Cus' NA6

[Cus]

It wasn't that slippery, just wet. There's a 20 minute video of the actual drive up, THAT was wet and slippery lol boring to watch though, i was just in traffic the whole way, water er'ryw'ere!

[Cus]

In the interests of seeing how much free WiFi one can consume in a hotel room, here's another thing:


It's not as smooth as the previous one, I forgot to change the settings from trying to catch the sunset last night.

Car driving timelapses need to be about 0.5 second intervals, sunets work best at 2 second intervals - just in case you wanted to know

Road was the Gwydir Highway, on the leadup to the Gibraltar Ranges between Grafton and Glenn Innes.

[Cus]

I use to do that a couple of years ago in the Mx5 when i had more time, set off for days with only a rough idea where i'd end up, best way to enjoy the car.
This year i'm going to take a leaf out of your book and drive the cars alot more..

It definitely is the best way to enjoy any car! Little Red just ticked over 291000kms, 50,000 of which I've done in 18 months. He was only doing about 10,000 a year before I released him from the evil bonds of the previous owners! haha


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sAYBUvJaCY

This is the continuation of the previous video - this was an actual video but sped up 5x, the video I uploaded was a much better quality than what you see here, I'm not sure if it's a function of the hotel's free wifi - either way I need to cut out the entire second half after the ute passes me, he caught up to me at the roadworks, I sat there for an eternity, I even stopped recording.

Where I pulled off and stopped, I took these:

http://i.imgur.com/6AXUIgb.jpg



http://i.imgur.com/UUkwbC7.jpg

And today, I'm off to Woodenbong! *snigger*

[speed]

Woodenbong... lol

[slug_dub]

Watch out for the Lindsay Road from Woodenbong to Legume, its not great.

Come to Brisbane instead!

[Cus]

I found it slug_dub! I wouldn't recommend it to anyone with a lowered car. I bottomed out a few times, but not to the ground, just to the end of the suspension.

The road to woodenbong from tenterfield was excellent to start with, I was starting to wonder why it wasn't a known roadster-road. Then the dirt started...

Saw a commodore and a fourbie both parked "in" trees in that 130km stretch. Fun drive, I'll never go that way again lol

I'm almost to Brisbane, camping at Mt Tambourine tonight.

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[Cus]

I'm booked in Tuesday morning at Automotive Plus for a roll bar to be installed. Yay!

I'll be kicking around Brisbane-town from Monday lunchish to sometime on Wednesday, slug_dub is rounding up some troops for the age-old tradition of consuming seared animals and fermented hops at The Normanby on Monday night from about 6 if anyone wants to drop by.

At a guess I'll be in Sydney-town at the other end of the week, probably Thursday or Friday at this stage. I'm really not good at forward planning, but shoot me a PM and we'll organise something!

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[Cus]

Following up on little red being 1000km overdue for an oil + filter. It's now a nice round 5000km overdue. But I'm back in Bendigo and have my tools, so that'll happen ... soon.

I caught up with Andrew + Andrew (and Andrew's partner, whose name I've forgotten again, sorry!) at the pub in Brisbane, it was great to meet you! Didn't end up organising anything in Sydney-town, because I drove through at 1AM, and was homeward bound for reasons of excitement, which I'll get to ... sooner than my oil-change.

Woodenbong! Lovely place. Kinda. Pretty boring, but it is the home of the Yowie, didn't see any Yowies though, so clearly they don't get out too often. Here's little red, just chillin in Woodenbong.


After leaving Woodenbong I headed to Koygle, then Murwilumbah, then up through ... not sure, to the back of brisbane, and straight to Wild Earth - they had a tent I wanted, and I found an MX-Friend!


I booked in to a caravan park/camp site at Tambourine Mountain, the GPS tried to tell me to take a left-turn into a cliff, but I found the actual place eventually! I'm pretty sure we've all done this trying to find the key hole in the dark, a filthy car leaves evidence though!


The next day I was off to A+ and MCA to talk about Roll Bars and Suspension, respectively. A+ told me I needed to come back Tuesday so they could build and paint my new roll bar (Tall Boy, Twin Diagonal), and after the hour driving to MCA's old shop, I discovered they had moved to 10 minutes away from A+ - so I took some photos on the way back - why not?

