Chris's new build of an MX5 based car

[shh120m]

now that is exactly the reason i went with a bike engine! that would probably cause me to have a nervous breakdown

[CTWV50]

YES!!! The engine still works! I only made one mistake! I put the ignition live for the Fuel Pump Relay to a dead terminal rather than the relay. Once I had then hooked up another car to the battery to jump atart it as it was flat, and tightened a bad ground hey presto my loom still works without all the other stuff, including the immobiliser. I will wait till it's test fitted to the engine in the roadster before doing anything else to it. Time to put it in a box and forget about it happy in the knowledge it worked before I put it in the box and took the engine out!

[spud69]

Wiring loom ain't too bad, a lot of that can come out - neater than the sierra. Got ours fired up earlier in the week and it sounds sweet. Just need the prop and it's having it's first test drive of the suspension around our "private" estate. Just going to modify / shorten the prop for now.

Andrew

[CTWV50]

So I've decided like many that if I tacked the whole frame together I'd end up with a badly distorted frame when it came to fully welding it, with my limited welding skills, experience, potential for the table sagging under the weight and build space, I've decided to get the basic bottom rail frame fully welded and work out the distortion in it before continuing any further, I've learnt a lot doing this and now have an appreciation of weld procedure and heat management.

One thing I have found is that if you do get distortion that needs sorting, a good method is grind back the weld on the high side of the frame put a small V groove over the old weld and reweld. The heat generated doing this pulls the frame back in to shape and I now how a frame sitting pretty much level with minimal distortion. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and struggle to leave things if they aren't right but I'm happy with it.

A few more welds and a bit of tidying up and I should be ready to continue!

[skov]

Great to see you've made a start on the welding
Need to see some pics!

[CTWV50]

Got a good 8 hrs in the garage, many of which were spent swearing at the welder, but progress was made!

[CTWV50]

We took it of the table once the FF was in place and took it for a test drive round the front garden!