Cheers, dude. The whine from the pulleys remains a mystery, though I suspect my alternator might be on the way out. The attitude towards Webers has been definitely reversed... see below, lol. As for the cooling; it's not over cooling as such, just that it really doesn't need the entire radiator core exposed because then it would. As it is, it runs fine at about where it did before all the mods. If the rad was all exposed, I reckon it'd be forever opening and shutting the thermostat and that's not really ideal. It's all been checked and it's all working as it should, so for now I'm going to leave it alone and be happy I've got more cooling to access should I need it when the weather gets warmer again.
Anyway, if the forum has stopped telling you of updates to your own build thread, it probably means it's too long since you updated it, so maybe time for a proper update then?
I've had the car back a few weeks now and had a chance to get used to her new behaviour. And I have to say, it's almost a completely different car. I've got used to the starting ritual (five or so pumps on the throttle pedal and she's never yet not started...that'll queer it, lol). I've got used to the characteristics of the Weber (it doesn't like running a closed throttle, it flats out from two to three thousand rpm but from four and a half it really starts to
go). I've got used to the go-kart taughtness of the chassis, the new Energy Suspension bushes have transformed the handling. I've even got used (again) to the lack of power steering and the fact the clutch feels like it's broken
But one thing I don't think I'll ever get used to is the noise
I've owned some pretty frisky vehicles in my time and enjoyed the full cacophony of engine noise from turbo whistles and whooshes to a 17,000 rpm redline on open pipes, but I can honestly say this is without compare the best-sounding vehicle I've ever driven. The brap at idle that hardens to a growl as the butterflies open that rises to a roar as she starts to spin and finally a crescendo scream at the top of the dial (OK, three o'clock on the dial, pedants)... well, let's just say that I rarely feel the need to fish the stereo faceplate out of the glovebox! And this is still running in, I've barely had it up to 6,000rpm yet
So shall I put up some hopefully slightly more clear pics than the ones I hastily scooped up in the workshop last time then? Externally she hasn't changed much. Which was kinda the idea really. However, she's now back to how she should have been had Corsa Boi not inflicted his fool self on me
The skirt that was mullered is all repaired, as is the bumper (and probably fits better than it did beforehand) and the wing kindly donated by Adam and Dean looks as though it's always been there
One day I'll have to invest in a TWR decal so people know what this sad, indistinct and blurred heiroglyph is
supposed to say
You know your car's been away too long when you get it back and there's wildlife hibernating on parts of it...
Anyway, there have been a few changes beyond repairs... as you've no doubt noticed. First, the unglamorous underside. When we last talked, the pump was running out of manliness so now a Facet red top lives in the pan where the stocker once resided.
and since we're crawling around underneath, one more of those superb Energy Suspension bushes. I know little red polyurethane lumps aren't the sexiest of items, but I really can't praise them enough. If anything, the car rides bumps more compliantly than it did on the original rubber ones (I guess cos it's held in more control and allows the suspension to actually absorb bumps rather than the entire car flapping around on knackered bushings). Yet they give the car such a tight and responsive feel, it's so together under cornering load and on changes of direction. Good trick that. Here are some Watts linkage bushes for your edification and delight
Many of the other changes have ranged from the completely essential, such as the beefed-up version 2.0 throttle linkage plates that avoid the tendency for the Bowden cable to bend the mounting at full travel!
...to the ludicrously superficial, such as the excellent "Rotor Motor" oil filler cap from Damon that's one of my new favourite things ever. Dunno why, just tickles me
...and the oil filter cover complete with Betty. Gotta have a bit of Betty!
It's not all tinsel and frippery though. I have been busy with some of my usual OCD finishing touches. One thing I've never been sold on with the FB is the grille. It's kinda a homage to the "egg-crate" style of early Ferraris and Maseratis and such, only made out of really horrid plastic and without any kind of aesthetic value or design flair whatsoever. With this in mind, I took one from the stash of about five I seem to have accumulated for no obvious reason :?
Nasty, innit. I sanded it back and sprayed it with some special flexible plastic paint so at least it was black rather than the inconsistently-faded grey it'd become. Then I got busy on the ol' Dremel
In the first incarnation I left a couple of extra vertical stays in, as seen here, because I didn't want it going too floppy. On closer investigation, these seemed unnecessary, so they went as well. Then some quality (not) but cheap Ripspeed mesh from good ol' Halfrauds and some fasteners later
it was ready for a test fit. Whereupon I realised the tow hoops were in the way! A bit of trimming later and some edging courtesy of self-adhesive motorcycle screen trim
and it was ready for some finishing touches. Had these sitting around for a while hoping for a chance to find a home for them, so this seemed as good a time as any!
