'97 Mk1 MX-5 V6 - Weights and Measures

I found on ours that the wing bolts seemed to be made of cheese and snapped ever so easily, I replaced them with stainless bolts.

one of our Wings also went is the same place at the front, I welded in a repair piece.

They did snap easily, I was being as delicate as I could with a little 1/4" ratchet and penetrating oil too!

I need to weld in a repair piece - or find some better wings. I'm being berated by mates for my planned bodgery, but on this wing at least I really do want to see how long the Bilt Hmaber stuff holds the rust back for - everybody has different answers and I want to try for myslef

I haven't cleaned up the other side yet, but if it's similarly frilly I might have to enlist some help and do that one properly. Either that or I'll convert the rust with electrolysis and use the same BH products on it as a further comparison. Quite aware I'm going to be putting quite a lot of time into wings that aren't going to last very long though.

Oil pump will be fine. I don't replace them very often, and usually when I do it's because of damage on the pressure relief valve rather than the gears or housing.

Ah, sorry - Supercharger setup is going into my girlfriends MX-5. Mine was just a handy testbed for it as it wasn't in daily use. Throttlebody, PAS pump and alternator are going onto the V6 so I have the block/head, intake/exhaust manifolds and fuel rail to move on.

Thanks for the wing offer, but I'm coming under lots of condemnation for considering filler in that wing, so might be succumbing to peer pressure and doing it right with a pair of new wings.



Thanks! Good to hear. It didn't look bad to my eye, but it's a very untrained eye.

My Lego kit has arrived

Well, I have half a hope of getting the engine in place this weekend... I've said it publicly now though to there's no chance of that happening!

If you haven't seen it already there's a very comprehensive thread on Pistonheads in Readers Cars on a Rocketeer conversion.

www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=47&t=1709711

I got home on Saturday with a boot full of goodies and cracked on with prepping the car while the weather was good. Unfortunately the next job on the list was cleaning up the inner wings, wheel arches and engine bay with the wire wheel. Not the nicest of jobs. As it turns out, when you go hunting under underseal and seam sealer for rust on an MX5.... You find rust! Who'd have thought it?! More accurately I found lots of surface rust and some patches that had been hidden under underseal. Nothing too bad so far, but I think sills are going to need some attention in the next few years.

I cleaned back anywhere that even hinted there might be some rust hiding, then gave everything two coats of Hydrate 80, resulting in something a little like this:


I must have used about 150ml of Hydrate 80 in total, it really stretches a long way and is really easy to apply by brush - except when you're upside down and it drips all down your hand!

The next day I gave all areas a coating of Electrox primer. There seems to be a theme with BH products in that they go a long way. I'd bought one can for this car and had about a quarter of  a can left from the other MX5... That quarter of a can did almost the whole job here. Covers far better than any other primers I've ever used too.



Between coats I cracked on with the engine. First up, it's changed colour since my last post:




I painted the front engine cover in Matt Black Enamel and it was such an improvement that I went from 'I'm not goint to paint the block' to 'what else can I paint??' Unfortunately the nice red rocker cover that had been painted in halfords finest red VHT enamel proved less than resistant to petrol, so when I gave the inside a final clean some petrol got on the painted surface and melted it. I had expected it to be more resistant.... Ah well. Now I've decided to go crinkle red for both rocker covers - the big decisions in life!

Next was to start putting the sump back together. First off the sump baffle:


Then the new oil pick up pipe for the new sump - long one is the new one:



Then I failed entirely to get a good picture of it in place.... There was a touch between it and the baffle though which was solved through delicate use of a hammer on the baffle plate.



Then back to the top of the engine and getting the heads in place... One Victor Reinz head gasket in palce. Comparing the VR ones to the OE, the main difference is where the VR has small holes to pass the oil and coolant, the OE ones has what look like nylon mesh filters. Stops larger contaminants getting into the head I guess. In hindsight I'd go with OE - as I said before!



And LH head bolted on



RH HG in place:



And a sudden jump to all cams and timing chains in and aligned because I was too busy worrying about getting everything lined up to think about taking pictures! All my timing marks lined up and the engine spins freely but I still bolted the front cover on with a gnawing worry in my gut that it might not be right! Somehow I never get that with belts - I've always been confident that I've got it right. First time with a chain engine, and a V engine, and my gut was tying knots! 



The rusty old bolts holding the front cover on were really bugging me, so I've ordered a set of Yellow Zinc ones to replace them with. Not sure if it's because my first project car was the 944 which is full of yellow zinc fixings, but I do have a bit of a thing for them... On a fixings note I  also replaced the crusty exhaust studs with some shiny stainless ones.

Rocker covers on temporarily to keep the valvetrain clean, lower intake maifold and fuel rail also in place to free up bench space!




And back to Rocketeer bits, the shiny new sump loosely in place to keep things clean again - to be torqued up once the adapter plate is bolted on to line everything up.



Now I have the Rocketeer brackets to start bolting to the engine... It really is a lego kit. Here I have the parts, fixings bagged up and an instruction sheet for this step:



Assemble the subassembly: (What little there is of it)



And bolt it onto the engine. Et voila:



Now as I stand back and think how stupidly simple they've made this, it's almost embarrassing... I realise I've put the engine mount on upside down. Oh dear. 

Rinse and repeat for the other side - engine mount the right way up this time!



And that's about as far as I got, but the post wouldn't be complete without a little moan about...



....the weather! How dare you start raining when the BBC said it would be dry! I've got paint to cure don't you know. Thankfully it had already had about 6 hours by this point, so hopefully no harm done.

Well and truly jinxed!

