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Go Back   Madabout Kitcars Forum > Mad Build Area > Tribute Automotive Builds

Tribute Automotive Builds Discuss your Tribute kit build

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  #41  
Old 15th June 2016, 06:23
DaveP DaveP is offline
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Great work. Must be so satisfied with the results - I know I would be.

Dave
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  #42  
Old 15th June 2016, 17:09
TynoPrime TynoPrime is offline
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Thanks for the comments. Well just a single layer of red I think would be sufficient, but I put a layer of black behind to dull it down which was abit overboard.

A lot of people use illustrator to draw them up, personally I haven't had a lot of experience with it, so I chose to draw in AutoCad. I scanned in the original dials, then drew round them to insure the indices stayed in the same place.
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  #43  
Old 23rd April 2020, 07:33
TynoPrime TynoPrime is offline
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Well! It's been a while - but if isolation is good for one thing, it's getting back to all the forgotten projects!

It's been almost 4 years since I last touched this project, having moved house I had to concentrate on the entire house before I could justify starting the car again, and having 2 year old twins made it hard to give up time to the car.

Well, I now have all the time in the world! So the kit car is the main focus for the next few months (Making sure I have enough time with my now 6 year old twins and the wife of course!)
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  #44  
Old 23rd April 2020, 07:41
TynoPrime TynoPrime is offline
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So first things first - the car had been sitting for a few years in the garage - it was dry in there, but I didn't think the engine would be in the greatest shape having sat for so long. So I decided the first thing I would do is fix the car mechanically before putting the kit on it permanently - that way if anything was seriously wrong I could just get another donor car and move my interior across.

So over the past two weeks, I went from this;



To this;


This started with a full tear down of everything in the engine bay. So I began taking everything apart and bagging up the bolts...






I decided I would go only as far as the head for now, then decide if the bottom end needed rebuilding based on how it all cleaned up etc.

The car didn't ever blow smoke or anything, so I'm fairly confident the piston rings would be in good enough shape as long as they visually looked ok still.


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  #45  
Old 23rd April 2020, 07:48
TynoPrime TynoPrime is offline
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The head was in good shape, and the internals of the combustion chamber were covered in carbon, but no chips or dents and scoring anywhere in site, so I was confident it would be ok.

I decided to completely remove the AC system, as there was an awful lot of pipework, pumps and radiators involved which not only took up alot of room, it looked ugly and weighed a decent amount!

Having decided that everything looked like it would work out without a full rebuild, I started on the piston heads to get all the carbon off of them - and cleaned up the mating surface for the head gasket.

I didn't want to use anything mechanical on this, so decided the best thing I could use was a green scourer and lots of WD40. It took about 4 hours to get everything fully cleaned up, but it worked and there was no damage to anything which was the aim.

Before, and after;






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  #46  
Old 23rd April 2020, 08:30
jones jones is offline
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TYNO! Welcome back!

Great to see your build is back on! Very envious of that engine bay but serves as great motivation to get mine done. What paint did you use for the bay?
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  #47  
Old 23rd April 2020, 08:39
TynoPrime TynoPrime is offline
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Having looked around at the engine bay there was lots of spots of rust, especially under the brake master, where there had clearly been a brake fluid leak at some point and the DOT3 had eaten through the paint and started on the steel.

So I pulled everything else that was in the way, and got the engine ready for paint. Again, I didn't want to drop out the trans/engine so i went as far as I could to allow the space to paint the engine bay.







After cleaning back i then treated all rust with a rust converter before priming over it






Last edited by TynoPrime; 23rd April 2020 at 08:41..
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  #48  
Old 23rd April 2020, 08:53
TynoPrime TynoPrime is offline
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I then masked up the engine to ensure it wouldn't get covered in paint! And painted out the engine bay.

At work, I have access to a full spray booth, with a good turbine compressor with two large tanks, anti oil, anti water, good Sata projet spray guns, etc etc.

Well I'm not at work... I'm at home. I don't have any of that equipment nor do I have the room in my garage for a compressor - it's tight as it is!

So I had to improvise...

So I bought myself a little HVLP - It's basically a hoover in reverse to provide air - I got the "best one" I could on a budget - managed to get this one for £40 from CPC. It came with three tips, a 1.0, 2.0 and 2.5. It's a 1200w motor that produces 1100L/min of air, which is actually technically enough for a gravity gun... But again wanting to keep costs down I thought I'd try the gun it came with.




