MadaboutKitcars

As for the rear lights,

I didn't want replica 250 GTO lights / LR rear lights as i feel they make the kit look a bit more like a kit car.

I was going to go for some LED style hamburger lights, even after reading a lot of unfavourable comments, then i thought i'd settled on Mk 1 granada rear lights, then to my horror i noticed one of the forum members had already beat me to it!

then i found these bad boys!!!

bonus points if anyone can guess their origin!

clearer image

America or Cortina...

the front lights are LR defender aftermarket DRL headlamps, I'm fitting stainless lampguards over them for the vintage race look

http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/yy78/Martyn_Neil_Jacobs/DSC_0077_zps13cf1aae.jpg

the DRL's in the lower half look great against the headlamp cutouts, Not everyones cup of tea i know

Hopefully next week i will get some workshop space back and i can finish off the prep work,

If anyone knows of a good supplier of hubcentric spacers please let me know, looking at the rear arches i think i'll need at least 40mm each side to get the stance right, i've seen bolt on spacers in 50mm for over £150, i think thats a bit steep,

Nope....

If they are not from a BMW 2002 then I am a Dutchman.......

clearly you are not a dutchman!

Well spotted!

Got them off FleaBay for £65 the pair, the great thing with these lights as apposed to the mk1 granada lights i was considering is the reversing lights are built in saves me having to fit a seperate reversing light, keeps the back end tidy.

They are very neat and pretty, and suit the car perfectly. They are very "un-kit"

I bought my spacers, 50mm from memory, from freaky parts for about £90 (I think). Had to wait a few weeks.

Thanks, I'll check them out

That's exactly what I need,

Well done with those rear lights, that's the cleanest look I've seen yet!

Very neat.

That's fantastic progress in 3 weeks!

You have beaten us to it with the BMW rear lights, we have 2 pairs in the workshop waiting to be used.

Thanks Chris

They say great minds think alike!

I was considering sticking a red bulb in one of the reversing lights to use as the fog light,
But I think it has to be a set distance from the tail/ brake lights to make it 100% legit,

I did take it for a brief blast up the road today, I seem to have some slight rubbing due to the increased wheel size, will probably need to cut back the inner arch fillers, might as well wait til I have the rear spacers.

Hopefully I'll have some workshop space available later in the week so I can tackle the wipers, boot lock and bonnet latch,

Until then I'm going to eBay a few items to try and generate the money for the spacers and wipers.

I didn't get much from selling the spare bits off. The hood complete was the only worthwhile bit at £90. Things like the boot lid, rear lights etc I just got a few pounds each so hardly worth the hassle of posting or waiting for people to collect.

has your mx5 been lowered at all. whats the diameter of the tyre your running. I quite like the combo. bin looking 16x8 and 16x7 and then what tyre to fit . 23inches ish maybe.

I believe the overall diameter of the wheels i. A shade under 27 inches
the suspension is completely standard, before I fitted the wheels I was planning on lowering, looking at it now, that won't be possible or necessary.

Running wheels and tyres this big will cause the speedometer to be fairly inaccurate ( about 7mph at 60mph) other than that it's just a matter of clearance
I'm fitting a double din Sat nav stereo which will help me keep an eye on my speed

The tyres are 215/55/16 - big and bouncy
wheels are 16x8 et20 offset all round, rears will be spaced 50mm each side

I've been looking at a few other builds, has anyone managed to use either the original bonnet or boot latch to latch the bonnet? I notice there's not a lot of room, so I would be cutting into the metal in front of the rad.

Most builds seem to use bonnet pins, I'd quite like to use the original bonnet release lever/cable

You might find your speedo is actually more accurate with the larger tyres. Most speedos over read by about 10% so you're typically travelling at about 54mph when it reads 60.

You can check how much difference your tyres will make to the speedo with this handy tool -

http://www.kouki.co.uk/utilities/visual-tyre-size-calculator

Just enter your original and new tyre sizes and it'll tell you the difference. So long as the error isn't much more than 10% slower than actual speed you should be fine. Check it against your sat nav speed and you might be surprised.

er kouki says 30mph on dial you actually be doing 35.9 same nock on affect with 60 actual is 71. same amount of turns 19%further distance travelled. something like that. I think i'll need a gps thing too