Darren's Build

[mrjingles705]

Hi Guys,

I've been lurking around the place for a while now as I was originally going to break my ST170 to make a Sonic 7 - I didn't go through with it in the end as I just thought the car was too nice to face an end like that, but the bug never went away and the MX-5 based Mevster finally sold it to me

I'm a first time kit car builder so I thought the Mevster kit was a good choice to ease me in (I'm happy with everyday servicing and repairs so I think I should be able to work my way through it, fingers crossed).

The plan (such as it is!) is for the Mevster to be my daily driver and only car.... I think it's doable (has to be, can't afford to run two cars really and no space for both long term either) and if not, well, I'll have fun trying

[mrjingles705]

18/08/2013 - Collecting the donor

Every car I tried to get a viewing on at the lower end of the price bracket was bought within minutes.... really I should have held off getting a donor until the winter blues set in but I was eager to get on with the build, so eventually I took the risk to buy a donor over ebay unseen. Not my first choice, but I figured I'd be stripping it right back anyway so I should find any horrors before it gets serious.

I managed to get a 105K donor (1.8 import, 1993) with a clean interior and hood but rotten sills and some poor paint in sections; only time will tell if I'd been better off stumping a little more for a better donor but it seemed in generally good condition for the age/mileage.

Driving it home to Reading from Cambridge was enjoyable and mostly uneventful until, without warning, it started to run very rough. I dived to the hard shoulder in short order..... this was not how I wanted to get started!



Anyway, a quick inspection showed that one of the plug leads had come loose. No idea how it happened but reseating the lead solved the problem and allowed me to continue home and get it tucked in for the night



(Note the scaffolding - going to be used for overhead storage and also as a lift point, fingers crossed)

[mrjingles705]

19/08/2013 - Started stripping car; also checked Fuel Level Sensor

Only had a couple of hours to work on it today, so I wanted to do two things:

• "break ground" on the strip down of the car... before I changed my mind
• Look into an issue with the fuel gauge constantly reading empty (to see if I could track it down)

First off - the fuel level sensor.

If you lift the rear carpet (lots of plastic caps to release and a couple of philips-headed fittings that act as a sort of stop for the hood when it is folded down) you can see several access hatches:



The one you want is the larger one - removing this gives you access to the top of the tank:



Word of warning - make sure you depressurise the fuel line before slacking them off or you're going to get petrol everywhere! Haynes manual recommends pulling fuse for the fuel pump and running the engine til it stalls, this works.... once you have done that you can take off fuel lines an the plug connector and then undo the top cover to free pump & sensor.

On my MK1 there are two plugs on the underside of that cover - a blue one and a white one. Blue goes to pump, white is for the sensor. Either remove the plug or find the wires later and stick probes on them..... when you manipulate the float arm you should see resistance going up and down if it's working, like so:



If you get between 30 ish and 120 ish ohms (as I did) then the sensor is working. So in my case either the wiring up to the dash is faulty or there is a problem with the gauge itself. Oh well, one for another night.

I stripped off the other piece of carpet, the side trim, the belts (word of caution - the top bolts seem to have been done to the death, plenty of WD40, a long pry and patience required!), and some of the hood fittings. No real surprises, just a case of taking my time to try and save as many of the caps etc as I can for selling on later.

The only tricky bit was the door sill kick plates.... the screws came out cleanly enough but the things still wouldn't budge! turns out there is a long run of sticky stuff behind it firmly holding it to the door sill. I wanted to get them off without damaging them so didn't want to pry at the edges - in the end I settled on heat. Providing you are careful you can heat the plate enough to break the bond with the sticky strip to let you lift them off without scorching anything. I'd recommend wearing wreckers for this as the sills hold on to the heat quite well



That was pretty much it (only had a few hours as I got in late). Hoping to get the rest of the interior out in the next session.

[mrjingles705]

20/08/2013 - More stripping; Don't try this at home and loom gloom

Managed to squeeze in another 2 hours of stripdown, which was a bit of a mixed bag.

On the plus side I managed to remove all of the trim and disconnect everything in the boot, remove the bootlid, lights, petrol filler covers etc. I also removed the hood without damaging it or the glass screen; hoping this will net a decent amount on ebay and help pay down the donor.



On the downside.... I had a good look at the wiring in the boot, and it does not bode well:



You see that red wire? it's coming out of the plug connector for the light and has been routed through several welded bits of the chassis. It's either a repair piece or (possibly: haven't checked the wiring diagram yet), how they wired in the foglight (this was an import) but the way they have done it means I need to cut it in order to get the loom out. It wouldn't be so bad if this was the only one but there are similar bodges for the back window heater, other lights and so on, all in the rear area of the loom (so far) which aren't related to the import.

