In case you hadn't noticed. It's been a suuuuper long time between updates - the longest I think I've ever let it go. Why? Well mostly just because of all the other MX-5 things that needed to be done. But the main item worth mentioning that I've been working on is another MX-5!

Now this sorry car was destined for the local car wrecker, so I snapped it up before they got their dirty mits on it!
A 1990 NA6 with some 250,000kms on it, stolen and recovered. But sadly very badly damaged in the process. If I ever met the people who caused all this damage boy would I want to give them a 'stern talking to'. Honestly they damage they caused to someone elses property for ZERO benefit just boils my blood.
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Anyhoo, after picking the thing up effectively sight unseen, I had to assess the damage and, well, the to do list was immediatly pretty extensive:

• Every window was smashed
• Roof was slashed beyond repair
• All 4 quarter panels were kicked in
• Ignition barrel was destroyed
• The car was filthy inside and out
• The shifter needed a complete rebuild
• And the list goes on....

So I quickly got to work stripping the car down for a 'rebuild'. The door trims needed to come off to be repaired, the seats and rear carpets were removed for cleaning and the damaged roof removed.
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One of the first things I wanted to get completed was the new soft top. I sourced a new roof online and swapped it over on the existing frame one night while in front of the telly. Not too hard to do but certainly time consuming. Here it was after first throwing it back on the car, its certainly nice and taught when latched down!
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Then the interior needed to be reassembled, I repaired the door cards which were pretty sad, cleaned everything up as there was glass EVERYWHERE! And, gave as many things as possible a wipe/clean/paint as necessary to get the interior up to scratch.
I had a spare ignition barrel and keys from my NB track car, so I replaced the damaged NA item which doesn't have quite the same dimensions but I was able to make it work.
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While I was at it, I swapped in a nice new short shifter with new bushes as the shifter in the car was completely trash, it felt horrid and was as floppy as a........ well something really floppy? Took that as an opportunity to also video the install process. As seen here:

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Onto some of the exterior items, and firstly I had to remove the bumper and guards to try and clean them up and straighten them out. The fools who had stolen the car had kicked the crap out of the front guards, the drivers side was particularly bad. I was able to recover it to a respectable level with some careful massaging. Still damaged/wavy but not completly ugly.
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Under the bonnet, things seems pretty good and in fairly good nick. There's the usual oil leaks that you get with an old NA, so first thing I did here was replace the valve cover gasket. While pretty much all the other seals need attention also, this will do for the moment.
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While under the bonnet, I also took the opportunity to add a little bit of bling with this radiator cooling panel designed by yours truly. Makes for an awesome shelf to keep your tools in order while working on the car and really neatens things up! Want one? You can order them from Racecar and performance MX-5 parts Home page
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Onto the rear body work. This was some of the more daunting work the car needed as this was much more extensive body work than I'd expected would be required before collecting the car. Anyway, it was just a matter of getting in there beating out the dents from inside the trunk area, then sanding back the exterior paint and smoothing it over with filler.
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After a few nights/weekends here and there I was able to get it good enough for some primer and for the first time be able to visualise a mostly straight pair of rear quarter panels.
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While they werent body shop perfect, I really did think they were 99% there. I had the odd few little spots that were a little off but again, given how the car was when I got it I really felt this was a complete transformation.
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To finish off that job, of course I need to give it all a paint job - it actually turned out much better than I expected, however, it ended up being so nice that it didn't blend in well enough with the rest of the car. So I ended up trying to paint the whole car. With only 1.5ltrs of red paint on hand, I sadly ran out toward the end of the paint job so I'll re-do it someday in the future to get a better result. But, nonetheless it's already WAY better than when I first saw the thing!
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Basically the ONLY modification this otherwise stock car got was a set of these hilariously cheap coilovers. WHY??? Well, for science mostly.
Yeah, I was just genuinely interested in seeing how they might perform for sub $500 coilovers. You can't expect them to be very good at that price, and this seemed like as good an opportunity as any to find out how they would do.
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If you're interested in finding out how they actully perfromed, well I've put a video together on that here with my take on things:

