So, What's Next?

Despite looking nearly done, I still have quite a few things to do.

Some of the simple items still do do are as follows.

Bleed the brakes. This is pretty simple, I just need to get someone over here to help out. I may also take this as an opportunity to pick up a motive pressure bleeder. http://www.motiveproducts.com/

Replace the slave cylinder on the clutch. This is a simple task, it will also require bleeding the system. Again straight forward, will probably take some time under the car and its already quite messy around it.

Finish the seat/harness installation. This will involve removing the bracket from the seat. Mounting the bracket to the car. Locate the final rear holes and drill them. Mount the bracket to the car. I will then mount the seat to the bracket. At this point, I can then locate the brace mounting locations and start scoping out the sub belt mounting locations.

I need to actually mount the battery. I am pretty sure the car was missing some of the battery mounting hardware when I bought it. So this will be a matter of locating replacement hardware or fabbing up a new hold down.

I need to pressure wash the engine bay. Its nasty. There is so much gunk under there its hard to tell if there are active leaks or if its just the remnants of 20 years of driving, oil spillage and former leaks. Luckily it does not appear to drop any oil while sitting so I am taking that as a good sign. However, definitely not a certainty.

The Advanced autoparts commercial just reminded me that I also need to get some wipers. Outside of that reminder, I also need to get a transponder, wheels, tires, and a fire bottle. I also think I am going to rework the lower mounting of the window net.

While I am at it, I will throw on some hood pins, radiator screen.

When all of the above is done, it will be time to mount the hard top, address the looks of the car. i.e. the areas with peeling paint. Change all of the fluids with race fluids and take it to the track.

Outside of the purchase of wheels and tires, none of the above items are large or overly expensive items.

A lot of progress since the last post.

As you can tell from the above photos, I have been neglecting this site some. So, I am on here to bring it back up to speed. Since the last post, I have reinstalled the dash. There was a little additional trimming that had to be applied to the dash. Overall, the dash was pretty easy to reinstall. There was one exception to this. Getting the defrost vents back in was a bit of a challenge. The rest of the ductwork was removed to accomodate for the under dash bar on the roll cage.

I also reinstalled the steering column, long with my steering wheel disconnect and steering wheel. I disabled the steering lock before doing so. The disconnect is a quality piece. It has a great fit, finish, and feel. It also seems to be very well engineered.

The kill switch was finished up and tested. I ended up breaking the battery terminal on the new cable so I also had to replace that. All terminals are covered to help prevent any chance of shorting against an exposed terminal.



In retrospect, I should have installed the fire plates before the roll cage. It was still possible to install them but driving in the hardware was a bit difficult. To drive in the self tapping screws I ended up using my drill with a 1/4" drive bit and a 6" 1/4" extension. It actually worked pretty well.

Four of the six points of the harness are now in place. I still need to mount the sub-strap. I really want the seat mounted in its final position before mounting the sub strap. I will allow me to make sure I am drilling the right holes in the floor. The lap belt mounts on the existing lap belt holes. The shoulder harnesses wrap around the roll cage. They are held in place with a couple shaft collars from McMaster. The seat back brace mount is now in place, I once again need the seat mounted to finish the seat back brace.

The rear deck was sealed up with fire resistant latex sealant, and foil tape. This was time consuming, a little messy, but not difficult to do.

The fuel filler tube is now back in place.

I added the roll bar padding, I am sure that I will need to trim it here and there.

I bypassed the heater core. Initially I purchased a length of 5/8" heater hose. While this did manage to connect the two outlets on the engine, it kinked due to the 180 degree bend required. I ended up purchasing a preformed portion with a 90 degree turn in it. The hose is stiffer and with the preformed 90 degree bend it kept it from kinking.



I took this has an opportunity to replace the vacuum line that I previously replaced. The small vacuum line that I replaced has an orifice in it. Well I neglected to notice that initially. The one that is on there now is a preformed hose, with a new orifice.

I think the interior paint is done.

More lessons learned and prejudices confirmed. Painting is a bit of a black art is the lesson learned. My prejudice that painting sucks was strengthened further by this experience. It just does. Big fairly flat areas are a piece of cake. Its cylindrical objects that contort and move into tight spaces that are a pain. That said, the car portion of the interior looks nice. The floor, the rear deck, and transmission tunnel are fairly easy to paint. The roll cage on the other hand was quite a challenge. You will notice in the photos, the masking tape was starting to give way at this point. I am sure I will have some overspray to get rid of. As promised here are some photos.

The interior of the door painted

(A nice shot of the overall picture)

(Nice glossy paint with no runs, the cage is another story)

The interior is mostly painted

Last weekend, ended up being busy with some work stuff. So I took a couple days off this week and wrapped up a couple items on the car. I finished masking the car for painting the interior.


I then shot a coat of primer. Using a full size spray gun on the interior of a small car, that has since had a series of bars, etc installed to make the spaces even smaller, is no small feat. I then shot a second round of primer to get the spots that I missed previously.

After allowing about 24 hours to dry (its 55 degrees in the shop) it certainly does not dry quickly, I then shot my first coat of gray. The primer was white, so I had a pretty good idea what the interior looks like in white, and I have to say it looks dirty, even painted. So the gray really looks nice. I need to shoot another coat of gray, again to get the spots I missed. I will let this coat dry some time longer. I will shoot another coat tomorrow. I first have to round up another quart of paint. I will get some photos tomorrow.

Ready to be put back on the ground

The rear suspension is all back together. The exhaust is on. An interesting note on the exhaust. The muffler on the Mazda Spec Miata exhaust is noticeably smaller and has one less mounting point. This caused no problems, it makes getting to the sway bar mounting locations easier. It is also easier to remove and install with the one less hanger.

Now I am onto interior paint. I started masking the passenger side door. This is going to be a serious job. There are so many things to mask. To further complicate matters, my masking tape doesn't want to stick to some things. I think I am going to regroup and do some serious cleaning before hand. It will have to be done any ways and very well may be easier without the masking in the way.

Rear suspension

The passenger side rear suspension is together. Tires on, ready to hit the ground. Tomorrow the plan is to get the driver side rear suspension together and the exhaust on. This should not be a challenge. The exhaust is simple and straight forward. The other side of the rear suspension should be be very simple. I have a couple things I need to lookup on the rear brakes, but I am pretty confident the passenger side is correct.

Not quite the spec miata

Well today I worked on my trailer. After an incident Friday morning, when the trailer decided to unhitch itself, I decided today to fix the damage and fix the problem. I removed the old style coupler and replaced it with a new collar lock coupler. At the same time, I replaced the jack while I was working on that. Removing the old jack proved to be the largest problem. Welded from the top and bottom, in addition to bolts, required some serious grinding, cutting, and cursing.

Despite the setbacks, it is all back together. So far so good, the coupler held once it was placed on the tractor to move it to its storage location. I will hitch it back up to the truck and see how it does tomorrow.

I also noticed I now have a tail light to replace. It was likely damaged when it came unhitched I am guessing it reared up and busted the light. No biggie, its not like I have to replace the coupler again.