I had a flick through the service history paperwork to try and see what this was all about... was there an unrecorded accident maybe? it seemed wierd that so much had to be messed with. And I got my answer.

Rodents.

Apparently, rodents had chewed the wires, and the garage had made repairs. Hmm. Will wait to see what's what when the whole loom comes out.

The other bad point was trying to brain myself with the hood - it's not massively heavy but it is awkward. Stubborn git that I am I tried to lift it off and get it stored away on my own.... and managed to drop it on my own head from rafter height. After I stopped cursing I managed to get it stored (somewhat) but will need to move it later. Lesson learnt.

[mrjingles705]

21/08/2013 - A helping hand & new home for the seats

My friend Craig came over to give me a hand (having learnt my lesson from the hood!) with the goal of removing the seats and interior trim. And as is the way with these things it didn't go entirely to plan.

The seat bolts were siezed pretty bad, and with carpets still in I couldn't give them heat.... so I tried WD40, which made barely a dent even after leaving them to soak for quite a while, gentle hammer tap on the socket to loose it up etc. Add that to a chronic lack space if you need to get some leverage (especially on the back ones) and we ended up getting fairly creative.

For the fronts, sleeving tools with a short length of pipe was the way to go... for the rear bolts this just wasn't possible, so after a few failed attempts we came up with the idea to use an extension on the socket to make a tall T piece. one of us kept the socket seated whilst the other cranked the top T bar.... eventually this did the trick.

It would have been miles easier with an impact wrench though.... ironically I've just bought one but the impact sockets haven't arrived, which is really frustrating. Oh well.

After that we got a few more minor trim bits sorted (window rubber, visors, etc) and called it a day. With no seats in there is quite a bit more room now to work so the rest of the stripping should be quicker.



A big plus is that Craig is the proud owner of a TVR that has some fairly tired seats.... and the MX-5 seats apparently drop in pretty well. The seats are a fair bit heavier than I was expecting so we've done a deal - he'll help part-pay for a replacement set of lighter seats (GRP? Carbon? hmmm...) and I'll help him drop these into the TVR. Job's a good un!

[mrjingles705]

27/08/2013 - Ebaytastic

Having had a nice break for the bank holiday weekend it's time to get stuck back in.

I only stripped a few bits off (washer, bonnet) - the rest of the time was spent on getting stuff organised for ebaying as I am rapidly running out of storage room.

Quick tip - check prices on everything, little items can fetch reasonable money and it'll all add up. Case in point, the battery vent pipe:



I almost left this on the bodyshell thinking it really couldn't possibly be worth much more than pence (how often would someone need a replacement, honestly?); but they sell well on ebay, even used. Add all those little trim caps you've been saving (you have been saving them, haven't you? ), screws and other odds & sods of trim and the donor really can pay for itself.

Case in point - I'm about 60% of the way through the strip of ebayable bits and I think that I have between £250-450 worth of parts.... and this from an extremely tatty donor. By the time I'm finished the donor shouldn't owe me anything.... I might even make a small profit on it, we'll see.

[mrjingles705]

02/09/2013 - Odd Jobs

Checking in again - I've been slowly but surely getting all the tiny bits of trim off without damaging them ...this requires a fair bit more patience then I'm usually capable of! (hopefully the sale value will make it feel worth it).

In other news it took me an evening to get everything listed on Ebay (so far anyway) and then another hour to rework the garage lighting as all the overhead storage is blocking too much light. I've also SORN'd the car now the V5 has arrived (and put in the paperwork to claim the tax back... every little helps).

The biggest problem at the moment is logistical.... the garage is brimming with parts! I'm really hoping that the ebay auctions fetch good value and people collect early as, if I can't clear more space soon, this is going to become a problem.

[mrjingles705]

05/09/2013 - 06/09/2013 - Rust, Cheap Tools and a few more interesting bits

I've not got as much done this week as I'd have liked (work has been pretty hectic) so progress has been very slow; it didn't help that both of my ratchets gave up the ghost (to be fair they were very cheap tools and had a hard life, so I'm not too surprised... just incovenient timing really).



I've bought some nice shiny Halfords Professional Extreme's to replace them... heard good things, although it's a shame that the warranty doesn't include the bit that's likely to break (the mechanism).

Many of the Ebay auctions finish this weekend so hopefully most of the huge pile of bits I have built up will go soon.... giving me room to put even more bits in their place Honestly, it seems to be the way to go (breaking the MX-5 to the smallest components that will sell) even though it is slower. There's just so much more to be made from a door as parts than as a whole door for example.




I reckon another few hours of strip and then I'll be ready to lift the body off! Best sort out a crane and an engine stand soon.....

