Its a strange feeling driving around even with the soft top up you can hear the outside sounds more. The driving position felt quite natural and the handling was very responsive even when the back kicked out a bit it was easily corrected. How do you. Tell if you have limited diff. Mine never spun the wheels going forward but could going backwards. But saying that my tyres were quite fresh.

I wouldn't mine leather seats but with cloth centres specially for summer as I found it gets warm. My classic mini has half and half

Thanks Jones, I'm watching your thread eagerly waiting for updates! You're quite a fair way from me, I'm in South Woodham Ferrers in Essex, but maybe someday I'll take you up on that.

Yeah I agree, I really enjoy driving my mx5 to work and back. I get to open it up on country style roads, and kick the back out on a couple of "easy" roundabouts! Mines a 1.8 eunos so it has the Torsen LSD.

Jack up the back end so both wheels are off the ground. With the car in neutral, turn one back wheel as if the car was driving forwards. If the other wheel also turns as if it was going forwards you have a limited slip differential fitted. If it turns the other way you don't. If it doesn't move at all your diff's f*cked.

I'm glad you like the thread, I have to admit as of late my new business has started to take off a little so time is becoming sparse so when I do get to dabble I am in such a rush I forget to take any pictures.

If you are going to Stoneleigh, you drive past mine more or less - you can have brew on your way up. We are heading over on the Sunday by the looks of it as both days are forecast to rain.

if youre only doing one day, can i suggest go o the first day not second.

all the useful jumble bits have gone. the bargain discount bits have gone. the majority of owners have gone, and the tomato sauce bottles at the burger stands are all clogged up at the end so the sauce doesnt flow properly.

Not all Eunos have LSD, still gotta check....
Pull away from a T junction (so you are going hard left or right),
give it some welly, and if one wheel spins, (one tyre fire....)
you dont have an LSD.

Bit difficult to try as the cars surrounded by other bits of cars at tribute hq. Plus it doesn't have a bonnet or headlights/tailights. If their was an empty field nearby I could try it their.

Sorry for the lack of posting! It's been the build up to fashion week so work has been ridiculously busy. On the bright side, I've now moved house! Yay. Which means I had enough spare money to buy and start fitting the kitchen! Yay. But most importantly, enough to order my kit! YAY! Deposit paid just waiting for Chris to confirm delivery date.

On a side note in the background I've been working on my instrument cluster... After literally months of thinking and probably just hours of actual working I'm really happy with my results. I'll post a full post tomorrow I hope but for now here's a teaser...

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...e/DSC_0804.jpg

Would I have seen you on the catwalk?

Just hope he wasn't modelling the "Budgie Smugglers":eek:

TynoPrime - Even with the soft focus, the reverse rev counter looks good. :cool:

Congratulations on the house move / kit order.

Good luck, Paul. :)

Looking forward to seeing your finished cluster.
Even the out of focus shot looks great
I made mine many years ago, made the mask out of aluminium, very fiddly to get the lenses in place for the warning lamps
I do miss the old girl :(

http://i1219.photobucket.com/albums/...415_172910.jpg

Interesting to see you had one of those Retro Caliber (?) stereos, Roadster. Any good? I've been looking at them for my Triumph. Thanks.

It was good, but I didn't have anything over the top in speakers etc, I tried to keep it looking 60's
It fitted the dash style - some modern radios look out of place

Nothing so glam I'm afriad! Im the construction manager for a set building company. Racked up 86 hours last week :bolt: atleast I'm paid by the hour!

Thanks Paul and Roadster.

So I always intended on making my own dials, so lets start there.

I did a lot of research as to the best way to make them, and after finding a good guide done by the guy that started RevLimiter I went to work.

So I've always liked RevLimiter guages, I think his designs are beautiful. However I had a few reasons to make my own. Firstly, they're expensive. I'm trying to do my build on a budget. Secondly, there was a change i wanted to make to the standard design, and that coats additionally! Thirdly, and most importantly, I love the idea of doing it all myself. There's just something about having made it yourself, even if all my ideas are borrowed from others :bolt:

So drawing up the dials took awhile, probably about 18 hours of drawing. The dials are made up of 3 layers. (although I actually ended up having to use 5) each of which are drawn up individually for each dial. The design is then printed.

Layer 1 is the "mask" layer. It's what you phisically see in everyday driving. It's printed on clear acetate.

Layer 2 is basically the "white/black out" layer. So everything you dont want showing up at night youmprint black, and leave everything else white. (I actually had to double up on layer 1 in the end, as the black turned grey when the backlighting came on).

Layer 3 is a "nighttime lighting colour" layer. I wanted everything amber, bar the redline, for that older look.

And finally Layer 4 was just a gradient layer. The test dial I did Was brighter in the middle, and darker towards the top and bottom. This layer helped to even it out.

I printed 5 sets of each, as I anticipated lots of mistakes in the gluing process.

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...e/IMG_0659.jpg

I then cut each into it's individual dials ready for gluing up.

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...e/IMG_0661.jpg

Then I began to glue them together. I found the easiest way was to use a clip at the top of the two, then align them up by holding them up to the light until everything seemed to merge perfectly. It was then a case of carefully lifting up and spraying a fine coat of spray adhesive inbetween, before pressing the two layers. Here are the first two layers glued together

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...e/IMG_0662.jpg

And once all layers are glued together

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...e/IMG_0663.jpg

One down, 4 to go. Continue with the rest until they're all in the same position, then leave them to fully go off for a few hours before trimming. I trimmed them with a pair of Fiskars scissors, and a sharp stanley blade with a ruler for the cutouts. Take note: The ink is delicate! Fingerprints are visible and hard to remove, and when cutting the first dial I did the ruler scratched the dial. I ended up using a piece of tissue under the ruler.

Here was my original test dial put into place in the instrument cluster. I picked the Speedometer to try first as the needle for the speedo is "self balancing". I.E you just drop the needle on 0 and it's good to go, no stopper or anything needed.

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...e/IMG_0692.jpg

And many hours later, the finished guages in the cluster! You may notice the speedo numbers have changed position.... I actuslly bought a second instrument cluster from ebay to play around with so i could continue using the car in the meantime. I didn't notice that it was a different speedo design. So i scanned in all the images of each dial, drew to it and when I put it into my cluster the speedo lied, and said I was doing 50 when I was doing about 35!

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...e/IMG_0696.jpg

And when lit up

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...e/IMG_0703.jpg

The photo actually isn't a very accurate image. The darkening in the top and bottom isn't so noticeable, and there is a large colour change between the amber and red which isn't really showing on the iphone camera!

I've had them in the car for a little while now, and I couldn't be happier. The only thing I would ammend is that RevLimiter suggests putting a layer of black behind the RED as it is otherwise 50% brighter than the amber, however with the black behknd the red is very dim. So eventually I will replace that dial with an ammended one.

Very impressive! How about using 2 layers of red to make the red darker?

They look great
What program did you use to draw them?