This month started with a family holiday in Portugal for a week, so no real progress made. We did buy some parts and tools though, which should arrive by the time we get home.
One of things we ordered whilst away on holiday was this 5m length of daylight white LEDs. This 12V LED COB strip has 320 LEDs per meter to provide a continuous bead of light and it is very bright. It is also just 5mm wide. The plan is to use this as part of our custom side lights project.
This photo of the LED strip does not really do it justice. It is very bright! It is also waterproof but, we plan to resin encapsulate in our lights anyway.
And just out of curiosity, we wanted to see what it looked like across the front of the car. The front bumper even has an indent for it!
Today we started removing loads of bits from the engine bay. The plan was to get the MX-5e ready for the petrol engine to come out. We weighed all of the parts removed using our vehicle scales.
With the two radiators removed, there is a huge space in the front of the car. We will fit a much small radiator and twin fans in here.
This is as far as we got. We have removed the air intake system (3.7kg), battery and clamps (11.5kg), main radiator and fans (8.1kg), most of the air con system (7.8kg) and the exhaust system (19.9kg). This is a total of 51.0kg 😎
There is now room to stand inside the engine bay 🤣
More work under the bonnet today, to get to the point where we can remove the engine and gearbox. The most time consuming part was draining the fuel tank. The fuel tank can't come out without removing the rear subframe but, we plan to remove both subframes to be powder coated. The main battery pack will sit where the engine is now, low down and behind the front anti-roll bar.
By the time we have finished, the engine bay will be completely empty. We have decided to replace the brake pipes too, so that we can completely strip and restore the underside of the car. We are now committed to a completely new wiring loom too.
Something that surprised us a little, was just how many of the bolts we were removing were fairly loose! There are quite a few metal brackets bolted to the chassis in the engine bay that are no longer required. More weight savings 😎
Bit of a break from working on the MX-5e whilst Rob was down in Somerset again. These 3W 12V LEDs arrived for our custom side lights project. They are seriously bright!
Another delivery today was our hydraulic ramps. These are going to allow us to work on the MX-5e whilst it is immobile and within the confined space of our garage.
Today we finally got the engine and gear box out. A quality engine hoist is essential and the time consuming bit was disconnecting the wiring harness. We still have quite a lot more stuff in the engine bay to remove. Even so, there is loads of space for the EV bits.
With the engine gone, the steering is incredibly light. This bodes well for the EV it will become without power steering.
We weighed the engine and gearbox as shown here at 196.2kg. The propshaft was 4.5kg, the front anti-roll bar was 3.3kg. We also removed another 8.1kg of odd engine related bits.
With the engine and gear box out, there is a huge amount of free space for the EV components. We have even more stuff to remove too.
The recent weather is not helping us to progress. We have limited space to work within our garage, so we are going to focus on the front end of the car first and strip it down and complete the full restoration of the underside. We will then fit this new powder coated front subframe, with new bushes and alignment bolts.
We also have powder coated suspension arms and these will be fitted new ball joints.
As you can see, we have limited space in our garage to work on the MX-5e and we have had no luck finding another space to rent, to work on the car. We have decided to progress anyway and have raised the car up on ramps, so that we can focus on restoring the under side and we are starting with the front of the car. The front subframe will be removed soon.
Before we started, we took loads of photos of the underside of the car. It's in surprisingly good condition with minimal surface rust and none on the front chassis legs. This car has clearly been garaged for most of it's life, like Yoko.
The plan is to remove all the underseal, treat all the rust and to then apply new underseal. Given that this car will now be garaged all its life, this should enable it to see another 30+ years of use.
We made really good progress removing stuff from the engine bay today. The wiring loom is going to be pulled through into the cabin to keep it intact but, we have no plans to use it. We will have to reuse some of the connectors though.
As we have stated before, the plan is to fit a new, custom wiring loom that is much lighter than the one currently in place. There are simply loads of wires that we no longer need.
Mazda must have been really keen to have pop-up headlights on the MX-5. Each unit weighs 4.3kg! Whilst it is very tempting to replace these with something much lighter, they are very much part of the cars character and we plan to do some clever stuff with the wiring of these units, so the car can wink at you 🤣
Having taken some initial measurements, we are 90% sure that the Nissan Leaf inverter will need to be remotely mounted. It is very close though and we will only be 100% sure of this when we do some trial fitting next week.
The engine + gearbox is up for sale opn eBay. We would ideally keep it to go in Yoko if needed but, we simply don't have the space.
Today's job was to remove the steering rack, so that we can 'depower' it. This is going to be documented as a project in its own right. The rack as shown here with the tie rod ends still attached weighed 7.6kg.
A 5-hour round trip to pick up a differential for the MX-5e. The refurbishment and upgrade of this differential is also going to be documented as a project in its own right.
With the old 1.6 differential removed, we weighed it at 24.1kg. We have added 4.6kg by moving to a newer and strong differential (28.7kg) but, we gain so much from doing this.
With the steering rack out of the car, we have kicked off a started to depower the steering rack. This involves buying some new tools and taking the steering rack apart.
With the right tools we made good progress on with the project to depower the MX-5e steering rack. It just needs to be greased up and put back together now.