A few points to share:

1) If you want to remove the rear boot hinges/sprung bar, be careful. I knew it was under tension but even following the right proceedure the thing still went off like a gun.
2) Check the price of parts of ebay before losing the hump with them. Those rear plastic mudguards/arches I destroyed with my dremel were worth between £10 and £40 (!!)a pair .... oops.
3) Working with someone on the stripdown can be great, but it can also backfire; case in point a friend was helping out and whilst I worked on the bumper he thought he'd climb in the car and strip some bits off the doors.... the car, being much lighter at the rear now, had risen up until that point giving me plenty of clearance but when he got in it settled right back onto my head. No harm done (nothing in there anyway) but it does drive the point home.
4) Sometimes you just can't win on the rust front; you can soak it in WD40, you can tap, you can heat, you can stick a big bar on it, but despite everything it's still going to snap. If there was one thing I would change now it would have been to spent the extra money for a donor with less rust.... it'll clean up OK but it's adding hours. You'd need to weigh up if an extra £xxx to save yyy hours would be worth it for you, but for me (with lack of available hours to spend on the build) it probably would have been a net plus. Oh well.

[mrjingles705]

I do have the kids keeping me company though in their ultra-lightweight kitcar

[mrjingles705]

08/09/2013 - How not to remove a windscreen

A gentleman noticed all my MX-5 listed on a certain auction site and sent me a message saying was a windscreen available? £40 of the queens heads up for grabs. I've heard plenty of stories about the horrors of getting a windscreen out, but what can I say? it was worth a go at least right?

I'd previously removed all the interior trim around the window (dashboard is still in, but you don't need to remove that to have a go at the window) - so I took off the wipers, the plastic panel over the mechanism and the outer window seal.



That seal is a pig by the way - whoever fixed it in did an excellent job, took quite a few minutes to get it off and it did snap once in the process.



After that you need to run something thin between the window and frame (through the adhesive) to get a starting point to work from. A pawl is the tool for the job here, just be careful not to chip the glass.

So far, so good.

So (having no piano wire) I had a hunt around and found some thin (but strong) single strand wire that I thought would do the job. Wifety type & I were merrily sawing away and all was going well until I got a bit enthusiastic (must have put too much pressure on the wire)....



Bugger.

Oh well, win some, lose some.

[mrjingles705]

09/09/2013 - 17/09/2013 - Slow and Steady...

Has it really been a month since I bought the donor? jeez, where did that time go?

Sorry for the lack of updates recently - I've been working my backside off recently so have only had a few hours to spend on the car in the last week. What little time I've had outside of this has been spent trying to ebay the pile of parts I've built up to give me some space (Hint: whilst offering to post parts will get you more bidders, it means a heck of a lot of work. Way the Pro's/Con's accordingly!).

Talking of Ebay - the good news first - The donor has now officially paid for itself!. That's right, from the parts I've sold to date the full donor cost has been recouped... and I still have headlights, lifter motors, dash and some other good bits left to sell yet. And this from a tatty bodywork donor. With clean panels I really think doubling the donor's value would have been possible, very impressed.

So what is new? lets talk about lessons learnt.

Lesson No 1: When people tell you not to use paper labels.... really, listen, don't use paper labels and think "It'll be OK". It won't. Instead, you'll learn that rolling a car out into the rain (so you can very quickly clear some workspace) means your labels go like this:



And you'll need to re-label the whole loom agin, using a dynalabel (like this):



Lesson 2: sometimes good advice is still bad advice.

In this case, someone advised me to use a hub puller to get the steering wheel boss of the spline, and that this would not damage the boss. See for yourself:




(P.S Would really love to know what the best way of doing this is... )
(P.P.S A guy bought the wheel, the wooden handbrake handle and the gearstick off me for £70 so it's not all bad news)
(P.P.P.S Use heat on the handbrake lever, but *smart* heat.... get it into the metal, not the wood, or you'll ruin the finish. A cone is good for this)

So asside from that and a little more stripping (although not as much as I'd have liked) I did get my crane and engine stand delivered. The prices for second-hand ones around my area were so close to the new prices that it really was a hire-or-buy new decision, and I figured with the number of times I plan to use it plus the time I'd have it, it'd make sense to buy). Got the SGS engineering ones, very happy with the build quality so far but the proof is in the pudding.....

[murfeey]

hi mate you in reading by any chance?cheers murf.

[mrjingles705]

I am indeed Spencers Wood.

Managed to do mostly naff all this week between working like a mule and being sick as a parrot.... hoping to rectify that this weekend and get the strip finally finished.

[murfeey]

sound mate in woodley building an exocet ,stuart mentioned hed sold a kit to someone in reading, need any tools or help drop me a pm, have a memfast tool,welder, engine hoist mate ,save you a few pennies rather than buy or hire.cheers shaun

[murfeey]

same mate doing floor at mo ,bulkhead, alot of hrsh words!!!!.