1st – 10th May 2025.
Starting to make relatively quick progress now. Here’s what’s been done over the last 10 days or so:
- Finished rear brake installation.
- Finished handbrake cable installation. This required a few changes to how the fuel lines ran from the top of the tank and some additional ‘P’ clips and cable tie saddles.
- Thread locked and torqued propshaft to diff flange using news OEM nuts, bolts and spring washers. Torque specification is 55Nm.
- Fitted the remaining cable tie saddles for the wiring loom to the front and rear most chassis rails.
- Trimmed side panels ready for fitting.
- Started to install the front suspension. This did not go to plan as the rocker bearing inner rings and spacer tubes (~14.85mm ID) needed a great deal of persuasion (heating) to get them to slide over the chassis bearing shafts (15mm OD). Managed to *&%$& two inner rings and a spacer tube with my first attempts, requiring replacements. Second attempts went much better and just waiting for a new spacer from MK to complete the job.
I have also decided that the current flexible fuel pipe clearance to the inner CV joint boot is unlikely to meet with Mr IVA Tester’s approval. So after watching this video from MK, I have decided to change the routing to over the top of the O/S driveshaft. This will also make removal of the diff easier in the future, if needed.
Here are some pics:
11th – 24th May 2025.
Over the last couple of weeks I have installed:
- The N/S rocker assembly, shock absorber, push rod and upper & lower wishbones.
- Both front hub carrier / uprights.
- Wilwood front calipers.
- Steering rack, and
- Begun the painting / modification to the steering column parts.
This was all pretty straightforward, however there were a couple things which delayed matters somewhat.
Firstly, the two custom brackets supplied to fit the Wilwood calipers were markedly different looking despite being the same part number (see pics below). A quick email to Neil resolved this in that one was an older style front caliper only fitment, and the other a new version which can be used to fit Wilwood calipers to either the front or rear uprights. Neil explained that the newer 4-hole version is dimensionally the same as the front only version and given that they can hardly be seen, I decided to use what I had.
Secondly, I didn’t keep the ‘vertical’ lower ball joint bolt from the MX5, and neither the steering rack nor track rod extentions came with lock nuts. These has to be ordered.
The vertical lower ball joint bolts were ordered from Spalding Fasteners on eBay. These were M12 x 30mm Fine 10.9 Grade High Tensile Self Colour Steel Flange Head Bolts (DIN6921) in black to match the powder coating. Ideally these only need to be 25mm long, but they were out of stock in black.
The rack lock nuts are half nuts in the following sizes, from Accu:
- For Ford track rod – M14 2mm thread pitch.
- For the MK track rod extension – M12 1.25mm thread pitch.
25th to 30th May 2025
Work pace is ramping up with the nicer weather. Here’s what has been done over the last six days:
- Lower steering tie bar refurb finished and installed.
- Upper steering column lower bracker removed, column primed and top coated. Column installed.
- Flexible fuel lines at the rear of the car rerouted again with new support brackets added. I’m quite OCD about cable ties and tight radiuses, preferring stress free curves over tight changes in direction.
- OS side panel bonded and rivetted to chassis.
Here are some pics:
