Mighty White

Car is Canoeing filthy :-(

Yes mate! They look wicked!

Thanks!

Today I spent the day working on the car but I’m a bit out of practice so it was slow going. Doesn’t help that it was cold and I was rolling on the floor of the estate car park.

Firstly I wanted to sort the steering issue out, I was recommended that if I was going to do anything to the steering rack I should probably upgrade the bushes to superpro. So first job was to do that. I am terrible at taking pics while working but managed to take a few today.









So with the purple poly bushes installed, I went in the car and figured out the actual centre of the rack by turning the steering wheel lock to lock. I expected there to be some big issue but the steering wheel was centred on dead centre of the rack but the wheels were not both pointing straight ahead. They were out, not by much but enough to notice. Front left looks to be toe out and front right toe in (so the car is always steering left). Down below this is what the tie rods look like





This is what had the kwik fit alignment guy flummoxed in whichever town I went to near Llandow circuit and tbh it had me confused too. I couldn’t even get the lock nut undone so after some plus gas, some pain in my shoulder, and some swearing I gave up, having made zero progress. Does anyone have any ideas as to what’s going on or what I need to do?

Obviously I need to adjust the tie rods to straighten the wheels (and set whatever toe in/out/0) but according to kwik fit alignment guy there wasn’t enough adjustment to be able to do that which makes sense as front left tie rod was showing no thread so it was fully adjusted one way.

Having given up on that I removed the exhaust manifold



The v band clamp holding it onto the exhaust was practically welded onto the flange, but a bit of banging and mole grips got it free, not without ruining the v band clamp entirely. So I’ll need a new one of those to sell the old mani and exhaust combo.

This manifold is being replaced with the one I’m picking up Tuesday.

On Saturday I picked up this exhaust





A 2.25” centre pipe, most likely an MX5 Parts exhaust with OTT exit.

The old exhaust didn’t want to come out from under the car due to the backbox/centre pipe sleeved join being rusted shut and that meant I needed to remove all of that in one piece. Except the rear chassis bracing, davefab rear bar, and the jack on the davefab rear bar holding the rear of the car up had other ideas. It took me about an hour to get the exhaust out after eventually resorting to undoing the bolts for the rear chassis bracing, and naughtily lowering the car and then jacking it up again on one of the tow eyes on the davefab rear bar. Not recommended one bit but needs must.

With the old exhaust finally out I sorted out the jacking scenario and then fitted the new exhaust. Thanks to the bolted flange between the backbox and centre pipe I was able to fit this exhaust without the rear end needing to be taken apart, although I noticed I appear to be missing one of the mounting points for the centre pipe, so the cp is only held up by the connection to the backbox and one mount. The whole assembly is currently a bit floppy and moves around a fair amount but I’m hoping once the manifold is in and everything is connected, it will be a lot more solid.





After that I finally freed the stuck headlight retaining ring screw using a lot of plus gas and mole grips. This meant I could bin the bent ineffective headlight retaining ring and install my shiny new one and my 3 new screws. The bowls and/or the headlights still need trimming though because the tabs on the LED headlights are bigger than the gaps in the bowls. I had to call it a day at that point as it was dark by then, very cold, and my parents had arrived to go out for dinner and I was still working on the car.

Jacking bar is fookin' epic. I really recommend everyone go out and get one!

Steering rack bushed easy enough to do?

Jacking bar looks noice!

Saad, looking at those pics, you might want to get busy with the waxoil or something like that.