(Warning: long, pic heavy post ahead)
Long time lurker, occasional poster, finally getting around to turning my little NA6 into the machine it always dreamed it could be (or, you know, getting in that general vicinity) and thought I should document the transformation. OK, it's not going to be a rotary (I'm as disappointed as the as-yet-unnamed car).
Some background: I've owned the MX5 for 5 years, it's my first car, it's currently got 280,000 on the clock, and mostly, it's stock. At some point in its life it had a (bad) respray. It's not immaculate, or I would have passed it on to an owner who wanted an perfect original, rather than embarking on the journey that is to follow.
I've taken it to the track (Sandown, and yeah, I know) a few times, some driver training and just regular track days on some secondhand rims and RE002s:
Me not losing control
I'm slow, and it's been a great car to learn in. If something goes wrong (like, you know, running out of talent
) it's not going to happen at any great speed. I've always had my dad's track car as an inspiration (except the paint-job 
). To be fair to dad, the paint-job was an apprentice's final assessment piece and not his choosing, and it's definitely unique. 1.8l 4-cyl, turbo, lightweight and generally reliable:Bubbles are less cliche than flames
Stock it stayed, however in December (happily not during winter) my soft top gave up:
"Oops"
Replacement took me a weekend in Feb to fit, but happily it's all waterproof(-ish) again. Between then it was heavily taped up
I always envisioned a slow build, accumulating and upgrading step by step. However, with 300,000 looming, and an oil leak from the 1.6, I was faced with the choice of (a) spending more money than the car was worth to fix it up or (b) spending more money than the car was worth to accelerate my plans.
No, selling it never really crossed my mind. I've dríven a 2014/5 W310 SS Commodore, a 1997 WRX and a 2018 M140i, among other things, and, well, it's just too much fun.
That said, my engineering/mechanical knowledge only really extends slightly past this stage:
At least I know the dipstick goes in the oil, not the radiator
Given that I don't need it day to day, I started by pulling the dash:
Erm, you know how to put this all back later, right?
I was greeted by some wonderful wiring, an attempt by a previous owner to install a central locking system, and I think alarm and immobiliser. None of the above worked, and the central locking had required some hacking of the internal door skin which I filed smooth when I discovered it:
"More exposed wire is always the right choice
"It's also important to tangle everything thoroughly. Wires that could run together should split both sides of the steering column"
"This white wire... no... that one!
"I just don't even know any more"
So I pulled all of it out and patched up the harness as best I could just in the car:
Temporary patching
It starts, (I checked)
6m of electrical tape and 300km of pointless wire later...
Genuinely amazed my car actually started at all
I also started stripping useless wires out of the dash harness (foglight switches, radio which is no longer in the car)
Little did I know what was to come. With Greenmachine's ecu and dash kit sitting there in the "parts for sale" section begging the geek in me to say yes, along with the brakes to stop the car from speeds hopefully higher than than the 160km/hr Vmax I'd been achieving so far, I had taken the first steps to something I'd been planning to do for years:
"Mine are bigger than yours" (old shagged discs I don't know why we have - not just off the car!)
New calipers with dust seals for ADR compliance - Because red goes (stops?) faster
Shortly after, picked up a 3.6 diff, with complimentary NB subframe, which I don't intend to use. The NA subframe in the car looks pretty good and unless there are really good reasons to swap, I'm not planning to.
"How in the seven levels of hell do you get the axles out of the hubs?"
PS1000 and harness arrived, and I set to following all the wiring, tidying up where I could or thought it might be helpful:
"I've bitten off more than I can chew"
Pretty happy with this
Then just this weekend, everything happened all at once:
SE motor, 6 speed gearbox and HD clutch
New springy things
Out with the old
Unfortunately I have 4 coilovers, 8 top hat studs and only 6 flanged nuts for the top hats. The stock nuts seem to have a different thread pitch and don't want to tighten down. I've reached out to MCA and suspect it won't be an issue. I got the rears in with dad's help this afternoon and the fronts will happen whenever the new nuts arrive. The car looks pretty funny with massive reverse rake courtesy of the front stock suspension and low rears.
While I was there, we cleaned up the rear control arms and the gritty wheel arch with liberal use of degreaser.
Next steps:
More wiring: strip the stock harness, pull the ECU and basically just have lights and HVAC from the stock harness left over, for the PS1000 to control everything else clean up the SE motor, get the 1.6 motor, GB and diff in the car, out, and the SE gearbox, motor and diif outside the car, in.
Dann tells me pulling the motor apart and putting new rods in is child's play. The accuracy of this statement? TBA.
End game:
Deliver to Dann to breathe on and make magic. Learn to drive a car with more than 50-60rwkw. Modplates. Laugh maniacally.
)
