Tri-Point Engineering front swaybar

I'd been trying to figure out what swaybars to run on the car for awhile.  On my old CSP MX-5, I ran a Mazdaspeed RX-8 front bar along with the stock rear bar.  However, most of the time, I ran with the rear bar disconnected. 

In working with my friend Jason Saini, he told me that Tri-Point Engineering had a speedway style front bar for the car.  For those unfamiliar with this style of bar, it's used primarily on Nextel Cup, Craftsman Truck, and Busch GN cars.  The advantage is that the middle section of the bar is separate from the ends, so it's possible to easily change rates by just changing the middle.  This middle section has splines at both ends which the "arms" attach to.  In the case of the Tri-Point bar, the arms are made of aluminum and have five adjustment holes per side, which gives a lot of adjustment.  It also came with adjustable endlinds that can be adjusted on the car.  According to Tri-Point, the softest setting is 55% stiffer than the stock MX-5 bar.

Obviously I'll still need to figure out what to do with the rear bar, but I'm going to start with the stock bar and tune from there.

The install was pretty easy.  Since the middle section can easily be pushed into place from one side.  I used a little white-out to mark the arm and the bar for reassembly.  After that, it was pretty much the same as any other swaybar.  The only other thing that needed to be done was to grind down the bushing brackets a little to allow the remounting of the ABS sensor bracket that can be seen in one of the pictures.

Almost ready!

As of today, we're still waiting on our suspension, but we now have all four wheels with tires and have done a few other items in preparation for the season.

First up, I have been working on getting the final bits of the wiring harness wrapped up.  The primary things that needed to be done were to get the wiring in the "dash" area loomed and to hard mount a small fuse block and the OBD2 port.  For the wiring, I was able to reuse some of the mounting points for the dash itself.  That, a few clamps, and plastic wiring loom, and it looks pretty professional if I don't say so myself.  A little more challenging was how and where to mount the fuse block and OBD2 port.  After much searching, I was able to find the original plastic piece that the fuse block was mounted to from the factory.  Since it had attachments for three items, I cut it down to fit my needs and then pulled out my trusty rivnut set, drilled a couple of holes, and mounted it to the firewall area.  I had planned to do something similar with the OBD2 port, but couldn't find the stock mount, so I cut out a piece from some aluminum sheeting I had and made a bracket to mount it.  Same thing with rivnuts (man I LOVE those things) and it's now mounted in an easily accessible area where the base of the windshield used to be.

Next up, my other three wheels arrived, as did a couple of other needed items.  Again, my wheels are from REAL Racing Wheels.  I highly recommend them, as their prices are very reasonable for a 3 piece wheel, and their turn around times of about two weeks seems to be quicker than the competition by a good amount of time. 

I was also in need of a harness, so decided I'd stick with the green theme and ordered up a six point harness from NRG.  Mounting was fairly easy for four of the points, as I just used the factory seat mount locations to attach.  The portion going around the roll cage needed a little extra work however, as the belts came with brackets for mounting with bolts.  So, I cut off that portion and used the standard looping method with some brackets from an old harness.  I also made sure to melt the end that had been cut off.

Lastly, with the 7" back space on the new wheels, and the way the centers are shaped, I needed spacers.  Ichiba makes a very nice set of aluminum/magnesium hub centric 10mm spacers that come with extended studs.  I had previously purchased and installed a set of ARP studs, so didn't need the studs that came with the spacers.  The center rings come out of the spacers, so in my case, once the spacer and wheels were mounted, I pulled out the center rings out since the wheel center is much bigger than the ring.  Don't need those flying out on course!  ;-)  The part number for these spacers is MZ-52110. 

Now obviously we need the suspension to get rid of the 4x4 look!

Today's project was to "cover" the headlight holes.  Per the rules, if you remove the headlights, you have to cover the area with either mesh or some kind of hard cover.  I was able to pick up some stainless mesh from a friend.  After tracing the cutout onto paper, I cut out a test piece and tried to figure out how to mount them.  After spending awhile trimming it to try to get it to slide into some gaps, my wife (not a car person, btw!) said "I have what's probably a stupid idea, but could you use zip ties?"  I don't know why I hadn't thought about that, but it was a perfect solution.  I probably should have taken some pictures while installing, but didn't.  Here is what the finished look is.  Almost like bug eyes...

Hopefully my next post will come in a couple of days with some good news on the suspension.  Stay tuned for some sweet pictures of cool stuff.  A beautiful Tri Point front sway bar should be here any day.