Nick's NA6 - many shades of Smurf

ave · Postby **ave** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 1:55 pm

Hi everyone,
Contained within is my somewhat delayed (5 years and two months to be exact) MX-5 ownership diary. I've avoided labelling this a build thread, as I've not really built anything and I think my car has probably ended up worse than how it started, but nevertheless I'm more than a little bit attached to it. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I've enjoyed experiencing it.

Since everyone likes pictures, we'll jump to the present day (well not quite today).

Now let's travel back to 2006 and see how this started. My first car was a 1989 Honda Prelude, yes I can hear the groans, muttering and disapproval through the internet, however even to this day I still contest that it was an awesome first car. It had awesome wedge styling, pop up lights, super easy to park with mechanical 4WS, perhaps a tiny bit faster than my MX-5, and the handling was above average for what it was (Honda's second tier semi luxury personal coupe).

Time for a pictar

the back end

Despite my incompetence behind the wheel after not very long I wanted something with a manual transmission, better handling and something I could tinker with if I felt like it. After much browsing of the interwebs I set my sights on getting an MX-5. I guess I don't need to preach to the converted but I was attracted by the good reviews of it's handling (that Wheels article from back in 1989), simple mechanical layout, good build quality (although not quite as good as that Honda), reliability and in no small part by the support/community on this forum.

At this stage I was in TAFE, working nightfill at Safeway and could only drive auto because no one in my family had a manual car. Over the next two years I saved hard, took a few manual driving lessons and then sat the test to get the restriction removed from my P's so that I could drive a manual.

Then in July 2009 this happened:

I wanted to keep the Prelude as a daily driver and the MX-5 was going to be my toy for the weekends.

ave · Postby **ave** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 2:21 pm

The question begs, how did this happen?
Originally I wanted to get a BRG LE, but I found the best of those to be out of my budget, and for some reason I didn't want a red one (even though red is the fastest). I checked out a few MX-5s and then 93_Clubman posted a link to this car, I went down to Seaford to check it out and was pretty impressed with what I saw. I was looking at a 1990 Mariner Blue NA6 with 133xxx km on the clock, it appeared to be pretty clean and straight, had no a/c or p/s, but that didn't really bother me, more importantly it came with a hard top. The owners had some kind of service records, it drove very well and passed a RACV check with flying colours. The only issue was the tyres were barely roadworthy and the seller said they had planned to replace them prior to the sale anyway. So after a bit of a discussion we agreed on a price and that instead of replacing the tyres with cheapies they would have a brand new set of RE001s fitted before I picked the car up.

I actually don't have any pictures of the car on the day that I got it, but not long after I headed out to a favourite haunt with a mate to take some pics.

ave · Postby **ave** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 2:44 pm

Now that I'd had a bit of time to acquaint myself with my MX-5 I realised a few things:
1) Someone in the past had cared for the car, there were numerous paint chips on the nose, leading edge of the bonnet, door edges and roof, most of which had been touched up using a blue which was a little bit darker than my car. The underside of the car was reasonably clean and I even found a spare key taped to the body.
2) The car had been in at least one accident in the past since when you look at it in the sun there's probably at least three different shades of blue. Colour matching aside the accident damage was repaired properly as I couldn't find any weld seams that shouldn't be there or other evidence of bodgey repairs. It just needed a good cut, polish, wax to freshen up the colour a bit.
3) The interior of the car stunk!

Whilst vacuuming I discovered the cause of this stench - the passenger side footwell was full of water. Somehow I'd missed this during my initial inspection, but there was about 2cm of water in the passenger footwell. The padding/insulation under the carpet helped to hide it and when I checked the driver's side was also damp. So out came the carpet!

Initially I didn't realise how much water was sitting in there so I tried to use a hair dryer to dry the carpet - fail! So I pulled the carpet out and all the soggy insulation went in the bin.

Found a few small spots of metal cancer, which I sanded and put rust converter on.

The ECU cover was so badly rusted that I had to replace it, here's the old one:

A little bit of reading on here told me that my drain tubes needed to be cleaned out. I first used a coat hanger and then a piece of yellow tongue and removed lots and lots of leaves and pine needles. Also in for attention was the vent in the cowl, and behind all the mudflaps.

After a thorough cleaning I gave the car a clay bar treatment, very mild cut, polish and wax. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of this process, but it removed the oxidation, brought back some depth to the colour and the wax helped to hide some of the scratches and touch ups.

ave · Postby **ave** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 3:12 pm

My first modification/improvement (debatable) was to move the numberplate out of the way. It occupied most of the "mouth" in the bumper and the bracket which held it on was terrible, so that went in the bin.

I made up my own very simple bracket out of aluminium which I fitted onto one of the tie down hooks.

Unfortunately one of the down sides of not having a garage is that everytime it would rain I would end up with water spots all over the front of the car. If it had been dry for a few weeks and then rained then they would turn into dirty spots as above.

