A strip show on my birthday

What better way to spend your birthday than ripping a car to pieces? 

Not too much to say here other than this was fantastic fun!  I recommend stripping the inside of a car out at least once in your life if the oportunity arises. 
Your own car of course, someone elses would just be wrong.

Here we go....

Hmmm, that's a lot of bits.

Might of got a bit carried away :-0

Ah that's better

No going back now...

I have found that there is something very scary but oddly satsifying in drilling big holes in the bodywork of your own car.  The first job that really means no going back, fitting the bonnet and engine cover pins.

After much faffing and trying to decide the best place to put them, it seemed best just to get the drill out and start.  The neighbours were a bit confused as to why I was in the car with a drill but hey ho.

First up the front bonnet (but just a spare wheel inside as the engine is in the back).  Here is a pic of the holes drilled inside the bay, and the bolts attached.  Still nothing too scary has happened yet...

And now the scary one, drilling a hole the bonnet.  Best just to take a deep breath and press that drill button :-0

Then you make the hole even bigger, and pray to the god of holes that it is in the right place.  Screw in the clips and voila! Here is one I made earlier.

Time to take a deep breath, and then rinse and repeat on the engine cover. Same thing but a bit trickier as there is less metal to put the bolts in.  Had to put them quite near the edge in the end.

Not quite done as I have to disconnect the standard mechanism so that they are just held in place by the pins, but thought it might be a good idea to see if they actually stay on for a bit first.

So quite a scary day, but we are definitely making some progress!

The right wheels

While fitting the shiny switch panel (TM) a man arrived and delivered some wheel nuts.  This is good as it enabled me to fit the 15" stock wheels that I have to have on the car.  Here they are.

Now to ebay the 17" ones and hopefully get a few quid back.

Shiny switch panel

Thanks to Steve getting me a nice shiny bit of aluminium I've created a blank panel that will go where the stereo used to be and will hold the extinguisher pull cord and cut off switch.

Anyone familiar with my CDT skills will be concerned at this point, so here is what I created:

You will notice that this is held in place by my finger.  This is a problem as the finger is required for other things, so I went to screw it in and realised it was not wide enough for the screws to reach the nuts in the dashboard.

So I made another one.  This one was wider and went behind the dash and actually fit.  If I say so myself I don't think it's that shabby...

Now it just needs some switches.

Been Shopping.

Been shopping :-)
Picked up some more of the bits that need fitting.  I really am going to have to start putting some of this stuff on the car...

Lovely orange tow straps

Kill switch and external pull cable

Bonnet and engine cover pins

FIA rain light

New Wheels.

Next up is sorting the wheels out. Currently the wheels on the car look like this:

Now this is all well and good, but unfortunately these are 17 inch rims and the championship requires stock 15 inch rims :-(

So after a bit of a trawl through the ebay and gumtree managed to pick up a set with pretty decent tyres on for 50 quid.  Hurray!  A quick spin down to Rochester to pick them up and they are now in the spare room with the washing...

So why are they not on the car? Well, as usual there is always a complication, and in this case the wheel nuts the are on the 17 inch wheels (60 degree chamfer) are different to the ones needed on the 15 inch wheels (flat face).  So I have had to order a set of original wheel nuts in order to put on the original wheels.  Stupidly these cost almost half the amount that all 4 wheels and tyres cost!

The morning after.

Right.  Up early and determined to sort out whatever the problems are.
First stop halfords for a set of fuses, a socket set and a trolley jack.

Job 1.  Fix the lights.
Please let it be the fuse.  Please let it be the fuse.  Find the fuse box and wow, the fuse is blown! Joy! So replace the fuse and and let's test the lights.. and... nothing.  Check the fuse and it has blown again.  Oh dear, this is not good.  A wiring problem :-(

Where to start? Maybe pull out that stereo that has got to come out anyway.
So I start pulling it out and it becomes apparent that it has been wired in by a blind man.  A drunk blind man.  There are wires taped to all kinds of other wires, so I pull the whole lot out, trim down and insulate all the wires in the dash and get rid of the stereo.  Might be able to ebay it for a few quid anyway.

Now to see if this has helped the lights by some happy chance.  New fuse in, lights on and YES! All the lights have come on!  Job one sorted in an hour :-)

Job 2. Horrible grinding noise
Now this has me worried.  It sounds like a brake problem, but I can see there is plenty of pad and disc left.  Maybe the caliper has seized.  Better get the wheel off and take a look I suppose.  So I roll the car back onto the flat ground and take a look underneath to find the jacking point and.. what the ***?

What the hell is that plastic thing wedged under the car? You have to be kidding me, the front plastic undertray has only come loose and bent over and got stuck under the car.  A couple of tugs and a quick unscrew and off it comes, and lo and behold no more grinding!  This is fantastic!

So take the car for a quick spin and everything is fine.  Oh what a difference a couple of hours can make :-)

Now that the urgent things have been taken car of, it's time to start the serious work.  And the first things to do are make a list of everything that needs to be done, and get some standard 15 inch wheels.

The drive home.

So what have we just bought?

It's a 1997 Japanese import with hard top.  This is good as it means no mucking about welding the sunroof shut, and also means it's the Revision 3 with the 172ish BHP engine.

Not so good is that it's on 17inch rims which will have to go, and at some point apparently hit a badger which damaged the front bumper a bit.  This doesn't really matter as the body is going to get knocked about anyway.  The badger was a bit annoyed though.

It's got a new clutch (allegedly..), an induction kit and rather handily comes with a complete set of polybushes the previous owner bought but never fitted.  Result!

So off we go down the motor way and oooh that induction kit sound nice :-)

10 minutes later suddenly there is a massive scraping/grinding noise coming from the front. Aaaghh!
Pulling over I can't see anything obviously wrong so carry on but with a bit more care... 

Hmm, why am I being flashed by everyone now it's dark? Also why do I have no dashboard lights... oh oh.  A quick check reveals that I have in fact got no rear lights either :-(
This is not ideal.

So I get home without being rear ended by a lorry and go to sleep muttering and not happy.  These problems will just have to wait for the morning...

The beginning...

So track days are great fun, but there were a few problems that were becoming a pain.

1. The car had to be driven home afterwards so we had to always be a bit careful with how we treated the car.
2. After doing a sprint day, the lack of competition on track days made them lacking.
3. Want to be a racing driver!

What could the solution be? How about a bit of club racing? Mmmm.

Looking at the various clubs and entry level series, decided on MR2 racing with the 750 motor club.  This gave a good selection of circuits, limited modifications allowed and single car type so should give fair racing without spending a fortune (in theory!).  Also MR2s look cool :-)
http://www.750mc.co.uk/F-mr2.php

After popping along to Donnington to meet the head of the series, we had a good read of all the info and started thinking about exactly what to get and where to get a donor car.  And then went out and bought one on a bit of an impulse!

Here it is in all it's glory before the drive home from the previous owners.  Now to get it home...