And so, the final result was a car saved from the wreckers and back on the road! An MX-5 still running and driving on the road makes me ever so happy. This car is club registered for occasional use only, hence the burgundy front registration plate. And now the plan for the car is to help my brother to set it up as a super cheap track day car. Something just to get out there and have a drive.
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Lastly, if you are curiour around the question of costs.... in terms of actual money spent, it's probably well under $2000 to get to this point.
HOWEVER, I spent MANY hours bring the car back from the dead. Would I have been better off just buying a half decent car for maybe $4-$5k? Sure, but then I wouldnt be able to say I saved and MX-5 from a certain death!
Stay tuned for updates on how we make this car a track toy, and of course next time I promise there will be news on the BEAVIS Turbo NB.

Thought it would be fitting to post up a lap of me in Dave Moores impressively fast 300+HP turbocharged daily/track car.

This is my first time at Winton Raceway with the new surface, and my first time driving a car with this level of power on track, but I apparently set the fastest lap the local MX-5 club have on their record list. That's mostly thanks to the capability of the car, and NOT me... as I am very rusty and certainly don't want to bend someone else's car.

Nonetheless, the thing is a hoot to drive and it's great to see it getting to the point of being fairly reliable on track.

What are the specs on his car?

It was originally a Mazdaspeed turbo car, but now runs something like a GT2860RS I believe.
The engine has also been rebuilt with superior rods and pistons, well... this is probably the 2nd or 3rd engine he is on now.
Haltech ECU, Wilwood 6pots at the front, LS2 coil packs. Tuned to about 330rwhp on E85.

Unfortunately, i'm not 100% up on all the specifics but you get the idea.

How about that update on the Track NB that I've been owing you all for oh so long? Well here it is!

So finally back onto the Turbo track car.... and first up, I thought it would be fun to post up a video I put together of what it's like trying to start a car for the first time in about 2 years after an excessive collection of changes have occurred to the poor thing.
The cars had a lot of changes between running from ecu retunes to turbo installs to new ignition system to completely different injectors to a change in the entire intake system. You can probably predict roughly how it goes.

The cause of the start issues ended up being simple, in reworking the wiring for the ignition I had to donate some of my wiring loom to another car for a short while and in the process, the pinout on the deutsch connector for the coil packs had been switched... resulting in Cyls 1&4 firing when 2&3 should have been, and vice versa.
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Moving on, one of the breather lines was annoyingly close to the dipstick, and if you know anything about these cars, you know the dipstick handle is made of faberge egg... if you even just think about touching the dipstick it breaks.
So to try keep the hose away from the dipstick, I found a spare 45deg bend AN fitting and it made such a simple thing seem so satisfying. Not strictly necessary, but it made me feel good.
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Regarding the forementioned battery from a few posts ago, I ended up designing a mounting bracket, and hooking the thing up to an anderson connector for easy disconnects or to attach a jumper pack etc. Mounted up under the dash so battery cabling is all very short and should save a nice amount of weight.
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Now if you've been following my posts via Instagram/Facebook you'll have seen I recently got this Electric water pump in and working.
Why go electric water pump? Other than the personal challenge and my own curiosity in something different, it will allow for running the pump even when the motor has stopped, which will presumably be good for the turbo, it makes bleeding a breeze as theres no thermostat and therefore no need to run the motor up to temp to try flush out air pockets and it is controllable via the ECU.
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To get the thing in and working, I first needed to remove the old mechanical belt driven water pump (which was brand new sadly so theres $100 down the drain - doh!) and to get to the water pump, meant all the 'bits' on the front of the motor need to come off including valve cover and plastic timing belt covers, pulleys and the timing belt then lastly the water pump itself.
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In place of the old water pump I've installed a modified & gutted spare water pump. This pump has had a block off plate welded where the old impeller lived, and is needed to do 3 important things... 1) fill the big hole in the front of the motor, 2) Provide mounting locations for the timing belt pulleys, 3) provides the convenient location on the exhaust side of the motor where the water pump inlet housing bolts to...
You can also see the slightly odd nakedness of having no water pump pulley. All I need now is a belt from the crank to the alternator. No other belt driven items on this motor anymore.
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Speaking of the inlet housing, that also copped some modification. I flipped it 180 degrees, shortened it, and blocked off the old holes for the heater core hard line and the small coolant line barb.
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With all that done, the new Electric Water Pump had a home to go to, and it fit right in. The pumps inlet and outlet are about 38mm diameter, wheres the Mazda runs 32mm hoses. So I found some aeropro branded straight reducers locally which fit perfectly on each end, and made the install a breeze. (now that everything else was modified to suit)
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The elec pump is now all plumbed into the radiator, and the inlet to the 'dummy water pump'. It sits in place just with the support of the silicone hoses, no brackets or other mounting is required.
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And, it's high enough above the bottom of the subframe that it shouldnt have any issues clearing the lower splitter and floor... And most importantly, the thing is pumping fluid! I ghetto rigged up a car battery to check it was all happy and it ran like a dream. Made some really amusing gulping noises for a minute or two before all the air was purged.
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Keep a look out as I've got a video coming in a week or two with more detail on the EWP if you are keen to see how it was done and want to hear my soothing voice talk you through the process. :P

