JoshuaM's Midnight Blue Miata, Yeah.... soz :P Options

[JoshuaM]

Hello again,

I haven’t posted here much recently... and as many of you know there is a good reason.

Following 3 years with my ’97 Celica ZR I was ready to step things up a notch. This was supposed to be in the form of an engine swap to the 147kW 2.0L red top BEAMS 3S-GE engine, but problems sourcing a suitable donor car in Japan in time, and my friend losing access to his garage space where we would do the work, this was no longer practical. I was in the process of going all out with parts from Japan (Tanabe Coilovers, TRD front strut, OEM rear strut, whiteline sway bar, TRD quickshift + all the visual stuff installed.... then bought C-One catback exhaust for Beams, ORC lightweight flywheel, C One cooling panel etc and was shopping for Evo 9 MR leather and alcantara bucket seat, C-One CF hood too). With the paint on the Celica fading fast, and the engine swap delayed for 6 months minimum, I decided to call it quits.



I wanted to get something fun but not too expensive until I worked out what direction I wanted to go in next. I would LOVE a 3rd gen MR2 Spyder with 2ZZ + 6spd from a 7th gen Celica, but signing up to a new engine swap wasn’t exactly solving any problems. I decided as a car enthusiast it was my responsibility to own a MX5 at some point in my life, and now was a good time.

I did a lot of research into all of the different models available and the NB8B came out a clear winner for me. Given the reasons I was upgrading cars, I wanted a clean, fairly low kms car with good paint. The car is going to spend most of its time commuting, so safety in the form of dual airbags and ABS were highly desirable. Considering the fact that I would upgrade a NB8A with the later bumper, projectors, rear lights, seats and centre console…. And still miss out on the VVT engine and safety stuff it just wasn’t worth it.

I actually wanted a NC originally – I was looking at ’05-’06 soft tops with ~130k kms for around $13k. However, I didn’t have that kind of money in the bank (I would have when I sold my other car, but that would have meant more time) and I did some reading and the handling characteristics of the NB seemed to suit my needs better.

My Midnight Blue NB8B

I came very close to making an offer on a Crystal Blue one (tinted silver, basically), but I am glad I held off because I managed to get an even less silver one! (Running joke – when I had my last car we had 4/4 silver cars… nice, but ready for a change )

Today marks 3 months since I flew to Sydney to pick up the car. A late ’00 midnight blue NB8B model with the 6 speed manual. It was a single owner car with 65,200 kms!!! (40k miles)

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The only drawback was that the owner did not have the service log book and was obviously not a car guy at all…. Just ‘took it to the mechanic when it needed done’. I took a guess at the service centre he was using and they found a couple of hits on their system that helped confirm that the kms were legit and it had been getting serviced (albeit based on kms not time… a problem with such low km cars). I had a friend who is an apprentice Mazda mechanic in Sydney test drive for me and he was pretty happy with it, and I chose a random garage nearby and paid for the owner to get a compression test done which came back all good so I was happy to proceed with the purchase. Price of $8k was negotiated before I flew down.

Arrived in Sydney at 8pm on Friday night, went out for a Nasho run with some friends from a car club for my previous marque, met the seller Saturday morning, sorted out all the paperwork and transport permits, chatted with a friend until like 11am and then drove back to Brisbane in time for a mate’s 21st that night.


Quick rest stop on the way home.

Getting it Registered

Since I didn’t have any service records, I didn’t know how much had been done beyond oil and filters in each of the services, so I wanted to start checking everything off. The last service was only in February, but I did a service with fresh fully synthetic oil, new filter, new spark plugs and a new air filter. The latter gave me about a 30% power boost, unlocking the high end performance. This may have something to do with it;



A few days later I took it down to get a QLD roadworthy certificate and registration. I knew the motor in the driver’s mirror wasn’t working, but the seller and I were under the impression that everything else was all good.

The mechanic that I went to was really awesome, he remembered me from the last couple of times I had been in there with other cars and offered for me to come into the shop and watch him do the inspection so I could check out the car on the hoist. Most things looked pretty good, but there was a small rocker cover gasket leak (planning to do the timing belt soon anyway), a leaky clutch slave cylinder and the rear dif mounts were shot. Purely for my own interest, he also noted that the suspension was fine at the moment, but the rear would probably be gone in 6-12 months, and that the brake pads had plenty of meat on them but were a terrible pad. There was nothing really dangerous, so they let me register it on the proviso that I fix up the stuff as soon as possible. Nice guy mechanic (y).

The Breakdowns





On my way down the coast at Easter for some much-needed holidays the engine started cutting out on me at 110 in the right hand lane of the M1. Managed to get off to the left hand side, and waited for some tools to see if we could find anything wrong. By the time dad got there (30 min) the car started straight up and drove the rest of the way just fine. Weird.

