Okay, so my hope is to keep more up to date on the current progress of the car along with thoughts for the future.
As noted in my previous post, I’ve now pulled the automatic transmission out of the car. A few more details on that. First, I had to drain all of the fluid. The automatics hold more, and they have an oil cooler that is integrated into the radiator. So, although I didn’t initially realize it, that means that the automatic and the manuals have different radiators. Additionally, with the paddle shifters, etc. there are a lot more wires going to the transmission than there are on the manuals.
Step one was to unbolt the shifter from the transmission. This was actually a little easier than pulling out the shifter on a manual. Next came disconnecting the oil lines that went to the radiator. The rest of the steps for pulling the transmission were pretty much the same as pulling out a manual transmission. So, take off the PPF, unbolt and remove the driveshaft, disconnect all the wires, and finally undo the bellhousing bolts. Actually there was one other step. You have to unbolt the torque converter from the ring gear. This wasn’t too tough, but there is supposedly a special tool that makes getting at the nuts easier. Fortunately there were only 4 to undo, so it went fairly quick once I figured out how to do it.
So, that pretty well brings that portion up to date. Today I started working on getting the car ready to install the manual transmission.
Actually I almost forgot part of what I did today. I will be picking up a header for the car this weekend (I’m going with a Goodwin Racing one at this point,) so I decided to go ahead and pull the stock header/manifold out of the car while I had the transmission out. Since the easiest way to do this is to pull off all of the heat shielding, it made it easier to do this with no transmission in the way.
Okay, so back to getting ready for the manual. I needed to pull out the lines for the oil cooler. These are routed behind the motor mount on the passenger side, so I jacked up the motor with my tranny jack and disconnected the motor mount. After this was out of the way, I was able to pull these lines out of the car. I also disconnected the coolant lines from the radiator and pulled the radiator. Fellow forum member, Jim Boemler, happened to have a stock manual radiator from his car available, and since he’s local, I’m going to get that from him. I also took this opportunity to start a little cleaning of the engine bay since there is currently no battery or intake in the car. I didn’t make it very far, but at least the beam between the rails that the power steering reservoir sits on is clean…
Next up was installing the clutch to put the transmission in. I had purchased a used clutch setup to use as a temporary to make sure that I get everything working right. As you may know, the 5 speed transmission uses a different clutch disc than the 6 speed. The clutch I purchased was from a 6 speed car, but I have a 5 speed disc, so I figured this would all go pretty quick. BTW, the only difference between the disk is the portion that goes around the input shaft of the transmission. The 5 speed shaft is smaller than the 6 speed. So, what was the problem? Well, the torque converter for the automatic has a nub that goes where the tip of the input shaft of the manual transmission goes. Since this nub doesn’t do anything really, the engine doesn’t need the roller bearings that the manual transmission needs. So, I’ll need to buy the bearings before I can install the clutch. Not a big setback, but it does delay installing the transmission until I get the part.
That more or less completes today’s work on the car.
A couple of thoughts towards the future of the build.
1. I do have an actual race clutch for the car. It is from 10,000 rpm and weighs in at about 10 ½ pounds. I will need to replace the discs with new ones since as I noted above, the clutch I have is for a 6 speed, not a 5 speed. I had some problems getting this clutch to work right in my CSP car, so that’s why I’m starting with a stock clutch. I want to make sure everything works correctly since this is a pretty major swap.
2. I’m starting to decide which route to go for coilovers. I previously used JICs on my CSP car, and while they were a decent option, I needed more control than they allowed, so I swapped them for some double adjustable Moton Club Sports. These were incredible shocks. So, those are one option. Others have used AST 5000 and 5200 series shocks and Sachs that I’m aware of. I’m sure there are a few other options as well, such as Fat Cat Motorsport’s Bilstein revalves. I want to make sure that whatever I do, I won’t have to worry about swapping them for something different in the future.
3. I will also need to get a cage installed in the car. I’ve talked to a couple of people about options, and I think what I want is to do something that’s as low as possible, and would be legal for roadracing as well in case I ever decide to give the car a try at that.
4. Wheels/tires are going to be a big deal as well. DP allows you to run up to a 7” wide wheel without a penalty. This works fine if you can fit 13” or 15” wheels on your car, as there are a lot of cantilevered slick options from Hoosier and Goodyear. Unfortunately, due to the rear suspension on the MX-5 (namely the hub shape and the multi-link,) a 16” wheel is the smallest diameter that can be run. As far as I can tell there are no 16” cantilevers, so to run the width of tire that the car will need, that means running a wider wheel than a 7”. The rules allow up to a 10” wide wheel with a 75 pound weight penalty, so that’s what the current plan is. This is not a common size, so it looks like I’ll have to have some wheels custom built. I may just go with some steel wheels from someplace like Diamond Racing Wheels to start with. Tire options include Hoosier and Goodyear. I’m probably looking at something like a 23.5x11x16.
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