Mazda MX5 Mk2.5

[Daniel]

Not much to report lately as we've mostly been saving like mad for our new house and all the associated costs of selling a house. I've kinda decided to hold off building the new engine until I get into the new house as I'll have much more space to work, plus I'll maybe be a bit closer to stumping up the £3500 for the new ECU and turbo

But.... it'll all be worth it in the long run
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That garage is the stuff dreams are made of mate! .. even the size of the drive is class!

 

[veedubnoodle]

Fantastic Gaz! Lovely looking house, all the best with the move

 

[Gaz86]

Not technically part of the build but while hunting around online for places that sell piston ring grinders I found a distinct shortage of places in the UK selling them and any I could find were about £80 for a manual one, which when you think about what you get is kinda ridiculous!!

So.... since I love designing and making stuff I drafted up a basic design in AutoCAD, had this laser cut and folded, ordered a small 2" diamond cutting wheel online alone with a short length of M5 threaded rod and voi la!!

I'm going to get it powder coated this week but mocked it up just to check it works ok.

That garage is the stuff dreams are made of mate! .. even the size of the drive is class!

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I know, I'm going to attempt a drift all the way round the house in the GT86 not the MX5 though lol

 

[FM155]

Done a few circles in front of the house, the Mrs was not amused lol

 

[FM155]

Hard to hide the evidence with a series of 'Rings Lad' painted into the tarmac.

 

[Gaz86]

That's the beauty of gravel lol not that Laura would care anyway. She's witnessed my antics first hand on numerous occasions

 

[FM155]

Aye she'd be loving all the broken windows

 

[Gaz86]

Merry Christmas to me... from me

Carbonmiata red quilted carpets

Loved the red JDM carpets in my last two Civic Type R's, really smartened the interior up

I also started re-trimming my door cards earlier too as they've been off since April. Will post up pics when they're finished

 

[FM155]

You absolute TART lol

 

[Gaz86]

You absolute TART lol

Was a bit of an impulse buy tbh, hadn't planned on anything else for the car until after we'd moved house as I've spent a small fortune on it lately but I'd probably have forgotten about these by then.

I forgot to mention I started upgrading the ICE earlier in the year and picked up a bit of a bargain from Stuart Patrick, who as anyone who knows him is very much into his top notch ICE installs! He was parting with a set of Kenwood 25th Anniversary components, tweeters, crossovers, sub and a load of very expensive Phoenix Gold RCA's, (which I think were £95 each retail), Phoenix Gold power cable and Phoenix Gold OFC speaker cables so I parted ways with about £120 and it was all mine!! Their 25th Anniversary stuff was top notch stuff. I made some MDF speaker adapters, installed the tweeters, fed the new speaker cables through the doors (this was a doors off job, total pain in the buttski doing it by yourself but I somehow managed), ran the RCA's the length of the car..... but I was missing one vital component.... something to drive it all. Wanting to stick with the Kenwood theme a friend talked me into buying a Kenwood DMX7017DABS 7" double DIN unit which comes with Android Auto and Apple Car Play

Superb unit and now the little Mazda has DAB, SatNav, Apple Car Play.... the works!!

I still need to get a couple of amps to run everything but that'll come into play after Christmas and I've already part-made the boot built to fit it all into (a tougher task than you'd imagine in the boot of an MX5 lol)

 

[Gaz86]

Door cards turned out pretty well I think

 

[FM155]

Does look well but I love that mine is the antitheses of yours. Hopefully later next year we could meet up for a compare and contrast session.

 

[Gaz86]

Does look well but I love that mine is the antitheses of yours. Hopefully later next year we could meet up for a compare and contrast session.

Yeah totally different purposes, yours is more of a rally/track car where's mine is/will be more of a fast road/show car. I do like my little luxuries lol can't not have decent sounds in my cars, the system in the GT86 drives me nuts and is soon to be replaced.

 

[FM155]

Oh yes absolutely, you have done a serious job on yours and I have abused mine horribly.

 

[Gaz86]

Oh yes absolutely, you have done a serious job on yours and I have abused mine horribly.

It was never meant to go this way or this far tbh, but I just love tinkering with it, gives me something different to focus on, especially when I'm strung out with work stuff and need some headspace a drug addition would be cheaper tbh

 

[Gaz86]

During the first lockdown when I was stripping the engine I decided to do away with what little was left of the front water neck after fitting the coolant reroute. However, the aperture for the water neck still remained in the upper timing cover which bugged me slightly so I got a bit creative with some fibreglass and created a flush timing cover. Most people probably wouldn't notice as it looks very OEM bit it tidies up the front of the engine. Admittedly I did muck this up a couple of times, partly due to dodgy cheap primer shrinking but I didn't give up on it, I've re-primed it and started laying down the base coat.

This morning I also took to re-trimming the other door card, and managed to get both sides identical to eachother

Here are some step by step progress pics....

 

[Gaz86]

Upper timing cover finished so happy it's worked out ok this time. Love this colour

 

[Gaz86]

The new Kenwood head unit came with a USB lead that I was going to leave trailing in the glove box but then thought I have a blank button on my centre console, I'll put a usb port in that. Easy enough done, just an hour or so of carefully filing and checking. I also had no use for the ciggy lighter so a few minutes with the Dremmel and voi la.... S2000 engine start button fitted looks right at home.

 

[Johnny_E]

Oh very nice.... Looking forward to seeing how the Kenwood looks when fitted. Fancy installing one of those myself.. or the Pioneer or Sony alternatives with Android auto.

Wonder can you tinker with any of these to get torque pro on it?

 

[Gaz86]

Oh very nice.... Looking forward to seeing how the Kenwood looks when fitted. Fancy installing one of those myself.. or the Pioneer or Sony alternatives with Android auto.

Wonder can you tinker with any of these to get torque pro on it?

This is it before I removed the carbon wrap. Great piece of kit, I'd highly recommend it. Don't think you could get it to run Torque though, think it'd need an android operating system or something like that to run it.

The fascia is a bit scratched up, only minor scratches but it bugs me, may paint it silver

 

[Johnny_E]

Looks great that.... I've the JVC upgrade speakers bought to install over winter on mine.

Looks like you can fudge torque to run...

 

[Gaz86]

I'll watch that later, as long as I don't have to mess about with the head unit and void the warranty.

 

[Johnny_E]

I'll watch that later, as long as I don't have to mess about with the head unit and void the warranty.

Nothing to do to the head unit. All done at the phone side and no rooting needed either.

 

[Gaz86]

Nothing to do to the head unit. All done at the phone side and no rooting needed either.

Happy days! That'll come in very useful indeed! Thank you

 

[Gaz86]

Love this retro style window switch