I tried it out with the 1.0 and it actually sprayed surprisingly well - shockingly well in fact. It did however let out a little too much paint, as even on the "lowest" setting of the trigger it opened the needle quite a bit. So I screwed a screw into the back adjustment nob - which means I can now go from no paint coming out at all, to as much as I need.



A little video of it spraying;

https://youtu.be/AQGxQRE0NMw
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  #49  
Old 23rd April 2020, 08:55
TynoPrime TynoPrime is offline
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So having decided my little £40 set up should work - I got to spraying! I used a 1k Gloss Black enamel chassis paint. In hindsight I wouldn't use this again, as it stayed soft for about a week and thus I've marked/damaged some small areas in the reassembly process - nothing too bad but a note!




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  #50  
Old 23rd April 2020, 09:04
TynoPrime TynoPrime is offline
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With the bay ready to go,it was time to start reassembly. The bottom end was ready to go, but the top end needed the same treatment. So I spent the next 6 hours with a soft wire brush attachment and lots of WD40 again and cleaned the top side of the combustion chamber and the valves.

This is how it looked before I started on them;




I wanted to do everything I could to avoid having to pull the valves out of the head, as I don't have the correct tools to remove the valave springs and didn't want to end up doing more damage than good. Again, with myself and my wife being furloughed and on 80% of our wages, I wanted to keep the spend down as much as possible.

After cleaning the valves themselves and the head, everything looked in fantastic shape - so the last thing I wanted to do was check if there were any leaks where the valves seat against the head. I watched a few videos and seemingly most people use WD40 or the like to check for leaks by filling up the cylinder and leaving it for a while.

I did the same, filling up one cylinder at a time and leaving it in there for an hour to check if anything was coming through into the intake or exhaust ports. Luckily, not a single drop came through so I was happy enough that i wouldn't need to pull the valves.



And after the several hours of cleaning, the top end looked like this;

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  #51  
Old 23rd April 2020, 09:42
TynoPrime TynoPrime is offline
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Happy that the cylinders and mating surface were as good as they were going to get - it was time to remount the two.

Bottom end ready to go;


Head Gasket in place;


And head fit on and torqued down. I torqued it in 3 goes, 20, 40 then 60 ft-lbs.
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  #52  
Old 23rd April 2020, 10:26
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Mister Towed Mister Towed is offline
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Nice work. I'll pinch that tip about using WD40 and a scotchbrite scourer to clean up the pistons and combustion chambers. I've previously used Barbecue cleaner but it didn't do the job as well as your approach.
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  #53  
Old 23rd April 2020, 10:47
TynoPrime TynoPrime is offline
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So continuing the reassembly! Everything seemed to take forever to do, mainly because basically every single part I took off the car was either filthy, corroded, rusty or generally looking worn. So I would wire wheel back each item and then treat/paint accordingly.

This started with me refitting the lifters, cam shafts and cam gears. Cam gears were cleaned and repainted. For anyone doing this - the cam shaft has a small "dowel" on the end mounting end of the shaft - this fits into one of three locations on the cam gear - for the intake side you put it so that it's on the "line" that points to the "I". On the exhaust, on the line that points to the "E".

I then also test fitted all the new coolant pipes.





The next job was putting the Cam belt on - I bought all new belts from Euro Car parts for an absolute steal! They're still on offer now - I got 60% off with their easter code, and the cam belt and each aux belt ended up costing me £6 each! This was a Continental cam belt too not some cheapo.

So fitting the cam belt, you ensure Cylinder 1 is at TDC - This should always be the case when the small notch on the crank gear (which in turns is in line with the pin in the crack shaft) is at 12oclock, or lined up with the small arrow on the case as shown here;



That's the crack aligned, now you need to line up the cam shafts. There are two ways to align these, firstly they should have the small timing mark next to the "I" on intake and the "E" on exhaust pointing directly upwards to 12oclock.


Secondly there are two "aligning" marks on the black cover that sits behind the cam gears. The timing marks next to the "E" on the intake and the "I" on the exhaust should be directly in line with those marks.


These can take some pressure to keep in place, so I found it easiest to put an adjustable spanner on each camshaft, and used that to turn the cams to the correct position, then I clamped them together using a small quick-grip to keep them in place while I put the belt on.

So personally I find the easiest way on the mx5 is to fit the belt around the bottom first, then keeping it tight I pull it around the exhaust camshaft then over the intake and down and tension it up. There should be exactly 19 teeth between the two marks on the cams, and when under tension the intake cam should look like its leaning very slightly towards the exhaust cam.

