Chocolate Drifter

last_resort14 · Post by **last_resort14** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 12:51 pm

Hey everyone.

Been a long time since I posted anything on here about my car, has been going under some serious changes lately so I thought I would put up a build.

Also after reading all the controversy in the pic thread about everyones attitudes towards drifting, thought I would have this here to get everyone going

Anyway, a bit of history on the car,

Originally an NA6 which I brought in near standard condition, lowered on BC coilovers and installed a Greddy turbo kit

(original turbo build seen in this thread-http://www.mx5forum.co.nz/viewtopic.php?t=8876)

car has had a lot of changes since that original build.
The 1.6 was getting a little tired, starting to push a little blue smoke so i thought I would put it out of its misery by entering a burnout competition.
http://youtu.be/AnuQKyhW3gw
After this the car still ran the same, so I wound up the boost and melted the side off a piston.

So the car went back in the garage, and I picked up a 1.8 motor and box from a 1996, put this in the car and re-did the turbo setup with a larger turbo, new manifold, exhaust system etc, kept my intercooler and radiator setup the same.

Then gave the car a big tidy up, so I could enter it in the 2011 4&rotary nationals show and shine.

at the show I won a judges choice award, which i was pretty happy about,

after this I felt I needed to use the car a bit, along the way I had been upgrading everything else on the car, 1.8brakes, 1.8 torsen rear end, 6 speed gearbox from a 1999, along with new custom made diff/engine mounts etc.

went along to a few skidpan days at hampton downs, had heaps of fun, and got the buzz for keeping my car sideways.

Decided this was the direction the car was now going to go,

purchased some Iconcept rack ends from japan for more lock,

Got a racetech 1000 seat to hold me in place

And also installed a hydraulic handbrake.

from here I went out and gave the car a hard time at hampton downs and taupo, using plenty of tyres in the process

http://youtu.be/Q0nnjbXgugY

Decided I really want to get into this drifting thing, Built myself a Car trailer to get the car around, and also purchased a tow wagon.

Only thing holding me back at the drift days was my cooling setup, I could only go out for short bursts at a time, and had to have cool down laps between drifts.

So I pulled all the stuff off the front to decide my new plan of attack.(sorry about the phone pics from here on in)

Theres still not a lot of room in there to do much, and I really like the idea of V-mount setups.

Therefore - make more room!

Ah thats better

to save on cost, I re-used my current intercooler, just the other way up, and i purchased an FD RX7 aftermarket radiator to fit in there with it.

Did all sorts of measurements to check it would all work, and decided it was close enough so started figuring out the mounting.

Decided to use tube to make up the front lower section, and will have to weld brackets to it to carry the radiator.

The tube section is now welded to plates, which bolt to the bottom of the chassis rail.

For the top half I used 16x16mm box section, as I already had a few lengths of it kicking around.

this top half is nearly done, the intercooler is sitting where i wanted it so im happy.
You can see the little triangular corner wedges in the front corners, these are for me to mount the bonnet pins to as there is no longer a bonnet catch.

As the car is now no longer going to see the street,I thought I would gut the interior out.

and sold the roll bar off to a friend of mine, as I was after something a little more serious.

So this is where I am up to, only got the car back from Sinco Customs who did the roll cage yesterday,

The cage is nice, fits perfectly under my fibreglass hardtop skin

the cage builder also put tabs on the front corners of the cage for my to make mountings for the hard top.

So this is where I am up to. next up on the list is:
-Painting interior
-Try to fit dash back in
-Tidy up wiring
-Cut rear window and install lexan

And after this there is finish the radiator/intercooler piping and away i go

Mad Kiwi · Post by **Mad Kiwi** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 12:59 pm

Hey nice car!

Where are Sinoco located and do you mind giving a ball park figure on the roll cage, looks like good work!

Mark

punkoutnz · Post by **punkoutnz** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 2:01 pm

Nice one Luke!!! Show those pansies a real drift car aye

harlansmart · Post by **harlansmart** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 2:28 pm

You rock.

That is legend.

Absolutely LOVE it

last_resort14 · Post by **last_resort14** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 2:41 pm

Mad Kiwi wrote:Hey nice car!

Where are Sinoco located and do you mind giving a ball park figure on the roll cage, looks like good work!

Mark

On Kilarney Rd in Hamilton, was just under 2g including gst, bloody good price considering its all Tig welded,

Furai · Post by **Furai** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 10:50 pm

Nice car, looks to be good nick and well built.

Only thing I dont like is steelies

last_resort14 · Post by **last_resort14** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 8:08 am

Not a fan of steelies myself, which is now why I have sold them and have 2 sets of 15x8 alloys.
They were more to prove that I could fit 15x10s all round on a mx5!

Skilfil · Post by **Skilfil** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 9:00 am

Looks cool, I only have a thing against knuckledragging 'drifters' who won't take their car out on the track but have cut springs etc. Which is fairly common in the Cefiro/Laurel/Skyline lot.

I'd love to give it a try on the track though, I find it fun enough at the roundabout up the road (rural so no one around).

