Hello and welcome to my blog. I’m Cal, a maintenance engineer in Sheffield. I spend my days maintaining an agricultural feed mill, and what spare time I do have rebuilding a 1990 Eunos Roadster that I’ve had since 17th of March 2010.
I’ve started this blog halfway through the rebuild so let me fill you in real quick; it started in 2010 when a mate took me out in his 1.8 miata. It wasn’t the drive into town that sold it to me, it was the drive home. My car history was pretty much Peugeot, 1.1 106 and a 1.4 206 hdi, the latter being a company car. So having been for a blast in a miata it was quick, fun, rwd and handled great. I looked around at early MR2s and even some of the later ones, but wound up always going back to look at mx5s. I did my research and knew I wanted a Jap import, I want too fussed on spec as it was planned to be a road going track car. I was working in a poor signal area when I found it on Ebay, I’d spoken to my dad and asked him to bid it up to £900 which he obviously was excited to do for me as he was also a customised car enthusiast. So, I find myself a bit of signal and watch the bidding, up and up and up, £900, £901, damnit! £950, sold! I was gutted! Anyway, one thing leads to another and I’m on the phone to my dad “you’ve bought it haven’t you, you were the £950 weren’t you!”, I’m sure you can imagine how excited I was at this point.
The car needed work; headgasket, a crease in the offside wing pulling out, and ofcourse, new headlight bulbs. Having never worked on a car before, I sunk my teeth into the headgasket job first with an Mx5 enthusiasts handbook laid in the engine bay. 10 hours later and scraped knuckles, the jobs done and we’re on the road. A week or 2 pass by with no problems until I’m driving back up the M1 towards meadowhall and all of a sudden there’s steam coming from the offside wing, into meadowhall we shoot. You got it, headgasket again. I limp home with bottles of water to refill the rad and pour over it. After 2 stops on the way home she’s parked up for the night, my face red with frustration and more gaskets en route from mx5parts.
Anyway, the problem was a cracked head. I sourced a new one and swapped it out (I even still have that head, along with another block, that’s another story). I had by now sorted the headgasket problems, fitted spax lowering springs to the bilstein shocks, mongoose decat pipe and stainless 4-2-1 manifold. I did an Anglesey trackday with my uncle in his 1.8 UK spec Mx5 who had done similar mods to his. This paved the way into motorsport, my biggest dream since junior school!
The car was off the road again; a split radiator the cause. New fast5 alloy radiator fitted and we’re off for an MOT. Having passed plenty before I thought we’d sail through…… Nope, brake pipes were corroded. Quickly replaced with 2nd hand ones from Mx5City and we’re back for a retest, passed, emissions a little high, but a pass is a pass. Great, back out for a run with Luke in his new car soon.
His new car, his new Toyota supra, obviously with pop up headlights. No, it was too fast for me to keep up, there was only one thing for it, time to turbo! Many months passed, and I’m running a bone stock engine with a t3/t4 turbo with a 10psi waste gate spring, bolted to a redneck downpipe and stock ecu; now we’re competing with the supra! This is awesome! BANG! What was that!? Home we go, no signs of an oil leak, running issues, nothing, everything seemed fine. I decided not to start risking it and to do the turbo install properly. 315cc Toyota 4age pink top injectors, AFPR, megasquirt MS2 ecu, intercooler, coolant reroute, walbro 255lph fuel pump, new water pump, and a new engine bored out to 1700cc. Off to AREA52AUTOSPORT for tuning. Day 1 ended with a bad fuel pump, Day 2 we had issues with the boost controller so tuned it to 130bhp, but told of I sort the controller we will be looking at closer to 250bhp, not the best day but good news nonetheless.
Anyway, this brings us to where we are now. I’ve moved out, got married and had the mx5 on the back burner for a few years. My current plan is to rebuild the car from the ground up. I’ve done the rear suspension, I’m now halfway through the front, so we’ll pick up from here in the blog section. See you over there!
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The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
Walt Disney
Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.
Dr. Seuss
