11 May 2022
Popped out to the garage, cleaned up the fuel filler pipe and glued it to the reducer with JB Weld. Very happy with how that's worked. The pipe will get cleaned and painted once I'm happy witht the fit. A bracket will be required to bolt it to the chassis somewhere. Exhaust flexi pipe has arrived but doesn't feel very flexible... Will see if it works when I connect to the exhaust. Might see if I can bend the exhaust pipe enough to make it work. Otherwise will look at some different flexi pipe. 16 May 2022 Sorted out the connection for the side light warning lamp. Did some testing on the charge warning lamp. It's controlled by the ECU but isn't coming on when I turn on the ignition. Feed is working and the wire to the ECU doesn't have a break so a bit confused so emailed CANEMS to check how it should be working. Took the exhaust centre pipe out and trimmed it a bit. Did a test fit with the back box and flexi pipe, it's pretty close to being done now and I think the 2 hangers I have will work. 19 May 2022Had a look at the positioning for the coolant expansion tank on the firewall. Rearranged and sealed the sight gauge and inlet and outlets. Loosley attached the rear ARB droplinks. Popped the wheels back on now the brake fluid leaks seem to be resolved. 22 May 2022 Had a think about where I want to position the fuel filler, taped it and marked it and then left it for me to ponder over. Decided I really wasn't happy with the firewall grommet through to the engine bay, it doesn't fit well and doesn't hold the cables effectively either. I've been looking around for a while, there don't seem to be many good solutions for this which I find strange as every car needs to run a fairly chunky bit of wiring through the bulkhead. I stumbled across the Seal-It split firewall grommet so I've ordered one from Merlin motorsport (the one with the 1” hole). The good thing is that it is split in half and is bolted to the firewall so I can install it without having to pull all the wires back through. In future if something changes it will be a quick job to remove as well.
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2 May 2022
Got started on the covers for the driving lamps. Before I cut anything I wanted to take a mold fromt the apertures so I can mold the polycarbonate to the right shape. With some brown paper as a pattern; some thin sheet aluminium and a couple of hammers I did my best to make a profile. I've never done anything like this before so there was a lot of trial and error before I was happy. I expect any panel beater will be horrified but they are only going to be used to form the covers so doesn't need to be perfect. Ordered some polycarbonate sheet for the driving light covers so I can make the covers and then start to vut out the apertures and get the lights fitted. 6 May 2022 My spacers and mirrors arrived today. Had a quick check of one of the spacers on the front with the wheels and they fit lovely. As I expected I will needed extended wheel studs to make sure the nuts have enough thread to tighten too so place an order for those today from Demon Tweeks the ARP ones seemed very expensive at £30 for 4 and as I need 16 that's more than the spacers but found some cheaper ones from Demon Tweeks at under £30 for 8. The front and rear hub studs are different it seems so I've hopefully ordered the right ones. 7 May 2022 Only a bit of time on the car today, most of the day spent getting my bicycle ready for riding. Had a go at soldering the reducer onto the fuel filler pipe but failed, cleaned everything up and applied flux but the solder didn't penetrate at all. Plan B is to use JB Weld on it. Just need to get some. Order some polycarbonate sheet online as no one seems to stock it locally. Added a couple of p-clips to hold the loom underneath the fuel tank. 9 May 2022 A free day in the garage today. Started with fine tuning the back box position, and ensure it is fully supported. The rearmost part of the boxwas unsupported so I modified one of the clamps to provide a hanger on the exit pipe and moved the offside hange to use with it, that seemed to work well. I was able to use the original subframe hanger with one of the nearside hangers. It just needs a bit of support on the inlet pipe. I've ordered up some more hangers and rubber mounts and also a short section of flexi-hose to join the exhaust and back pipe together, the the short rigid joiner I'd bought didn't work with the angle of the back box pipe. My extended wheels studs arrived so I decided to get those fitted, and then bleed the brakes, I'd not refilled the system since replacing the rear calipers as I knew I was going to have to remove the calipers and discs again if I needed extended studs. Once I had the caliper and disc off, a lump hammer took care of removing the old studs. I had to modify the brake shield to get clearance to fit the new longer ones but a bit of cutting with an angle grinder and files sorted that out. I used an old cut down wheel nut and some large washer to pull the new studs in. The rear ones on mine are different to the front and in the videos I'd watched they had to grind a flat on one side to get them in. Thankfully the ones I bought were already ground down to shape. So with the discs and calipers back on I filled the reservoir and went round bleeding each corner in turn. I used a suction bleeder with my compressor and a bit of gravity cleeding. Pedal seems nice and firm without servo assistance. 23 April 2022
Fitted the offside side indicator. I used the gasket for the lamp as a template to mark on some masking tape. Then I drilled out the centre with a 10mm drill and enlarged it with a small sanding drum in my dremel. I used some small files to slowly shape it to the correct size. It took me about an hour of filing and checking but it finally popped into place. Next up I have to do it all again on the other side! 24 April 2022 Fitted the nearside indicator to the car. Terminated the lamp and body wires with SuperSeal plugs. Terminated the front indicator lamp and body wires with SuperSeal plugs. Successfully tested the indicator and hazard functions. 25 April 2022 Made a start on fitting the additional set of high beams that will go in the apertures either side of the grill. Spent a while looking at it and taking some measurements. Took a rough reading of the angle off the face of the aperture using a long square clamped to the front of the chassis and a ruler across the aperture. I thought about designing and 3d printing something but the surface is quite complex and I would have probably have to file it down to make it fit. As an experiment I bought a short length of plastic pipe from Screwfix and then cut it into a couple of 100mm lengths then roughly marked the angle on the pipe and cut it off with a handsaw. Then I shaped it with a flap wheel and lots of trial fitting to get the length of pipe to match the inside contour of the aperture. I'm pretty happy with the results and I think they will work. My plan is to bond the pipe to the inside with fibreglass and the light will be mounted inside the pipe using its bracket and a 3d printed spacer. There should be enough movement with the bracket mounting to adjust for inconsistencies in the tube positions. 28 April 2022 Designed and 3d printed a space to fit between the lamp bracket and the tube housing. Just a prototype at the moment but it fits well. I will need to adjust the size to position the light vertically in the tube once it is fitted but that is simple to do. Looked at the fuel filler again, the old MX5 filler pipe matches my filler cap diameter (51mm) but Mazda made the pipe on the fuel tank smaller than the bottom of the filler neck. They solved that with a rubber pipe that is different at both ends but that doesn't fit with the position of my filler. I've got flexi fuel filler hose to connect to the tank (38mm) and for the filler cap. So I need an adaptor to reduce the end of the pipe from 42mm down to 38mm. I found a mild steel reducer pipe that will do nicely, just need to braze it on to the end. I also ordered the wheel spacers, I've gone for 10mm ones. 1 May 2022 Up to the National Kit Car Show at Stoneleigh today, had a good chat with Andy on his stand and a chance for another look round his demonstrator. Picked a few bits at tha show for the build, boot lock and handle, interior mirror and a few more tools. Had a chat with Intatrim and Classic Cobra Interiors about seats, but nothing ordered yet; also had a chat with Protech about shocks. Looked around the club stands but didn't see any other Replicars. Back at home I spent a few minutes in the garage to trim down the Mazda filler neck and check the fit of my reducer which fitted perfectly. When I got home I ordered some wing mirrors similar to the ones that Andy has on the demonstrator which I like and satisfied the IVA test. |
AuthorThis is my first kit car although I've messed about with cars all my life. Archives
November 2023
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