So with the cam belt on and tensioned up, i did a couple of full revolutions of the engine using a 21mm socket and a long bar to turn it over 4 times, just to make sure everything was still in line and nothing hap slipped etc. All good, so I cleaned and popped the covers back on and test fit the other two belts.

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  #54  
Old 23rd April 2020, 10:58
TynoPrime TynoPrime is offline
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Next I moved on to the intake and cam cover - I knew I wanted these in a nice anthracite colour - so I found one that would work and got to spraying. Again, these took bloody ages to clean up with a wire wheel and lots of elbow grease, but I got there eventually and got them sprayed.




(By this point I had also refurbed the Brake master in the background of the photo - unfortunately I didn't get any pictures - but to remove it there are 4 12mm bolts tucked right up under the dash - I had to remove the seat, lie on my back on the floor inside the car and reach up with an extension to get them - then there's a small circlip on a rod that connects the brake servo to the pedal.

I then cleaned it up, wire wheeled the aluminium to a nice shine, and cleaned and repainted the black brake booster.

Next was fitting the injectors. Mine were abit.. messy. Someone had previously tried to "fix" the injectors leaking by adding 3 additional orings to each seat *DOH*

So I just bought some 2nd hand ones on ebay that were complete, tidied them up and installed.



Fuel rail again, tidied up, repainted and put into place, then bolted in.




Finally, the radiator was toast - it looked like it had been through a flock of birds, THEN a gravel track, THEN a field. So I bought a new one on ebay for the incredibly good price of £33! and got it fit.




Finally the bay was finished for now (I will be adding a turbo soon, so the intake and exhaust are TBC.

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  #55  
Old 23rd April 2020, 11:42
TynoPrime TynoPrime is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mister Towed View Post
Nice work. I'll pinch that tip about using WD40 and a scotchbrite scourer to clean up the pistons and combustion chambers. I've previously used Barbecue cleaner but it didn't do the job as well as your approach.
They say acetone eats through carbon really quickly, but to be honest I'd worry about the seals if I used that, atleast I know WD40 isn't corrosive, just a good aid for cleaning!
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  #56  
Old 23rd April 2020, 13:01
TynoPrime TynoPrime is offline
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I bought two wheels to trial - I knew these would definately be fine on the back (actually they're probably too narrow still) so I got the two for now, then I could try them on the front and see if they fit - then order the front two based on that knowledge.

So here are the wheels - 16x8 et -20 Japan Racing JR19's. I have bought a test tyre - a Michelin Primacy 3 in 225x60 so nice and big sidewall!




I pulled the car out of the garage and started playing around with heights etc, then took a bunch of photos I can spend the night photoshopping some ideas with





I knew I wanted some extra height on the back, as I much prefer the stance when the arse is lifted up - I feel like the body "squats" too much otherwise.

Ultimately, I'm in love with cars from the 60's - but taking the top spot for me is the Shelby Daytona -


So I want to add as much of the styling of that to my build as possible.

After playing around with photoshop and double checking measurements on the car it came down to the final design;



So there are some modifications to the fibreglass that are needed. Firstly - Ive always felt that the wheels people put on these are always really small, and the arches look too oversized for them most of the time. So I will be cutting the arches out to pretty much the mold line you can see on the rear arch - this works with the mx5 body behind the fibreglass, and the photoshop above shows the car correctly sized, with the wheel correctly sied on a 225x60 tyre (which is 676mm wide)

Secondly, I will be modifying the back end. Again, I love what some people have done with theirs, and Andreas's build was always my inspiration - however even his I feel the "arse" of the car looks abit low and abit BIG. So i'll be shortening the back end and making it more "vertical" - more like the Daytona.

The front will also be getting some modifications. Firstly, I will probably be losing the three vents in the front. I;m not 100% on this yet but I just feel they scream "ferrari", and I prefer the ones that don't have them such as Seanicks build.

In regards to the front grill opening, again I'm not a big fan of the circular cut out, I will likely do something more like the TVR Tuscan grill (in regards to shape)



Last edited by TynoPrime; 23rd April 2020 at 13:09..
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  #57  
Old 25th April 2020, 08:10
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Paul L Paul L is offline
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TynoPrime – Welcome back and belated congratulations on your twins.

Great work cleaning up the engine both inside and out.

Based on the modifications you are planning, I hope you have read Andy’s thread.
http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...ead.php?t=7259

Good luck, Paul.
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