Firstly, hi all Secondly, there will also be a build thread here so bookmark if you fancy though I'll do my best to keep them both updated: towardsthehorizon.co.uk/exocet-kit-car
Thirdly, here's the first post from the website
How do you define your first car?
For me my dad very generously tried to get me into driving when I was 17 and bought me a ford fiesta. Unfortunately for him at that time for some reason I had little interest in it and it sat on the drive, I definitely couldn’t be considered to have ever driven it.
Then when I started working I needed a car to commute, I did try riding a bike down a straight busy single lane national speed limit A road for a while and quickly decided that was not a long term solution (one way or the other I wasn’t going to be doing it long). Step in my dad again with a friend selling a 12 year old Corolla for cheap. Don’t get me wrong I loved that car so much, it was brilliant, and I made a strong attachment to it, but I never quite felt like it was mine.
So then after a couple of years, having saved a little, with no obvious need for practicality I went on a search. After a bit of browsing this little silver car came up, was promptly checked over, purchased an back in my parking space. The Corolla summarily was handed to my sister after which the exhaust immediately vacated it’s mountings and a short time later the car was written off when failing to match up to an icy country road (everyone was fine). But back to the little sunlight silver (22V) 2004 Mazda MX5 that became nicknamed Kayleigh and my love for this little machine was absolute.
At risk of spoiling the ending of this post, I still have this car 12 years later as well as another MX5 because, of course, two of a good thing is better than one.
That started a long relationship with Kayleigh, the MX5 platform, the community and the world of car modification. I joined the MX5 car clubs, I started modifying, I took Kayleigh on a track day to Abingdon and later another at Castle Combe and of course, I learned all about MX5 rust issues.
Early modifications were subtle with the side reflectors and indicators, a grill and a front lip, then progressed to wheels and tires, an exhaust, an aftermarket ally radiator, Meister coilovers and whiteline ARBs. All of that brought us to this.
Alongside the modifications came not one, but two rounds of welding up the sills, about 6-7 years apart but still. Then there was an advisory for rust on the suspension components so a full strip and powdercoat of the wishbones happened along with replacing the bushes with stiffer replacement rubber bushes after which another successful MOT passed with yet more rust advisories. This time for the chassis rails. I was not surprised. I was however, upsettingly, losing my love for the car, which is where the next chapter picks up.
One last note though is that because of all of this time and joy with Kayleigh, another acquisition was made. This one is named Sienna and came about because of my deep love of the colour and orange coupled with a wonderful partner that can only otherwise be described in this case as “a bad influence”. The good news as you can see is that the car does get used to it’s full potential, most recently at Oulton Park and Anglesey over a surprisingly mild weekend in February.
So we’ve established I love MX5s and I love my MX5s in particular. While not obvious purely from what we’ve seen I have never yet sold a car, a record I don’t intend to break starting with Kayleigh. We also know that the poor old MK2.5 model MX5 of mine cannot keep on without some significant intervention which brings is to the next choice, do I:
Learn to weld, deal with the many rust issues and continue to deal with them for the foreseeable future, thus saving my poor vehicle for as long as possible from the great scrapyard in the sky.
Ditch the rusty bits altogether and do something altogether more ambitious, expensive but perhaps ultimately… fun?
Believe it or not from what I’ve written so far, the choice between these was made using a practical argument – while the car has been roadworthy the last couple of years, because of the orange MX5 it has barely been used. I don’t want to lovingly maintain and restore the car just for her to sit in a garage developing the next rusty piece of restoration work for me. The alternative, at worst will give me something to occupy my time for a while, hopefully with a sense of achievement attached, and a best, a fun car that can be used in a completely different way to the orange Mk4. Okay, maybe not completely different.
Enter the MEV Exocet, a tubular frame chassis with some fibreglass bodywork that will reduce the weight of the car by a significant amount, reduce the practicality to basically zero and hopefully be a bit of a riot to drive. The overall process is to remove the mx5 body leaving just the suspension, engine, gearbox and differential joined together in order to drop the new body over the top. Simples.
So, next step was a trip to KitFest to have a chat with Stewart who builds the kit cars, ask him many many many many many questions (sorry Stewart), and a few days later, having selected from a smattering of options, put down the deposit for a kit to start production. Not sure of the current lead times but I would anticipate picking up
And, here we are, working on removing everything from a car that technically hasn’t yet failed it’s MOT (because it hasn’t had one) with some potential rust issues being slowly (but hopefully not too slowly) dismantled. My ultimate goal just to give this car a new lease of life, whatever that may be.
