Fizbne's Mazdaspeed Victoria-Bitter-Spec Stage II Roadster

EXTREME BIG UPDATE FOR THE HONOURABLE OF WRITING JOYFUL MAN IN DANDISM ROADSTER DESU.

Lo, for I have returned.

After reading V6's Honda V6 Build thread from start to finish today, it really motivated me to update my build thread from my last post. Which as you can see is well overdue.



Since Sept 2018, quite a few things have happened. So you might want to grab a hot cup of tea, maybe a nice glass of wine, or a beer because this is going to be one hell of a post.

So, I left off with me doing the brakes. I did the brakes. So here is a 16 month overdue photo of 1.6 DBA Discs, Rodders Pads, and a very rusty brake pad shim thing... What, I'm cheap and they're FINE...



As expected, the stopping power is great! They're perfect for road use with no requirement to get to a higher operating temp and on track they're outstanding, but more on that a little later.

Maintenance, re-alignment, and health checks... Of sorts.


Wow, holy crap I've really neglected this thread this haven't I...

So, at this stage, I now had decent brakes. Now that I can stop, I need to be able to actually drive straight. I decided to fit Vredestein Sportrac 5 tyres to the Roadster because the car came with 4 different tyres, and it handled like utter trash. There wasn't any point in getting an alignment without matching tyres so I chose the Vredesteins as I heard great things about them and they sure enough did wonders for the handling without an alignment however it wasn't perfect. Under accel / deccel the car would still pull to the right / left and didn't inspire confidence at all, especially when pushed.



I think I mentioned earlier that I checked the lower ball joint dust boots were "replaced" for the MOT but it turns out they were not. Torn all the way round - so I ordered a set of replacement MOOG LBJ's, and OEM Upper dust boots.

I decided to give Cribb Jr. a visit at SRD Tuning to get the work done, a 4 wheel alignment to my specs, and give the car a dyno run to see if the car really did have it's claimed factory figure of 145BHP.

Off we goooo!



Every visit to SRD is a treat, my oh my have they got some mighty fine machines here.




Whatever, N/A is best.



Cribb then got to work and fitted the new MOOG Ball joints.




Strapped 'er in.




Then let 'er rip.




It made such a dirty noise when it came on cam at about 6k, the phone mic just doesn't give it justice. We did about 6-7 runs back to back (I can't remember the exact figure) but it pulled hard every single run and consistently gave a dyno figure of:



121WHP @ 6850 RPM and 100ft-lbs @ 5660RPM on a Dynojet.

Very healthy, and pretty close to the factory claimed figure of 145BHP.

The drive back home was amazing. The handling of the car was transformed and it felt SO planted. Heaps of grip, feedback, and predictability. The confidence was restored!


Yellow lights, cheap lips, and a bit too busy to do any car stuff anyways.



After the work done at SRD, not much happened in car related shenanigans for a few months. I did managed to source some yellow JDM fog lights to replace the white fogs. I much prefer them and they're 11x more JDM so that had to happen.



I also fitted a Carbon Miata "OEM Style" front lip. In all honesty though, I would avoid any replica front lips, because the fitment is TRASH, it looked cheap, the brake ducts didn't fit properly, and the bottom of the lip has a sharp finish and doesn't tuck / fold away like the OEM one. But I guess it made the front of the car look a little less naked, so this sufficed for now.




The whole being busy thing, I had a pretty good excuse:

FIZBNE DID THE MARRIAGE.




WELCOME TO HUSBANDRY, HONOUR, AND BEING MARRIAGE WOWOWOWOW.

A family friend let us borrow his Porsche 928 S2 for the day, which was pretty great fun. Can't beat a lazy rumbly V8. It's a great GT car for sure.


Also, we went to Iceland for our honeymoon in January 2019. If you haven't been to Iceland, I HIGHLY recommend going. It's metal as FKIN FUKC.



GRIM FROSTBITTEN BLACK SAND BEACH BLEUGUHUHURHUR.

Oh right yeah, cars.


N/A Tuna is BEST Tuna.


Ah, Spring. The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming, rabbits are shagging, and Fizbne is...

HOONING FOR TUNA.


I've always wanted to have my car run on a standalone ECU. I've driven loads of MX5's with standalone's and I've been impressed with the response, power delivery, and of course BANG BANG FIRE. The appeal to be able to jump on your laptop, change a few things here and there and play around with your overrun settings for extreme BANG FIRE has always been strong. An ME221 came up for sale from a good friend of mine, so I took the plunge and it was fitment time. I'm pretty cackhanded with any car work (especially electronics) so I left it to someone who knew what they were doing because I would 100% wire my injectors to my windscreen wipers or something.

I wanted to go down the route of removing the AFM to mitigate that as a restriction in the intake, so Nick fabbed up an Aluminium do-hicky to mount replace the AFM unit and welded a bung to install and wire in a GM IAT sensor. The HKS Mushroom filter plonked on to the end and the ECU was plugged in.






