Pretty big milestone yesterday. Ignore the messy garage is messy.

I now have a roller skate again. Took a couple hours for a few reasons. Unfortunately I didn't get any close-up pictures so I may explain them later, mostly for my benefit in the future.




When I can get some help the frame will come down from its lofty perch, hopefully this week or weekend.

 

Under that stuff is a frame bolted to the subframe

 

Are you parting out the bike?

 

If my kid keeps breaking stuff I just may

 

The bike is the sidecar

 

Update

I put the header and IM on. I'm adjusting the ebay intake so that it'll fit the engine bay, namely cutting it much shorter and installing a new tube for the PCV inlet. I reattached the engine harness to assess what I need to change, and it looks very minimal on the engine side. I need to reloom the whole thing as it's falling apart. The ECU connections turn right in the engine bay, but I need them to turn left. When I reloom I should be able to take care of that pretty easily. I'll also have to separate the three connections to the ECU/body harness/BCM since most of that stuff is going away. I'll only be left with a couple of lines to the pedal and other misc. stuff so that will cut down on most of what's not strictly "engine harness." The radiator arrived this week but I need to either weld or rivet the mounts for it, neither of which I'm able to do at home (i will be getting a rivet tool, just don't have it yet). I'm debating getting a cheap welder but even "cheap" yet usable (eg shielding gas and sufficient amperage) is a significant expense. I have a neighbor that lets me borrow his but I can't go get it every week.

 

After everything that needs to be welded is welded

 

Paint. Most that have powdercoated have regretted it.

 

Mostly due to ease of touch-up. It does get scratched, and paint is a lot easier to deal with if you want to make adjustments after it's been coated. These cars are never truly "done" being tinkered with.

 

Just leave it bare metal and clear coat it. Tube chassis rat-rod.

 

A little progress. I finished mounting the pedals and steering column (side note: whenever I say "finished" from now until paint means that it's finished being modified but I will have to remove before paint). The Miata pedal assembly has a hole near the gas pedal where a stud from the firewall fits in. The kit comes with a standoff to put in the stud's place (it's actually a coupler with two screws), then you'd drill a hole to fix the standoff to the bulkhead. I had to chop all of that section of the pedal assembly off to weld on the CTS pedal. The CTS pedal comes with three holes to fix it to the CTS firewall (two are exposed on mine), which I used for mine. There are two issues, 1) the standoff I'm given doesn't work because the distance to the bulkhead is too great, and 2) the holes are nearly directly above a welded joint. I had to kludge it slightly to make it work. I shifted the drilled holes a little outboard and overdrilled them. I fit two full-thread 3in screws into the holes and fixed them to the bulkhead with nuts. I then placed two more nuts on the screws for the pedal flange to bear against. Then two more nuts to fix it there. The screws are slightly crooked because of this, but the assembly is pretty solid this way so I think it'll work.

 

Nice job!

 

This is a really cool project to the point that I just read all 191 posts. I can't say that I've ever been a Miata fan but this looks like the best use for your donor car. I'll keep watching this and I look forward to finally seeing it under it's own power tearing up some pavement.

 

Thanks! It's not much, but 1) I'm documenting as much as I can, and 2) this is all new to me so everything is an accomplishment.

I appreciate this coming from you. Your build is amazing.

 

It's interesting seeing the skeleton of the pedals and system like that. Nice jerryrigging!

 

Depending on how lazy I am I'll try to clean and paint it all when it comes off again, but they'll be mostly exposed in the end as well. Thanks for saying "jerryrig" instead of "jury rig"!!

 

Don't lie you're not going to paint them

 

I might not technically be an engineer but damn close to it
You should hydro dip some of these pieces instead of boring "painting".

 

The most likely is I'll start brushing the rust off, then give up on that and just paint over it

If it's more expensive than paint it's not happening. I don't really like hydrodipping anyways. Kinda cheesy to me.

 

It's not more expensive (per se) but it does require more effort... Something you're highly uncomfortable doing.

 

Just go get some rust reformer, and let it rust up good and then hit it with the reformer

 

Surprised you aren't gonna use the cobalt power steering column. Reason why not?

 

I have a Miata column and don't have a (spare) Cobalt column. The Miata's is manual which I prefer for this project, anyways.

 

Just adding my $02. when it comes to protecting metal from rust. I would always suggest taking the time to prep the surface and put on a quality coating product. I am a painter by trade and I know how much time it takes to deal with a coating failure after the fact. You can end up spending way more time re-doing things by trying to save some time but in the end it's your call.

 

This week I've shifted to wiring. I cleaned out the engine harness of everything that connected to the TCM, then I labeled all of the power sources. The connectors were labeled when I took them off of the engine. Today I will pick up some sheet metal to make a wiring tray. I'm sorting through the fuse block diagrams to figure out which fuses and relays i need, then I can make fuse blocks.