Little Red on top of the hill near MCA's old shop


View of the Glasshouse Mountains from the top of Mt Beerburrum


And the path back down - traveller's tip: bring the water out of the car, it's "only" a 700m walk, but it's all up a giant hill of death. ("Mountain" in geographer's parlance)


I made it to MCA's new shop, and met Luke who gave me the tour of the shop, showing me around and telling me all about what goes into a set of MCA coilovers. The guys are clearly passionate about their work, and after talking about what I wanted to do with the car "spirited daily, with some track work eventually" they told me my new coilovers would be ready tuesday as well.

This was the Friday - I headed back down to Coffs Harbour to hang out with a friend, and booked myself into a backpacker's in Brisbane for Monday and Tuesday nights. The Kookaburra Inn, not bad for the price, and they had a HUGE German Shepard living there, he was cool, he wandered around and clearly owned the place, the humans just happened to run a business there.

So Tuesday rolled around and I excitedly dropped little red off to A+ and went to the cafe on the corner for brekky and had the first of many horrible coffees in Brisbane-town. I don't know how or why, but Brisbane seems to have nobody that knows how to make a good coffee, or a poor supply of beans. Either way, I tipped out the first coffee of my day. This turned out to be a bad move, the replacement wasn't any better.

I wandered around in Fortitude Valley for a while with my camera, in the rain, because Brisbane has bad weather, as well as bad coffee. "Sunshine State" my left foot!


After picking up little red, I set off to collect my new suspension from MCA.... but by the time I'd arrived at MCA I was nearly insane. The rollbar was rubbing on the roof, resulting in a very loud and persistant squeaking. Louder than the stereo loud, and it was triggered by the smallest undulations, even on "smooth" road. After collecting the coilovers from MCA, I stopped, fiddled with the HT latches and stuff, discovered my previous efforts of adjusting it to not rattle, squeak or otherwise make noise had all been undone, and headed back to A+, "slightly" irate.

By this stage it was almost 5PM, so I knew nothing was going to happen that day, but sort of hoped it would. I was informed that they'd never heard of the roof rubbing on the bar before, but they eventually agreed to look at it the next day. Upon picking up little red the next day, the squeaking was gone! Huzzah! Time to head south!

Or, so I thought. The solution A+ had enacted was to put spacers under the back supports of the rollbar to rock it forward a bit, so it would clear the hard top. What they'd forgotten to do was actually do up the bolts at the front of the bar, so by the time I was on the freeway, the bar had shifted, and the noise was back. I ended up solving it temporarily by pulling the roof off at servo and putting a sock across the top of the bar. The un-adjusting of my hard top they'd done the previous day was presumably an effort to stop the bar from hitting the roof. All they managed to do was undo several hours of adjustment time on my part, which is still annoying me.

ANYWAY. I made it back to Coffs Harbour and stayed with a friend, they had most of the tools I needed to do up the bolts on the roll bar properly, and the Coffs Harbour Autobarn let me borrow a socket to finish the job. Go Coffs Harbour Autobarn! I didn't take any tools with me this trip, because my old tent was too big, and I was running out of room to carry things. Never again!

Back shot:


Front Shot:


Money shot: (The design of this part is why I chose an A+ bar over the other options, it looks stronger - I'm not an engineer though, so I can't make an educated comment)


I'm pleased to report the roll bar no longer rubs on the roof, and I've almost got the hard top adjusted back to perfection. I'll make a video of how it's done once it's correct - you know, to share the knowledge.

After scooting back to Bendigo, and my tools, it was COILOVER TIME! *party music, balloons, confetti*

The reason for the fast return to Bendigo was a desire to install the new MCAs. I ended up getting X-R Purples in 6/9.

Comparison of the old and new rears.


The old and the new fronts, new on the left at full droop, old on the right, also full droop:


Difference front and back:


The MCAs at full droop are about where my old ones sat fully loaded. My inner voice was starting to worry about what I'd done, there is a fear I'd gone "Full Stance" - Luke at MCA had assured me they'd be set up to be "pretty close" to what I wanted, but at this stage of the install, I'm having reservations.

I used the "long bolt" method, there's about a dozen youtube videos showing what to do, took me about 3 hours all up, including coffee breaks and trying to keep my nephew away from the car while it was up on the stands. All-in-all, really easy.

I shouldn't have worried! Here we are, on the ground!




I'm going to raise the rear 10mm - 15mm to level out the lower control arm, then get a wheel alignment hopefully this week, and take some more photos after washing the car tonight. The initial drive was basically as expected, driving slowly is all sorts of rough, driving with some pace smooths the ride out a lot. Most of the rocking and rolling from the old suspension is gone, and it behaves MUCH better on corners. Chuffed.