Initially the car was a bit of a kent. It wouldn't start / catch but after some wizardry the car fired up and it was time for the Tuna to happen.

After a couple of hours, the power runs started. Long story short, I managed to receive Power and Torque gains in the mid-range. I did have some drive-ability issues to start off with regarding town driving, but I bought it back and after some fettling around with the map, that was rectified. The throttle response is now way better than with the old-school AFM, and the inlet noise from the cabin. Wow... Wow it's insane. Once the car hits 5.5K RPM you get a VERY prominent dirty cam noise and it's so addictive. Nothing beats an NA tune for noise.



116WHP @ 6700 RPM. Up from 111WHP @ 6600RPM You may have noticed, that the initial figure of 111 WHP is less than the 121WHP on the SRD Dyno. But afaik the different brands have different calculations, and Skuzzles dyno is a bit of a heartbreaker. Also the SRD Dyno is setup for different cars... You know... Supra's... With their long gearing and lame-ness.

Behold:



Oh, I also asked Nick to map in crackles on the overrun. Because I am a child.





He also said I have a floppy knob, and that my knob needs to be stiffer.





Stiffening up my Knob, youthful thieves, and a spit 'n shine.







If you think that's bad, you should have seen the remnants of the shifter bush. By remnants, I mean it wasn't there. Just a broken fleck of plastic with just hopes and dreams holding it in place.

I know, I know I should have done this a day after I bought the car but I'm lazy and useless so NER.

I opted for the 5X Racing Bronze shifter bush as I heard brilliant things about it, and after fitting it (a very simple task, albeit a bit fiddly) the famous shift feel was back! Oh how I missed it! Compared to the OEM Shifter bush, there's not too much difference, but it does have a more pronounced "click" that better affirms you've selected the correct gear, and it goes without saying that bronze will last a lot longer than nylon so that's another thing sorted and off the back of my mind.

I stumbled across a set of OZ SuperLeggera wheels up for sale on teh interwebs, so I bought those. They sat in the underground parking garage behind my car while I was living on the boat. I lived on a canal boat for a while. It was awesome.

Speaking of secure underground parking with key-fob entry, security camera's, concierge, countless Porsche's, a Ferrari Testarossa, A couple of Astons, and some other classics and other high-end cars, you'd think that my humble little Roadster would be safe and secure? Was it fkuc.

Some little prarrie canoes decided they'd break into my car, and try to steal it. With a screwdriver. Made of die-cast alloy or something because they failed. They did however break my new dash-cam for no reason whatsoever, and make a mess of everything else in the car. However they didn't take my Ran-Bans, stickers, or anything else that was valuable in it. I... don't even. Even if they did manage to start the car, I'm not sure they would have gotten far because they were quite young looking (CCTV) and to be fair I came off less worse than the gentleman with the really lovely Porsche 928 S3. Broken sunroof, smashed OEM Air compressor, stolen sunnies, and a ruined first-aid kit. Canoing kents.



Not sure if you can make it out but in the keyway there's a broken bit of screwdriver inside. I had a spare lock-set from a later car, however I really didn't want to fit it as I'm a bit of a sucker for originality (says the guy running an aftermarket ECU), Also I tend to use the glovebox and center console locks so changing those out would mean I'd have to carry 2 different keys. That's just trashy.

I tried my key again, and the piece came loose, so I knew if I could somehow get that broken piece out then I might be fine. A quick trip to a hardware store to grab a dremel so I can cut some gouges into the studs holding the key barrel onto the steering column. I was able to get a flathead screwdriver in to remove it, and had a poke around. There's a small service hole(?) and with a little shake, the offending piece plopped out. Tried my key, and hey presto! Put the car back together, cranked 'er up and we're golden.



Morons.

One thing I wanted to do since the acquisition of yon Roadster was to sort out the paintwork. From day 1 it's been good but it definitely had potential to be great, so I set aside a weekend to thoroughly clean and detail the paint.

Rinse, wash, clay bar, wash again, dry, machine polish with Autoglym for Dark paint, and Simoniz Carnauba wax and the car ended up looking like this:



SO stoked with the result. The paint is glass smooth and really pops now. The green is super deep and it makes the car really stand out. Definitely going to polish it again once the weather picks up, but I don't want to go too heavy so I may try a lighter compound and a softer foam pad for my polisher. I'll probably get a tin of Fusso King of Gloss or whatever it's called as I think it lasts longer.

I want to get the black trim along the sills BLACK again, they've started to fade and I don't want it getting too bad. I *may* repaint it, but that's quite a daunting task for me so I think I'll try some BLACKENING products first - If anyone knows of anything that works to make the black BLACK again then please let me know.

I'm going to leave it at here for now. I don't want this to be TOO much of an update, but rest assured there's more content to come. Also I am shattereddddddd, so stay TUNA'd for more of Fizbne's escapades.