Well I thought I start a post so I can make a build diary.
This is about an hour after picking her up





Literally 2 hours before someone reversed into it


Come back the next day to this!!


Behind drivers seat. Not to bad I hope

My Capp next to the car that reversed into me. 1500 for a new bumper for his 5door civic. Whoops

That bloody oil leak. Looks a good job but hasnt lasted long

Some dodgy looking rust appearing

Drivers side. Had work done before. Huston. The pigeons have landed

Front bumper support. Looking healthy lol

And this is the garage within a garage iv made for her to keep the damp out over the winte

That's got to be one of scores outings....

Yea it was. A couple years ago now. Came down to Cornwall and did a two day run I beleive.

Its very unusual to see that many cappos together these days. I think most cappo owners are shy creatures now ??). Your cappo doesn't look in too bad order. Your going to do some performance upgrades by the sound of it :)...

Yea a few bits. Going to tidy her up and use her untill September when the mot is out. The. Take her off the road for the winter and strip her down. Send the body in to have all the floor and other bits done. And hopefully by jan-feb time start rebuilding her back to new standard. well that's the plan anyway. Also getting te engine stripped ad checked and then hopefully tune her to a healthy 100hp. That's what I'm aiming for. Some more bottom end grunt is what I'm after

She looks very clean. Like she's had a re spray at some point. The floor needs looking at. Looks like a new Fuel line and cover at some point.

Shame about the wing. Like mine when I had mine!

Sounds like you have serious plans for it!!

Cheers lord. Yes she's clean. Had two new wings. Rear quarter panels and drivers door 8 months ago and then a complete respray. Just a putty about the rust underneath and the floor. But that will get treated for the time being and sorted out in the winter. Any idea if you can get new floor pans??  Steve

Sadly Suzuki stopped producing floor pans some time ago.  Apparently MX5 floor pans can be adapted to fit though.

Hmmm. Handy to know. Il find out a price tomorrow me thinks. Cheers Andy :)

Hi steve - I had to have mine cut out completely and new ones fabricated out of sheet a few years ago....pretty much the whole underside of my car had new metal at the same time.....just dont ask how much it cost!!! Worth it in the end though mate :-)

I have heard about the Mx5 floor pan, but where do you buy them ? And what Mk of Mx5 or it doesn't matter?

And i take it they are also double skinned like the cappo?

Thanks
Ming

It actually annoys me that panels for the cappo are so expensive ~~~~

This seems a decent price for Miata floor pan:

http://www.theautopartsshop.com/auto+car-usa+parts/mazda+miata+floor-pan.html

Ming

Ok. Few more pics from yesterday's mission. I simple oil change. Ha. Nothing simple on this. Was leaking oil from the sump about 1" above the drain plug hole. Some one previous
Had what looks like araldite to fix the repair and was leaking behind it. Let's just say I touched it with a screwdriver and the whole repair fell off :0. In typical cap style the sump had rusted so bad that there where a couple pin holes where it was rusted through. A thorough clean up and half a tin of brake cleaner later it was ready for some devcon. Ally putty. Left under 40 deg heat for four hours and away we go. Heres a few pics along the way.

After the repair fell off




Cleaned up a little with wire brush ad some elbow grease

Cleaned up ready for some devcon


Oil and genuine filter


Also tried fitting a oil pressure gauge. Had to remove alternator. Two bolts. Relatively easy to get to. Removed the inlet hose and water heater hose from inlet manifold.
Should there be oil resedue in the inlet??

Wow that sump pans a rusty little sucker. The engine breather vents into the  inlet system. Its probably worth taking the intercooler and other parts down stream of the throttle body and give them a good clean out. A lot of owners have vented the engine breather system into a separate catch tank this cures the problem.

Those bits are very rusty indeed. fair play for addressing it sits a fiddle job. you have a lot of work on your hands there so persevere. might be worth getting a spare one of someone.

Yea just bought another cap yesterday for £500 with a 40k mile engine so will be using that after the winter project :)

Spent a bit of time on her today. Sorted out the windows. Another exhaust. Sorted out the gauges and relocated the stereo in the glove box :)

Had a bit of a mess about today. Trying to get things ready for our road trip in the Cappo for a week next week. Removed the air box ready for steves new one. Also took wing off to try and to a temp repair until one turns up.





Removed air con ready for big intercooler






Broken headlight




Red led primed

Nice (thumb)

Thanks :)

I have to say... the standard form cappo looks really good!!

