Craig's Finished Exocet Turbo

[gwnwar]

Noticed the gear shift sits alittle high at least in the pics.. you might want to loosen the bolts on the PPF at the trans and drop the rear of the trans some.. Just an idea..

[h5ngs]

Yeah there is a spec in the workshop manual about the height of the ppf, it was to stop the annoying noise on overrun the buzz that all mx5s with the 6" diff have, ive upgraded to the 7" LSD with rubber mount so shouldnt have a problem, im also stripping the car down for powercoating so will adjust the ppf to the required specs then, ill also be going over every nut and bolt loosing and retorquing to mazda's specs when the final rebuilt happens, its also good to pen mark each bolt once done so you know its been torqued up.

[gwnwar]

Good idea on the torque stripe.. remember having to do that on all lines and fitting on the Lunar Module space program.. boy that's a long time ago..

[h5ngs]

Spent a few hours on the wiring harness, been stripping out all the unwanted/needed parts - pop up light connectors, wiring and relays, air con, heaters, radio, speakers etc... took a fair amount out i plan on rerouting the loom to help hide as much wiring as possible.















Hoping to get it up and running in my week off as the wiring is nearly done, few more bits to remove and retest then start positioning and fixing it then loom it up.

[h5ngs]

Well this weekend seen lots of time spent on the car doesn't look like I've actually done much but its a big part nearly out of the way and I'm happy.

Got the wiring loom fully stripped, cut out all the unwanted/needed bits. It cranks over and the fuel pump runs just need to sort out the fuel tank and lines and she should start. I did have a few silly issues like I mounted the horns on the radiator and they need to be earthed so made a jumper wire onto the body, then sill nothing, I found the steering wheel contact wasn't touching so sorted that and all was okay. I also had an issue with the side lights after I'd removed lots of the harness, ended up that I'd accidentally cut the wire for to the fuse box so was a simple fix. I still need to sort out and make a panel to mount the hazard, fog and light dimmer switches and the fronts pretty much done. Made a dash panel from the rear bulkhead plastic as I'm going to make them out of metal i think. I like it as its sloped and looks nice when sitting inside.

The rear harness needs to be installed but unsure of where people have ran this, do you take it down under the car with the main power lead to the battery?, I was thinking of using a cone cutter and putting two holes in the main frame then feeding the wiring through. However I'm unsure if Mr IVA man will be okay with this, I was going to put the harness in plastic conduit first so its protected inside the frame, but its just an idea.

I'm please with how the loom has turned out and gives a very clean engine bay I will be taking it back out on the strip down and I plan on fully insulating it with the plastic conduit and fabric tape to make it look better. Well here's the pictures oh and I finish at 1:30 Sunday morning haha

First things first laptop with wiring diagrams


Dash panel



starter and alternator wiring





p/s/ wiring routing




pretty much done









another box of wiring removed

[h5ngs]

ITS ALIVE ................................................................

[h5ngs]

Well spent a few hours on the car last night, figured I'd stick some fuel in and fire her up .... well that's what the plan was anyway, I fitted the fuel tank then temp fitted the fuel pipes and hoses just to see if it would start.






fully charged battery at work and ................................................................

pop pop bang bang ......pop pop .........nothing .... :S ........ ohhhh s**t!!!

I tested the fuel, spark, and air all the vitals for combustion, all okay, So compression test it is then. Straight away I could see it was not holding compression on cylinder 2 so must be valve timing it also had that sounds of firing at the wrong time, so on with the strip down of my lovely cleaned and painted engine it is then .......




Sure enough id timed it 180degrees out on the cams. Note when checking the cam timing, with cylinder 1 at TDC and the crank mark lining up the marks on the cam sprockets should line up, which all my marks did, however check the cam lobes on cylinder 1. The intake cam lobe point should be facing 9 o clock and the exhaust cam lobe point should be facing 3 o clock, i.e both facing outwards, well both mine were facing inwards, so quick pull the belt off re-time and rebuild.

Ta daaaaa first turn of the key it fired up now that's sorted i can finish off all the niggly little parts of the build.

[tomelliott]

Congratulations on getting it fired up! Really enjoyed reading through this build thread so far.

[welshy1]

Great feeling the first time it starts up. Dont worry about the timing done a similar thing on a megane in work which is an easy mistake on them awkward to time up properly.

With the wiring loom i have a similar sized box full with unwanted wires surprising how much there is to remove and how much there still is on the car.

Great progress on the car can't be long till your ready to strip it down for powder coating.

[h5ngs]

Yeah there is a lot of wiring that can be removed in the harness, to be honest if i can be bothered there is still a lot to remove. Most of the wires could be shortened to make the loom even smaller but would mean cutting and soldering around 100 wires, lol maybe later

I'm not too far off the strip down however there is still a list of little jobs that need doing, make rear bulk head panels, mount hand brake brackets, fit fuel pipes, fit battery, mount battery wiring ....etc.... then make a start on the body panel fixings. I think the very last job on the car will be mounting the wing stay brackets and wings as i think this will be the worst job of all

[welshy1]

Same with me really don't fancy shorting the rest of the loom. Even though i mocked up as much as possible there are still things i forget and have to drill in to fresh paint which i hate doing. My last job will be the wingstays and wings will need spacers first to get it in the right position.

[malcolmmazda]

I love the angled shelf idea to store the electrical bits'n'bobs - never thought of that but cleverly obvious when you see it!

How is your instrument binnacle secured? I can't see any fixings! All the completed cars have it mastered in some form but I can't make my mind up how to do it! Thoughts from anyone or everyone appreciated here!

[malcolmmazda]

Ps - very nice neat wiring job (I now have niggling thought in the back of my mind that I should do the same but sadly laziness will undoubtedly take precedent for the time being - and the best weight saving I really need is to trim some off the driver - lol!)

[h5ngs]

I havn't secured the instruments yet as i still don't really know how haha, not made my mind up yet, so far I've made 2 different brackets and didn't like either so will have to have another rethink.

[h5ngs]

Popped in the garage after work tonight just to sort the timing and run the engine, put water in the system and ran it up to temperature to make sure the fan kicked in which was fine, had a small issue with a seal leaking but easily sorted once i drain the system again.

Slight issue with the coolant bottle as i found it kept coming out of the over flow pipe, maybe because i mounted it lower than the radiator cap but in theory it shouldn't make a difference due to the design on the system but its something to look at.

I adjust the idle once warm and set the ignition timing to 14 degrees to give a bit more power low down, then ran the engine at 3000 rpm to get the hydraulic tappets filled with oil which stopped them tapping

I've took a short video which is uploading so will post when its done, this shows my rear light set up too. I've gone for 6 function trailer lights so covers everything in a nice small neat unit, easy to fix as well and e marked so should have no issues come IVA.

Am getting there but week off next week so should be getting hopefully the rest of the work done so I'm happy with everything before I start the strip down