Davey
29th September 2012, 10:11 PM
As some of you may have noticed I now have a '95 MX5 "Gleneagles" 1.8. I have to say I'm well impressed with how well this 17 year old car handles and goes, its quite low geared overall which makes for brisk acceleration but its still capable of exceeding the UK limit by a large margin. I bought it to go hill climbing next year but as it had 10 months ticket when I bought it I thought I might as well tax it and run it for a couple of months to find out what "issues" there may be, then Sorn it for winter to sort it all out ready for next March and the start of the season.
Issues so far are a bit of welding required underneath, both chassis rails have some nasty but thankfully small rusty bits. Rear arches/rear of sills both sides need attention, not uncommon apparently and it is 17 years old. Brake discs and pads all round, the existing ones aren't terminal but they do look tired and I got a new set of discs and pads for all round for £85, good quality kit too. I was thinking of fitting grooved and cross drilled discs but as hillclimbs generally last for around one minute I reckon standard kit will suffice for now. I've also bought a set of Goodridge hoses for it to improve brake feel(£75, I love Ebay).
I've replaced the exhaust with a home made system comprising no cat, 2.5" bore pipe recovered from motorhome exhausts and a single SS silencer. This has resulted in a generally pleasing exhaust note featuring a low grumble up to 3K rpm where it gets a fruity rasp to it, by the time its up in the 5-7K rpm range it just sounds fantastic, don't know what its done for performance as not visited the RR yet but it certainly pulls well from 3200 all the way to 7K. I've also fitted a cheapy cone filter (more Ebay tat), again not sure if it helps really but I do intend to get it on the rollers for a couple of power runs. Run 1 will be back to standard exhaust and filter, run 2 will be standard exhaust and cone filter, then two more runs, one with my exhaustand standard filter and finally with my exhaust and cone filter.
Cureently running ditchfinders all round which appear to be pretty good in the dry but shockingly bad in the wet but I did get yet another Ebay steal in the form of a set of BBS 16" MX5 wheels for just £59.
Been out to Loton Park hill climb today and some nutter launched a single seater directly at me at over a hundred MPH, to me that equated to a bout a litre of poo per second while I dived for cover. I really do mean launched, he left the tarmac at over a ton, then hit a dip which got him airborne, he touched down (briefly) about four feet from where I had been standing (amazing how fast your feet can move isn't it?) after a fourty foot flight but bounced straight back into the air for the second thirty foot leap before coming down nose first and "parking it" very neatly at trackside. Thankfully nobody was hurt but I reckon he's going to feel it tomorrow morning. I got two shots of him leaving the tarmac but self preservation prevented me getting any more photos as my feet were taking big steps out of there.
D.
Issues so far are a bit of welding required underneath, both chassis rails have some nasty but thankfully small rusty bits. Rear arches/rear of sills both sides need attention, not uncommon apparently and it is 17 years old. Brake discs and pads all round, the existing ones aren't terminal but they do look tired and I got a new set of discs and pads for all round for £85, good quality kit too. I was thinking of fitting grooved and cross drilled discs but as hillclimbs generally last for around one minute I reckon standard kit will suffice for now. I've also bought a set of Goodridge hoses for it to improve brake feel(£75, I love Ebay).
I've replaced the exhaust with a home made system comprising no cat, 2.5" bore pipe recovered from motorhome exhausts and a single SS silencer. This has resulted in a generally pleasing exhaust note featuring a low grumble up to 3K rpm where it gets a fruity rasp to it, by the time its up in the 5-7K rpm range it just sounds fantastic, don't know what its done for performance as not visited the RR yet but it certainly pulls well from 3200 all the way to 7K. I've also fitted a cheapy cone filter (more Ebay tat), again not sure if it helps really but I do intend to get it on the rollers for a couple of power runs. Run 1 will be back to standard exhaust and filter, run 2 will be standard exhaust and cone filter, then two more runs, one with my exhaustand standard filter and finally with my exhaust and cone filter.
Cureently running ditchfinders all round which appear to be pretty good in the dry but shockingly bad in the wet but I did get yet another Ebay steal in the form of a set of BBS 16" MX5 wheels for just £59.
Been out to Loton Park hill climb today and some nutter launched a single seater directly at me at over a hundred MPH, to me that equated to a bout a litre of poo per second while I dived for cover. I really do mean launched, he left the tarmac at over a ton, then hit a dip which got him airborne, he touched down (briefly) about four feet from where I had been standing (amazing how fast your feet can move isn't it?) after a fourty foot flight but bounced straight back into the air for the second thirty foot leap before coming down nose first and "parking it" very neatly at trackside. Thankfully nobody was hurt but I reckon he's going to feel it tomorrow morning. I got two shots of him leaving the tarmac but self preservation prevented me getting any more photos as my feet were taking big steps out of there.
D.