The forums aren't used as much as the fb groups anymore but they are seriously a good source of information. The help and tips you get from reading these build blogs are amazing.
Keep us all updated with the build and we will do all we can to help with any questions
Jay
South Yorkshire (UK) - RHD Mazda 2000 1.8 Mk2 Donor - Will be building the Exocet G-Type
The forums aren't used as much as the fb groups anymore but they are seriously a good source of information. The help and tips you get from reading these build blogs are amazing.
Keep us all updated with the build and we will do all we can to help with any questions
Jay
Agreed it's a shame FB exists for builds & things, but that's the way of the world people want instant gratification, they don't seem to mind that the same question gets asked 50 times in the same week, that FB seem to deliberately make the search function completely uslss. But then it may also be that I am just a dinosaur & don't like change but I'd have 1 good forum over 1000 FB groups anyday.
Quick answers have proven a major help for me on fb as someone could respond with a 'cure' within minutes. However, for build tips and shared learning etc, this forum has been an unbelievable help. I probably wouldn't have even thought about building one if I hadn't seen other people's build threads etc
South Yorkshire (UK) - RHD Mazda 2000 1.8 Mk2 Donor - Will be building the Exocet G-Type
Hi and welcome to the forum. As already mentioned, this place is a gold mine for information on the builds and you can go down many a rabbit hole looking at how others have gone way over the top and made some very bespoke bits and pieces for their builds. FB is handy but I agree on your points. between them these are both great places and don't forget to keep referencing the actual build guide - people forget it's there and then that's when the same questions keep coming round. On FB there is a wiki pinned to the top of the page so should be easy to find. Happy building and keep the updates coming
Mazda 1999 1.8 MK2 Donor for 2016 Exocet with Double Nose Cone
Big day today, the body was separated from the skate! Only took a couple of weeks but a lot of cumulative time, very pleased. I'll skip the pre-amble from the post and just cover some things from the last couple of weeks.
So not a small task, and as it turns out comes with plenty of challenges along the way… in no particular order;
Draining the fuel tank
I was a little nervous about emptying the fuel using the drain plug as I still had quite a full tank and sloshing fuel into a bucket in an enclosed space seemed too much like tempting fate. Instead to have a bit better control of the process, I unscrewed the vent from the top of the tank (once the roof and carpet were removed) and used a valved hose (that I had for draining motorbike fuel tanks) feeding straight into a petrol container. I may still need to drain the last bit out with the drain plug but this was my preference to drain the majority in a more controlled way.
Removing the dash
A few issues I had with this:
Removing the dash binnacle – once the steering column cover is off it’s just a strong pull
Removing the HVAC panel – don’t try and remove the cables at the control end, it’s much easier to pop them off the other end, there’s two that feed through to the left behind the glove box, and one to the right
Removing the passenger airbag took a bit of Googling. There are two bolts underneath once you’ve removed the glove box, then trim tools will do the rest
There’s an earth connection in the centre behind the HVAC panel and another under the dash on the drivers side
The loom routes at the top behind the vents and is held with two pretty inaccessible clips, no idea where the back of these clips are but a bit of brute force broke the clips off
As well as the 2 bolts on either end of the dash, and the 1 in the centre at the top, there are 4 more (2 each side) in the centre behind the blanks or footwell lights.
A couple of lessons learned from others: make sure to unclip the fuse box and OBD2 port
Rear hub nuts
If you have a mk2.5 I believe that in order to remove the rear brake shields (needed to fit the wingstays) you have to remove the hub and therefore the hub nut. Best to do this while there’s some brake or the wheel is on the ground. Firstly I bought a 29mm socket following a brief bit of googling, then found out my rear hub nuts are 32mm so ordered a second one. Then had the issue of having a lengthy breaker bar, but apparently not lengthy enough. The solution to this was the Ryobi impact wrench which when turned up to 11 finished the job nice a quick.
Steering column
Top of the column isn’t too bad, some bolts in the firewall and one bolt behind the rubber gaiter which holds the universal joint brings most of the column inside the cabin away. For the rest, it’s basically a clamp with a bolt and some splines which may or may not be rusty af. Hit it as hard as you need but as gently as you can.
Engine bay
Make sure to disconnect the clutch lines from the firewall clips (and the brake lines can help manoeuvre stuff around), undo the earth behind the engine, and undo the fuel line. Also in my car the clutch line from the master to the slave is attached to the body at the rear of the engine on the passenger side (next to the earth mentioned above), this needs to be removed but the bolt is under the line so if you need to remove be careful of leaking fluid (and definitely don’t assume it’s a brake line which is already empty and then pour clutch fluid everywhere).