Cheers

To finish of the water pump from last time, there was one thing missing, the wiring and ECU control.
So while the pump WAS working, it was pumping coolant, but it was just some temporary wiring.
As such, let me introduce you to the Bartine Engineering mosfet control board do-hickey which is triggered by the MS3 ECU to allow PWM control of the pump.
With this (and the help Alex's wiring skils) the pump is now ramped up dependant on coolant temperature so that it can function like a thermostat.
It seems to work well however time will tell once the car is up to speed and we can log coolant temps to see how they stabilse.
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Also from a temperature perspective, I've wrapped my intake in this ebay spec gold tape. The stuff gives off a nice glow so I'm hoping it will help reflect radiant heat and aid in keeping intake air temperatures down.
I may also wrap the intake tube from the intercooler to the trottle body... perhaps I will see how this goes first. I'm assuming it will be able to hold up to the on track demands.
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I've hit an important milestore, it's finally time to start thinking about finishing off the next phase of body/aero on the car. This is exciting because this is kind of all that's left before we take the car out for a real drive. (of course, the car is never 'done' but you get the idea...)
So a few items have started happening. Firstly, I've been considering redoing the front guards/fenders and cutting them in half, something like the shape shown with the blue tape line.
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Secondly, is the new Lightyear wing that is going on the car. This is going to require a little bit of home engineering to get it mounted and fit up, and will need some endplates as the old ones appear to have been donated somewhere for the greater good. How do you lose wing endplates?
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Mocked up on the car just for a bit of fun, however it needs a lot of attention before it will be mounted up for the final time. New mounts, some cleaning up of the surface finish, and maybe a gurney flap?
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So.... she's getting closer to being back in action now.
For the moment, we are going away for a short trip overseas to visit family and take a little time off. As soon as I'm back I have no doubt I will be straight back to it. :D

So long time no post... this is going to be a little lengthy, so bear with me.
To continue the talk on the Lightyear wing element from the last post, lets start with the mount.

