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Well, its done... Another Project.
About me, i live in sweden, my name is Andreas. 35 years... so this will be the first one in sweden, (if someone else in sweden doesnt buy one and build it faster )
Payed Chris the doposit a couple of Days ago. Found a -91 Miata 1.6 that was pretty low milage (110000km) cheap. But it was used as a test car for some kind of new roadfence, so i started out this weekend bending out the front frames, and fabricating some bars for ridgety. Hope it will work with the body...
Good to see you on the forum, you will find it a great source of help, advice and ideas.
You will need to replace the slam panel (bonnet latch panel) once the kit is trail fitted , to give you the correct position.
How is that monster V8 boat engine build going?
Yes i probably will. Is the front end hanged on the slam panel?
Nothing with the v8 this weekend, has to order titanium retainers, valve spring, shims and spring cups for the heads... It´s a very slow build as it is deliverytime for Everything from US.
Thanks "Fatbloke". I bet your well wishes will be needed! Started out with the rear wheelopenings after almost an hour in phone with the "car inspection" here in sweden, and Believe it or not, i could remove the rear wheelarches if i welded the inner fender to the outer fender. Also found a lot of corosion in the arches where they reach to the sills, and a bit of those were rusty too. But sheet-metel is cheap, and after a bit of work it was done!
Pulled the guage cluster yesterday. Somehow it doesn´t look 60´s to me. I just want the feel of a 60´s car, and the look of separate guages, not a cluster. So i started working a bit with it.
The standard (pretty ok) cluster
Pulled it apart...
Bended of these from surrounding
Gently bended glass of
Made a template of thick paper. Also marked and punched a hole for reset button
Made a plexi piece after the template(White protective on it). Used a bandsaw
Bended this of as well
Marked out on the plexi using the surrounding where to drill holes for Control lamps ¨
Drilled
Pulled protective of finished plexi. Put it back on where it came from, to be used again
Cut out the circles from protective an put em back on glass
Paint! Used very thin (almost dry) layers to prevent from sipping under protective vinyl
Machined aluminium rings, polished and clearcoated them. Glued them with blach RTV silicone(used for Engines etc). The White protective is on backside only(for scratches). Used very small amount of Silicon. Some sipped out, but can be removed later.
So. Rings on the glass! Just have to wait for lenses to the conrol lamps, ordered them on ebay.
The results are great!, tell us more about the rings, are they an offcut of alloy tube , were you able to machine them yourself (yes I had considered cookie cutters to try to get the same type of result!).
Agree with Scottie on that, dash is looking a whole lot more retro.
Andreas, I have found you a replacement door locally for a very good price. We will be making a start on your kit and the modification at the end of next week. I will post some pictures up of the progress.
Hi Andreas,
I love what you have done. I am planning tu use the MX5 instrument cluster on my Sammio and am looking to do something similar. Did you need to put a small spacer between your black plexi and the original black plastic? On mine, the centre of the instrument needles sits slightly above the black plastic, so I cant just put a piece of flat plexi across the face of the gauges.
I hope this makes sense!
Had to reroute a wire on the back of cluster. It is the airbag lights. This is not possible this way if you got abs as i think it uses this blank light that i used on mine. Got a no ABS car. Reason why i did this is because of the hanging needle on tacho. The Airbag light is on the bottom of Tacho face.
This is how it looks in the dark. Guagefaces are made of 4 layers transparent overhead film, and a White addhesive vinyl on the back. So it lids up as the originals...
The mx5 is pretty light as it is in standard form, but my intention is to take it to track events, so i want it lighter. Pulled out the heater, a lot of sound deadening, cut away half of the dashpanel, relocated the ecu and pulled out the kick panel and bracket for that, center console and misc. deleted, floor carpets out of it, will add some very light carpet/felt in it, but only where visible. All this was 31kg! 940kg car minus 31kg makes a difference just over 3%! Kept the fan function, and pulled aluminium hoses to the vents from the fan.
Dashpanel cut i half, wanted a more vintage, narrower dash. Made a new shorter "skirt" for it in aluminium. Then put a chrome trimming on it and some carpet/felt
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