Funily enough I was looking at the KPD website at lunchtime and trying to decide whether to go for their fibreglass or '7 style' seats.
Can't make my mind up :rolleyes:

I did use the KPD runners, you will need 4 fine pitch M8 bolts per side too ( sierra seat mount bolts are ideal )

http://www.haynes.co.uk/forums/showp...2&postcount=19

Mounted on 25mm box. for some reason one of my rear tubes was not quite in the right place so I added a second (helps take the weight too ;) )

TT

Any chance you could measure the position of your tubes for me please?
I want to get the supports in, but don't want to have to buy the seats/runner just yet!

Will have a look for you later if I remember.

TT

I picked up my donor today, a rather tatty 1.6l Eunos Roadster.

I got about three miles down the road before it spat the pulley off the end of it's crankshaft, resulting in no power steering, water pump, or alternator :rolleyes:
The nice man at the RAC got it the rest of the way home for me though :cool:

Looks like your getting on well john, at this rate you'll catch me up :)

Out of interest how much was the gas and did you get it from starmaker? I have got a BOC contract but it's pretty damn expensive especially if your not using it much

I'll be watching this thread closely! Interested in the cost of the gas too!

My gas wasn't cheap...
Think it was about £180 to buy the bottle outright (which includes a built in regulator).
Refills/exchanges are then around £38 a pop.

You need to start a thread soon CTWV50, it'd be good to compare notes :)

Haven't done anything on the build for the last couple of weeks, been busy with far less interesting things.
Made a start stripping the donor at the weekend though, and already sold a couple of hundred quids worth of stuff on ebay and mx5nutz. I've got high hopes of breaking even on it!

Try Energas if you have a local branch i have found them to be the best. There is a small monthly rental but you dont have to pay upfront for the bottle, just for refills at a decent price

Andrew

Just phoned a local supplier an 11 litre bottle is £139.25, Quick release fitting and reg £9.99, refills £36.75. How much gas am I likely to use, no experience at all of this sort of thing.

A local company are doing me a boc bottle for £73 a year rental and £33 for refills it's 1 meter tall bottle. Seems like a reasonable deal. Erm were did you get those little plastic blocks from for the jig? And what are they? Can't find the little buggers anywhere!

the little plastic blocks tend to be the ones that hold most kitchen cabinets together so hardware section of b and q or screwfix/toolstation etc

Ahh thanks

I got a bag of 100 of those little blocks off ebay, which is more than enough! Try searching for 'modesty blocks'.

Just got a cheque for £68.33 from the DVLA for road tax refund on my donor :cool:
Makes a change them giving me money!

After a bit of a delay I finally got started on my rear end yesterday and got the diff cage tacked into place:




This evening I borrowed my mate's crane and whipped the engine out of the donor:



She's looking very sorry for herself now. Poor thing!

Always good to have the engine out of the donot :)

TT

Oooo progress, I'm so jealous. Have you sold the entire interior?

Not all of it yet, but a fair bit has gone.
Interior wise I've sold the dash, radio surround, heater controls, hazard switch, seat belt stalks, drivers seat belt, seats, runners, one door pull/handle, style bar, chrome vent rings, cluster cowl, floor console, gear knob, ashtray, window switches, sill plates, and floor mats. Still got all the carpets, door cards, and some bits of plastic trim. I'm sure they'll go eventually though!
None of it went for much, but it soon mounts up.
So far I've got about £410 back from the donor after postage and ebay/paypal fees. Another £90 and I'll break even :D

Right I'll be listing mine this weekend!:) Can you link me your sale thread so i can see the format? Thanks.

Noooo, I don't need any more competition :p

I stuck most things on a 30-day buy-it-now listing, with the price set slightly cheaper than similar items.
I kept the listings nice and simple, as it's a pain in the ar5e entering them all.
Here's one of mine
I had things flying out of the door every day for the first couple of weeks, but it's slowed down now I only have the less sought after stuff left.

Well I didn't make it to Stoneleigh, but I did get a fair bit of garage time over the long weekend.
The donor's now stripped of everything I need and anything worth selling and is ready to be scrapped.
Also made some good progress on the rear end :)

looking good john:)

Thanks James :cool:
Not looking as good as yours, can't wait to get mine off the table and on it's wheels too. Got a little bit to do first though...

I pretty much finished the rear end this weekend. Just need to add the wishbone mounts and tank support plates, then I should be ready to fully weld the chassis. I'm not sure whether I'm looking forward to, or dreading that much welding!

