Project MUX - MX5 Turbo

[Guest Garfy]

I know its not a Supra, but I've decided to start an on going project page for MUX, as I hope to be doing a lot to it this year, and I know a few of you on here do have MX5's and thought you might be interested.

 

First of all an introduction to MUX

 

He was first spotted on ebay by my wife, we were on the look out for a fun replacement for her Lupo TDi, and I was keen on getting an MX5 after regreting ever selling the one I had some 5 years previous, but if I was to buy one again it had to be a turbo, the idea being that it would be Trish's car, but my project, anyway, back to the car, Trish found it on ebay, it looked great in the add, looked like loads had been spent on it, and it was a bbr turbo, with 6 speed box, LSD, mk2.5 dash, full respray in velocity red, nice seats, KYB mazdaspeed shocks on eibach springs, looked a great car, but one problem, it was in Glasgow, (we are near Brighton) you really couldn't get much further away with it still being on the same island, lol.

 

But, contact was made with the seller, lots of photos were sent, and a deal was made, one Saturday morning we get on a plane, and fly to Glasgow, the seller meets us at the airport and takes us to the car, it looked fantastic, everything was as described, we handed over the cash and took the long drive home, it didn't miss a beat all the way home, but on that journey I realised that I would be needing to sort a few things out, so project MUX was being born in my little head

 

Here is how it looked when we first got it home

 

 

 

 

 

 

First thing to go was that air filter, it was loose and not doing much good being positioned right on top of the exhaust manifold, it was first changed for a stock item, and then changed to a Racing Beat high flow intake

 

 

 

 

Then the steering wheel was changed to a larger item, I don’t have a picture of that, but its black with red stitching

 

The 17” wheels had to go, we went through various different wheels here.

 

These Racing Harts were first fitted (and were free J )

 

 

but one was damaged,

 

 

so we changed them for these O.Z’s

 

 

the 15’s went a long way to improve the ride, but it was still far from good, further investigation revealed that the Mazda speed shocks were knackered, I picked up some yellow billy’s from ebay for £100, they were better, but it was still very hard, so I eventually swaped them out for P5’s puredrive suspension, which is very good, and I’m now happy with the ride and handling, a week after fitting it went to Wheels in Motion for a full geo set up, which was well worth doing, as it was miles out.

 

Winter arrived, and the headlights needed sorting, it had stock uk items, but they still weren’t really upto it, so some Raybrig units were sourced and fitted

 

 

the petrol tank sprung a leak and had to be changed, that was a hell of a job

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest Garfy]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I never really liked the OZ F1 cups, so I changed them for these

 

 

then came some speakers in the rear shelf

 

[Guest Garfy]

I gave the engine bay a good clean

 

 

 

and most recently I’ve fitted some Flyin miata chassis rail braces.

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest Garfy]

took it to Santa pod a few weeks back, managed a 14.9

 

 

 

[Guest Garfy]

well a few months back I noticed a rust hole under the car, and today a friend of mine very kindly offered to weld it up for me.

 

as is the way with these things, when we ground it back there turned out to be more of metals flakey side kick than I thought,

 

 

 

But no biggy, he soon had some solid metal welded in place

 

 

 

bit of temporary paint and its all done

 

[liam1]

very nice mate, got a budget of 2k to find myself a decent mx5 to tinker about with.

[Guest Garfy]

Well after my friend helping me with some welding Last weekend I decided it was time for me to dig out my Dads old equipment and give it ago myself, the last time I did any welding was some 14 years ago, when I fully restored my first car, which was a mini, but my dad was still alive then, and he helped me all the way, unfortunately he died about 7 years ago, very unexpectedly and very suddenly, when he was only 45, so I’ve had to over come some personal issues with being able to even look in his garage really, but in the last couple of years my anger, and pain has subsided to a degree that has allowed me to think about using his tools.