Good to see an MX5 out there sticking it to the usual, they're easy cars to control as far as my limited experience with RWD goes.

zippy2 · Post by **zippy2** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 3:08 pm

nice setup with I/C etc. do you plan to do anything to the bonnet to let all the hot air out ? or are you hoping it can exit under the car from the engine bay?

last_resort14 · Post by **last_resort14** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 5:07 pm

Forgot to mention that

Is going to have a hole cut into the bonnet, with a duct going down right on to the back of the intercooler core. also will have some ducting on the inlet side like a funnel to get the air in there. I dont want to ever have a cooling issue again!

mazline · Post by **mazline** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 4:45 pm

Did you see the custom bonnet i've got listed in the classifieds ?,might be suitable.
Brownie

last_resort14 · Post by **last_resort14** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 7:44 pm

Had seen that bonnet. But I'd already cut the latch off my one in preparation for this, so it's no good to anyone else so I may as well have a go with it and see how it comes out.

brownie · Post by **brownie** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 9:26 pm

Thats fair,
If you get stuck trying to play with the alloy bonnet,I do have at work a Brand New Tai bonnet,It's a steel one,So twice the weight of a factory unit...But better to cut up to modify...and cheap if keen.

last_resort14 · Post by **last_resort14** » Mon Apr 16, 2012 6:28 pm

Have been slack on updates of late.

Sold house and brought a new one, so all of my time has been taken up with running around sorting finances and lawyers and then the nightmare of moving my house and garage.

Anyways, have managaed to get a few little bits and pieces done on the car.

Firstly I had a look at mounting the dashboard back into the car around the roll cage bars.
I cut the factory dashboard in every place I needed to and finally got it in there, But once in there I found that the factory guage cluster would not fit as it would be exactly where my rollcage bar is

. and also the cut up dashboard would only have one mounting point and would shake like crazy.

So I made up a plan to make a custom dashboard. Firstly got a large piece of cardboard and did a few measurements to make a mock up.

This was fitting pretty well and would have room for my guages etc so I traced the outline onto a piece of 1mm sheet aluminium, and cut holes out for my guages and switches to sit

Got this sitting in place and went down to Collins profiling, where I have been for a few things in the past, and he bent it up for free

once bent up I sat this back in the car, and test fitted a few guages etc, it looks like it will do the trick.

crappy pic this one

My tacho has a curved bracket which sits on my steering column, so it will be mounted there.

More updates when I finally unpack everything and find some time to do some work

Bwarp · Post by **Bwarp** » Mon Apr 16, 2012 7:03 pm

Holey shit, that dash is excellent. Very very jelly.

May i ask about your wheel fitment?

I've got a mate with 15x7.5 0 offset wheels, but they are 4x114.3, so I wanna run an adaptor to try them on the MX5 (have been on his AE85 racecar), which will probably make them -20 offset approx. Considering you ran 15x10's, does a 15x7.5 -20 sound feasible to get in the guards without running silly amounts of camber and a rubber band tyre? keen to run atleast a 195 on them...

last_resort14 · Post by **last_resort14** » Mon Apr 16, 2012 7:38 pm

my steelies were 15x10 +10, and my alloys are all 15x8 +0.

7.5s at -20 would fit but would require some serious guard rolling and pulling if you were to run a 195.
My steelies only fit at +10p because they were running a 195/45, and my 15x8 0p wheels just clear with a 195/45. my guards are rolled but not really pulled at all.

Bwarp · Post by **Bwarp** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 8:13 am

195 on a 10" rim? Farrrk. That's keen. Haha.

its damn hard finding wheels that look good on the MX5. 4x100 stud pattern sucks for getting wheels that fill guards.

Kieran · Post by **Kieran** » Fri May 18, 2012 11:16 am

Just saw on Club Roadster that your car made the lowest miata list from this pic
http://i457.photobucket.com/albums/qq29 ... resize.jpg

old scrubber · Post by **old scrubber** » Fri May 18, 2012 11:55 am

well done , it is not my style but i do admire what you have done, goodluck

last_resort14 · Post by **last_resort14** » Wed May 30, 2012 12:49 am

Finally got another chance to work on the car,
Have done heaps of wiring for my dashboard, all of my guages and switches etc, not very exciting to look at so no pictures of that.

Finally got around to priming my roll cage, Took quite a while to get it ready as I had to lightly sand quite a few sections as it had surface rust coming up where I had touched the cage with my hands

needs more primer put on it tomorrow, and then I will finish masking up all of the inside to prep the entire interior for paint.

Kieran · Post by **Kieran** » Wed May 30, 2012 9:53 am

that cage is awesome!!!

harlansmart · Post by **harlansmart** » Wed May 30, 2012 5:59 pm

Lol, that whole car is awesome

Kieran wrote:that cage is awesome!!!

last_resort14 · Post by **last_resort14** » Wed May 30, 2012 11:34 pm

Got a few more things sorted today.

finished priming the cage, steering column and any other bare steel in the interior. Once that was done I started to mask everything I dont want to paint when I do the interior.

Unfortunately I ran out of masking tape

I am most probably painting the interior black, and I have masked so that the door jambs and other bits and pieces so that they will be black, as the exterior of the car will hopefully not be red too much longer, and as its only a race car I dont want to paint door jambs and that sort of fiddly stuff.

Also sanded, primed and painted my dashboard.

Came out pretty good.

And re-assembled. Check out my awesome fuel guage, haha, pulled straight from the factory dash.

Will get some more masking tape tomorrow and will finish masking the car off. hoping to get the interior painted over the weekend.

punkoutnz · Post by **punkoutnz** » Thu May 31, 2012 8:26 am

That dash looks freaken lush dude!

Born_disturbed · Post by **Born_disturbed** » Thu May 31, 2012 8:45 am

Hard! up for sorting me out a cage and dash? ha

Chocolate Drifter

Chocolate Drifter

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