The other thing I did which I don't have photos of is, was to change the radio over. The car came with a really gaudy looking head unit and a 6 stacker in the boot. I really wanted an OEM head unit, but after searching and only finding ones that didn't work, I decided to go for the simplest of aftermarket units. I found a Pioneer one with green back lighting and a mostly black front. The wires behind the old head unit were a mess, so I rewired the plugs to be ISO, and then used and ISO to Pioneer converter cable so everything is just plug and play and if I wanted to switch head units in the future it would be much easier. I ended up turfing the 6 stacker as the Pioneer unit has an Aux in port.

These were the plugs I assembled

Here's an interior shot - the new head unit doesn't look too out of place.

Here's some photos from the first time I took the car on a Great Ocean Road cruise. Pop-up crew!!!
(dopey kid didn't put the lights up)

'straya

ave · Postby **ave** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 3:53 pm

Things get hazy from this point on, I'll try and keep it chronological, but no promises.

Mirror fix

So at some point I went to move my mirrors and accidentally adjusted them off the car. Here's a really brief write up on one way to repair them.

Step 1
Gently pry black plastic ring away from housing. I used plastic credit cards to do this, but there's probably many ways to go about it. The black ring locks into place with a series of notches in the mirror housing and I think there may have been some adhesive in there too. Luckily the adhesive had become brittle and the plastic ring held together.

More gentle prying

Once the black plastic ring comes off the mirror should come away from the felt quite easily. As shown in the photo below the mirror housing doesn't drain fully which causes the bolt and spring to corrode. Eventually either the bolt corrodes through or the bolt and spring fuse together with corrosion product and the mirror will literally just snap off.

Step 2
Obtain suitable sized bolts, washers, nuts and springs. I used stainless steel items with the hope that they will last a little longer. In hindsight it may have been worth drilling a few small drainholes in the underside of the mirror at this point.

Don't forget to adjust the amount of compression in the springs. The first time I did this I didn't tighten the driver's side enough and the mirror would droop whenever I went on the freeway!

Job done!

ave · Postby **ave** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 3:57 pm

Pictars and new shoes.

Dat wheel to guard gap.

Before I bought my MX-5 I bough a set of 14" x 6" +35 Watanabe F8F wheels. I tried really hard to clean them up myself but after much oven cleaner and scrubbing this was as good as I could get one wheel.

So I got them sand blasted and sprayed gunmetal grey.

Eventually I managed to find a set of matching nuts, lock nuts and caps to complete the look.

I think the gaps were not meant for 4x100 wheels because I had to trim out a small part on four sides so that you could get a socket onto the nuts. Those lock nuts are super neat by the way. They have a magnetic key which is used to remove the cover and then you can fit a special socket onto the nut. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the key, but I believe certain SSRs and use a similar system for their centre caps and lock nuts.

smy0003 · Postby **smy0003** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 10:47 am

Your car has worn some nice wheels, first the watanabes and now the 14" rpf1's?
Any other nice wheels you haven't mentioned yet?

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

ave · Postby **ave** » Sat Oct 17, 2015 12:03 pm

smy0003 wrote:Your car has worn some nice wheels, first the watanabes and now the 14" rpf1's?
Any other nice wheels you haven't mentioned yet?

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Unfortunately aside from the standard "daisy" wheels those are all I have.

smy0003 · Postby **smy0003** » Sat Oct 17, 2015 6:26 pm

Still not bad going.
Easily the nicest two sets of wheels ever available for the mx5.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

ave · Postby **ave** » Wed Dec 09, 2015 2:29 pm

I'm still lusting after a set of B type Watanabe's as IMO they suit the MX-5 perfectly.

Here's a few more shots of the car in 4WD mode, it stayed like this for some time whilst I was saving up for new springs and shocks.

One thing I did shortly after was to swap the old headlights for a set of 6" round Raybrigs with clear lenses. There was a noticeable improvement in brightness as well as light spread.

ave · Postby **ave** » Wed Dec 09, 2015 2:51 pm

In some of the photos you can see that the front lip is pretty hacked up. I sanded it back to bare plastic, primed it with flexible plastic primer and then gave it a few coats of paint. This was my first time painting anything cosmetic and I made a proper mess off it. Luckily the lip is down low and you don't really notice until you look up close.

When I had the lip off I also unstapled the little air guides and attached them with brass nuts and bolts in the hope that they'd not rust and would make it easier if I wanted to respray the lip later.

Finally in Jan or Feb of 2012 after almost three years of having the car I had it lowered. I went for the tried and tested combination of Koni Yellows with King springs and Fat Cat Motorsport top hats and special bumpstops. This made such a huge difference to the way the car handled, body roll was significantly reduced and you felt a lot more of the road (sometimes in a bad way).

Photo credits to RdS.

I'd also bought a second hand Fujitsubo Legalis R muffler some time back, and after polishing it up as best as could be done it went on shortly after.

No matter what I used or how much I polished that burned looking area couldn't be removed. I really like the sound this muffler produces, it is a littler deeper than the standard one, without being too much louder or droning on the freeway.

BlackR · Postby **BlackR** » Wed Dec 09, 2015 9:01 pm

Looks awesome. Surprising how many MX-5 owners are previous Honda owners. Was on miata.net and so many used to have Civics, Preludes, Integras or S2000. I myself have had (and currently have) many Hondas.