Subframe bolts
The build guide says that there are 8 bolts in the front subframe and 6 in the rear. Just to help those looking for them (and in particular those who might miss the last two in the front, easily done apparently), there are 4 nuts and 4 bolts in the front subframe, and 4 nuts and 2 bolts in the rear.
At the front you have
- two nuts on each side connecting to the threads on the chassis rails - one bolt on each side just behind the lower wishbone (easily missed) - one bolt at the back of the subframe (this may have already been removed if you have the gearbox undertray)
At the rear it’s harder to miss them but may also harder to remove them:
- two nuts on each side just below and behind the shock mounting - one bolt on each side right in between these two nuts
I didn’t have too much trouble removing the front ones, they mostly came quietly. However a number of the rear nuts were very challenging to remove. Use plenty of penetrating spray, don’t overdo it if you have a impact wrench (otherwise known as a dac-dac or ugga dugga) and don’t underestimate the power of a good bit of wire brushing to clean up the threads. As with many parts of this process, patience and a tea break are incredibly useful tools.
The other challenge with this is, if you jack up the body then undo the subframe bolts the subframes will just fall out. In my case I took one end at a time, jacked up the subframe (either off the engine oil pan at the front or diff at the back), took the wheels off, undid the nuts and bolts, put the props in to support the subframe, put the wheels back on and dropped everything down. Then the body can be lifted off.
Having successfully separated the body from the skate, I took this milestone, rewarded myself with a cookie and had a quiet five minutes. I spent the next couple of weeks clearing some jobs around the house, removing any last bits that I might need, generally tidying and organising the garage space ready for the next stage and pottering about the car.
The last of the fuel was removed with some slight creativity, and the fuel tank promptly followed. The vin number and plate were removed from the firewall officially turning the body from “a car” into “scrap metal”, another moment that gave me a small lump in my throat.
In the meantime, the hotel where my daughters swimming class is held happened to be hosting the Basingstoke comicon where we were lucky enough to spot Jason Momoa’s electric Rolls Royce Phanton II. If you haven’t heard of it then have a quick Google, while it’s probably not qualified to carry the ‘kit’ car handle, it’s a cool piece of engineering nonetheless.
Next came booking in the local scrapyard to come and collect the body, with a reasonable cost of £50 to pick it up. Turns out that the transporter had a crane, meaning that I could drop the body back on to the skate, roll it to the end of the drive and then we could use the crane to lift it straight off and onto the back of the loader. No enigne crane required and the skate rolled back into the garage. While a reasonably cool way to go, it still makes me a little sad sending more of the machine to the great scrapyard in the sky. All the more reason to do her proud.
While this was going on, I had realised that at some point in this process I was likely to need a bench vice. You know, the odd stuck bolt needing drilling and tapping, a bit of metal needing to be bent for a bracket, etc. And now you’re thinking “so you bought a vice, why are you telling me?”. Well that’s where the lesson (fun?) of scope creep comes in.
I need a vice —->
A vice needs to be mounted to the bench, and my bench is cheap and just has a very thin top laid on a simple metal frame —->
maybe I need to reinforce the bench? —->
maybe I should build a new proper bench —->
make sure it’s nice and sturdy, have a quick google —->
makes sense to have a shelf underneath to reinforce it —->
with a little more wood you could add a shelf above as well —->
it’s a bit weird having a blank wall between the bench and the shelf, I wonder if I could get a pinboard that would fit the gap, or I could adjust my plans to fit the pinboard…
And needing a vice turns into a big order of wood, an afternoon spent in the garage while the car is on the drive waiting to be collected, and ultimately, this…
Bought an unfinished project so please excuse the questions I ought be able to answer from dismantling the donor MX5. Chassis / kit 2011. Donor 2002 Mk2.5 1.8 VVT
While the donor car has been being dismantled and organised, I have had the opportunity to meet up with a fellow Exocet builder in Basingstoke. He has a lovely red chassis based on the same model as my own, so understandably he’s had to answer many many model specific questions from yours truly.
He is very much at the other end of the journey to me, with his car almost ready to be on the road. There are lots of little quirks of the IVA (individual vehicle approval) rules but one such is that, aside from a few exceptions, you can’t have sharp bits. I know, picky aren’t they. But they have a strict definition which is that anything contactable (again specific definition but I’ll spare you) must have a radius of at least 2.5mm. One area that falls foul of this on the Exocet is the top of the rear suspension. So when I was told that that was something that still needed figuring out, I decide that I would repay all the patient question answering with a solution (and it would be really fun for me – no really, I like that sort of thing). So I took some measurements and said I’d be back the following week.