While originally I was just going to bolt it directly onto the old aluminium mounts, somehow along the way I convinced myself it was a good idea to invest the time into mounting the thing 'swan-neck' style.
This specific wing was a prototype and wasn't manufactured with these top mounts in mind, so to make it strong enough to support the forces it will be facing, I re-purposed the underside mounts into spreader plates, glued them in place and temporarily screwed them down.
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Then drilled through the screw holes to run bolts to the top side which attach to the top mounts.
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New upper 6mm plates in the 'swan neck' shape were made to attach the thing to the existing (although slightly modified) uprights.
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Made some carbon end plates with a foam core, about 8mm thick so they are pretty beefy, but at least we won't see any inward bending on the underside when at speed.
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Still needs some cleaning up and refinement but the bulk of the work on the wing is now complete. It's just about as wide as the body of the car, around 1660mm or so.
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I did a quick front guard/fender hack job, should theoretically make for better wheel well airflow. I literally just marked out a line, and had at it with the angle grinder. Nothing particularly fancy here. You can just see a section of aluminium under the lowest point of the guard to hold it securely and avoid any movement when at speed.
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With the wing now mounted and front guards cut, the car was starting to look pretty aggressive again.
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And then it was time to fix the front end. The first step was to work on a new splitter, I wanted to try build something that would be easily removed to make loading on the trailer easier, and ideally nice and wide.
I started with a sheet of this aluminum composite panel stuff. It's nifty but perhaps a little too weak for a splitter. I can only find it in 6mm sheets here in Melbourne, anything stronger or thicker is a lot more costly and harder to source.
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Doing this sort of work results in a garage that's a complete mess....
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Anyway, with some persistence, I got the front end done. I also blocked the OEM fog light holes with some sheet aluminium, and the gap between the bumper and splitter is just filled with plastic garden edging. (it's a little too heavy but such is life.)
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Then believe it or not, my worst fears were to become reality, the splitter composite panel just wasn't strong enough for the span it covered without additional support. How did I find this out?
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Well I took the car for a sneaky little test out to Phillip Island to iron out some bugs and see what needed fixing/refining etc. Clearly, the splitter was one of those things.
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Despite the splitter needing to be trimmed down to stop it failing, the car worked! Well, mostly. There's a small list of issues that I need to work through but the thing is getting back out there on the tarmac.

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Some of the said issues included:

• Missing a front swaybar endlink (no front sway made for a bad experience)
• Loose exhaust clamp.
• No oil pressure sensor to ECU.
• No speed sensor to ECU.
• ABS doesn't seem to be working. (this is a worry)

On the upside, I've got most of those fixed now (except the ABS, that's still a concerning once), and finally starting to drive the car again which had been sitting (although, not being left untouched) for nearly 3 years.
And, I have entered the next MX-5 club sprint day at Winton Raceway a few hours north of Melbourne in about 3 weeks which will be nice as a proper event to really start pushing!

Long time no update.
So I suppose best place to start is with the good news, finally took the car out for another proper run at the track.

With all the little niggles dialed out over the last few months, the car was performing great. Put out some nice speed and although I'm still getting used to things (more power, less weight, rusty driving) it was able to set a new MX5 club record at Sandown.

There was a lot of cars there on the days so getting clean air isn't easy, but I was happy nonetheless with how the car ran.

Video of the day:

And to top it off I had my brother come along in our little NA 1.6 for his second track event in this car and first time around Sandown:

I just watched some of your videos, love the new kraken setup! Can't wait for more videos.

Thanks Fire, appreciate it :)

So now the bad news...
Despite the happy lap times, toward the end of the day as I pulled into the pits the car was making some rather discerning noises from the engine bay. It totally sucks as I'd really just wanted to drive this thing more and it finally looked like the end of being a garage queen was near and I'd be driving regularly again. Well apparently the end was near... but it was the wrong sort of end.
Long story short, the engine has spent it's entire life in my hands at 7000rpm and I think it's taken it's toll. As such I'm back to the sidelines for a while to save more funds again and consider my options.
A rough estimate says I'm going to be spending about $10k in the next few months - RIP credit card :-/

So errm, to try distract from the negativity, here's a cool interior pic:

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TIME FOR AN UPDATE - OUT WITH THE "OLD" ENGINE
I think I am well overdue for the obligatory forum thread update.
This is going to be a long story, so get your cuppa tea/coffee/beer and some snacks and sit down for a solid read.

