Weber and Coulomb's MX-5

And there I was thinking it was a bargain at AUD$10.60 !!

Yes 10^6 is a nice touch.
I hope it costs a little less to electrify !

Here are the hold downs; they weigh 750g each (including bolts that don't have to be replaced). There are two front and two rear, totalling 3.0kg.


At left: front hold downs ("baby teeth"). Right: rear hold downs.

Note that I don't recommend removing the rear hold downs. They serve another purpose: they are the first thing that scrapes at the rear of the vehicle. Without the rear hold downs, the rear plastic bumper cover would rip off, and it would cosmetically be much worse than a little more wear on the hold down loop (you can see a little wear there in the photo).

Originally posted by EV2Go I guessing you never plan to accidentally run out of power and need a tow on a tow truck???

We did research this. It seems that as with any other car, you can tow it safely with a band attached near the front jack points. The manual actually says that the "towing hooks" are to be used only to haul the car out of a ditch, mud, or snow. For ordinary towing on two wheels, I don't really know where they lift it. The rear hooks are there, because without them scraping a driveway would rip the rear bumper cover.

Did you weigh it before you started to see what the actual different is post conversion? you can use factory specs but I dont know if they are always accurate.

We will do this. We've been told that you can use beams and about 8 bathroom scales. Next Thursday we'll start buying tools and two scales to try out the technique on perhaps one wheel.

Thursday is our designated EV day where we both are off work and try to be appointment free. We feel if we don't do this, interruptions will cause the project to be deferred indefinitely. We've seen this happen with other "weekend" projects.

We went tools shopping today; the most expensive item was the engine lifter. This is the 1,250kg from SuperCheap; about $365. We had no idea it would be so big. In fact, when we got the heavy package home, we realised that we had only one box of three. Sigh.

That's a claw hammer it's holding (to gauge the size), and my garage door in the background. The length is over 1.8m.

Here is is in its "folded" configuration:

Now it's almost 1.7m tall! For something that gets used so infrequently, maybe we should have hired one of these as needed. Oh well. I guess we can use it for battery trays, controllers, etc.

Here's Coulomb blissfully mounting the first castor... on the wrong side of the base! The instructions were terrible.

You can also see the MX-5 on stands, and near the front wheel is the cheap (~$28) SCA hydraulic trolley jack that we used to get it on the stands. There was another brand a dollar cheaper, but it looked less solid, had a slightly higher minimum height, and a slightly lower maximum height.

Edit: added third picture and associated text.

Edited by coulomb - 05 March 2009 at 11:04pm

Hey Coulomb, after I changed gears at 7500rpm and accidently selected angel gear at the drags and got back on the loud peddle (3 broken rockers), I needed the assistance of a tow truck to get my 180sx home. They used the tow hook at the rear to tie it down on the tow truck, because late model Japanese cars typically have IRS so there is no diff housing to tie down to.

That's one big crane.
If you were in WA I would have gone halvsies with ya
btw I like you table of contents!

Weber decided that the more he drove the MX-5, the more convinced he was that he wanted power steering. So if we want it, a prospective customer is likely t want it. It so happens that some models of early MX-5 came without power steering, and others (especially the Japanese imports branded Eunos Readster instead of Mazda MX-5) come with. The two are basically interchangeable, as you can see with the two steering racks below:

At top is the manual steering rack, and below is the power assisted version. Of course, the power version requires more parts not shown.

There is an idler wheel in the manual steering models, which can be replaced with the steering pump, though a different sized belt is required. A complete "kit" (well, a jumble of parts) is available from mx5plus.

I guess it was a fairly standard install, but it sure taxed us all the way. Without the proper tool, it took a lot of "drifting" (whacking with a hammer) to separate the steering rod from the steering nuckle. We found that supporting the steering knuckle on a hydraulic jack helped.

Edit: was "supporting the steering rod".

Some of the bolts were hell on earth to get to to undo and to tighten. Things will be so much simpler with the infernal combustion engine gone.

It was finally ready by about midnight Sunday, and only one bolt and one belt left over!    There always seem to be sme leftovers. (They weren't forgotten, they were not needed). A test drive confirmed that it works very nicely. After the test, we decided to chase up a slight clunk; it was the locking nut on the steering wheel connecting rod.

Edited by coulomb - 10 March 2009 at 10:35pm

Originally posted by coulomb I guess it was a fairly standard install, but it sure taxed us all the way. Without the proper tool, it took a lot of "drifting" (whacking with a hammer) to separate the steering rod from the steering nuckle. We found that supporting the steering rod on a hydraulic jack helped.

The steering rods are best removed from the knuckle with a firm hit with your standard claw hammer or gympie on the side of the taper. This just pops out the ball joint and arm. It's the easiest way by far. This works for both the steering arm attachment and the lower control arm to the wheel assembly.

Personally i'd stay with manual steering. Do you know whether the weight over the front wheels is going to stay the same, get lighter or get heavier? Zeva might be able to assist you. You will find if it's going to get lighter that there is no need for power steering as the steering will get lighter anyway. Also if you put low rolling resistance tyres on the vehicle, it will get lighter again. The silica compound tyres help with this without sacrificing grip.

Edited by juk - 10 March 2009 at 10:05pm

for the headlights, do a search for a "Pivot headlight controller"

Originally posted by juk The steering rods are best removed from the knuckle with a firm hit with your standard claw hammer or gympie on the side of the taper. This just pops out the ball joint and arm. It's the easiest way by far. This works for both the steering arm attachment and the lower control arm to the wheel assembly.

I have done it this way on the mini and it works, I found it best to also try to lever the steering arm down as well, the risk with hitting the nut on top (or so I'm told) is that you could deform the threads and because it relies on the taper friction to stop it turning enough that you can do up the nut a damaged thread can be problematic as it just turns in the taper.

The idea was that hitting the side of the taper with a hammer deforms the taper enough to pop out the steering rods and avoids potentially damaging the threads.

Ball joint splitters also help like the one here (required sizes might be different):
Ball Joint Splitter

Edited by fuzzy-hair-man - 11 March 2009 at 9:34am

Yeah sometimes not being able to get a clean hit on it can be a bit of a pain. I have in the past still managed to do it while not hitting direct in line, as long as the wood is hard and square to the nut and you hold the other end of the wood firm, you can still hit it as close as you can get and have success. The trick is in the sharp rap of the hammer, slow heavy blows are not as effective.

Sounds like you guys are making some good progress...

I use two hammers with a synchronised hit on both sides of the knuckle OR support one side with a hammer so you don't feel like you are destroying the steering arm bush.