I couldn’t replicate the issue in the driveway, so I kept driving the car thinking it may have just been a random electrical glitch. It wasn’t. Happened again, this time at low speed with AC off, so completely different scenario to the first time. Car started back up after about 10 min. Did lots of forum searching but with the search terms I was using I couldn’t find anything conclusive. Rinse and repeat until I posted a video of the engine cutting out onto the MX5 Aus Facebook group. Within minutes I had the answer! A new cam position sensor was ordered and the problem was solved.

I almost forgot too, during that weekend that Brisbane get a ridiculous amount of rain I had the car parked out the front and the foot-well filled up with water. Pulled the carpet up to make sure I dried everything up 100% and eventually tracked down the problem to be the plug that seals the wiring going to the door was out and all the water was splashing in.




Currently

I am having an absolute BLAST with the car. Unbelievable amount of fun; even stock it puts my modified Celica with expensive suspension and chassis work to shame. If it’s this good stock… imagine it with a bit of extra love! :twisted:

Since my dif cradle needed to come out to replace the mounts then it only makes sense to use the opportunity to replace the hideously long 3.63 open unit with a 4.1 FGR Torsen 2, doesn’t it? :lol: A unit was sourced locally for a very good price, but unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to install it before uni got too busy. It will happen in the next few weeks. I also have Super Pro poly mounts to go with it.

At the same time as I started getting the break downs I got a nice big tear in the roof. In the past 3 years the car had only done 3000km, all weekend use and garaged with the roof up during the week. Suddenly here I was flipping the roof up and down 2-4 times per day and parking it out in the elements. I thought about repairing it, but it is obviously well past its use by date so I am going to order a replacement top from the states. Looking for a cloth replacement top, zipperless, glass with defrost. Looking at something like the Robbins Streamline or the Sierra top. Just trying to decide between black and a navy blue.

Finally, just a couple of weeks ago I ordered a set of Tein Flex Z coilovers from Japan. This is a new model (basically a sealed Street Flex, so lower maintenance and cheaper… and about the same cost to replace a damper instead of rebuilding anyway), and I’ve been waiting for them to come into production for the NB MX5. Good news is that June 12 was the lucky day and they should be with my agent shortly. I am probably going to save some money and get them shipped via sea mail though… we’ll see when the bill comes through.



I am an electrical engineering student, so I love little technical goodies, so I am also anxiously awaiting the arrival of my Tein EDFC Active Pro damper management system! Worth the cost? I doubt it. Awesome? Most definitely. The Active Pro system uses latitudinal and longitudinal G force sensors to adjust the damping of each corner of the car on the fly. It also uses a speed signal input to allow you to have a soft and cushy ride when crawling around town and firm up when you speed up again. I think this will work great for a daily driver that I also want to put to test on the weekends. More Info.



I have always loved the NB design, but there are a few things that bug me, like the US sidemarkers that they gave us too. Eventually I would like to fill them and repaint the bumpers, but clear replacements will do for now. I then went a little bit silly on IL Motorsport (combined shipping! ); Quickshifter, clear sidemarkers and indicators, LED centre brake light, hood struts, chrome vent rings and some frankenstein bolts for a bikini project (already bought a NA roof to demo on).



I also went wheel shopping around Easter.... and got a nice little delivery yesterday morning;



I wanted a set of wheels that would suit the car in white, that were light weight (lighter than stock anyway) and look good. I don't want to run wider than a 205 tire for now, so I didn't want to go wider than 7". A spec miata class +25 offset would have been nice, but it is fairly rare to find used wheels. I bid on a couple of sets of 16x7 +35 Volks TE37, and I was in the right ballpark with prices, just unlucky.

I then saw a set of these Enkei RP01 come up for sale; 16x7 +32. Much cheaper, looks good (was actually factory fitment in Japan... but in 15" with a weak offset) and fractionally lighter than stock.



These will get a refurb with either a respray at home or powdercoating in white. Should look good;



The Future

.... I have lots more to put here, but I significantly underestimated the time this would take to right... so you'll have to wait and see!

This post was originally written for a different forum, before I decided that I should start a thread here too, so apologies if it isn't 100% targeted to this audience. I still have the Celica for now, but I am just waiting for exams to be done for me to strip some more parts off it and list it up for sale.

[JoshuaM]

I have been a bit quiet but have been getting stuff done….

So the weekend before last I did the soft top install. I knew that it was going to take a while, but 2.5 days was much longer than expected! My old top was perfect when I went and inspected the car in March, but having only done 3000km in the past 3 years, it was only a few weeks of daily use before it fell apart. The vinyl is just rotten, all the rubber seals are wrecked and the stitching was falling to bits inside…. Repairing definitely wasn’t an option.











