And we're off

-

 Big week!

First - after a few false starts and a bit of an issue with the courier, the donor arrived.

True to his word, the person I bought it off has done a lot of the stripping of it and its down to the important bits I guess! As I write this it looks like this:


Except a lot wetter (it's chucked it down all day). That doesn't really matter - I managed to pull out the steering column before i finished, as well as the propshaft which are two of the critical bits I need to get off to MK to be modified. The rest is going for scrap anyway once I have the big greasy bits that I need. So, the order of work next is:

Try to get the rear hubs off. I've splashed out on a nut gun to go with the rest of my Ryobi stuff - everyone tells me it will make stripping the rest of the car a piece of cake. I hope so - those nuts had two of us hanging off a big piece of scaffolding and did NOT want to move.

As soon as i get the hub nuts off, I can quite quickly get a load of other things out:

  • rear uprights
  • rear calipers
  • Driveshafts, AND
  • The diff.

For those that don't know, in simple terms, the differential is the thing that allows the outside wheel to go around a corner at a different speed to the inside wheel. There are a number of different sorts of diff and the one in this car is a Torsen Limited slip differential which is A Good Thing. This is one of the four things that I need to send to MK, and I'll come to that in a minute. 

Then I need to go up to the front end and pull out:

  • A couple of bits of the steering assembly
  • The Engine and gearbox

Once all thats done which should be this weekend, weather permitting, I can send the four things to MK so that they can work their magic. Those four things are:

  • The propshaft (it gets shortened)
  • The lower steering column (again - shortened)
  • The back half of the differential (while the internals of the diff are pretty bombproof, the arms have a tendency to snap on the MX5, particularly if you add a turbocharger which I would like to do at some point. MK weld plates on to strengthen the whole caboodle)
  • The sump. The sump is the bottom of the engine where a lot of the oil collects. As stock, the MX5 sump sits pretty low underneath the MK, making for a high risk of scraping and damaging it over bumps. MK shorten it to lift the clearance about 4 cm, and in the process add an oil return which is important again when you come to turbo the car.

Then, I can properly get to work on bolting the new one together!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Been a while

-
Image
  It's been ages since I posted. The combination of holidays, not getting a lot done on teh car, and then getting things done in fits and starts has meant that I am no-where near where I wanted to be at this point, but never mind. So, to recap; Last time I put something up, this was the state of the car. Now I look back at it, in that time, I have done quite a lot. Not TOO long after the previous picture, I put the engine in with the help of another builder, Chris. Now you may remember that I was refurbishing the engine last time I posted. I changed direction on that a little bit and got some professional help which I will do a separate post about in the not too distant future. The long and short of it is that I now have a nicely refurbished engine that is installed! However, the fact that the engine is effectively a clean slate now, means I can't just throw some fluids in and start her up, I need to do a proper run-in process.  What that in turn means is that I need to have t...
Read more

Frustration

-
Image
While I said I enjoyed breaking the donor, I may have oversold that a bit. Pulling the engine out was deeply satisfying. Fighting with every. single. part of the donor since is somewhat less so. The car is from just before the turn of the century, so there is the best part of 22 years grime, corrosion, and just general gunk gumming everything up. The gearbox looks in great shape. It really just needs a good brush, a clean with some brake cleaner and then paint. Check. The engine looks OK. The previous owner assures me it runs fine and there is no reason not to believe him to be honest. Problem is he had already taken it apart a certain amount. That makes it a bit difficult to put back together but lets assume I can manage that with some guidance. The diff is fine. It's gone off for strengthening, but its in reasonable nick and its an LSD which is nice. The driveshafts, most of the ancilliaries and anything from the interior are fine. The uprights and hubs look like they are closer ...
Read more

Catch up

-
Image
 OK - so loads has happened since my last post. In terms of progress on the new stuff, I've been chipping away at it. Got both sides of the bodywork finished and cut out, and then moved onto the rear part and got that finished so thats all a good result! Then finally, my uprights came back, allowing me to do this: And then tonight I managed to find a place to sit! I'm also still working on the engine - I resealed the windage plate and the sump and all was going well, until I went to torque the final bolt up to spec and it snapped Leaving this looking mostly done, but I think I am going to pull it off again, re-clean, re-do and re-seal the whole lot. Alternatively - I am hoping Raptor might service and refurbish the engine for me. I'm really not crazy about the job, and honestly they would do a way better job of it than I will, with the added peace of mind for me. I'm just waiting on Andy to come back and confirm thats an option and I'll whisk the engine away to him ...
Read more