The rears rub only slightly, my sister has a wonderful driveway that I was able to load up the suspension on the opposite corners of the car, the wheels disappear well into the guards, and only just touch the guards on the way past. I'll roll them a bit while I'm changing the height tomorrow. The fronts have only rubbed once, a hard right into a corner with a fairly substantial dip, sounded like it was on the plastic trim inside the wheel well, I'll investigate further if it turns out to be an actual problem.

My sister talked me into buying some Enjo cleaning things for the car - no chemicals needed, just clean water and the glove, and a cloth, and it comes up looking pretty good. There will no doubt be photos.

[Magpie]

If you were in the Valley we could have met up and had a decent coffee.

Thanks for the info that MCA had changed addresses as I need to visit them as well.

Sounds like a good road trip, shame about the roll bar rubbing. I have the single diagonal and have put a thin bit of foam between it and the hardtop to stop any rubbing.

[cookie]

Cool trip! Shame about the bar. What perked my interest was the coffs harbour autobarn. They were extremely helpful and also lent me tools and sold me a boost gauge really cheap on my last car adventure down there. Did you go to the pub at woodenbong? The dude there is hilarious and the food is always good. I've visited on days off from brisbane. Any further from the pub and it's horrible roads!

[speed]

Another awesome write up. Great to see little red developing

[slug_dub]

Awesome write up. Glad the hardtop has stopped rubbing... I get squeeking when it's hot out but it might just be he padding!


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[Cus]

Raised the rears 5mm - not as much as I'd planned, but enough to do the job at hand, which was to get roughly even arch gaps on the front and back (the back was lower)

Took it in for a wheel alignment. I don't know the specs, or care, old mate that set it up last time did it again, made some small adjustments, but mostly left it as it was sitting. I think I'm cambered out as much as possible in the front at my current ride height. We spent a lot of time talking about old race cars and Bathurst instead of little red, so a 10 minute job took 45 minutes once conversation time was included.

Then I went for a drive.


ooo-weee!


Did I go for a drive!

When I first got little red, I thought "this is the best thing on the planet, no doubt about it!"

Then I got sticky tires, and once again thought "It won't get better than this! This is driving ecstacy!"

NOPE! WRONG AGAIN!

MX5 + Good Tyres + Good Suspension =
Orgasm Face. All afternoon.

I just can't even contain the excitement, go aroud a corner, and the car just rails around and then you're done with the corner. Every corner. Even the ones that had horrible "shuffle bumps" in them are just corners now. (you know, you hit the bump, and the car shuffles over a foot) None of that crap. Turn steering wheel, car changes direction, face contorts in happiness, mess in undies. NEXT CORNER!


OK, that might be over-stating it a bit... But seriously, some of the mods I've done have added a whole new level of MX5iness to my MX5. The coilovers have definitely changed the behavior of the car for the better. Around town the suspension is a little bit stiff, but out on the road where the corners are, it's wonderful. It's a bit rougher at the start of the bumps but I'm not hitting the bump stops halfway through the bumps, and most importantly once you're past the bump, the car is back to normal and not still flopping around like a meth addicted fish, and something in my glove box rattles now, and I keep loosing my phone and/or wallet under the passenger seat, but aside from those small inconveniences, it's two big fat thumbs up and a stupid grin.

After that I got my rear guards rolled by a mate, once again, a 20 minute job, and 2 hours of talking crap. Then it rained, and I putted on home in the dark with the rain avoiding the puddles of standing water and kangawallafoxes.

At some point I took some photos too.







I've also made the previously mentioned video about hardtop adjustment to avoid rattles, creaks, squeaks and generally irritating the crap out of you, and while it is definitely my best video yet, i screwed up the audio and need to sit down and over-dub the whole thing. which I totally cannot be bothered doing... ...especially not now my go-cart is more go-caty than ever

Update on the rollbar too, now it's bolted in properly, and the HT has been adjusted not to give me the irritants, it's not squeaking or doing anything other than just chilling out and being attached to the car. With the exception of the seat being hard up against it - a microfibre cloth over the back of the seat sorted that out. I could shorten my legs, or sit more upright, but a cloth on the back of the seat is more comfortable.

[speed]

Looking good. How long g before we see forced induction?

[Cus]

It's best not to ask "when" but ... well, just don't ask lol

It took me well over 12 months to get the Rollbar I'd decided on installed, and I still haven't decided on a turbo

The receptionist at ViPac knows who I am now, but I still haven't had a call back from the bloke that does the testing. I've now emailed him.... and we keep waiting.....

Like Pantene ads used to say; It won't happen overnight, but it will happen!