I bought a Robbins Streamline replacement top in the Stayfast Canvas. This should be quite a premium top; look good, be quieter inside and last well. I was tempted to play it safe and get black, but I don’t plan on having any other black accents on the car, so I went with a dark blue to complement the paint. I bought it from a seller in the USA and had it shipped here through the eBay Global Shipping program. It ended up costing just over $900 (when the dollar was at around 0.73).

The first day (afternoon) we got the frame out of the car and stripped the old vinyl off the frame. Spent a LONG time cleaning the drains… they were both completely blocked…. It took several goes of hot water and poking and prodding to just get a thin wire through the passenger one.





The second morning we had a look at the frame and found a few rust spots on it. I don’t plan to ever have this soft top out of the car again, so we got out the grinder and cleaned them up, treated the rust, then primer and a quick coat of black spray-paint.



Second afternoon was installing the Robbins soft top on the frame. We took everything inside to make it easier and followed the instructions step by step. This would have been easier if the instructions included all of the steps! Argh! Because of that, we wasted a lot of time trying to run tension cables through just after we had riveted the canvas over the mounting points. Also had to go out and find a suitable contact adhesive.



On the third day (long weekend) we put the assembled top back into the car. It was a 33 degree day so we gave in and set up a gazebo It was quite fiddly getting it all back together. My driver’s side latch broke too when stretching the canvas shut (always very hard when they are new) which was quite annoying.





I didn’t put the interior trims back in (except for the seats ) because I wanted to make sure that everything stayed dry after a few days of normal use, and the material hadn’t quite stretched in the right places (more later). So I was roof-up for a week (drivers latch wired shut ) whilst the material stretched into shape.




This weekend I almost made it to dodgy day out at Magpie’s place (a DIY mechanic day with a bunch of MX5 club people around an hour from me), but a friend ended up coming over instead and we just played MX5s in my driveway instead. It was time for my car to get some low back.

I hate raising/lowering my coilovers (have to unbolt and twist the whole bottom section on the Tein Flex), and I was lucky enough to have my good friend Richard ‘volunteer’ for the job

Whilst he was doing that I had a go at a quick headlight restoration on his car using baking powder made into a paste and then some fibreglass polish. Before and after (the driver’s side was worse originally);



We had my wheels off anyway, and Richard wanted to see what white wheels would be like on his green (he has stock NB8B 16” wheels like mine had);





As soon as Bathurst finished on Sunday I went out and spent a couple of hours playing with the tension on the roof before I reinstalled all the interior bits and gave my car a wash. Then I spent an hour pulling the dash cluster out of my sisters Barina SRi because of a flickering bulb (Opels are a pain to pull apart!) and then gave it a good wash too (The first wipe of her car put more dirt on my cloth than my whole car.... including the wheels).

By this stage it was about 11pm and I headed out to get a few quick pics to show of the low and new roof. I set myself a 5 min radius to find somewhere new to take some night shots and this is what I came up with;





White wheels on a dark car are really hard to photograph at night!!! It wasn’t long there before I got kicked out by security wanting to chain up the car park so commuters don’t use it in the morning (next to a bus station). It was already after midnight so I gave up on flashes and just pulled into somewhere with a big floodlight and took a couple of quick shots from the rear;







That last photos shows the biggest problem I am having with the top. I’m not sure why, but it doesn’t feel square. The passenger side is MUCH less tight on those rear corners near the straps (the whole way up)… this is also leading to a gap between the fabric and the edge the black edging. With this how it is, instead of the bulk of the water flowing off over the edge of the roof down into the door openings to drain off, it all flows down into the rain rails and has to go down the tiny drains. Also, it will only be a matter of days before my drains are clogged if all the leaves can go straight down when I’m parked.

I spent a couple of hours on Sunday redoing the tension on the bolts that hold on the base of the roof to try and distribute the tension better. I did it the Robbins way, and a few different custom methods which managed to reduce it (to what you see in the pic) but it is still an issue. Going to get in touch with the supplier to see if they have any suggestions before I try and rig up an extra support to hold the canvas out to the rim.

Another gripe I have with the Robbins top is the quality of the rear 'glass'. We did the roof install onto the frame indoors on some clean lino. I was generally pretty careful to have the tracing paper under it, but when you are flipping it back and forth you sometimes forget. I have a few decently noticable scratches in the middle of the 'glass' from it rubbing the lino under its own weight (no pressure). You will notice the quotes on glass because no proper glass product I have ever dealt with is that prone to damage.... it is supposed to be hard wearing.

In any case, after a week with the top stuck up I really enjoyed driving home topless the last 2 nights!!!

This post has been edited by JoshuaM: Oct 12, 2015 - 11:04 AM