Cheers lord. I think the same. Just need some decent shocks and some wider tread. Oh and a stiffer anti roll bar. That should sort the handling

BC Coilovers is the way to go.. or some lowering springs!

Yea. That's next on my list :)

Well done mate.  Very committed driving 8)....

Wait till you see the on board footage of me spinning out at 65 mph lol

can't wait to see that :)
Nice pictures!!

Here's the video. Putty I took it the wrong way up

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z247/stvhole/cappo/b4080d26.mp4

Cracking video!  What do you use to do that then?

Track addict app for the iPhone. Just remember to put it landscape. That way when you watch it back you can watch it without a crooked neck :)

Luckily I'm on my laptop so simply turned it on its side :D

Here is the last three laps. Lap 12 is the spin out lol

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z247/stvhole/cappo/c4f5d887.mp4

Thats a good set of videos, where's that track and how much?

That grey mini in front was badly ruining your run, it looked like at times you were short shifting to prevent getting too close and the braking points were well too early for your car.

Once you get some better suspension and some sticky rubber you'll see a massive improvement with carrying speed through the bends.

Finally got these from steve. Asked for crome bars instead of powder coating.  Think it looks a tad better as well.

Hi,

Can you write up a few notes on how the car behaves with the braces?

Thx
H

To be honest iv not noticed anything drastic. Steering feels heavier but this is a weekend car for me so noticing a diff is a bit harder. Think the steering is down to a tyre going a bit flat so not the bars. One thing I did notice is it feels that bit sharper on the steering and feels a big more solid. More go carty then it was before. But my shocks have nearly had it so also makes it harder to tell. But reading what others have noticed it seems pretty good.
Always seemed scepticle about these strut bars on cars. Never imagined that the shock turrets would move enough to see a difference. But it appears it does.

All in all I think these combined with some decent shocks and bushes all round would make it a lot more planted. But only time will tell once iv found some decent shocks to compliment these strut bars.

Took me about 30 mins to do front and rear bars. Steves fitment guide defo helped :)

Steve

Finally got round to finishing off my garage in a garage. Here's before and after.

So had the car on the rollers today. Alot better than I was exspecting. Considering my turbo isn't producing boost until 5k rpm. Only mods are sis sixty air box. Bike end can and boost up to 1.1 bar

As you can see the massive lag bottom end

Hi steve, is that spike when your boost is kicking in? If the turbo is already at boost which it should be looks like your car isnt fuelling right when its running closed loop. Could be your lambda sensor. Had a look at the manual and the ecu ignores the lambda after 4400rpm and that seems to be where your car starts picking up.

No. It's where there is no boosts. It starts to come on boost at 4500 and reaches full
Boost about 5500. We think the wastage isn't closing propper or there is a crack I'm the turbo/manifold. We noticed that as soon as it comes on boost lots of smoke comes out of everywhere. I need that ecu of yours to try ;)

Check out the smoke on boost

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z247/stvhole/13BA4689-3C68-40BF-BBB1-9FCB2FFFA808-1540-000000D7231CB865.mp4

Sorry to hear that. My old car was a bit of a smoker too when it came on boost. Did you have a boost controller fitted?

I hope it's not your turbo that's dying.

Stock turbo shoud that making boost at 2000-2500 rpm, and full boost should be around 3500rpm.

Nice garage by the way :)

Cheers chaps. Well iv been thinking about this one. Matey found a split in my boost controller pipe. So was over boosting at 7000 rpm and was thinking if that smoke was actualy the fuel cut defender kicking in. What your thoughts.

Steve

P.s
It wouldn't rev past 7000 rpm if fourth. Is that normal

Not reving past 7000 rpm ? Not normal.

Rev limiter is set to 9000 rpm with the stock ECU, and a bit more (9300 ?) with N1 ECU if I remember correctly.

It revs out fine in the other gears. Not sure what happened

“ Quoted from Capposteve, posted Saturday, September 15th, 2012, 10:55:34pm at here ” Check out the smoke on boost

I'm afraid that's exactly what my old cappo used to do, centre bearing and seals gone in the turbo would be my guess. If the bearing has gone it wouldn't spool up as quickly which would explain your boost problems too.

That must be it the. Will boost up to 4-5 psi from 2000-4500 then gradually go up to 1bar at 5500. :(. Have been offered a ct9 turbo off a starlet as aperently they fit. Any ideas??

