Cus' NA6

[Nevyn72]

Today I spent a bunch of money on car parts. My wallet hates me. The car better love me. Or else. *shakes fist*

I hope none of those parts involves removing the steering wheel again...... *shakes head*

[Cus]

Nevyn Noooo!!!

The steering wheel can stay there until the end of time. That's where he lives, he likes it there, and that's the end of that.

Lil Red and I have had the discussion; If I do have to take the wheel off again, I'll sell him and buy another one exactly the same, name it "Lil Red" and carry on like nothing happened....

[Cus]

Once again proving an MX5 is a practical car:


Yes kids, mania parts!

Which parts? Well all of this:


But most importantly; these!


The old ones, for comparison:

Yes, that's electrical tape on the left one...

After getting the latches in, it went from a constant annoying rubbing/squeak to a quieter, less frequent, but no less irritating creak-thud. I discovered that if I pushed on the chrome domes at the back of the HT, the HT would push down by a mm or so, making a thud when it contacted the car body.

I got the feeler gauges out and investigated the gap, discovering that it was more than 0.5mm but less than 1mm. (Clearly I didn't put a huge amount of effort into the measuring) and toddled myself off to Clark Rubber to see about sheets of ABS so I could make shims.

It turns out Clark Rubber don't have ABS, but they do have rolls of clear plastic at various thicknesses - I scored myself a whopping two inches of 0.5mm clear plastic (it's about 160cm wide) for the grand price of nothing.


Some quick eyeballing and some cuts later, and I had a pair of these: (nb: not in final form)


The passenger side fit snugly and stopped the HT moving, but the driver's side needed a second shim. I'll see if I can move the shims to below the HT thingies I just replaced, then they're attached to the HT. I was going to glue them originally, but I'm not sure it'll go to plan.

Now I'm down to soft-top rattles and mild creaking when I'm on a really victorian roads. Win. Good roads are excellent, and OK roads are pretty good! This is made all the more enjoyable by the fact that I took the speakers out of the car on friday for science. More on this another day though.

Also in my care package from mania was a hose kit! YAY! First I excitedly attached every hose clamp to every hose, tightened just enough to not fall off the hose. This actually turned out to be a bad idea. Don't do it, even if you are excited about new hoses and clamps. Just put them all in a pile, ordered by size if you must, and work from that. It's way easier than having to undo every single clap to get the hoses on....


Random progress photo. I started at the heater hoses and worked around to the front. Do it the other way so you're using fresh patience when doing all the little hoses at the front, the heater hoses are easy.


I've managed to get it all in except for the lower/front radiator hose which I'll do from underneath, and one hose clamp which the car seems to have eaten, it was on the hose, and then, it wasn't. I looked on the ground, but it wasn't there, and I've since washed my engine bay and still haven't found it.

OH YEAH! Washing engine bays! That's an adventure. The general consensus is don't do it, because boogeymen will poop in your kitchen sink while you sleep. This is not entirely untrue. While putting the hose kit in, I found some places where there was some oily gunk starting to build up, so I made mental notes of the locations, hit them all with CT18 and then the garden hose the next morning while everything was still cold.

I'd just like to point out that the attachment on the hose has been a nemesis of mine for quite some time now. It has a plastic self-locking mechanism that locks itself on and then allows a click-release so you don't have to hold the trigger. Except it sticks on randomly. Usually you just donk it on something and the self-lock disengages, and the water stops running. Not today. After a couple of polite donks it still wasn't disengaging, so a more spirited donk was called for. Slightly too spirited it seems, I broke it.

Oh well, they opened a new bunnings around the corner the other month, and I hadn't been yet, so off we went and got a new nozzle and a couple of customary snags in bread. Lil red ran fine, no indication of chaos from washing the engine bay, so happy days. I got back home and fluffed around with the new hose making sure all the spray patterns worked (they do) collected the camera, jumped in the car and ... it sounded like a combi van.

Panic sets in.

I have killed my baby. My baby is dead, and it's all my fault because I'm a terrible mother.
Luckily, years of monkeying away in IT has taught me to "panic away from the problem". Droo was on the internets and conveniently (for me) has done the same thing in the past and gave me things to try. The issue appears to have been "water in the spark plug wells" because blasting it out with the air compressor sorted it out. Word of warning, you can (or; I do) get oil in these wells, so put a rag over the top of the hole when you're blasting it out, even with the rag in place I managed to spray oily goop everywhere on one occasion. It turns to an excellent mist and goes a long way, and I'd just cleaned everything.....


