Purchased in November 2013.
Hard-top, air-conditioning, near new soft top, manual and shiney red.
Sure she may be a little rough around the edges but she is tidy enough for me to use for a bit of fun on the weekends. Well that’s how it all started.
Initially I gave her lots of TLC to clean her up and replaced some necessary parts to bring her back to life and up to code. Namely the alternator, battery and brackets and vent tubing, new brake discs and pads to make her safe, plus a bunch of miscellaneous items such as combination switch, rubber window seals, gear selector bush, etc.
Flash forward 20 months and she looked like this. (Not finished but a plan has been developed and it is progressing)
But before I get to that you need to see how it all started out.
When I purchased the car it looked like this.
Wheels
Came with 17 inch chrome advanti racing wheels (4x100 & 4x 114.3)
Unfortunately each tyre (although in almost new condition) is a unique tread pattern, so completely illegal and useless for resale.
I’ve never had chrome wheels before, so there was that but I just didn’t like them and felt they looked way too big for the car.
Found some SSW Tuning wheels with an advertised weight of 4.7Kg each. They are 15x8 +30
Have not been a fan of black wheels ever but there wasn't a lot of choice colour wise, so I grabbed them anyways thinking that the colour scheme still works.
They've grown on me and the only thing that bothers me now is the massive gap in the wheel arches.
Brakes.
I bought a set of OEM discs from Mania and went down to my trusty clutch and brake joint to have them fit with new pads, bleed and fluid. Thankfully my master cylinder survived and I could cross another thing off my list.
Suspension.
Purchased a set of Bilsteins with King springs. Fitted them up to find the car raised a full 60mm.
This freaked me out, so I checked every nut and bolt in the suspension to see if I had stuffed something. Even pulled them out and swapped standard springs in but that rode like crap, so I refitted with the King’s I had.
Turns out that they are heavy duty standard height. Jesus, who wants that!!!
So back into the classified section I go to hunt down some LOWERED King springs with the correct part numbers now etched into the back of my brain.
Picked up a set at a reasonable price. They even came with spring compressors, as the poor kid had managed to strip the threads on the strut nuts, making it impossible to remove the springs but optimistic he was until the end, there were 2 compressors fitted to the strut with the worst stripped nut. Unlucky.
I fired up my air compressor and rattle gunned the nuts off in seconds. Put the springs in a labled box and the spring compressors in my tool chest.
I plan to fit the lowered springs after the car is engineered, so the four-wheel-drive height will remain for a bit yet.
Should also mention that I’ve had the front and rear aligned and am happy with how she feels on the road. Definately a vast improvement over the worn out crap that I had before.
Ride height.
These pics show the difference in; as purchased, std height Kings/Bilsteins & stock springs/Bilsteins.
I also included some pics that show the not so much difference in bonnet height from my Valiant Charger and the MX5. (Charger does have a flat tyre in some pics)
More exterior pics. Because we need more pics Sorry the quality is not so great, had a mix of iphones/galaxy and lots of blury)
NA8 bits.
Seat belt tower brace, Nadi and boss, boot release, power window switch etc.
It was at this point that I cleaned out the window tracks and lubed them up with silicone spray.
Exhaust.
Started looking at headers and the various types available for my 1.6
Landed on a new set of Aussie made Hurricane’s for $325 shipped from Perth.
Then I stubbled upon a unique and interesting cat back system.
Is 2.25 inches, bolts up to the standard hangers (bar one), has 2 resonators and a single baffled muffler. The interesting part is in the shape of it. It’s designed to allow the space under the car to bolt up the spare wheel.
Now we all know the size of our boot’s and that additional space without the spare wheel was so appealing I just had to have it.
Pictures show comparision between; stock and Hurricane headers, current sports exhaust against the spare relocation exhaust and what it looks like out the back
CAI.
This is when I really started to loose it.
Was determined that a Mania styled CAI was going to give me the power I felt that I was missing. It didn’t.
What it did do is drive me bonkers whilst driving on a highway, especially under load.
Don’t get me wrong, the first five minutes was awesome but for a mature driver, the excessive drone and just the sheer volume of it was enough to force me to return to stock.
IMO the stock filter set-up appeared to give more consistant power whereas the simota with tube seemed to suffer from heatsoak relativly quickly into any drive.
Foamectomy.
We all know what it is. Taken from the base only.
Helps but drivers seat still needs more low.
Going Supercharged.
So I made the decision to go supercharged. I’ve owned a fair few turbo cars over the years but never a supercharged one. Besides turbo just didn’t feel right for my particular lady.
If ever I do another, I’ll be sure to just give NitroDann my credit card and the car and wait but in the meantime I’m keen to see how far I can get with what I’ve got.
I researched the supercharger kits available (and the costs!) and broke it down to either the BMW Mini Cooper S MP45 or the Toyota SC14.
I preferred the Toyota unit in so many ways; more compact, quiet, easy to mount and away from the exhaust (well not above it). Unfortunately the Toyota unit meant that I’d have to remove my air conditioning, which is not something that I want to do as I often attend car club runs with various vintage car clubs and we are often out in the middle of nowhere in the stinking heat, so the air con stays and that left only one choice, the MP45.
A kit came up for sale and I pounced on it. The kit included; supercharger with inlet/outlets, sc side bracket, sc front brace, twin tensioners on a plate, 10psi pulley, 325cc injectors & bov.
