Retro inspired RS-ltd

Still got the center exit system?

I've got the perfect rear bumper for you if so..



Its a genuine Jubiride bumper for a centre exit system let me know if you would like any more pics

no sorry dude, been long gone

onto the next episode.

so the leak was caused by this little bastard, managed to source a replacement the same day. Didn't fit it though as I decided to go all silicone to prevent any hoses slpiitting in the future.



so with that fixed a test drive was in order and I needed some furniture so went to ikea in coventry. looked like a right spastic unpacking the chest of drawers into my boot. But it worked and more importantly, so did the car.



having changed to the silicone hoses and being told about the "brown radiator of death" whenever I opened my bonnet at an mx5 meet I chose to get a new alloy rad. But I didn't want one off an mx5. I had seen a few people had done a swap to a civic radiator and I liked the idea of it. Still holds more coolant than the standard rad and being alloy offers better cooling still. The biggest bonus was the ebay specialz rad i bought, £80 posted for a three row with a slimline fan. Win!

so it began, went to my brothers place in the countryside to use his garage.
the agenda that day was:
oil change
fuel filter change
new rad
air con delete
swap the remainder of the coolant hoses to silicone

after a late start the car looked like this



whilst tightening a jubilee clip this connector snapped, there was a lot of swearing. so a trip into redditch late on a saterday afternoon to wickes to get a copper t-piece was in order. they were out of stock, kind of happy about that as they wanted £20 for it. tried 5 more shops to be disappointed. eventually screw fix saved the day. exactly the same product as what wickes had an it was only 99p. who makes up these prices?!



anyway it got fitted and looked a bit, urm, bodged. it gets hidden by the crossover pipe and it us water tight so it will do for now.



after wasting a few hours driving around redditch i could get back to work then.
so here is the empty space where the aircon rad and the coolant rad were.



here is what I wanted in its place



obviously a bracket needs to be made up to hold the base of the radiator. i used what i had at the time and that was some ali box section from a gazebo. hope we won't need it in the summer

an over engineered join. the flat end was bent upwards to meet another bit of box section to be bolted in place



mounted in place. I cushioned the bottom of the radiator on some off cut of hose. Also had to make a couple of cut outs in the box section for it to pass the ARB mounts, you can see them at the top of each vertical bit. the bracket to hold the top in place was made from one of those bars to keep the draws shut on cheap tool boxes, cant see it in any of my pictures though...



so I did up all the clips, filled it with coolant and run it up to temp. Found another canoeing leak, great. It was late in the evening at this time and the leak was only slow so I chose to ignore it until next weekend. Here is a shot of it fitted with the bumper back on.



A few finishing touches need to be done if you ask me, one being the great gaping hole on the right exposing the pas belt. Also want to relocate my air filer to the right above the mouth so I can kill two birds with one stone and make an air guide to also act as a shield, watch this space. The ali box section/gazebo leg works but isn't pretty. I plan to at some point remake it and instead of bolting it together have it welded which I am learning to do at work. Other than those few bits I love it, saved money and saved weight and there hasn't been any cooling issues, even with no air guide.

so I mentioned about another coolant leak. it was coming from beneath the inlet manifold as far as I could tell. I had no idea what would be under there that used coolant but then I discovered that mazda fitted an oil cooler where the oil filter mounts. Don't know where these hoses weren't included in the stoney racing kit. Anyway, the manifold was off and I needed a fix. Very conveniently the hose which runs from the rad to the overflow tank is the same diameter and there is just enough length to replace both hoses.



whilst the inlet was off i did a bit of house keeping. cleaned the injectors up, cleaned the fuel rail, fitted the fuel filter which I hadn't fitted the previous weekend, tried to get the 21 years of crap off that had built up on the side of the engine and painted the inlet manifold whilst it was off.

no photo of it completely back together but..



that brings me completely up to date now. 

so what is going to happen in the near future?

in the post on the way to me, as I type this, are the bits needed to move the air filter. Also ordered two new tyres so I can get the gold bbs back on.
i've bought my ticket for japfest and i am on the almonds/punks stand but have also applied for show and shine. i've been accepted onto the show and shine stand at the japanese performance show, apparently the first ever indoor jap show.
i would really like some new seats, can't exactly afford the original RS recaros that the twat of a previous owner sold so will have to look for an alternative.
other than that it is just going to be driven cleaned and enjoyed for now.

Like this alot, great job!

love how clean the car is, saw it on the show and shine at jf2.

Really nice work with it so far!

Thanks for the praise guys. Just waxed it today but it has gone tits up. The wax wasn't buffing off, think it was down to the cold/too much wax/paint not clean enough.

How could I forget! Went to a cars and coffee at johnnyb's detailing in walsall which meant driving across Birmingham so tunnels!

The go pro kept dying though. Means I'll have to go again. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BDytUQVgr5v

https://www.instagram.com/p/BDywXHGAr_c