Dunno about this turbo, so I can't say.

If you don't mind not having boot until 3000-3500rpm and full boost at 4500rpm (all the way to at least 8500 rpm :) ) I'd recommend an HT-07, possibly from yahoo auction or something like that. It's almost plug&play if you buy the good water pipes from Suzuki, there's a topic somewhere with the details.

Hmmmm. Not sure on that. Isn't that the one you have to use with bigger injectors and n2 ecu??

Thanks.

Yeah, if you value your engine, you shouldn't use it without being sure your ECU can manage it.

But it would be the same with the CT9 turbo, if it's the one from 130bhp Starlet then it's bigger than stock and than HT-07 turbo.

New turbo turned up.
Cheers Chris

That's spankers!!

Very good buy.

Is that a stock turbo ?

Yep. :)

Here's a video of the weird boost curve

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z247/stvhole/3E5F29D7-928A-411A-BFCF-D3CB9278B5FE-1492-0000008F1E7DC9D0_zps5c04d2e2.mp4

Finally got round to almost finishing my digi dash








Playing about with the new iPhone 5 camera.

The dash looks quite nice and functional, good job.

Nice pics also !

About the boost, can you find a long straight road and do a pull from 2000-2500rpm all the way to the redline in 3rd gear ? Or can you tell if the boost stays at 1bar at 8000rpm ? If it does, maybe you have a bigger turbo... but the smokes from the dyno leads more to a damaged turbo, I guess you'll know when you fit the knew one ;D

By the way, why did the dyno run was stopped at 7000rpm while this engine can take 9000rpm ?

Yea il do a video today and come back. It's holds boost very well. It just takes its time to get there compared to my red one. I could get my red one to make a bar of boost just by revving it. I'd be lucky if I got this to make any positive boost just by revving it. I'm 90% sure it's standard but will let you no this week.

She wouldn't rev past 7000 on the rollers for some reason in 4th. But on the road she does really easily. Not sure what happened that day tbh

Steve

Here you go. A much better video. 😁

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z247/stvhole/07713F34-952F-4A15-A2D5-2CADA96C61EC-2473-00000118E90D4FEB_zpsdd73fce4.mp4

Will not rev past 8000 no matter how hard you try. Just goes massively flat

Thanks for the video.

Not revving past 8000 ? That's very weird, and I'd be concerned about your engine if I were you. What do you think about doing a compression test ? It's not difficult and would let you know the health of the engine core.

When are you going to fit the new turbo ?

Yea I am quite worried tbh. It will rev past just not in gear. Big flat spot almost. Fitting it this week as mot on Saturday

Ok. Well. Been a busy boy recently As your about to see. Il let the pics to the talking. Fitted Bc coilovers. Don't like them if I'm honest. Especially crap in our roads. To stiff even on softest setting. Going to talk to them and see if there is anything that can be done but if not I'm gona have to think of something else. Awaiting aches to arrive for these uber wide wheels. Ok. There not that wide. It's just iv had to use wheels stud adapters which tbh has fucked it all up. Anyway. Il let you take a look

It's gonna be wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide :D

Big arches :o.....

Lol. Gona fit some mini miglia arches. They come with a 5" stance and chop to suit. Not sure if its to wide though. Bloody adapters lol

What's the wheel to suspension clearance like?  You could get the backs of the spacers machined down to bring them back in if you have the clearance.

Whats it like on full steering lock :-/.....

Can't do that. Couldn't get much thread on the nuts if I do that. Plus that would mean I'd have to chop some of the original studs down :(

Rub rub ;). But that is on full full. It's fine for normal driving.

Well what would be cheaper - new spacers or adapting those ones?  If it was a more widely used fitment you could probably have sent them back or sold them on...


Funnily enough Steve I asked the very same question about full lock :D

Lol. It's a old ford fitment. And is the only one I really liked. Spacers isn't really an option. Nor is sending then back I'm thinking lol

Looks doable to me :)  Go for a lower profile front tyre should help too.

What are the the wheel specs again? 

It only just rubs so I will live with it. Not changing my tyres. No way lol. I think big arches and were there. :)

It only just rubs so I will live with it. Not changing my tyres. No way lol. I think big arches and were there. :)

So iv FINALY got around to sorting out my LSD. Turns out it looks like its a plate LSD as  which is a bonus.
Still undecided if I'm going to sell it mind.

I spot a hair in there :P tut tut :D

And its a curly one  ;D

We're lol