So, back to the hose kit;

It's holding water quite nicely, my small cold water leak is gone which is excellent because it was dripping on the fan belt leading to random squeals. I did notice the rubber grommits around the heater pipes going into the firewall seem to be all sorts of stuffed. Also, are they supposed to move? (about 5mm)


There are other things that were delivered, but they will remain a secret until they're installed, tested and documented

[Magpie]

I too have fallen to the water down the spark plug hole thingy

[Apu]

Use a steam cleaner! I got one for free from Godfrey's (they had a promo on) and they're the best for cleaning out gunk from most places in the engine bay...as long as you can get the nozzle to reach.

Environmentally friendly, no waiting (as long as the water has boiled up), and you don't get water where you don't want it.

[Cus]

Right, into it!

Here are the pair of shims from the driver's side in their final testing form. The rubber sticks to itself with some compression which is cool. They were sandwiched between the body of the car and the bottom of the HT latch. I ended up putting a second shim in the passenger side, the single shim was working itself loose.


I cut the shims down to put under the striker/latch/things.


And then; did.


The results are better again; If this were an audiophile forum I'd insist that the addition of the rubber layer in the HT latch assembly reduced vibration in the HT, and therefore, made the ride quieter in terms of overall road noise. And like most everything else you read on audiophile forums, it'd be bullshit. But, it is eerily quiet on fresh hotmix roads now. Or that could be because I still don't have my speakers back in..... It's most likely the latter, noisy roads are still noisy. I expect the shim being rubber will compress over time, in which case I'll add another, or swap in fresh ones. Who knows, future-me is capable of anything, I might even work out why there's a gap that needs filling in the first place!

Not today though. There were more menial tasks to accomplish!

I got the lower radiator hose installed, it looks like it has a bit of a kink in one of the radii, I'll monitor it for shenanigans over the next few days. It's not a huge kink, it's just flatter on that bend than the others seem to be, even after re-re-fitting it and fluffing around for a while.

And I finally got my front lip mounted properly. Sounds like a straight-forward task, except my front bumper has done a lot of bumping in it's 25 years, the whole bottom side (or what's left of it) show signs of being scraped and caught on all sorts of things in the past.


And today is our first anniversary! *makes pepe le peu love eyes*

[Cus]

New shoes! SSW Tuning 15x7.5 +30 wrapped in 205/50 ad08s.

There was a minor debate about the weight of the rims in the NA wheels thread. I fully intended to weigh a rim for further evidence. When I arrived at the shop the 2 guys working were deftly working on three cars at once, and I wasn't about to interrupt their mojo with random questions. I did get to hold one though, it weighs slightly less than a 5KG bag of spuds.

The excitement levels are approaching "drunk white girl" status, and I think it's affecting my judgement.

The steering actually feels lighter on centre, but i'm attributing that to whatever camber i have (the man told me 10 months ago, but I forget), and square-ish tyres "rocking" over, but I guess that'll go away with wear. And I do need to check pressures. And get a realignment before I go much further...

I procrastinated for almost 12 months on new wheels + rubber. It feels like it's the right combination. Excellent weight/cost tradeoff, looks alright, and it's 15" which seems to be the cheapest overall tire size for our cars if you're after the stickier street rubber.

That concludes show-and-tell for today ladies & gentlemen!

[speed]

Nice choice. I've grown to like them more the longer I've had them.
Great job on finding that perfect angle to show off your new maximum dish too

[Cus]

I knew I'd have your vote speed!

My favorite angle is just as you get out of the car and look down, there's rubber and alloy everywhere in the wheel well... it makes me happy deep down inside, where the happiness is purest.


In the past I've always replaced my tyres with the cheapest option, and this is the first car I've had that isn't a boat in the handling department. I'm glad I didn't cheap out this time. They may well be overkill for my needs, but it hangs on like a champion, and that's worth every penny to me.

I haven't had a chance to go for a decent drive yet, but one of the back roads home includes a hairpin right / sweeping left, on the old rubber the front would start trying to get away from me about 70 clicks on the leftie, on the new ones it kept held on all the way up to 90 before the corner finished. I think I could have carried the speed into the next corner, but being used to the limits on the old rubber I chickened out. Now begins the slow process of working out where the limits are again.

It's like having a whole new MX - It's amazing and I love it and it's awesome and YAY!!!

A Couple more gratuitous car shots, because I can.

[Cus]

So, this happened:


That's 29,000Km in a smidge over a year. Not bad for a car I was going to drive occasionally while keeping my DD on the road so I could go full race car. Life is a funny thing sometimes. You sell the DD so you can keep your race car, then you don't race it. I think that makes it a DD...

So to celebrate 270,000kms, Lil Red got fresh oil and a filter, a 100,000km service kit from mania (as yet uninstalled), and new pads on the front, because they looked to be getting down.

