As you're aware if you've been following along, the car came to me with a number of items missing from the front of the car. Since I'd also updated the car to the 2009+ look, the bumper was missing all of it's trim pieces such as the grill, foglight bezels, etc.
This pile of boxes included the grill, front fender liners, under engine tray, and all of the associated fasteners needed to install them. It's really amazing how all of these seemingly minutia pieces can add up in cost.
The stock foglight bezels really stick out on the car, and the side reflector is incorporated into the bezel. I had previously ordered these, but decided that for my purposes, they didn't really seem like they were going to work right for my application. While browsing images of MX-5 Cup cars, I noticed that they seemed to have a different bezel and found that they were brake ducts that could be purchased through Mazdaspeed. What I didn't realize at the time was how expensive they were. I had wrongly assumed that since the stock pieces were so cheap, that these couldn't be too bad. Well, this was a case of not asking before ordering. $200 later, they were on their way to me.... I was tempted to return them, but decided that ultimately they were really what I wanted, so in they went.
The ducts are made of fiberglass and have to be drilled and riveted to the car. Good thing I've gotten fairly comfortable with drilling into the car, as I had to drill holes into my beautifully painted bumper.... For the time being I will just run them as is. Eventually I'll probably add the hoses and backing plates to really use them for brake cooling. However, since it'll be awhile before I put the car on the track, I'm not that concerned about it right now.
The other thing I decided to do was to take advantage of the headlight openings for the intake. I had an AEM intake from my old CSP car that I had already installed. This intake was deemed not legal in CSP because of the need to remove a splash guard, but for DP that didn't matter. I figured that moving the filter to the passenger headlight opening would give it a cleaner air stream, so I ordered up a couple of rubber connector pieces and the associated clamps, along with a 2 foot long long piece of 3" aluminum tubing. After looking at the intake for awhile, I determined that if I planned my cut of the existing tubing correctly, I could get away with just adding about 6-8" of new tubing.
After temporarily mocking it all up, I then set about trying to use the existing attachment arms. Fortunately, those too were aluminum, so bending them to get them to where I wanted them was fairly easy. I was able to use both of the existing attachments but attaching them to the car in different places.
With just over a month before the first event, I've ordered the remaining three wheels from REAL Racing Wheel. These guys have been a big help in my endeavor to fit 16" wheels to the car. Not only do they build a great product, but their pricing, customer service, and build times are incredible in the custom wheel industry. Their normal turn around time is about a week and a half to two weeks. Their 16x10 wheels run about $365 each, which is a great price for a 3 piece aluminum wheel. Once my Motons show up, I'll get everything mounted up and post more pictures.
I'll also be ordering up some wheel spacers, sway bars, end links, race harness, shift knob, and a new seat mount and slider. With these items and a quality alignment from Fordahl Motorsports, the car should be ready for it's debut.
More later.
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