New brakes

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Dom

Since I picked the donor up I wasn’t too confident in its braking ability, just didn’t seem to bite like it should. The discs felt a little worn but not heavily, pads looked like they could do with replacing.

As luck would have it, mx5parts had a special offer, 4 discs and pads for £80. Couldn’t really say no to that! Ok, they were nothing special, pattern discs and EBC Ultimax pads but I’m not planning on tracking the donor so they should suffice.

From what I can gather, Ultimax are an OEM equivalent from EBC so I’m not expecting anything special. They didn’t come with shims or clips/springs so I’ve had to re-use what was already on there, which didn’t include shims anyway. We’ll see if it squeals!

So, the old brakes came off and there was nothing massively untoward with the passenger side. Looks like there was a slight patch where the pad wasn’t making much contact but this photo doesn’t show it too well, which suggests how slight it was.

Drivers side was a different story. The wheel was hard to turn in places, suggesting some kind of warpage on the disc. It certainly didn’t seem to be running true. Upon removal, it certainly appeared that something wasn’t right. One of the pads was roughly half worn as expected, but the other was nearly completely finished. It also hadn’t worn evenly – I’m wondering if the caliper is up to scratch.

So, the fronts are all fitted. I’ve got a trip up north and a trip to France coming before Easter so I’ll check the wear after that. I might plan to replace or at least refurb the calipers during the build. They’re £140 each, so a touch too much to simply take a punt on really. I’ll make the decision closer to the time.

Next up, rear brakes! A slightly more involved job so that may wait until the weekend. I want to take the landrover out for a play on Sunday, so it might wait till during the week after…

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I have exorcised the demon… ish.

Posted on March 13, 2011 by Dom

After an embarrassing number of attempts, the coolant leak has been at the very least brought under control. Doesn’t appear to be leaking from the rear any more, at least not by a noticeable amount. I am noticing steam coming from the radiator though. It’s a bit wet on the top pipe where it connects to the radiator but the steam isn’t necessarily coming from there. I’ll keep an eye on that one, I’ve drained the coolant more times than I care to remember over the last week!

Next up, brakes I think. Investigating Performance Friction z-rated pads, probably with OEM discs.

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Continuing the coolant saga… and factory visit booked!

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Dom

So whilst the parts required are winging their way to me via royal mails finest I thought I’d get on a strip it back down, again, ready for when they arrive.

Where's that housing?

As you can (or can’t) see, the housing is hidden underneath the coilpack and the CAS sensor, so it’s a bit of a git to get too. Nothing is too complicated though, all bolt on/bolt off stuff. Caveat being on the CAS sensor of course which has to be aligned properly, hence the markings. Off came the coil pack, HT leads and CAS sensor.

There it is!

Top view

That wasn’t quite all that needed removing, I had to unbolt the EGR pipe from the inlet manifold and shift that out of the way. Eventually the housing was liberated and did suggest it had been leaking from the bottom. I hope. Unfortunately the camera flash hid any evidence I may have convinced myself was there!

It's free!

So we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

On a much more positive note, I’ve booked a factory visit for April 13th! I intend to get plenty of information out and pick up a build manual so I can get on with some proper planning, and bring some realism to it all.

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Coolant woes

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Dom

And so this post brings the blog up to date. The MX5 is currently off the road again, this time with a coolant leak. An incredibly hard to trace coolant leak.

It initially appeared as though it was coming from the oil sump which usually suggests the coolant pump. The headgasket had only been replaced in October so I thought it might have been changed. However, inspecting the receipt showed the pump was only checked. I therefore ordered a few bits from mx5parts and set to work on the job. I somehow got it all stripped down, timing belt off, coolant pump swapped and timing belt back on without breaking anything or running into any trouble. It even fired up straight away! However, the leak remained. I had taken the opportunity to do a full service though so it wasn’t entirely pointless.

Further investigation showed the leak was coming from the back of the engine. Again, nothing could be seen looking from the top, and nothing could be seen looking underneath aside from the resultant drips. Over a couple of evenings I stripped the back of the engine down and removed the first heater hose. It looked like the CAS may have been leaking oil onto this hose which could have damaged it. I couldn’t see an obvious split in the hose, but it had seen better days so chopped the end off and refitted it where the rubber was fresher. I also took the opportunity to replace the CAS oil seal. Fired it back up, and the leak remained.

Doh!

So tonight I’ve ordered a new thermosensor housing and heater pipe. It’s still technically taking a punt, but there’s nowhere else it can leak from back there. Surely!

I’ll strip it back down again tomorrow evening, and hopefully the parts will have arrived the day after to get it all back and running again.

I fear I’ll be taking the landrover to France at this rate!

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Windbreaker

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Dom

This update is almost embarrasing, I’ve bought a windbreaker for the MX5! I justified it as there’s a trip to France coming up in April and it’d be nice to have the roof down comfortably at motorway speeds. In reality, I’m probably just a tart and didn’t want the hair getting messed up.

Fitting proved interesting, the windbreaker is for a Mk2. Theoretically that shouldn’t prove too much of a problem and it kind of didn’t. The only issue I had is I had clips holding the trim on instead of bolts. To get round this, I simply drilled the holes out and tapped them meaning I could bolt the windbreaker in.

And where did the bolts come from? The Nissan 200sx. Which makes me wonder what I hadn’t fitted properly to that…

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