Got rid of the donor chassis today, which I'm very happy about, not nearly as happy as my neighbours are though :rolleyes:

Same here but I have a little bit more than you to do!:o

Just a tad - I'm sure you could catch up soon enough it you put your mind to it though!
Good to see you over on oddunit.com by the way, small world indeed!

I just got a new toy, which might slow my build down a bit.
I had sworn not to ride bikes on the road again, but a mate gave me this for free last weekend, and I might just have to get it roadworthy and potter about on it for the summer.
Not exactly the fastest bike in the world, so hopefully won't get me into too much trouble!

Well, I've not had the most successful bank holiday weekend.
First I ran out of welding gas, then I managed to grind through my grinders power lead.. doh!

Other than that, I'm well on my way to having a fully welded chassis, and I've made a start ripping all the cr&p out of the wiring loom that I don't need :cool:



I put the chassis on it's side to weld the bottom of it. Clearance above it couldn't have been much tighter if I'd tried:

A new steering wheel arrived in the post today. It's an original MX5 one, which is nicely padded and should pass the IVA:



I got it to replace this aftermarket one which came with the donor. This one had no chance of passing IVA, but also has such a silly amount of dish that I couldn't reach the indicator stalk without taking my hand off the wheel :rolleyes:

I must of put about 60 hrs into the mx5 loom separating engine from lights, nearly there now, and I'm enjoying it perversely! Can't believe how much stuff goes back to the ECU! Did you have an immobiliser on your car? Are you going to keep it?

I keep thinking! I'll sell that, then I think, no, what about the IVA!!:o

My donor had an immobiliser and an alarm/immobiliser fitted, had to pick both of the buggers out of the loom! I flung them in bin...
I've spent a fair few hours on the loom too, and still got a lot to do.
I'm currently thinking I might strip it right down to the bare essentials needed to get the engine to run, then make my own loom for lighting and instruments.

Yes I've eliminated the immobilser for the time being, just so when I fit it and the engine doesn't start I don't have to wonder if it's the immobilser. I may refit it if after the IVA if it reduces the cost of insurance. As for making a light loom I think it would be more hassle and expense. I separated the engine from the lights just so if/when I go aftermarket ecu I don't end up pulling the whole loom out to do so, Also I don't want any wires running past the hot side of the engine so it's clear for the turbo install at some point in the future.:)

More goodies arrived in the post today, courtesy of tigmatt :D

This cluster arrived from ebay yesterday afternoon:



It's from a 'new' Mini, and I thought it looked rather nice and would suit the Roadster. Plus it was cheap at £16 :D

The only slight issue is that it's controlled entirely from the CAN Bus in the Mini.
I like a challenge, so...

First thing I did was take the back off and see if I could figure out the pinout for the connector.
There's only 7 pins on it, and I quickly found the pins for GND, Battery, CAN-H, CAN-L, and the backlighting. That leaves two pins I don't know the funtion of, but I don't think I need them.

I cracked open my CAN interface and started sending random messages to see if I could get anything out of it. That was less than sucessful, so I did some googling.
Lucky for me some guy had recorded the CAN bus on his Mini, had a go at analysing it, and stuck his findings on the web. He had only identified a couple of the messages, but that was just the kick-start I needed, so I stuck my reverse engineering cap on and got to work.

A few hours later and I can now control the following functions from my laptop:

* Speed
* RPM
* All the tell-tale / warning lights
* Backlight intensity
* Position of the red-line

The only thing I can't do yet is get anything sensible displayed on the two little LCDs, but I'm working on that.

The next stage of this sub-project as it were is to design a box that will sit in the car, monitor various signals, and generate the CAN messages for the cluster. That'll give me something to do in my lunchtimes at work :D

Here's a screen shot of the program I knocked up to talk to the cluster:



And there's a little vid of it in action here (very poor quality I'm afraid).

that is goin to look great I wouldnt have a clue how to go about working all that out, good work

Clever stuff, I'm always amazed how folk can make head or tail of all that lecy wizardry...clocks look smart too:)

So what do you use for the CAN interface?

TT

Thanks guys. To be honest my job often involves playing around with CAN busses, so this is bread and butter stuff for me :)

TT - this is the CAN interface I'm using.

Genius!:cool:

Thought about changing my clocks too but sort of stopped when I realised you needed warning about break fluid, engine temp, oil pressure, and the ecu has a speed sensor which is in the clocks from the manual speedo I think. How do you get round all that!:confused:

Please excuse my ignorance but what are "can busses" I immediately thought of double decker buses and "blakey"... :o