I was so determined that I had bought a gslender built PNPMS2 the week earlier.
Brackets and piping.
With the charger fitted it was now time to fit the 2nd accelerator cable, which required a new bracket be made. Had a bit of angle lying around, so got to cutting, bending and drilling, Works a treat.
Next was the custom elbow, SC inlet and intercooler piping. Ground/filed and painted.
What needed to be modded to fit.
The TR Lane tensioners and plate needed to be bolted to the factory Power Steering mount.
Unfortunately I have AC but no PS, so needed to source the OEM bracket. Mazda wanted $180 for the bracket and I believe that that was mates rates. Don’t recall what I paid but from the forum member that I purchased it from but it wasn’t $180 and it came from Perth. (Where most of my bits have come from).
Since I have AC, I also had an additional tensioner to those that just have PS. The AC tensioner had to be removed so that I could bolt in the PS bracket and then bolt the TR Lane tensioner and plate to that.
Measured up the length that I needed for the 2nd accelerator cable and had one made to suit for $30. I’ve run this along the back of the firewall in an attempt to neaten it up a bit.
The inlet to the SC fowled on the AC lines close to the firewall, so I chopped it at a slight angle and re-welded to clear. This meant that the wheel on the pre SC throttle body needed to be flared out a bit so that the additional accelerator cable would move freely and not catch or rub on one side.
Ummed and arred about having the injectors cleaned before fitting but since they are so easy to remove, figured I’d just fit them and see how I go, as I’m super keen to start playing the MegaSquirt game.
Removed the stock injectors and went to fit the bigger ones supplied with the kit.
Unfortunately they have square connectors and not oval ones, which I didn’t look for as they were sold to me as part of the kit. A quick call to EFI Australia in Mortdale reassured me that I could get the necessary connectors for around $35. New quick release connectors installed but this means that I would need to replace connectors again, if ever returning to stock.
Against my intended plans but at least the cost and time required would not be excessive.
The parts pile. Other bits that are yet to be fitted.
Small teaser: So I have been accumulating some aftermarket parts that are yet to be fitted.
Need to take more pics but have the following sitting collecting dust.
FM frame rails, 52mm ASI radiator, Toyota COP’s, OMGPHAM cop bracket, Innovate LC-1 Wide Band, Mazdaspeed roll bar, Track Dog Racing radiator panel thingy, coil-over sleeves for the Billies (don’t ask) and some flush mount head-lights that I plan to convert to slim line pop-ups.
Currently working on the 3rd version of the SC to IC pancake pipe. VW owners should know what these are. Basically it’s a round pipe that flatten’s in the middle for clearance purposes in the wheel well. On the MX I’m using the same principle to run the piping through the 30mm space between the radiator and the bonnet.
Why? Because I want to retain AC and although I could tilt the rad back a bit and run the piping over the top like some others have done, then I have the AC condenser to deal with, so needed a better solution.
Having a F/I NA with AC is a double whammy as the head-lights make it difficult to run the piping in an ideal location and then the AC lines, condenser, compressor get in the way of mounting all your other awesome bolt-ons. The NB doesn’t have this issue (as much) but I’m not yet willing to accept the exterior design of the NB over the NA due to a lack of basic engineering in the bay.
The most recent part to be fitted was a $15 VTPS. As a result my TPS now talks with my MS which should make tuning easier.
Next on the install list is the LC-1. Just not sure where to mount it, as I really would prefer it in the cabin and not the engine bay. Do need to get it in soon though as it is holding up tuning progress.
Have done a lot of reading up on MS installs and tuning and am finding that I’m actually picking up things quicker as I go. The most confusing part for me was understanding the basics. I’m not a techie so when someone talks of firmware and version 3.3.3, my eyes immediately glaze over and all I hear is blah blah blah blah blah just like the dog on the Simpson’s.
I established that the firmware is burned onto the chip in the ECU (Apologies if I’m using incorrect terms etc) along with the base map. I downloaded and installed TunerStudio and then some driver so that the usb to serial cable would allow my laptop to talk with the MS.
Initially I just wasn’t getting it and had to PM our local MS guru for assistance. I must of sounded mentally challenged as I wasn’t aware that you could plug a 12v power supply into a socket on the MS. The last ECU I had tuned was a Microtech LT10s and there ain’t no provision for plugging in a power supply on those.
So I go away and purchase a 12v power supply from Jaycar. Was a bit confused as to what I was actually looking at though as I had already opened TS and loaded “provided map from 11d” with something like 138 mismatched errors but had a chance to play whilst it was all connected to the car. I figured that maybe I was just to learn the menu’s and where everything is. Not wanting to bug Grant again, I studied it a bit and moved on.
Now happy that I have firmware 3.3 (You see your version when you connect your lap-top to MS)
Started a new project as a test and then this is when I calibrated my VTPS.
Once I install my LC-1, I will move on to set the base timing and then things should flow a bit more from there. My physics and Chemistry teachers never understood why I struggled with basic principles but was able to excel at the more complex stuff. This is just what I’m like at times. Clarification is very important to me as my mind see’s many variables, so often slow to start but things tend to snowball from there.
That’s all I’ve got for now but plan on updating this thread with pics as I go.
PS Is worth noting that this thread would not exist or the project for that matter, had it not been for some of the experts on here. So thank you and I hope to be able to help out others in a similar fashion as my MX5 knowledge expands.
Steve
