Lachstock and Four Turbo Charged Cylinders ['04 NB SE]

[smy0003]

Shouldn't have to though. With the exchange rate and shipping you can guess it wasn't cheap.

Sent from my LG-H815

[speed]

No he shouldn't but if he gets a refund and the supplier is unable to send one that lines up, it could be worth while.

Sent from my GT-I9506 using Tapatalk

[ManiacLachy]

Argh! Been meaning to update for a few weeks now, but been lazy. I started a post but it grew massive, so I'll try to keep this short. If anyone would like further elaboration on anything, please ask, but it's all pretty straight forward.

No word back from Garage Star re: the brake master stopper after 2 emails. Nothing much more to be done there, I just won't buy from them again.

At the dodgy day, Magpie and I put the car up on the scales and weighed it, came in at 1143kg without driver and with 3/4 tank. Kinda heavy, but to be expected. Then we adjusted the ride heights to be even side to side, with a bit of rake front to back. Ended up a little higher overall, which I wanted and a 51/49% F/R ratio. My garage floor isn't straight so my attempts at home were always useless. Also, removed the windows to clean the runners and replace the bushing with Rolley's delrin part. My bushing was fine other than being caked in sticky grease, but replaced anyway. Windows much faster now!


Full tank, no driver - decently light for a car, but kinda heavy for an MX-5

While the door cards were off, I removed the driver's door pull handle. I've always felt like I needed more knee room next to the door and the handle was taking up valuable real-estate. It worked well, I gained a lot of room, and it was more comfortable to drive. However, the lack of handle was quite ugly and I do need a door pull of some sort. As a proof of concept it though, it was a success. A door car project is in my future!


You ain't got no alibi, you're ugly!


Man-spreading mod

The MS3 bypasses the immobiliser, and results in a constantly flashing light on the dash. It gets annoying, and distracting. So I pulled the cluster out and removed the bulb. I was going to store it somewhere for safe-keeping, but then noticed an un-used slot where the fog-light indicator should be, so I put the bulb there. It'll never light up as it is right now, but I won't forget where I put it and lose it either. Pulling the cluster was a little intimidating, but ultimately quite easy.


Bulb moved from top left to the empty spot bottom middle

I wanted to move back to my original radio antenna from my current shorty, get back a more classic look. Unfortunately the shorty has scratched the paint quite a bit, and it's too obvious with the original's smaller foot print. One day I'll get the car's paint taken care of properly, but until then I'll continue to rock the shorty.




It's been a big year for the little car, spent more money than I probably should have, but achieved a lot of things I've had on the list for a long time. Next year I'll try to reign in the spend, and fine tune things a little more. There are a couple of things that I've purchased, but not yet completed, so I hope to get to them too!

[Magpie]

Happy to help!

[ManiacLachy]

Happy to help!

I always very much appreciate the hospitality extended by you and Tess!

You haven't seen the last of me

[Magpie]

Hopefully I will not see you again this year


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[ManiacLachy]

While I would like to rise to that challenge, I have to work tomorrow

[Magpie]

Feel free to pop over, as you have seen my car needs some attention.

[SKYHI]

Just catching up on all this now, been a a very "interesting" few months for me, which has mean't no time to drive the MX5, let alone trawl the forums.

On the plus side, I now have the money to go down a very similar path with my SE, and rang Dann on Monday to start the ball rolling I will however just take the car to Dann, leave it for a couple of weeks for him to do the work and then pick it up when it's all done. I'm just too time poor to do it myself right now. At least I do have a nice daily to drive though in the meantime



Great to see the results you achieved, as I'm now going MS3 and sticking with the IHI turbo for now as well. Love the look of the airbox, think I'll have to add that to the list of things to do for Dann as well.

Really need to catch up with you again and meet some of the other guys who frequent the forum.

[ManiacLachy]

I've seen you stat to stick your head up once again. I'm glad you didn't get bored and flip the SE.

Dann does great work, if you can just leave the car with him until he tells you it's ready. The more time he has with it, the better it'll be. I put him on a rush as the SE is my daily and I only had a week off. I'm still fiddling and tweaking the tune for driveability, but I've learned a lot, it can be frustrating but also rewarding.

I don't know for sure if I can make it, but the Cars & Coffee is coming up this weekend. And I think the All Japanese Classic day is just around the corner too, it's a car meet at Banyo, focused on 25+ year old Japanese cars. Ours don't qualify yet but there will be plenty of MX-5s there, and there is an All Japanese day later in the year.

That Skoda would make a comfortable daily driver, I'm sure!

[SKYHI]

The SE is definitely a keeper for now . Just needed the time and money to get it sorted, and then get it out for some runs and track days, hopefully this year. Will leave it with Dann for as long as it takes to get it right. Don't want to be making another trip down there any time soon, so do it right the first time.

