This week we are planning to get the braking system completed. We are fitting new braided hoses, new front discs and new pads. The rear discs were replaced fairly recently, so we are leaving them alone.

Where the brake components mount to the car, we are cleaning the rust and painting the brackets. We plan to do a full underside restoration later and this makes it easier to work around the hoses and mounting points.

The new gold calipers are fitted with EBC greenstuff pads.

One slight annoyance was finding a broken spring. This means we need to fit new coil overs before we MOT the car and this means doing a fully restoration under the wheel arches first. On the positive side, it means we get to see the car lower to the ground.

Ordered the MeisterR Sportive coil overs.

We only ordered these yesterday and they turned up today!

Today we fitted the MeisterR coil overs on the front of the MX-5e. This would be a simple and quick task, if we weren't having to do a full restoration of both wheel arches at the same time. We are cleaning up any rust and unsealing the inside of the wheel arches.

With the new coil overs fitted, we have a much nicer ride height at the front of the car. It sits about 40mm lower.

We started to fit the rear coil overs today. Again, this should be a relatively short job. A 30+ year old car has other ideas though! Firstly, the rear mud-flap spire clips had all seized and needed to be drilled out. We then had to remove the wheel arch liners and clean up any rust inside the rear wheel arches.

This gave us the opportunity to remove the grommets that let you peak inside. The right side was super clean and has no rust. The left one was in better condition than we expected, given that this side appears to have had some work done on it before. The plan is to still get this side professionally repaired by a company that specialises in MX-5 rear sill repairs.

It took all morning to clean both rear wheel arches and treat any rust. Tomorrow, we will underseal them both and fit the rear coil overs.

More boring and time-consuming work inside the rear wheel arches today. Having treated the rust, these are being undersealed before the arch liners, and new braking system components go on. This is the only way to ensure this car will last another 30+ years.

Back from holiday and looking to have the car MOT ready this week. The front brakes are on and the wheel arch liners back in.

With the new MeisterR coli overs installed, the MX-5e now sits better, with a lower stance and looks much better for it.

We finished fitting the new baking system today and bled them. It all seems to be working well but we need to set the handbrake adjusters on the rear calipers. The car is booked in for an MOT early next week and is now insured, with a 3000 mile, fully comprehensive policy costing just £90. We paid £1450 for this car but its value has already doubled.

We also ran some STP engine cleaner through the engine before changing the oil and oil filter. The engine runs much quieter now.

The current mirrors on the MX-5e are not in the best of condition, so I ordered these last month. They will be painted to match the bodywork, when the car is resprayed.

We want to do something smarter with the mirrors on the OSSEV^® but, haven't got around to looking at this in detail yet. We have been so busy just getting the car MX-5e for its MOT. It feels slightly strange to have put so much time, money and effort into MX-5e and we have still yet to drive it. At least we know roughly what to expect, having a similar spec 1990 Eunos in the family in the shape of Yoko.

Lots of little jobs today, in preparation for the MOT. We have refitted the cowling over the instruments. We wired in the fog light, having forgotten how the switch was wired up before. We removed one of the fans but, it was the wrong one so that has been refitted.

Another thing we got working today was the central locking and both key fobs seem to work now we have fitted new batteries.

We have finished refurbishing an old Momo steering wheel with a wooden rim. It was just the right size and had a lovely feel to it, so we have hand-stitched a quality leather cover over the wooden rim, having repainted the aluminium spokes.

The MX-5e was booked in for an MOT today. We were quietly confident it would pass and it was also the first time that Rob got to drive the car since we bought it 😎

As expected, the brakes were initially quite poor, since the pads and discs had done zero miles. With a bit of use they started to work well and on the journey home were really quite impressive, providing plenty of confidence.

The rear anti-roll bar and rear back box were clunking over bigger bumps in the road. We have ordered new bushes for both the front and rear ARBs.

The only real downside was the automatic gearbox, which makes the car feel very sluggish off the line. Yoko is not the quickest of cars but, she makes Kaminari feel slow in comparison. We have a plan for this though 😉

We failed the MOT. Ironically, the main issue was the emissions test. The car was tested as a car with a catalyst and whilst it does have one fitted, the rest of the exhaust system has too many leaks. It just doesn't make sense to fit a new exhaust system, so we are going to see what we can do with second-hand parts.

The other thing it failed on was the left rear sill. We knew the previous owner had this patched by looking at the state of the paintwork but, the MOT tester was looking for solid metal and exposed the corrosion that had been covered up. We had always planned to get this professional repaired but, it is now something that has to be done sooner, rather than later. The corrosion only runs through the outer skin, which is good.

Today has shown us that the car rides really nicely, with good feedback through the steering wheel. It's clearly going to be a lot of fun to drive and has real potential.