Hopefully this looks a lot better than the manky old Mazda original and it'll certainly do a better job of stopping any rocks from launching themselves through my lovely new rad or ruining the hours of polishing I put into the oil cooler, lol
I'm not 100% whether the badges will stay or not. Some days I love them, some days not so much. I even spent a while faffing about changing the placement but always came back to this. Hmmm. Comments welcome, lol
I did trim the overlapping mesh from the top surface, too. I hadn't realised how prominent it'd be, how much the slats of the grille actually protrude until it was actually back on the car!
There were a few bits of tidying in and around the bay... not the least of which as cleaning of all the oversprayed polishing compound that had found its way in there...
The oil cooler lines I made up needed a couple of nip-ups to cure all the little tiny drips, but now they're good as gold, no leaks at all. The plugs ended up as 10s and 11s! Anything less and the idle goes all to curse word
Can't get over how much neater and less cluttered it all looks for getting rid of all the emissions and rat's nest curse word, all the spurious wires and rubbish!
...so of course, in my own idiom I immediately set about making it more cluttered again. In my defence, it was necessary. When I got the car back, the breather from the filler neck and centre plate just vented to air. Whilst they hardly blew out gallons of oil, they did mist out a bit that was collecting on top of the engine. So I got a cheapy secondhand Cusco catch tank, partly because it's nice and small and partly cos it was cheap. It wasn't in the best of nick, mind...
For some odd reason, presumably cost and ease of maintenance, it was chromed. Despite being made of alloy, where polishing would seem a better option. To be fair, the chrome would have been OK had it been more than one micron thick and wearing off with heat and going all yellow. So I wasn't having that, I got to work with the sandpaper
and then the polishing mops
The bracketry was worn and rusted, and in Cusco blue... which is too dark. So I cleaned that up and blew it over with my Tender Blue body-matched paint, then made a completely overkill alloy plate to hang it off. This mounts to the pre-threaded holes where the throttle blipping robot used to live, keeping it out of the way under the strut brace. I didn't want it to be too in-your-face, like it's trying to be a turbo car or something but oooh, look there's no turbo...
So that was the tank all done nice and shiny with the fitting re-mounted with new PTFE
all it needed was plumbing into the breathers. Which of course called for more of one of my favourite fetishes, braided steel hose. Mmmmm.
While I was in the area, I decided to paint in the MAZDA logos on the housings, too. Jason had highlighted the 12A emblems - and I knew he was celebrating that it was the resurrection of the "humble" 12A in a form Mazda techs could only have dreamed of 30 years ago - but it just looked slightly odd to me. So I finished it and blocked in the MAZDAs too with some high-temperature enamel
And whilst I was getting all arty...
Steady hand required, lol. Maybe it's these dark autumn evenings spent watching too much Overhaulin', but I keep finding myself thinking "hmmmm...what would Chip do?" And being unable to come within a lightyear of his talent, I can still work on his mantra of; make it stock
+ ...put in loads of little touches people may never notice but that add up to make the whole look, well... just better. So, with some roughing up once the mask was (very carefully) cut and then acid etch primer
and a few coats of Tender Blue plus several of lacquer
...and I have a K&N filter box lid not exactly like anyone else's in the world (maybe). Anyway, I like it more now, lol. And the filter has definitely tamed the evil starting habits of the motor, too, so well worth the time and money
So now we have a bay that pretty much looks like this
and there are a load of things I still want to do, but I'm completely broke right now so they'll have to wait. Paint I had so it's essentially free mods, but the next wave will have to wait for now. However, there were a few things that desperately needed attention. I'd forgotten just how scary it was driving a Rex on an unlit night road until autumn arrived just in time for me to get the car back! I used to augment the awful headlights with the fogs but they decided to play up through disuse and blew bubs and fuses. While I was waiting for some esoteric and obscure H2 replacement bulbs to arrive from some faraway corner of the internet, I set to fitting some new headlights. I'd had these in the garage since last winter, when I'd never quite got around to fitting them, but now it became a priority. They're just ebay MX-5 (Miata, eunos Roadster, whatever you like to call them depending which continent you're on, I guess) units so I wasn't expecting miracle transformation. However, as I began stripping out the old ones it became clear they were almost certainly the originals and equally certainly FUBAR
The reflector bowls seem to have delaminated or something and gone all milky (it said this on an MOT advisory years ago but never since, strangely). Put besides a new one, you can really see the difference. The new one looks black because it's actually reflecting... in this case, the inside of the garage roof. Which is black
The bezels weren't in much better state. They're chromed steel so there wasn't much I could do as they'd begun to rust.
