Blink and you'd miss it

Not much happening lately - I was supposed to be going to a track day at Sandown, but given the condition of the car (see below), that wasn't happening. It's off to the shop tomorrow morning, hopefully to be fixed before the next club event.

So to alleviate the boredom of a lack of car tinkering (or maybe just to satisfy my anally retentive attention to detail) I pulled off the corner reflectors and sanded back all the raised lettering. Start with 400 grit wet and dry to buff off the lettering, then again with 1200 (the finest in the shop, 2000 would be better), and finally a buff with plastic polish.

Hopefully the panel shop guys will be able to figure out which one goes where when they reassemble it, now that they aren't labelled. I didn't get round to doing the side indicators, but they could really do with the same work done. There's a couple of letters on the rear lights too, but I probably won't bother with those ones.

But the job isn't complete yet. They're still orange. The next task is to find and apply some lens tint and blacken them up - I saw some painted on another car recently and it looks superb.

handbrake - fixed

Took the (dented) car back to Tony's on Saturday to get the handbrake sorted out properly. We unbolted the lever and disconnected the rear cables and loosened everything off (finally managed to unscrew the handle adjuster barrel. Then reconnected, adjusted the calipers correctly, and it was perfect!

The front cable section is still frayed though, we will install a new piece next week.

Bugger!

photos say it all (well, no public comments anyway til the insurance is sorted)

Interior

First - just an opinion. I don't know how Mazda managed to remove both leg room and head room between the NA and NB series but this car feels really cramped inside. I have the seat at its rearmost notch, and my legs are just comfortable. Likewise, my hair is brushing the soft top, and I haven't pulled a helmet on yet... I don't think I'm all that tall. 185 cm isn't excessive. But I really need a different seat in this thing. The only option seems to be a race seat but that's not a good option in a daily driver.

Now...
I pulled apart the centre console this weekend for some inspections.

Rubber shift boots are torn as expected (top one only a little, but the bottom one's completely gone).

I pulled out the dash trim to check the radio as it's had an annoying rattle. Tightened up the DIN bracket which has helped. I had hoped to install something less ugly (eg an OEM stereo), painfully it appears that the last installer cut out the OEM stereo plug... idiots.

handbrake

Tyra spent a couple of hours at Tony's the other night trying to get the handbrake sorted out. It is not holding properly, and will be totally useless if it's like this when it comes to DECA (reminder - gotta get my entry in soon!)

It appears that a previous mechanic nuffnuff who didn't know what they were doing has wound up the adjustment in the handle as far as it will go, and then some, seizing the cable adjuster screw onto the rotating barrel. So now it can't be backed off. Morons. The only adjustment that should ever be done is inside the rear calipers.

Will be back there in a week or so to get it sorted properly. Likely to need a new cable, as it looks quite frayed from all the twisting.

Otherwise things are all good. The entry for Sandown sprints (and a new CAMS licence) have been posted off - can't wait to get out there again! The Bimmer has landed! duty and GST paid, unregistered vehcle permit done, and it' in our hands. Needs to go down to the garage to get complianced though.

diff oil

Dodgy Steve and Lilla came round for coffees and dinner, so we drained the diff and refilled it in the driveway. Someone still has my hand pump after the last Dodgy Day, so we had to squirt it from the bottle. This is next to impossible with the car as-is. The solution was to drop the muffler to gain line-of-sight access to the filler hole. Luckily the rusty exhaust nuts came off without a murmur.

Of course, theres only one thing you can do when the car has no muffler on it. Yup. BRMMM BRMMM! Sounds awesome. Almost as loud as Craig Healy's exhaust.

Diff oil used was Castrol SAF-XA. Full Synth. Still have the gearbox to do but that's a bit trickier and we were out of time.

more stuff

a few miscellaneous maintenance things...

I checked the soft top drain pans behind the seat belts, and found the plastic stoppers that were missing from the convertible top frame. Cleaned and reinstalled.

The soft top drain holes were badly blocked up so I stuck an old wiper blade down them to clean out the crud.

And the headlight aim was awful so I tweaked it up to a normal level.

Have been shopping for fluids for the diff and gearbox next, want to get all the maintenance sorted before the first event.