 

So, I go round to my mums and get into the garage, obviously after 7 years its not the same as it was in there anymore, but my mums new fella is very understanding of what happened, and is very respectful of anything to do with my dad, and had boxed all his tools up, and neatly put them in one corner, I start to have a rummage, and wow, what a great feeling, there are tools in there that bought back some great memories, some that he had made himself (he was an engineer, with a tool making background) I manage to find all I need for welding and much more, Mum is happy for me to take it all, so I put one of the boxes in the back of the MX5, its to big to shut the boot, but I’m not going far so it doesn’t matter, I even manage to find a sheet of metal, so off I go, feeling good about the task ahead

 

I get home and unload everything, then get set up and ready, first thing was to check that the welder still worked, and it did, I had to do a repair on the trigger because it was stuck on, but after that was sorted I did a bit of test welding, its not pretty I know, but not a bad start after all that time

 

 

Next onto the car, the problems are in the usual place, sill and the front lower area of the rear wing, near the sill, the passenger side sill actually had a small hole in it, so I decided that was going to be my starting point, and with it being so low on the sill I could afford to use it as practice.

 

This is the hole before I started

 

 

 

 

then out came the angle grinder, and after a clean up it looked like this

 

 

next on with a patch, I cut out a piece of metal and put a curve into it, then used a jack to hold it in place while I put a few tacks on, then removed the jack and welded it all around, you can see that my welding got better on the top section.

 

 

and after grinding it back it didn’t look bad at all

 

 

I was so pleased with the way that had gone I thought, well there is no point stopping here, I may as well continue and sort out the other problems, next one to tackle was this crack, its where the seam normally is

 

 

 

so out with the grinder again, dig dig dig, lets see what is in there

 

 

the metal of the wing is very thin, and can flex very easily, and as you can see there is also a small rust hole, so I weld in a small plate and weld along the seam, so hopefully it wont crack again

 

 

the over problem area was this small rust bubble on the rear wing

 

 

out with the digger again, this developed into this hole

 

 

after looking at it for a while I decided to try and fill it up with weld, to see if that worked, as a plate would have been complicated and difficult to hide, I’m pleased to say it worked

 

 

there was a few other small blisters, but they ground back and didn’t require any welding

 

so the next stage was to fill it all to give a nice finish again, this is a picture of that half way through, lots of filler and lots of sanding.

 

 

since then I managed to get it fine sanded and a coat of primer on it, and my plan was to finish it off today, but the weather isn’t great at the moment, hence why I am writing this, and praying for the sun to shine.

 

But I have to say, I’m so pleased I gave it a go myself, its such a great feeling knowing I can now do that, and the best bit, was using my dads tools to do it, kind of felt like he was there with me in some way

[Guest Garfy]

managed to get it sprayed, and I'm fairly happy with the result, I will get some more paint and try to improve it though, but I'll dig the compressor out

 

all in all, not a bad job I think, the only problem is that the colour is slightly darker, which is a shame

 

 

[Guest Garfy]

i decided to do some colour coding, my first idea was to take the lenses of the black lexus lights and spray the black bit velocity red, but I managed to break one of the lenses, so I gave up on that idea, (if anyone has a nearside one they want shot of please let me know )

 

with that idea shelved I wanted to do that headlight surrounds and the bits on the interior that the previous owner had sprayed silver, here is how I got on

 

rubbed down

 

 

Primed

 

 

after speaking to the paint people last week regarding the colour being a little dark, I was advised to use a white base coat

 

 

then it was just a mater of working out how many coats of velocity red they would need to make them match the colour of the car, I worked out it was 3 coats

 

 

while I was waiting for paint to dry etc, I kept looking at the style bars, and thought, hmmmm, I wonder if they will look good velocity red, out with the 10mmm socket, lets try.

 

Primed

 

 

and here is the finished result, I'm really pleased, I think it looks great a couple of the interior parts will need looking at again because there was something in the old silver paint that kept reacting which was a real pain in the arse, and I lost patience in the end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest Garfy]

and from now on we are upto pressent day, I put it in for an MOT on Friday, knowing it would probably fail, and it did, lol, a bit of welding, brake lines rubbing on front wheels on full lock, number plates, and a couple of other minor problems.

 

I decided to tackle the welding first

 

how it looked after the MOT tester had poked it with his pokey thing

 

 

Cleaned up

 

 

Plate welded in

 

 

ground back

 

 

undercoated

 

 

another thing it failed on was the front brake hoses rubbing on the wheels on full lock, but that was sorted easily buy tweaking the bracket on the car slightly

 

Just numberplates, handbrake and emisions to sort now.

[Guest Garfy]

If there is enough people interested I will keep updating this thread as the car progresses, sitting in a box in my spare room is a greddy emanage blue, once I have a wideband O2 sensor I will be fitting that, and hopefully I will be able to get it to 200bhp, which should be enough in a car that only weigh's 900kg

[SteamAhead]

Very interesting read, do keep us updated.

Like to see what 1/4 mile times you get when the car ends up with 200bhp

 

Jim

[Luxluc]

Wow ... great pics.

Nice work

[kill1308]

Lovely thread... really enjoyed reading this

 

What kind of welder did you use just out of curiosity?

[dangerous brain]

Wow how much does one of these set you back in the condition yours is now in? What sort of MPG does one turn out? Be a bit more fun to drive to work in than a rover diesel.

[Ace]

This has been a cracking read, and made all the more impressive by the fact that it was done with your own fair hand. Well done sir.

[Guest Garfy]

Lovely thread... really enjoyed reading this

 

What kind of welder did you use just out of curiosity?

 

I'm using a MIG welder

[Guest Garfy]

Wow how much does one of these set you back in the condition yours is now in? What sort of MPG does one turn out? Be a bit more fun to drive to work in than a rover diesel.

 

you would be looking at around 4.5k for a turbo one in similar condition and spec to ours, but you can get a base MX5 for less than 1k, but obviously would need work, then if you budget for around another 2.5k you should get a turbo kit and supporting mods to see around 200bhp, depends how much you can do yourself really

 

MPG, not good at the moment, ours is running very rich, its a trait of the bbr ECU when you up the boost, but once the greddy emanage blue is in there I will be able to give you sensible figures on that

[Guest Garfy]

This has been a cracking read, and made all the more impressive by the fact that it was done with your own fair hand. Well done sir.

 

Thanks and thanks to all of you that have left nice comments, by the sound of it you would be interested in me keeping the thread updated.

[Konrad]

you would be looking at around 4.5k for a turbo one in similar condition and spec to ours, but you can get a base MX5 for less than 1k, but obviously would need work, then if you budget for around another 2.5k you should get a turbo kit and supporting mods to see around 200bhp, depends how much you can do yourself really

 

I was looking for options with MX5, as I have 1995 1.8 convertible California edition one - why not to try supercharger? You can get it up to 200 bhp on 1.8 engine with supercharger set which costs around 1600 pounds all in.

[AlexM]

Nice job Garfy, keep it updated.

[Guest Garfy]

I was looking for options with MX5, as I have 1995 1.8 convertible California edition one - why not to try supercharger? You can get it up to 200 bhp on 1.8 engine with supercharger set which costs around 1600 pounds all in.

 

what supercharged is that?

 

there are supercharging options, you pays your money and takes your choice, personally I like turbo's and also with the bbr the insurance is cheaper because it was an option available through Mazda when the car was new

[imi]

Great thread - subscribed.

[Konrad]

what supercharged is that?

 

there are supercharging options, you pays your money and takes your choice, personally I like turbo's and also with the bbr the insurance is cheaper because it was an option available through Mazda when the car was new

 

I did check prices on Moss Europe, brand new Jackson Racing kit with Powercard etc cost now 2300 pounds. It's M45 blower, should be enough for MX5 You could prolly get used set for half of that, no maintenance, 100 000 miles without touching it

[PeteA]

I think I've met this car at an mx5nutz meet at a pub in Slindon back when I had my eunos maybe 18months ago?

 

It was a very nice looking car.