Since all the other trim on the car is black anyway, it seemed the obvious thing to do just to sand them back and spray them black
It also gave me a chance to clean up in areas that are often left to rot. And found all these bits pleasantly free from corrosion. I also was left wondering, as will anyone who's driven an FD and seen the depressing sight of their headlight cover finally gain its freedom and fly free over the car under the wheels of a Scania... why the hell did Mazda ever change this set-up?
Anyway, all back together and they look much better for being black IMHO, even compared to before the bezels went rusty
The fog lights now work again as well, but first chance they'll be lost in favour of something more modern and LED-based. I'm fed up with the bloody dodgy French pieces of curse word. Even when they're not blowing fuses or bulbs they're impossible to align properly and one is stupidly stiff on its mount, one wobbles about like a Catholic choirmaster after a particularly strenuous session. They're also starting to rust and go manky and I hate them too much to be arsed to strip and paint them
Anyhoo, here is a before and after comparison of the light. Which I stupidly did on the last sunny days of the year, so it's less obvious than it might be. I alos put in Osram Nightbreaker bulbs, and fair to say it doesn't necessarily come over in these photos but the difference is literally, and I hope you'll pardon the execrable pun, night and day. Arf
The bright ambient light masks just how much better a breadth and depth of field the new setup gives, but it does show how much more intense and brilliant the beams are. I'm not sure they're perfectly adjusted. I wrote down the measurements of the adjustor screws before I took the old ones out, but there's no guarantee these are spot-on for the new, though they ought to be a good baseline. Anyway, I haven't got flashed yet so hopefully they're OK. This was my scientific workings, lol;
So, the final piece of the jigsaw of "why-can't-Nik-see-at-night" was the windscreen wipers. Now for anyone who doesn't know (this franchises to non-FB forums, lol), FB wipers are some archaic pieces of toss that operate on a stupid sliding pin mount incompatible with every other hook-based wiper fitted to just about every other sort of car made since about 1898. It goes a li'l something like this;
This leave the wipers awfully infirm. They can rotate 360, flap around and generally even when they're new they do a rubbish job. That's if you can actually find any... Add to the fact that mine were going rusty, too and it seemed easiest just to bin them
But with what? One method tried by some guys in the States is to weld the hook from a more modern arm on instead of the pin attachment. All dandy except I can't weld. So I needed a complete arm that would fit the Mazda spline, be short enough for the fairly small glass area and not look odd. Apparently FC RX-7 ones fit, but these are hardly flooding ebay with parts. Unlike our old friend the Miata, of course. Worth a punt, wasn't it?
Twenty quid and a couple days wait produced some MX-5 MkI arms complete with nearly new blades. They needed sanding back and re-painting, but would they fit? Well, yeah. However, not perfectly. The one at the bottom in the pic stood very proud from the windscreen before coming back in at a sharp angle, and it just looked a bit awkward. I guess the scuttle and wheelbox on the MX-5 is at a different angle to the FB. I wasn't happy with it, so I ordered another set so that I could essentially use two left-handed ones. Which seemed to work perfectly.
They do look like they sit at a slightly funny rake angle in that pic, but this is less obvious in real life. Add in that I now have access to these natty new one-piece silicone blade wipers that actually clear the windscreen and I'm very happy with my flukishly successful thrift mod
Buoyed by this success, and with a pair of righthand ones leftover, I set about swapping out the rear wiper too. Only to find it didn't work. First I thought the motor might have failed, or a fuse blown, but getting out of the car I could hear the motor whirring. Just the wiper wasn't moving. Closer inspection revealed the spindle whizzing round happily inside the splines of the wiper arm without ever making contact. Yep, how typically Mazda. For no better reason than they could, the spindle on the rear wiper is a completely different diameter to the front ones, being about 2mm narrower. Why? Just because. Oh well. The rear can stay one of the stupid flippy pin type arms then.
So there we are current and up to date. I took some pics from a slightly unusual angle to celebrate, and even got down to some photoshop trickery. Which seems to have got a mixed reaction, lol. Anyway, I'm happy and I'm loving driving the car, even in this awful weather. She even managed to get me out of the appalling quagmire of a parking field at the Goodwood Breakfast Club after it rained biblically all morning. And that, the joy of driving, is what it's all about. And also a curse word advert slogan. Oh yeah... Mazda; the more you see, the more you like. That was the one
And as a final aside, one of Ramon's last acts before leaving this blighted Isle was to leave an excellent period piece of literature for me;
It's lovely, I find something extremely therapeutic about a map where the M25, where it's marked at all, is mostly a dotted line "to be completed", there was no QE2 Bridge, even the local bypass didn't exist, and London Docklands was made up of docks, not banking edifices and yuppie warrens. It's awesome, cheers Ramo
I've got loads more I want to do but no more money so for now I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the noize! Till next time, stay tuned, groovers!