So obviously a lot has happened since the unfortunate events of the sick engine from May 2018, and if you're a frequent viewer of my YouTube videos then some of the information here will be a bit repetitive but bear with me.

First things first, after getting over the mental hurdle that is coming to terms with the situation of my engine being crook, my old man and I pulled the engine from the car to assess the damage.

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We stripped the motor down to mostly just the block, pistons and rods. And on first inspection, it all looked pretty respectable.
There was still signs of the factory honing, nothing appeared disastrous, although there was some vertical scoring marks visible on a couple of the cylinder walls so clearly some damage had been done.
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Remember this engine did run, but it had what sounded like a bottom end knock. The block in it's stripped state was sent off to be cleaned and inspected and the lovely engine reconditioners introduced us the the source of our bottom end issue...
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Once the pistons were removed, we had our first exciting moment, a pair of bananas!
The engine had two bent rods, one bad, and one worse. These are now some nice expensive paperweights. But that's ok because replacements had already been arranged...
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FRESH ENGINE BITS
Naturally, by the time the engine was removed I'd already made a plan on how I wanted to 'fix' things... first part of the plan was upgrading the internals.
So my order of gear from the lovely folk at Trackspeed Engineering in the US made its way to me here in the land down under fairly quickly.
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I know many of you will be curious on what 'bits' I went with. My aim was stout and reliable, not all out power or 'big numbers'. This is a car that I want to be consistent and drivable at the limits on the track, so I don't want to be running components at their limits. I also see no issue with having plenty of headroom for future boost increases. So my parts choice had all of that in mind, and naturally I also employed the suggestions of the supplier:

• Supertech 9.5:1 Pistons
• Manly Conrods
• ACL Main & Rod Bearings
• ATI Super Damper
• Boundary Engineering Oil Pump
• Supertech Valve Springs
• and, not specifically for the engine internals, but a Skunk2 throttle body.

CLEAN UP THE BLOCK, ADD NEW FORGED BITS
The block was dropped off to be cleaned up and was prepared to meet it's new forged friends.
The engine re-conditioners also checked/balanced all the gear and then assembled the pistons and rods and threw them in the block for me.
Before committing to the work, I had a chat to the guys about the car, it's intended use, and what I thought was needed for the engine. They were quite receptive to the task at hand, respectably priced, and were a pleasure to deal with.

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VALVE SPRING UPGRADE
While the engine block was away, we kept ourselves busy installing the Supertech Dual valve springs.
First time I'd had the cams out of the head for this car, thankfully it again all looked quite nice and the process was fairly trouble free.
Slightly frustratingly, one of the titanium retainers was a mismatch from the rest of the set - must have just been a mis-pack in manufacturing. Trackspeed arranged a replacement sent directly from Supertech which arrived within a couple of weeks.
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And, naturally, here's a video of the install process, somewhat of a guide but don't take my word for it, seek professional advice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orNkoAs4RLc

ENGINE REASSEMBLY BEGINS
Once the block was ready, Beavis senior and I booked ourselves out for a weekend, and got to work on the re-assembly.
All went fairly well, as it's mostly just reinstalling OEM Mazda parts. There were the odd little hurdles and gotchas. Such as the need to clearance the windage tray slightly to fit the larger ARP main studs, and the general tense moment that is gluing the oil pan back to the block.
I also took the opportunity to utilise the Madjak sump baffle template and cut out some sheet aluminium to hopefully aid in maintaining oil pressure under high-g braking.
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Here is the montage cut of the Engine in the rebuild phase:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_bOIrnKFEs

I can't help but read your updates in your voice. Guess its a product of watching too many of your videos :rofl:. Glad to see the engine coming back together.