Wednesday 27 February 2013

Post IVA plan completed early.


 As said in the previous post, I wanted to paint the cam/rocker cover after the IVA as I felt it would slow the build down, however whilst still waiting for parts from GBS I have the spare time to crack on with it now.
If you look to the left (providing it's formatted properly) you can see my cleaned up cam cover, forgot to take a decent picture before but a quick whizz over with a wire brush and brake cleaner did the trick to get the worse off.

Using my previous experience painting the calipers, I took my time with this and layed on a thin first coat ensuring there were minimal drips or uneven drying.
A few coats later and this is the finished product ->
A couple unfortunate drips but nothing majorly noticable unless you inspect it closely and are looking for them, but otherwise a good job.


But never being happy with the finished product unless it is actually perfect, I found a small screwdriver and peeled out the over-spill that covered the indented writing, bringing back the Mazda and DOHC 16-Valve. Like before I'm not satisfied just yet and want to paint the writing black, but looking at it sat in my lounge, I'm going to leave that minor detail for now as it'll  



Wednesday 20 February 2013

Waiting and Playing

Whilst waiting for GBS to sort themselves out with my bolt kit and various other little items which are kind of important (still waiting a month on from collection, which was ordered in November!!!) I decided to have a little play about with some stuff I planned to do after the build once IVA was complete and I had a little spare time to work on the aesthetics of the car. However, boredom got the better of me and the calipers and cam cover are getting a clean and painting.



As these 3 photos show, a bit in need of some TLC. Nothing major but a clean up and a paint should do the job nicely. So another trip to Halfords for some brake cleaner, a variety of wire brushes and some paint!


Not the best of cleaning jobs but has got the worst of it off. Tempted to leave them cleaned but why settle for clean when you can colour co-ordinate!




As I have got black rims and orange GRP, why not have orange brake calipers? Unfortunately, no one does orange caliper paint, or even metal paint! So a quick lesson learnt from finger painting at pre-school and yellow and red Hammerite Smooth Metal Paint was purchased and I a cut up 2 litre bottle for a mixing pot. This was going to be tricky as I only had one shot to make the right colour and making it again would be near enough impossible! So 750ml of yellow and 250ml of red should be ok (too much red and the colour would be lost).




A bit of a mix with a larger brush (ironically orange) and the mixture was made. Thinking off the top of my head, I thought the mixture would dry darker, and with the lighting conditions in my living room - yes living room - the photos have not come out too well. You'll just have to wait and see the real thing.

Anyway, stuck in two minds for thin and many layers or thick and few layers....I began with thin as I could always apply more. However, being slightly impatient (lesson learnt) I began applying it rather heavily. This was a mistake as I was left with little bumps and uneven drops. But as they are covered by the rims and require close inspection to see properly, so no problem really.


Again apologies for the photo quality.

A bit carried away meant the discs also got a bit of a lick...but not really impressed by these afterwards.


Decided that after all this, I'm no Picasso, but the left over paint will probably be used on the cam cover. Note to self: Take time with it and don't rush!

Sunday 17 February 2013

Getting the required bits

Now that my kit has arrived, mostly, it has become apparent that the things I need for the kit car from MX5 are still on the MX5...so I put a sunday aside and cracked on.

My main intention was working at getting the brakes and hubs off. This was going to be a struggle due to the amount of rust that had built up from 22 years. However, the brake calipers were rather tough and using a healthy soaking of Halfords Shock and Unlock Spray, I removed the calipers from the hubs and pulled the whole disc and caliper off in one.

This made the whole thing easier and then the calipers just pulled off the disks no problem. This left some rather sorry looking hubs which will definitely need a clean up!



As you can see, a lot more rust than first thought!


To help get underneath to the prop and driveshafts I removed the rear section of the exhaust. This invloved un-doing the mid section bolts and removing the numerous rubber mounts. However to save time as I don't need the exhaust or mounts, a sharp knife and a saw made quick work of these hard to reach rubbers. This provided much more space under the car to get at the propshaft and drivershafts.





As you can see here with the differential, I have loosened the flange bolts to finger loose to that onces the hubs and brakes are all off, I could easily undo them and slip them off. This turned out to be very helpful as to undo them, required some unorthadox and strange positions to get the first turn to crack the rust.
Here I managed to snap a bolt head off one of the bolts which has left me in a rather bad position. I have a nut on the opposite end so tightly stuck that pulling on it caused the car to tip dangerously off the axle stands! Scary stuff!



 As we have seen many times before, a lot of rust is making the task difficult. Someone needs to invent some rust removing spray....


As stated on the MX5 Owners Club forum, for such a well engineered car, this strange hub design exposing the bolt is a very strange flaw. This may require some destructive methods to remove the bolt, this is cheaper to replace than the rest of the hub!

Answers on a postcard!