BEAVIS' White Track Car

[beavis]

Hi Yes Hello.
So I'm sorry I have not posted up here in a while.... unfortunately I have been busy with a few things which have left the NB neglected and unused over the winter.

First excuse, I moved house. Say 'hi' Dad.


Then I renovated the old house


Then I built a new race sim seat


Anyway... I eventually got back onto doing MX-5 things. However it was my NA that needed some attention first as I wanted to get it on the road as it was a little rough around the edges before I was ready for arranging roady and rego.


I installed a NoPro washer thanks to nerd mate bartune, and filled the stupid 'air intake' hole in the firewall made by a previous owner.


Installed an android headunit for maximum geekness.



Made a key for shits and giggles. Bought the matchbox car from the US as I couldn't find one in Aus. Got a key cut and used a grinder to make it all fit.


Polished the car to remove the hefty collection of grime, elbow grease worked well. The bonnet has been completed in this pic, but the front guard has not yet been touched.


Painted the plastic headlight surrounds in my favourite of all the colours. flat black.


And new rubber flaps under the headlights, $4 from old mate Clark


And then suddenly... miata's everywhere


Giant 6foot 4inch tall mate Nick decided he wanted slimline door cards to make his NB slightly more spacious. The stock NB door cards don't give enough room for big flappy elbows when hooking through corners.

So some $8 worth of MDF and we had this


Then we glued on some vinyl which was purchased from a shop called 'Spotlight' which I thought only my mum went to.


And bolted that to the car with some appropriately located rivnuts and nice allen head bolts.


An alloy trim and rubber seal on the top to neaten it up and its all done. Just needs some door pull straps, but those are in the mail.


And to top it all off, I did a radio fill in panel for the window switches in a similar Vinyl covered MDF style.


That's it for now. Next up is to get back onto the track car.

[npcan2]

You did the best job ever on the door cards! They look amazing.
"Paint me like one of your French girls Jack"

[rascal]

And to top it all off, I did a radio fill in panel for the window switches in a similar Vinyl covered MDF style.

I need to do something similar to mine, and this looks perfect..
How did you attach/mount the panel?

[lightyear]

And then suddenly... miata's everywhere

Soo, they are LHD?

[beavis]

How did you attach/mount the panel?

It is larger than the radio hole, and sits behind the surrounding trim.

I removed this:


Then the panel is cut similar to the blue shape in the pic below. I had to accommodate the trim clips which go where the red rectangles are.
Then just install the standard trim back over the top to hold it in place.

[IanR]

wow, quite a bit of stuff to take in (just read start to this)... impressive activity!

[beavis]

Hmm, time flies. Welcome to 2016. Hopefully I will get the car out again in the next month or so.
Over the last few months, I've tried to get a few things done on the car.

Did some 'simplification' to the dashboard. Cut out anything that wasnt really nevessary, but kept just enough to keep it still looking like a dash.


Bought some Wilwoods and big rotors.

Almost installed them as you can see below, bit of a comparison on sizing compared to the factory 'big brakes' that came factory on the NB8B ... but then I donated them to another cause so I'm awaiting another set to arrive ...


I started thinking about reworking the radiator mount. I have cut the front support away and replaced it with box tube, not sure if i really needed to keep anything there at all but I figure better to play safe for now. Please ignore my sh*t welding.


I lowered the factory brackets by bolting them to the spot where the antirollbar brace bolts. You can see the existing holes ~20mm above.


And I have bolted a length of aluminium angle between either end of the now lowered radiator supports so I could mount the intercooler.
Its a 460mm x 320mm core. With the end tanks, inlet to outlet it's about 600mm and fits nicely between the rails of chassis.
There's about a 10-20mm gap between the radiator and the intercooler.


Pulled the head off to swap the NB8B (01-05) headgasket for an NB8A (99-00) headgasket purely to best suit a coolant reroute. (HG part # is BP26-10-271)


Underneath the valve cover all looked pretty nice and shiny really.


While the head was off, I painted the valve cover.


The guts of the motor all back together.


I have swapped the front and rear radiator/thermostat housings/outlets.
Nice easy routing of my coolant reroute hoses. The two radiator hoses I used are Gates #21864 and Gates #22382. Between them is a 300mm length of 32mm diameter aluminium tube.


That's kinda where things are at for now. I have been tinkering with a few other things such as neatening up wiring, changing some fuel system items, oil cooling, etc. I will try get some more pics up of that soon.

[davekmoore]

I have witnessed your driving from the passenger seat and can see no reason why you would need brakes at all, let alone Wilwoods. Although you do mention the "intercooler" word ...........

