Chris's new build of an MX5 based car

[CTWV50]

Bloody Belgians! Coming over here! Buying our donor cars! Lol!

The engine just dropped straight in, excuse the pun! Had to weld in a lambda boss to the downpipe and weld up the EGR port on the manifold but the exhaust itself bolted straight up, which was nice!







Got the AFM mounted with a new Universal K&N Cone Filter. Which matched the body work. Which again was nice!



Horns now mounted out the way to make way for the BIG rad!

[CTWV50]

I've fitted a Mocal thermostatic oil cooler, yes I did use the the old engines oil and filter! Lol



Pipes I bought were equal length so they took an interesting natural route to the cooler itself. Self supporting themselves on the bottom rails.



The cooler itself is fixed behind the the radiator, supported top and bottom with nylock nuts and m6 threaded bar.



I know the oil cooler would be best fitted up against the front of the radiator but this suited my current installation better for now and it is in a high airflow location anyway so should be fine.

[CTWV50]

I've mounted the new BIG rad in the same position for now but I have worked out I can fit it a' la' Stot in the future. I've decided to skip the coolant reroute for now to see how the car and temps behave.



Got my header tank mounted high and central as possible, all shiny and new.



And finally got all the plumbing sorted, I've run the filler to the front hose to prevent any air locks and the pressure relief hose runs down with the speedo cable to under the gearbox. So if I ever do overheat no water will enter or go near the electrics which was an issue with the vw polo header tank.

[metal matt]

Up grade looking good there Chris. But I must ask, are you going to brave the colder weather to give it a test run and I have been tempted to upgrade my RAD to a nice shine alloy one.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/124541083@N02/

[CTWV50]

Originally Posted by metal matt

Up grade looking good there Chris. But I must ask, are you going to brave the colder weather to give it a test run and I have been tempted to upgrade my RAD to a nice shine alloy one.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/124541083@N02/

The last few post have been retrospective, I already have, and it's been quite warm and pleasant for September.

But I tell you what I nearly locked up the garage and let it be for 6 months when the wiring looked like this!!!

[CTWV50]

So I got it all sorted out. Wiring got a little bit much and I nearly made a possibly fatal error by wiring the B/W tacho wire to the B/W engine fuse wire, luckily I realised my error before connecting up the battery. Also mixed up the wires on my oil alarm so it went off as soon as you turned on the ignition. I'd wired it to the L/R ignition wire rather than the L/R fuel pump wire from the fuel pump relay. doh! Also my oil pressure gauge didn't work when I first turned it over. Couldn't figure out why but then I realised I'd earthed the body of the sender when I'd repositioned it. Ha! Soldered a wire to earth from the body of the sender which solved that issue.




It wouldn't start initially but it was struggling to turn over. I hooked up a 2nd battery and to my surprise it fired up about 9pm on a Saturday. Sounded terrible though due to the lack of oil in the hydraulic tappets. Turned it off a few times thinking I didn't have oil pressure but no, it was just sticking tappets. Let it warm up and then revved it a bit and it was fine.



I still had loads of wires to shorten but before I got stuck in I decided to look for error codes using the LED trick. This got quite interesting as I was getting three error codes, 11, 14, 22. Two of these didn't exist in the two digit error list which was confusing. I found someone else on the internet with the same three errors. 14 is an ecu internal barometric sensor error.

http://www.mazdamenders.net/index.ph...ult-codes.html



The dot/dash combination was -.-....--.. then a long pause. I knew that later cars had ODBII but this car had no OBDII port so assumed it was not OBDII.

Any how after a while I thought I'd look up some OBDII codes and discovered that a faulty coolant temp sensor should be P0115.

http://engine-codes.com/p0115_mazda.html

So then I pulled the rear green engine coolant sensor. I got the same previous error but also got another set of three digits

21,11,15 or --.-.-.....

so there was plenty of ones and fives in there but also these tens and a twenty. Eventually I figures out a dash - wasn't ten but was intact a separator so...

-- was two separators with no digit in the middle so that would be zero so I was actually getting -0-1-1-5 which was the correct code for the coolant temp sensor. I then looked up P1402 or -1-4-0-2 and found it was an erg issue.

http://engine-codes.com/p1402_mazda.html

I'd had the EGR device plugged into the loom to prevent any errors but it appeared removing the sensor from the alloy body had allowed the plunger to fully extend causing the error.

So 3 hours later I'd resolved the fault codes and could then carry on shortening the wires happy that all the wiring was OK.

What a palaver!

[SteveH1]

Nice build.
Where did you get the header tank from
Thanks
Stephen

[Rosco]

looks really neat! i love how clean it all looks!

[Ianr]

Its very interesting to see how your engine fitting compares with mine Chris. I don't know where you got the room for the battery where it is. As always brilliantly put together. Are you still using the same ECU or is it another for the 1.8 (I ask co I may be doing the same sometime)?

[CTWV50]

Originally Posted by CTWV50

I've mounted the new BIG rad in the same position for now but I have worked out I can fit it a' la' Stot in the future. I've decided to skip the coolant reroute for now to see how the car and temps behave.



Got my header tank mounted high and central as possible, all shiny and new.



And finally got all the plumbing sorted, I've run the filler to the front hose to prevent any air locks and the pressure relief hose runs down with the speedo cable to under the gearbox. So if I ever do overheat no water will enter or go near the electrics which was an issue with the vw polo header tank.

I'm BACK!!! yeah it defo needs the coolant reroute. Overheats easily with high rev driving. glad I wrotee this down!