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.
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.
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!
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.
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:
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.
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.
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
www.beavismotorsport.com/store
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.