Yep, the Skoda is a nice daily, especially in RS guise. Planning to take it for a run to Cars N Coffee at this stage, as I have two passengers to take this time around.

I can really only take the MX5 out for a run every second weekend at this stage, as I have my daughter every other weekend, but hopefully a few things will line up and we can catch up soon.

[ManiacLachy]

Over due update time! Though not too much has happened to be honest.

At the end of last year I finally installed the Lotus Elise seats I bought early last year. I picked up a set of used NA seat rails and a set of Flipside Customs seat brackets to mount them in the car. A quick flip through my photobucket shows I didn't ever actually take photos of any of it though! I'll get around to that soon, because the Internet loves photos
http://www.flipsidecustoms.com/mazda-miata/lotus-elise-seat-bracket-set

The seats are good, they'll stay. They definitely sit me lower, I had to adjust all my mirrors and there's a lot more room over my head now with the roof up. In fact I've just re-installed my sun visors as I now look out the middle of the windshield and their presence will no longer rob me of valuable sight! Also, the head rests are nice and high, my head is well protected from the roll bar now. Unfortunately I didn't gain as much knee to wheel clearance as I'd hoped because the seat mounts have a little more lay-back than I'd otherwise use, raising the angle of the legs. If I wanted to go lower I'd have to lose the seat rails.

The seats are hard, though they are Probax seats the padding is pretty much gone - you REALLY don't want to drop into these seats - a reupholster is in their future. However once I've settled into the seat it's quite comfortable and holds me in place very nicely. There's great feedback from the car through the seat of the pants feel, much more communicative.

The seat alignments do need a little adjustment though, the passenger needs to be placed a little more outboard, and the drivers needs a slight change in angle. The brackets are quite fiddly and there's very little clearance to the rails, I might need to massage a few things

To top it off, I lost 4kg per seat!



Comparison of seat weights between stock SE Seat and Lotus Elise seat (both with complete mounting hardware on slider rails)

My girlfriend is yet to sit in them and I'm sure she'll like the car even less now! These seats are not woman hip friendly.

I've also replaced my shift knob with a Voodoo knob from "Knobmeister". My old Blox knob had a great weight to it, but it sat too high I felt it looked awkward, and the shape just wasn't my thing. The Voodoo is lighter, but is counter-sunk for a low height and the ball shape fits nicely in my palm. "Knobmeister" provide laser engraving for the shift pattern, and I think it looks awesome. Lokiel has one of these in his car, and actually lent me a plain Voodoo some time ago and together I was convinced this knob was needed. Now I need the Voodoo park brake handle to finish the set.


http://www.knobmeister.com/page14.php?view=productPage&product=1&category=1

Other small items - a brake light went out, I replaced it but then one side was brighter than the other so I did both bulbs! And my battery was getting a little stubborn on cranking so I replaced it at Battery World, great people there!

Tuning is on-going. It's getting better and better, but there are a few places that still need a little more work. I've learned a lot, sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's rewarding. I've never been left stranded though! I have however received two speeding tickets since getting the ECU tuned by Dann

[Magpie]

Track day soon?

Good to see the seat install is done.

[ManiacLachy]

Track day soon?

Good to see the seat install is done.

Nothing planned at the moment. I do hope to get back out there in time, but I'm not confident in the car for track just yet. I have barely even dríven any back roads lately.

[ManiacLachy]

I've been thinking a lot lately about where I want to take my car, mostly focusing on power (POWA!). But I think I'm getting ahead of myself, the motor is running fine, and recently 3 speeding tickets in 1 year (a flip of my old average of 1 ticket in 3 years) has me thinking power is just fine for now.

There are a few nagging issues with the car that's taking the shine off, which high cost purchases won't fix, so below is a list of low/no cost fixes for the car that I need to address before any more big ticket spends. I think if I get these dialled in, my confidence in the car will return, I'll use it more often for fun and not just transport and generally I'll enjoy the car that much more.

Issues
*Correct driver's door alignment
*Replace exhaust gearbox brace bolt
*Replace & repair driver's fog light
*Correct driver's seat alignment
*Correct passenger's seat alignment
*Re-affix garage door buzzer
*Find and fix coolant leak**
*Remove FM oil cooler**
*Fix passenger window rattle
*Fix passenger wheel fender liner
*Tune:
-Overrun
-Idle activation
-AE (specifically from idle and on down shift/fast AE
*Clean licence plates
*Polish headlights
*Replace seat-belt stalk spring washer
*Add felt to eyeball air vents

**Coolant leak and oil cooler removal will likely be done by Auto+ at the next service

I hope to go into detail of the issue and the fix for each issue as I go down the list. I'll add any more than come up as I go along as well.