[smy0003]

Thanks for the info on your reroute. I'm having fitment issues with the Miata Turbo approved Cadillac hose because of the Brake and clutch lines being on the other side of the car to the 'Muricans.
Any pics of your hose fitment round the back of the head?

[beavis]

Some more detail on the coolant reroute for you smy

Bit of an overview of how things line up. You may see I bent up a little steel bracket which bolts off the throttle cable bracket to hold the aluminium pipe and then wrapped it in some old hose for protection.


Theres about 3mm gap between the firewall and the rear hose. You can see the way the outlet that used to live at the front of the motor is now at the rear and points in an upward direction. The thermostat is at this end of the head now.


I added some extra hose here where the hose bends around the intake manifold as extra security

[smy0003]

Thanks Beavis, will work something out with those Gates hoses I think.

[speed]

Wow, you don't mess around!

I like what you have done with the reroute. Simple yet effective.

Was surprised that the "outlet" points upwards once you relocate from front to rear, as my na6 outlet appears to point horizontal and would possibly give better clearance IF interchangeable.
I'm not sure if it is the head or outlet that is different or both as my knowledge is limited to na6 but it if did work then that could be another option.

[beavis]

Wow, you don't mess around!

I like what you have done with the reroute. Simple yet effective.

Was surprised that the "outlet" points upwards once you relocate from front to rear, as my na6 outlet appears to point horizontal and would possibly give better clearance IF interchangeable.
I'm not sure if it is the head or outlet that is different or both as my knowledge is limited to na6 but it if did work then that could be another option.

I did a similar reroute with my NA6 back in the day and i believe the outlet pointed toward the Intake, not upward.
The front coolant spout thingo bolted to the head AND the outlet that attaches to the spout are different from NA6, to NA8 to NB. I believe the rear of the head is more or less the same. So its probable that the NA outlet fits the NB, there is a chance it would work.

NA6 style:


NB (and i think NA8 is the same) style:

[beavis]

Small update on whats been going on - Wiring and Intercooler.....


I was sick of all the ugly stock wiring on the front end so I started tracing, cutting and pulling wires back through the firewall.
I did a LOT of depinning and tracing to check i wasnt going to remove something that'd prevent the car from running.
I think these are AC relays, dont need those...


Depinned AC relays


Even the Diagnostic Connector that normally lives on the left hand side of the engine bay got depinned and pulled into the cabin.


Collection of wires pulled back into the passenger footwell...


And the end result was no more wiring on the exhaust side of the engine bay, with the exception of the ABS sensor and some wires for headlights:



Likewise on the intake side


And a healthy pile of leftovers to clean up later.


While i was at it, I relocated fuse box a coule of inches further into the corner of the engine bay. I think it neatens things up, although slightly impractical. Particularly given now I can only open the lid by unbolting the fuse box, but its a simple 30secs with a 10mm socket to get it out so eh.


While I was in the mood for depinning things, I ran some braiding over the wiring for the connectors on the front of the motor.


And thought I'd show some more detail on how the intercooler is mounted.


Upper bracket extends up to the top radiator panel


Front shot, not the fitment between the chassis


You can see here the gap between radiator and cooler - also note the aluminium angle running under the intercooler.


The lower bracket

[beavis]

Long overdue for an update.... sorry for the slowness.

Continuing with some of the electricals on the car.

First up i've had the ECU apart to get a USB port in the thing.
ECU innards


The ECU has usb pins labelled on the board. Really, I don't know why they didn't just unclude a USB port as part of the build.


So I simply sacrificed a USB cable from an old PC to make my own ECU USB plug


And I had to rock out the TunerStudio to update the ReqFuel value in the ECU to accomodate the larger injectors.


Next part of the electricals was neatening up some more of the wiring on the car.
A whole heap of wires cut from the loom draped over a very dusty car (note the passenger seat has been replaced with wires)


I grabbed some of the Wiring spiral wrap stuff which comes with a somewhat unusual looking plastic installation clamp tool whatchamajig.


And with these Wiring clamps


I end up with something of a neatend firewall.


And the other thing that I've been tinkereing on over the last few weekends has been running oil lines for the cooler and filter.
This gives you an idea on how I've run the Oil cooler. I will come up with some sort of clever ducting once i have the front of the car back on.




Top shot of cooler and filter. The filter is bolted with an alloy bracket to the frame, quite nice and neat and mostly out of the way, yet much easier to get to than the stock spot.

Reasonably happy with how these are done as the lines are short, discreet, should minimise chance of issues, and should work properly.



I've sorted the Turbo drain barb in the sump:





Oh yeah, finally got the Trackspeed Wilwoods installed, pretty straight forward stuff really:





In other news, I may have actual genuine proper legit turbo bits coming in the mail soon.