Friday 29 April 2011

Ebsi as it was when I bought it in 2004

Ok, time to add some pictures of my MX5 back in 2004 when I bought it.
It was less than 3 years old and had only 10412 miles when I picked it up.


No aftermarket modifications at all other than the 17" OZ Racing Superturissmo wheels and custom light-grey leather seats with matching door-card inserts and gear-stick gaiter that were supplied by the dealer.

  
The 17" OZ Racing Superturissmo alloy wheels
 
 Custom leather interior
Mazda double-din 6-disc in-dash modular stereo

Focus is ill...

My daily run-around is a '99 1.8 Focus Zetec. A few weeks ago the ABS & TC decided to stop working. I had it checked and the ecu reports that the OS front ABS sensor isn't working. I replaced it but it hasn't fixed it so it looks like it's an ABS unit fault. That's not going to be much fun to replace!

On Tuesday on the way to work I heard a thump under the car and it suddenly got noisier. Taking a look underneath yesterday I find that the mid-pipe has rusted and fallen apart at the point where it connects to the back-box. MOT is due next week. Bugger. I think the car is trying to die.

Today I will attempt a temporary exhaust repair using a soup can. If it gets through the MOT I'll treat it to a replacement mid-pipe from eBay.

Wednesday 27 April 2011

I don't get on here very often - LOL

Ok, I really ought to put an update on here as there has been plenty happening over the last 14 months or so!

For a start I'll tell you a little about my car as I haven't actually done that yet (well not really). It's a 2001 Mazda MX5 1.8iSport in "Eternal Red". It came with all the usual extras as well as air-conditioning, custom light-grey heated leather seats and matching door-card inserts & gear-stick gaiter and 17" OZ Racing Superturissmo wheels the wheels having been requested by the 1st owner from the dealer. It was less than 3 years old and with 10412 miles.

I bought this with the intention of adding (a lot of) extra power and to keep it for a long time so wanted the best spec and the lowest miles I could find. I have since added a supercharger, upgraded the suspension, swapped the seats (ongoing) and replaced the exhaust but I started where most people do - I fitted a SS rad Grille, clear/chrome side indicators and reflectors.

The next mod and the first major one was to fit a roll-bar and upgraded suspension. The roll-bar I chose was the Hard Dog Deuce. It's not the highest roll-bar so not the best for track use but it does look good :-)

The suspension I chose was KYB AGX shocks with FM springs and FM ARBs. This was a great setup that had reasonable ride quality and very good handling. The sprints however were lower than FM designed them to be (there was a batch of them like this at the time) so while it looked really good it was way too low and bottomed out on even small speed-bumps or sometimes even the crest of the road!!!

The next mod was the supercharger. I chose the BRP MP62 "R2" setup. This uses the Eaton MP62 supercharger with a TDR air to air intercooler and a Powercard to control the fuelling. Very soon after I had a J&S Ultrasafeguard fitted too as the powercard doesn't control timing and the J&S will keep the engine safe by pulling timing at the first signs of the onset of knock. Like this it made 214bhp on the dyno.

Since then I have been through a number of upgrades. Lets start with the suspension. First I got fed up with bottoming out everywhere so wanted height adjustable shocks. I chose the Performance 5 Puredrive shocks & springs. it certainly sorted the ride-height problem but I was never quite comfortable with them. When the front shocks both started leaking I decided to replace them again with GAZ Gold Pro with 400lb springs at the front and 300lb springs at the rear. it's now a very good handling car again and performs great on road and track and at a ride-height which keeps me clear of all speed-bumps (so far).

As for the supercharger, I first replaced the Powercard with an eManage Blue so I could better control the fuelling and also control the timing. At the same time I fitted 320cc injectors from a Toyota Supra. With the extra injector capacity I fitted a bigger crank pulley to up the boost from the SC and later swapped the 320cc injectors for 350cc injectors. Like this it made 226bhp at the dyno but was clearly limited by the injectors (and a bad timing map).  Eventually I replaced the EMB, J&S and 340cc injectors for an Adaptronic ecu and 550cc RC injectors. I had this all tuned at Surrey Rolling Road and it now makes a conservative 242.9bhp and around 200lb/ft torque. Tuning of the idle and off-boost fuelling is an ongoing process...


Later I will post some pictures :-)