a list of pulses and their corresponding errors, does anyone know how to DIY up a box that shows the pulses, or do I need to perform some science? (I figure asking the ecu what's wrong will get me on the right path quicker)

[gslender]

Is anything wrong, or are you just curious? I think you can build a LED diag light that just connects to the diag port and count the flashes etc

[gslender]

Here ya go...

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j183/ ... icinfo.jpg

[Cus]

Cheers! I'd just found this too: http://www.miata.net/garage/Engine_Diagnostics.html

I have another thread where I started chasing an idle dip, and discovered that the O2 was completely not plugged in (and then; faulty) so I'm curious to see what the car has to complain about, as opposed to randomly finding things wrong and setting about solving the problem with my usual lack of knowledge lol

[Cus]

Now I've filled my friday night with some no-cost fun, I offer the following:

Little Red on our first Drive in the Adelaide Hills!

[gslender]

They look good for a car that's 25 years old ..... nice!

G

[Cus]

I made up a doo-hicky on breadboard with some long wires so I could have it on the passenger seat, ran it through it's paces, and it reported "15" (O2 Low, now resolved) - I'll do a battery pull tomorrow when my mate in the sky is back and confirm that there's nothing else going on though.

[KevGoat]

Following the epic first post ... looking forward to rest of garage thread

[sailaholic]

Your book will be American. They got cel lights and egr before aus.

[Cus]

I'm fast learning that while there's 25 years of information on my car, there's also about 20 years of that that's just wrong, outdated, pulled from someone's (possibly bad) memory, or for a car made for another country! Fun!

Lil Red got a wheel alignment yesterday morning, now set to basically zero - the previous settings were all over the shop (1.5 deg positive camber on the front!), the guy that did the alignment said it'll take a few days for the tyres to settle in to their new camber, and after that it should be good for round-town-clowning, which will keep me out of strife until we're decked out in coilovers sometime in the future.

I removed the seat cover off the passenger seat too - it was on there when I bought the car, I had a fear that there was going to be a huge rip in it, but no, there appears to have been a seat cover on there for no reason other than to make it look dodgy. Happy days!

I've been fluffing around loking at "Audio Solutions" - ie: I still don't have any tapes to play.... if someone has one of those old "tapes" that you can plug unto a discman (or mobile phone) let me know, I'm in the market!