Gregory the NA8

[smy0003]

Thanks Demon

Had a fun day today:






So, I got right to it:







I was deleting the plastic 'walls' on the left side of the panel and broke my pliers:



Mazda: 1
Me: 0



This is my favourite detail of Adam's gauges, a nice little copyright that can't be seen once everything is back together. Really thoughtful and super professional:

[RustRat]

We're officially gauge brothers now! Lol, nice choice.

[smy0003]

Haha metric Warbirds FTW!
The KG panel is mint, I checked out your pics a while ago.
Interesting that you have 'Mazda' in you tacho, was that a custom choice?

[RustRat]

Yes, I told Adam to add the logo, as I had ordered sill inserts with the same logo, so I have this theme going. I am on the hunt for similar badges for the exterior too.

[smy0003]

It's a great touch.
The RX2, RX3 and RX4 had that font Mazda badge, I think the RX4 was the only one to have the Mazda and model name as separate badges so you could hunt for one of those.

[RustRat]

That's a cool tip, I'll keep it in mind. Thanks!

[smy0003]

Well, set out the other week to do the timing belt, seals, 42mm radiator and coolant re-route.


Was a bit of a pain to be honest, especially the re-route. The timing belt job isn't that bad, but the 20 year old bolts were soft as cheese. I rounded one on the water pump inlet pipe when my socket slipped with barely any force. Ended up pulling the inlet with the water pump for some surgery in a bench vice. I also sheared a water pump pulley bolt whilst tightening it to 15Nm.

15Nm!!!!!

Pics of the offending bolt:


I managed to twist it out from the other side of the flange with needle nose pliers.



I also fitted a coolant reroute with parts from Begi and MX5+.
MX5+'s customer service is immense, they answered every one of my annoying questions quickly and they ship immediately. Begi's is awful. Like, really, really awful. I couldn't get any reply at all for over a week.
The only reason I needed to order form Begi was for a front thermostat block off plate, which MX5+ don't make. So, please MX5+, make a front block off plate to save DIY Australians the hassle of dealing with Begi and the exchange rate.
Also a big thanks to MX5 Mania while I'm on the topic.

Here's the MX5+ spacer and Kia water neck:


The spacer is beautiful, it's such a shame it's at the back of the engine. The fit is perfect and the position of the auxiliary tap keeps any extra sensors free from any obstructions. I did have to extend the wiring for the stock water temp sensor because of it's new location though, but that was probably the easiest part of the whole ordeal.

The other sensor is a VDO water temp sensor, which will feed a proper water temp gauge once I get out to Howard Instruments again.

This took a whole lot of swearing and bloody fingers to install, everything back there is sharp. Hopefully never have to do it again.


Yesterday I gave my car a Christmas present in the form of a two hour clean and wax, but it gave me a Christmas present back when I was cleaning the exhaust tip:


Yep, turns out I have an RS-R Power exhaust, WIN!
I was a bit curious after Aka_Juffa pointed out that my exhaust tip was quite large, turns out he was on the money.

To impress my girlfriends young cousins on Christmas day I ordered some googly eyes from eBay. They're a perfect fit and a pretty good laugh:

[smy0003]

Update for anyone still playing at home.

Although I wasn't actively looking for a new stereo, my current one annoys me to death.
To play my music I need to use an aux cord, which is fine, but it means i can't change tracks from the head unit. In my nb8b I had bluetooth music and loved it, so i picked up this:


This unit is quite interesting.
Firstly it was $75 or thereabouts, down from 160 something.

Secondly it is 'mechless.'
I had no idea this was a common thing now, but basically it's a CD player that doesn't play CD'S.

Have a look, the old JVC unit (circa 2002) is on top and the new sony underneath:


Another shot for comparison:


Instead of playing my CD's, it has a full array of digital media support like usb, iphone, bluetooth and of course radio and aux. So I won't be able to play my original copy of Whitesnake's 1987, but that's probably for the best.

Install took 30mins.

Out with the old eyesore of a JVC:


Unbelievably the sony and JVC had exactly the same plug, no wiring needed at all!

In with the sony, the black looks so much better than the grey of the JVC:





Bluetooth paired flawlessly and reconnects without me doing anything once the car has been off.

Two problems so far, the aerial is up all the time, and whenever I turn the car off the Sony beeps to tell me to detach the face-plate. The Sony in my old 2001 Camry did the same thing and drove me nuts. I thought they would've stopped this by now.

Bonus content:
How much weight can you save by using a mechless head unit?

Old:


New:

[Greasemonkey2000]

Warbird gauges are always a good choice. The coolant reroute is a pain, glad i got it out of the way already before i do a timing belt/water pump job. Keep it up!

[smy0003]

Warbird gauges are always a good choice. The coolant reroute is a pain, glad i got it out of the way already before i do a timing belt/water pump job. Keep it up!

Thanks mate
You definitely did it the right way round, trying to do the re-route and belt in one sitting is pretty ambitious. I'd definitely split it up next time.

[— Phatmiata —]

Love this build keep it up!!

[smy0003]

Love this build keep it up!!

Thanks Phat

I wanted to make a post about the latest change to Gregory, a brain transplant!



This is an Adaptronic, like the label suggests. It is also 'GOOD' as the texta would lead you to believe.

I want to say a few things about the Adaptronic for you guys in the UK and US, because while the Adaptronic comes up regularly in Australian MX-5 tuning discussion, I rarely see any talk about it on the overseas forums. The key question here is:

How is the Adaptronic different from the MegaSquirt?

The Select Universal I have is plug and play for the NA6 and 94-95 NA8 MX-5. Adaptronic recommends upgrading the NA6 wiring to the level of the NA8, ie. sequential injection and Variable TPS. Like the Megaquirt, there are pretty good base maps available for download from Adaptronics website to get you up and running.
My favourite feature of the Adaptronic so far is the serial input for your wideband sensor. It's a little 2.5mm headphone type jack that the Innovate products plug straight into. Not only does this make set-up super easy and negate the need to splice into the factory O2 wiring, it also let's the wideband communicate with the Adaptronic to tell it if it's up to temperature. This let's the Adaptronic ignore false readings, pretty cool.

Of course, an ECU is nothing without support. Support from Adaptronic themselves is good. I'll get a response from an employee within 24hours if I email them and within 48hours if I post on the Adaptronic forum. Obviously there is no support in the form of MiataTurbo.net, which is an excellent resource for all things MegaSquirt, which is great for the DIY tuner. In Australia it's impossible to find a MegaSquirt tuner, so that's the other side of things.

Adaptronic uses a unique software package called WARI. It's super light so I can run it on my old, old, old laptop, which is handy. It's as intuitive as it is basic, which is to say fairly. There is no gauge display, it does have a gauge window, but it just information displayed as values, not on a digital needle type gauge like tuner studio.
WARI's logging is epic, starting a log takes two key-strokes and it logs EVERYTHING. It gives you a CSV file which is good for analysing in Matlab.

Anyway, I think that's enough. Here are some pics of the intake I made to hold the new Intake Air Temperature sensor:



I really need to change the date on my GoPro.

[91BRG]

top quality build smy... the red interior is such a rarity to see here in Aus. You know what I think would bring it all together is a red/burgundy soft top like this

[smy0003]

Yes!
That was the original plan, but the previous owner recently put in what looks to be a Robbins glass top made in the USA, so I don't have an excuse to change that yet

[BRGNA8]

Hey greg can you send me a side-on photo of the car with the door open so i can have a look a the carpet? You mentioned that it comes in two pieces right? Just wanted to see how it looks