Roadsternut

[roadsternut]

The wrapped door cups have gone; maybe they'll turn up at the bric a brac table at the next MX5OC rally.

Some ongoing projects.

Cleaned the seatbelt webbing, which immeasurably improved the retraction, but I spotted damage to the driver's webbing. I couldn't unspot this, so I needed replacements. S-Limited belts are basically unobtanium, and any rare used belts could also be in poor condition.



So, after a bit of research, I found a company called FDTS; an example of a once thriving car parts industry, small "mom and pop" outfits. They were able to reweb the belts. Unfortunately, the red used by Mazda is not available. I had to choose between a fairly bright red (India Red QI) and more of a wine red, BK.



BK is actually a bit darker than original, but my eyes couldn't take QI,

Looking forward to receiving two new belts, rewebbed for £70. Cheaper than even a pair of standard used belts.

Thought about a rollbar cover for ages; I tried putting in eyelets into a strip of vinyl but the results were awful. After a few months, I had an epiphany. Why would I need to every remove a rollbar cover. Given the D-tec bar had to come out to remove the seatbelt assemblies, there was an opportunity.

And the D-tec bar was tatty looking; various chips (I'm not going to get into a discussion regarding padding), and the seatbacks had actually worn some of the paint away.

For the main bar, I used some double side foam tape; this was just to kind of hold the vinyl in place. Another £20 ($30) worth of Martim's Matador Red was procured, to yield a strip about 10cm wide. 4m is needed for a 4P bar; I had a 2m length, and 2m isn't enough for the main bar (you need nearer 3m), so I decided to "extend" the cover at the foot. Using spray contact adhesive, basically wrap the vinyl around the bar, with a little heat, to overlap. Once set, using a craft knife, trim the overlap to give a reasonably even seam. Any exposed edge is coloured in with a wipe of some colour-matched red I have for seat leather maintenance.







Not finished yet