Well, that was the plan. As I was pushing the right piston back into he caliper there was a quite little "pffff" sound, and then fluid came out of the rubber seal around the piston. I cleaned it up until it looked like there was no more (I presumed it was overflow or something, not something to worry about anyway) The pads on this side also had about half the wear of the other side, so it's not happy, and has been that way for a while.

After getting my new pads in and going for a drive, I discovered there was also "shhck-shhck" sound coming from the passenger's side.

The slider pins did need re-greasing, but I didn't have anything suitable so I decided to head into town, get the lube for the sliders, come home, pull them off clean them and put them back on, fixing the shhk-shhck'ing in the process.

The shhck-shhcking was easy, it turned out to be the stone shield. I cleaned and re-lubed the sliders, and then hit the whole wheel well with CT18 and the hose, put it back together, and proceeded to the other side of the car. This was the "leaky side" - and it turns out it's still leaking, there's crap all over the inside brake caliper, and compressing the piston back into the caliper resulted in more fluid leaking out. I still did the clean/lube/clean routine on this side anyway.

Random shot of clean wheel-well:


Soooo.... we're not going anywhere for the moment. I'd been contemplating "more brakes" for a while, sometimes I'd be mashing the stop button wishing I had more stop, that's not a comforting feeling. It's probably at least a little bit related to the uneven wear on the front pads.

I compiled a list of options; It turns out rebuilding our calipers is actually pretty cheap. Unless you want to upgrade at all, in which case you're better off spending the money on the upgrade. Given I was on the fence, there are new brakes in my immediate future.http://mx5cartalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=69413

I'm not sure of the official stance on using brake pads that have been covered in brake fluid, but my internal good-o-meter reads "not good" so my new pads lasted less than 20Ks. That's got to be some kind of record!

I've ordered a set of new-to-me calipers, and will be twiddling my thumbs until they arrive. Having a car I can't stop might motivate me just enough to do things I've been putting off. Like pull the carpets out for science. Then put them back. Also for science.

Stay tuned for Science!

[Cus]

Brace yourselves, Humans!

I've been working on the car again! *Crowd groans* It all started with my brake caliper wetting itself. I ended up getting a whole NB8B brake setup from Mania posted down. On wednesday (last week) they said they had them but they were still on a car, and they may not be able to get them off until next week (ie; this week). I had a little whinge because I don't have another car, and they said they'd see what they can do. I decided to do some things while I was waiting for the brakes to arrive. The new brakes arrived friday arvo, which I was all sorts of happy about. Thank you, Mania!

So, I purchased only the cheapest and nastiest tools for the job!


This little fellow was $30 at bunnings, charges off a USB port, and can actually turn that drill bit. I was all kinds of impressed. Not actually why I purchased it, but hey, at $30 I wanted to see just how far you can push a 3.7V drill. Far enough to be impressive (it does turn slow, because technically it's a screwdriver not a drill)

"Hang on, why are you crapping on about a cheap tools?" I hear you ask.

Because I got to spend a lot of time with it. Sort of. I borrowed a real drill from a mate in the end. I had to drill 24 holes!



Seats out, carpet folded back.



So, I got something like this:





The reviews were glowing, the science is sound, and ... no missus to tell me off

So the recommended installation method is to put it together, put it on the car, take the middle out of the brace, mark the holes, drill the holes, put the middle back in, bolt it up.

Which is basically what I did.The X in the middle of the brace is also the centre of gravity, so you can balance it on something (say, a jack stand) while you're under the car, and it will mostly stay there. Makes life very easy when you're doing this solo.



Everything is in place, but not drilled or bolted yet. Getting around the brake/fuel lines was a pain in the everywhere.

Rear:


Front:


I'm really happy with how the front turned out. I'm really not happy with how the rear part of the lines turned out, they seem to be pushing against the rail (even after bolting it up) which is not what I wanted them to do. I'll be getting someone to look at this next weekend for me.

After drilling the holes I got my apprentice (little sister) to paint the holes with killrust while I layed under the car covering the holes so we didn't paint the floor in the shed.





Put I put all of the bolts in, dropped the car down and starting at the centre, worked towards the end of the rails tightening as I went, going back and re-tightening middle bolts as required.

A couple of the bolts under the fuel/brake lines needed to be gotten to with vision, so I had to jack the car back up for a couple of the bolts (I wanted the car on the ground in it's resting position before pulling the floor tight)

So, how much difference does it make? Well, a lot of little bits of difference, I think is the best description. The car feels much more like one object as it goes over bumps and such. HT movement is diminished, but rattles from things in the glovebox are increased.

I'll regale you all with the story of my brakes tomorrow or the day after, it takes me a long time to post these rambles!

