Indianapolis Build

[alathin]

Andy got my down payment so I think that makes it official: I am building a Replicar.

For now plenty of work to do on the donor car. It's a 1992 1.6L with an epic amount of body rust. The drivetrain seems sound and it was very inexpensive.


It was a pretty well optioned car in 1992 - leather, power windows, headrest speakers - most of which is very little use to me. But it does have the viscous limited slip differential which my brother the Miata hobbyist says is a good compromise between performance and well mannered daily driving. Also came with the wood shift knob and brake handle, which I plan to use.


Basic 1.6L engine bay. It starts easily and sounds like a happy motor. 


One of the most important decisions already made: the grille badge selected in honor of the inspiration car's most famous victory.


I am not a mechanic by trade but my siblings and I grew up (well, sort of grew up) in our father's shop where he makes formula racing cars (formula Fords, Continental, etc). So I will have access to some tools and know-how that I would otherwise sorely lack. My brother Ray is a mechanical engineer and as mentioned above a Miata hobbyist - and he has already been a great source of help.

I was starting to accumulate a pretty big parts shopping list of things that were too worn or rusted on the donor car and I didn't want to use - when Ray found this pallet sale of a Mk2 complete front and rear suspension which looks to be in pretty good shape. 


So my task list now is to start disassembling the donor car, get rid of the unuseable parts, cleanup/refurb/repaint the parts I'm going to use, and maybe find some in-demand parts to sell to help finance this project.
Of prime importance: get the garage cleared of everything I'm not using before the kit arrives - lest I run out of space.

[alathin]

Having a mix of Mk1 and Mk2 parts, this compatibility page has become my most-frequented website


www.redlineautoparts.com/blog/nb-to-na-miata-compatibility-guide/

[alathin]

The donor car has a lot of rust and I was looking at replacing a lot of brake and suspension parts.



My brother found this complete front and rear suspension plus subframes plus differential for quite a good price. This is all MkII stuff - and all useable - so my Replicar will have Mk1 motor and tranny and Mk2 suspension.



I saw someone else on this forum had decorated their passenger side dash with an ad hoc rally timer set and I really liked that idea - found a couple of inexpensive stopwatches for that purpose



Not strictly relevant, but my son is making progress on his Dalek build. Building excessively elaborate toys must be genetic.



The great Axle Nut War of 2021 was fought with great ferocity, down to the last battalion, the last company, the last man, and the last bullet. In the end, the forces of humanity won - but it was a near run thing.



Seriously, that is the most stubborn nut I have ever tried to break loose in my entire life. The other side of the donor car, and both sides of the extra rear suspension, were difficult as one would expect an axle nut to be. But this one very nearly did me in.
Question: do I understand correctly that these kind of axle nuts that are peened in place should not be re-used?

[redgriff]

Nice to see your blog, good luck with the build.

I know someone in the UK that builds full size daleks - he also builds dalek voice box circuits if your son needs one let me know.

[alathin]

Oct 7, 2021 7:14:31 GMT redgriff said:

Nice to see your blog, good luck with the build.

I know someone in the UK that builds full size daleks - he also builds dalek voice box circuits if your son needs one let me know.

Thanks - I think we're already in touch with the same Dalek builders' group. There's a US vendor for the voice boxes - which are very convincing. I think I'm driving my son crazy with the level of pre-painting prep we are doing. If we're using car paint, it's hard to do anything but prep it like we're painting a car.

Nothing terribly exciting to report -  just taking apart all the fiddly bits off the donor car. 
An awful lot of labeling.


I do get to play with some of the toy aspects of the project. I saw another builder here had built a faux rally timing set and I loved the idea (sorry, stealing). I like the way the hardware turned out. Next step is to put a jeweled / machine turned finish on it. If I like how it turns out it may be a model for the instrument cluster.
My brother is trying to convince me to make a lever that will activate the two stopwatches at the same time. Our father is in the auto racing business and we both remember a timing clipboard he had like with a timer actuator like that.


I do sometimes wish I'd shelled out a bit more $ for a donor car that wasn't so rusty. The parts I need are generally in good shape, but a lot of the parts I simply need to remove are being unnecessarily stubborn. For instance, the seat sliders are frozen solid with rust - so won't move forward and back to get at the bolts. If they keep being this stubborn they will be meeting Mr Sawz-All... and if they are still unpersuaded, they may have an unpleasant encounter with Mr Oxy-Acetylene Torch.

[alathin]

Got a great deal on my donor car but now paying the price of a car that sat in the rain for two years with a badly leaking top. The seat rails are rusted into immovable masses, making the seat bolts either inaccessible or too rusty to get a wrench on. So plan B is cutting through the floor pan from the bottom with the death wheel, so I can get the death wheel on the captive nuts.



This one actually came off with the impact wrench. That's not going to work on the rear nuts though.


In a bit more pleasant job I made some vector art gauge faces. They won't fool anyone on close inspection, but they won't scream "1992!" from 15 feet away, either.

[alathin]

One evil stubborn rust-welded seat out - one to go.

[alathin]

The exhaust system on my donor car is more rust than sound metal and will probably have to replace a large part of it.
I'm curious what exhaust setups/mods/tweaks folks have used on their replicars.
My priorities:
Would like to save some space and make the boot bigger
I do like a pleasing exhaust note - but don't want loud.
I recently heard a Cobalt exhaust (cat back) that sounded pretty good - and if anything a bit quieter than stock.
If the bits that stick out look nice that would be good too.

Any suggestions?

[alathin]

So I have read the stories of the key moments in people's replicar builds - the first time they start the motor, the first time they drive it on the road...

I have a much less exciting milestone - after a great wailing and gnashing of teeth I finally got the second of those evil stubborn seats out. 



The rails were rusted beyond any hope of sliding, so impossible to access the rear bolts, and the front bolts were too rusted to remove in the usual way - like with a wrench - so 6 of the 8 seat bolts had to be cut out... five of them from below.

Perhaps the next few jobs will be a little less unpleasant and a bit more rewarding.

[alathin]

I am going to track my build on blogspot - find this to be an easier format.
Please visit me at illadvisedkitcar.blogspot.com/

Please place any comments/messages there or on the Facebook ANC/MEV Replicar group