On Saturday evening of the bank holiday weekend I realised that the fitting kit didn't include flywheel bolts - helpfully the first place that tells you this is the slip of paper in the bag with the flywheel fixings. All dealership parts stores being closed until Tuesday there wasn't much more I could do on the engine and not much point putting it in the car. On Tuesday I checked the stealership price for flywheel bolts and they wanted £11 each for M10x25 bolts... Not a chance I'm paying that. I sourced some M10x25 10.2 fine threaded bolts that looked right - only to find that the crank isn't a standard metric fine thread. In the end I ordered some flywheel bolts from Moss at £3 each and am still waiting on them to arrive.

That's not to say I didn't get anything done though...

First job on the engine was to get the crank pulley adapter in place. This mounts the old MX5 crank pulley onto the jag crankshaft. I offered it up, found that it didn't look like it would fit over the key, so got the calipers out.

Crank key: 5mm wide
Adapter keyway: 4.5mm wide.

That's not going to fit as is then. I queried Rocketeer about it and was told that it was an interference fit and that it would go on, just start it with a hammer and wind it on with the crank bolt. I was also told that my measurements were wrong because I was using calipers not a micrometer... for 0.5mm... 

So, 0.5mm over 5mm is a pretty significant interference fit, but I followed their advice to see what happened. Bashed it on for about 10mm and pulled it off again:



Well that looks healthy. Key is broaching it's way through the keyway. I wasn't happy to continue with that, so spent a long time with a needle file and feeler gauges widening out the keyway to approximately 4.92mm (Calipers aren't so good for that sort of resolution...) . 0.07 is still a sizeable interference fit, but doing it with a file is hardly accurate, so I didn't want to risk making it too large.



This was still a very tight fit, but the key was no longer cutting the keyway so I was happier!



I then had a total brainfart moment thinking that the MX5 pulley was a single piece and couldn't work out how to fit it...



Oh, the central part of it hammers out!



Here it is with a few coats of  zinc, body colour and laquer... I've never managed to make paint stick to a crank pulley for very long, but this has had a Deoxy bath and degreasing before the primer so fingers crossed.




And all fitted.

Next up, gearbox. From all the sticky black gunk I cleaned out of the bellhousing, there was definitely an oil leak from either the gearbox or the rear main seal on the 1.8 engine. Most likely from both of them. New oil seal on the input shaft:



Front plate off with new seal and a bead of threebond around it:




And back together:



There is a little play in the input shaft, which I suspect is a little more than there should be... But then apparently this box was initially designed for a rather agricultural pickup according to Bofi Racing so who knows!

To fit to the jag engine the bellhousing also needs a hole cut in it to accommodate the Jaguar starter motor - accomplished with a 64mm hole saw.

The paper template that I printed off didn't match up very well, so I bolted the adapter plate in place to get the location for the cut out:



What a terrible picture!

This put the centre point for the hole drill right on the edge of a feature, so that had to go first.





The hole drill really didn't like the ally. Slow speed, steady as I could hold it. Still caught regularly but got there in the end.



Bit of work with a file (suspect I'll get a fox picture if I use the full name?) and a hacksaw later had a far smoother looking hole - and a ~2mm chamfer around the edge which may-or-may-not still be required to ensure clearance to the toothed ring on the flywheel.




With gearbox all prepped, adapter plate onto the back of the engine which meant taking it back off the engine stand... (and more high quality photography)



The adapter plate bolts onto the block and the sump, which had been left loose to allow it to move still. Turned into a bit of a rigmarole getting it all to bolt up without holding the sump too low to make a seal. In truth I'm still not convinced it has and I'm planning to take it off again and add some sealant to the sump gasket to sump interface just in case.

Without the flywheel bolts there was little more I could do to the back of the engine, so did a trial fit of the alternator:



Only to find that the pulleys were decently out of alignment



The alternator bolts onto the RHS engine mount bracket. When I fitted this the bolts holes didn't quite align, which I fixed with a few taps from a heavy hammer - unfortunately I didn't really think that through because in doing that, I twisted the alternator mount. A little leverage with a breaker bar brought it back into what looks like decent alignment, but I'll be keeping an eye on the belt!

Enough engine for a bit... The Rocketeer fitting instructions go for mounting the engine and gearbox assembly to the subframe, wheeling it under the car, then lifting it into place to refit. When I went down to pick up the kit I was advised that with their turnkey builds they'd found that it was easier to fit the subframe then drop the engine in from the top - so I'm going to try it that way. I'll give it a shot with the bonnet in place but suspect I'll have to remove it.

First step of that is to get the subframe in place.  A lot of people doing the conversion have found that they need to slot a hole or two to mate the subframe to the body, but thankfully mine bolted straight up. Another bit of advice I had when I went to pick up kit was that if the subframe didn't fit it's more likely the body of the car that's moved a little and to try to use ratchet straps to pull them together rather than slotting the subframe holes. The rocketeer instructions are quite out of sync with the advice they give so I thought I'd mention it for anyone else doing this!



(Think I forgot to mention, the wheelarches have had two coats of Dynax UB wax for added stonechip protection over the epoxy mastic)



And now to add the steering rack...



As I understand it a large part of the reason for subframe in first being easier is to couple the steering rack to the column with easy access and without having to line up the whole engine and gearbox to do so. I get the impression that the steering rack might not be removeable with the engine in place.

The subframe itself is really well made, however does have some water traps. The main front crossmember is a fully closed off square section, but has holes to mount either a LHD or RHD steering rack - giving a very nice entry point for water and no exit points. The round triangulation tubes at each side also have open tops and closed off bottoms. I'm in two minds between spoiling the powdercoated finish, and adding some little drain holes.

Now I'm still waiting on those flywheel bolts! gah.