[speed]

Well done! I'm kicking myself for on-selling my butterfly brace

Looking forward to seeing a pic of a front wheel with those brakes jammed in there

[Cus]

So; upgrading parts on a car (Wider, stickier rubber) can cause other parts that were borderline, to begin failing (wheel bearings). This can cause some confusion when you do other work in between the upgrade and the failure (brakes, butterfly brace, braided brake lines), and you're chasing the wrong type of fault for a week....

Anyway.
Here's some caliper porn.

They're going to get painted as soon as we have a nice weekend again. Flat White, just to see if it is actually impossible to keep them clean, and, as the kids would say, "YOLO". I'll paint them Gloss Black if they turn out to be a total PITA to keep clean. There is a very large chance they'll end up Gloss Black.

Front:


Rear:


They do, almost, not fit. But they do, there's a good space in all the right directions, more in others - and applying the brake creates more clearance in the front, which is comforting. It's almost like the inside of the wheel was designed by putting a caliper on the lathe, and then milling out a couple of extra mm for clearance.

I spent what felt like an eternity cleaning the calipers, I now know it takes me about 1.5 hours to disassemble, clean, lube and reassemble a single caliper. This is half way into my second night.


Here's a clean front caliper; This was the second one, so by this stage the caliper was starting to pick up dirt from the cardboard I had down. Of course I didn't realise until after the photo was taken, because that's just what you do.


The very first drive on my new brakes was outright terrifying. I wasn't sure if I had enough brake clearance, I live on a busy 80km/h road. I'd never changed brake fluid before, let lone completely replaced an entire braking system. I learnt how to bleed, and then bled, said braking system, teaching my little-little sister in the process so I had an assistant. In short, I wasn't entirely sure I was going to live. It's not that I do bad work, it's just I'm not always sure I do good work - and "brakes" is one of those systems you sort of need to get right every time. So, by the time I was up to 40 clicks there was a horrifying scream coming from ... somewhere. It may have been me.

I indicated and pulled over, climbing out to inspect what I imagined was going to be one of my wheels looking like it's been on a lathe, complete with metal shavings strewn about everywhere. Things get serious in my head sometimes. It turned out to be the rear/left stone shield rubbing on the rotor.

After sorting that out, my first hard right corner (I'd determined the brakes both worked and held fluid by this point) elicited a horrific knocking/scraping/thudding sound. I chased the sound around for a week thinking it was some clearance issue with the wheels and brakes. Eventually I tried some 16" wheels and discovered the noise remained, so in the end I decided it was the wheel bearings.

I replaced the fronts because they were going to be the easiest, and I couldn't actually identify the source of the noise; and while they were pretty dodgy, they aren't the culprits so I have rear bearings on their way tomorrow, which should sort it out. I discovered while I was doing the hubs that I had four 30mm sockets, and zero 29mm sockets. One of my mates drives a tool van for one of the local shops and delivered a 6-sided 29mm socket right to my driveway. He also "happened" to have a cordless rattle gun in the truck...

My habit of cleaning things as I take them off the car has meant due to the numerous times I've had the wheels & calipers off the car, all of those nuts & bolts have beautiful clean threads so you only need tools to start & finish them, then it's all fingers - which stay clean because everything's already clean. Sure, my rims are dirty, but everything they're attached to is spotless

[Cus]

After putting it off for months, today I pulled the arduino out of the car, then the radio, then tidied the wires under the dash, then flashed a new firmware on the arduino, wired a new 12V relay to the arduino, put the arduino back in the car, put the radio back, put the dash back together, and now I can put my windows up and down without a key!

The arduino gets to come out again soon, I've discovered the auto-up code for the driver's side isn't triggering a stop properly, which means no auto-windows-up-on-lock just yet. I suspect it's a calibration issue, the windows seem to draw less current when the motor isn't running, which means I get to make a second set of end-stop tables so I can detect an end-stop while the car is either running or not.

Fun facts about MX5 power windows: They come with a 30A fuse, but will run quite fine through a 15A fuse, and no individual window will draw more than 10A at a time, so 10A relays will work fine if you're replacing the switches(*).

*: trying to make the window move past an end stop can draw very close to 10A, so don't hold the button down if you're at the endstop already, you might let the smoke out. (unless you "happen" to have some kind of over-current detector, there is none standard in an MX5)

Arduino firmware changes:

• Auto up/down enabled.
• Windows up/down timeouts tweaked (windows would not always go right up).
• Lights "on" is slightly brighter.
• Powers on/off external relay for power window power.
• Shortened length of RingBuffer averager (8)
• Made courtesy mode on the interior lights longer

[gslender]

Pushed the code to GitHub?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk