Hi Andy....I can highly recommend the cherry bomb mod I made on my car, it has done the two things I wanted from mine :- that is mellowed out the exhaust note and increased rpm responce above 3500rpm

I may try that, or talk you into making me a system... :D

I have been playing with my turbo past few days. I got a boost solenoid of a golf TDI for £10 and wired it up to my megasquirt as I found out the beta firmware now allows me to chose new outputs for boost control on my microsquirt. Its a fairly mature RC beta so I'm happy with that.

What a jolly it is at 10PSI and being electric boost control you get no creep or fade through the rev range. The noise from the exhaust as it boosts is insane, love it!

Cheers
Stot

I'm building up a ATB Diff into an old 1.8 open diff at the moment. Its been sitting rusty as hell for a couple of months now but as my wife is away the smell of rotten eggs on my hands and paint in the air goes un-noticed so its perfect time to have a crack at it.





I ruined one of the side bearings removing it from the open diff and all the oil seals went too.

Have you seen the price of these things if you buy MX5 specific stuff?! £50 for the bearings each. £15+ for oil seals each.

The side bearings are a standard part, 32008X, and the oil seals are standard sizes, 40x65x12 for the nose and 35x56x8 for the sides so I'm going to try using off the shelf stuff and see how I get on. £24.20 for one Timken side bearing, 2 side oil seals and one nose seal.

The bearing I think will be spot on but the seals are slightly different in that they don't have the funnel flange on them but I don't think it will cause any issues. Its not like my car is designed for the kinds of duty the MX5 was.

Cheers
Stot

Looks familiar! ;) I've not fitted mine yet, think I'll fit it when the 1.8 goes in. :D

Btw, why do your hands smell of sulphur? :confused:

Yeah you bought yours around the same time I bought mine. I need to send the prop shaft off to be shortened still too. Haven't even got it out of the packaging it arrived in.

I think the turbo is taking its toll on the poor 1.6 stuff now. Recon there's about 200hp at the wheels at the moment at 10psi and the bigger exhaust on there.

Old diff oil, has that lovely smell to it.

Cheers
Stot

I like that smell, Mmmm! Must be mental with that extra power! :cool:

Well my seals and bearing turned up.



Bearing was fine, nice quality and went on no problem.



The side seals again went in no problem and will do the job perfectly.



The nose seal however fitted the shaft just fine, but the casing must not quite be 65mm so it deformed and peeled as it was pressed in.



Booo. Ordered a genuine one for this in the end. Only cost £2 for the one that didn't work so no biggie.

Cheers
Stot

Have you got yourself a new crush tube for the pinion shaft? You can still get them from the dealers for around £10+vat.

Right, finally on top of my engine cooling. I got myself a 55mm 3 row aluminium radiator.



Its polo based however I thought I would mount it vertically for space reasons. 55mm rad and 75mm inter-cooler is pretty tight already in the nose and leaving space for hoses to pass the chassis was impossible.



I actually find this a much better solution all round, even if I didn't have an inter-cooler.

Coupled this up to a 10" Revotec high power fan. I haven't even ducted the nose yet and can hammer it along the motorway without going above 93* in the hot weather today. Previously I would need to slow down to 55mph to allow the engine to get down to 100* :eek:

In traffic the fan kicks in at 97* and only takes 60 seconds to get the engine back down to 92*. Well happy.

Now If I can relocate my air filter to somewhere less warm...

Cheers
Stot