I went home and CAD up a simple design to fit the purpose, loaded it onto the 3d printer and printed out a clever little (if I do say so myself) mount for the top of the suspension. The excitement to try it out when I returned the following week was too much, would it even work? Of course… not. I’d measured wrong and the piece was just slightly too short to fit. And that was the first of a handful of iterations.
The second iteration fit, but when we torqued up the nuts to secure it (it used the same nuts as the suspension and you don’t want that falling off) the cover split, the plastic wasn’t strong enough, even where I’d specially printed it solid hoping it would withstand the pressure.
A couple more weeks at the drawing board trying to decide the best solution.
The third iteration had a larger hole to fit over the suspension nuts, thus not relying on them, then a smaller hole and a plastic nut to then hold the cover on. Having not learned my lesson the first time and guessed at the measurements I was way out and yet again it didn’t fit. Though it looked like the principle could be sound.
One more time then with some more measurements and… Eureka! The thing fit even better than I could’ve hoped. The nuts were snug, I’d added a taper to the nuts and the top of the holes to give a better fit. Everything lined up perfectly.
In the end, it was a fun problem to solve, and given how well it turned out, I definitely banked a few more favours for the many many specific questions I’ll get through my build.
Time to start work on the skate (see what I did there?)
There are a number of jobs I had cobbled together into something you might call a list in my head:
My understanding was that it is easiest to remove the rear hubs on the mk2.5 so you can remove the brake shields, the ABS rings (unless you’re keeping it) and drill the hole for the wing stays (this understanding turned out to be entirely incorrect – see below)
I had acquired for a sensible price (from none other than rocketeer) an acid dipped and galvanised front subframe which needs swapping in
With a galvanised front and having already powder coated the wishbones, it makes sense to get the rear subframe blasted and coated too while it’s accessible
Power steering needed refurbing and possibly depowering
New clutch
General cleaning and tidying
The engine itself has had a good service less than 20k miles ago by me (cam belt, water pump, seals, plugs etc) so while a general tidy may be done it’s not needed. I also plan to turbo at some point in the near future so it may be worth doing some work while it’s out or conversely not doing the work since I can do it when the turbo is fitted… jury’s still out.
I started by pulling the gearbox since the clutch needed changing and the engine needed to come off to swap the subframes. Oil drained, prop shaft removed, PPF disconnected from the gearbox, slave cylinder and started motor disconnected, then a handful of gearbox bolts and it pulled free. Piece of cake.
I’d jumped back and forward between the front (above) and the back of the skate. At the rear end I have removed the brakes, undone the hub bolts and been alternating between spraying copious amounts of penetrating fluid and mercilessly hitting the bloody thing with a hammer to try and remove the hubs. After at least half a week of this (and one incident with a slight diversion of the hammers trajectory towards my unsuspecting thumb), I decided it wasn’t worth it and another way would be found.
And found it was. I pontificated on the problem and decided that while the hammer had indeed wronged me, that with the addition of a small chisel could do even more damage, or better yet tap a splice in the thin metal of the brake shield. And that’s exactly what it did. With that, and a bit of brute force bending it to get it off around the drive shaft, both sides were soon removed.
A similar process was applied to the abs ring, but alas these were a bit more tough. The rotary tool with a small cutting disk so as not to nick the upright was successful however. No bending this time so two cuts were made, one either side of the ring, and the two pieces fell off.
I’d also removed the oil from the rear differential.
Bear with me with the technical jargon here. The donor car is a mk2.5 MX5 sport and as such has the Fuji differential. These are good limited slip differentials when they work but suffer from a fatal weakness, the clutch plates that they use are prone to… what’s an appropriate descriptor… shattering. Exploding would probably be a bit too dramatic.
I guess by now you can see where this is going… the diff has a magnetic drain plug which when I removed it to empty it of the oil, found this, a big piece of clutch plate. While not the end of the world, I have seen much worse, it made me thinking about bringing forward the longer term plan. Knowing the weakness in these diffs I have heard about an engineering company in Ireland who have come up with a novel fix for them, just send the diff off to them and they’ll send it back working again, and for a reasonable price.
After all that I managed to remove the remainder of the suspension from the rear end, leaving the subframe ready to send off to the powder coaters, as well as getting the engine removed from the front end and onto an engine stand.