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!