Tuesday 23 July 2013

Teething Troubles...

Well 650 miles in and I've gone and broken it:


Not sure whether the rubber mounts or the diff broke first, but either way it's back to the drawing board...

Friday 12 July 2013

Road Registered

Didn't mention on my last post, but on the way home from IVA I stopped by Peterborough DVLA office.
A very helpful chap there went through the paperwork with me, took a payment for tax and application fee, and inspected the car.
Two working days later (Monday this week) I got a letter containing my reg number and tax disc!
I got an age-related J-reg plate which was nice.

Took the car out for a damn good thrashing Monday night, and have been commuting in it all this week.  Loving the unusually balmy weather :D

Thursday 4 July 2013

IVA Passed!!!!!!!!

Wooooooooooooooooo! I passed my IVA re-test today!

Here's what I had to do to get through:

1. Replace the slide pins on the dodgy rear caliper.  One of them looked home-made, and not at all suitable...
2. Replace Rally Design's crappy forged coupling (RD820F) with a pressed steel type instead.  Couldn't get the forged one to sit tight on the steering rack spline no matter how much I tightened the bolt up.  I'm not the only person to have this problem either...
3. Delete my Mondeo rear brake bias valve to improve my overall braking efficiency.  The rear brakes are quite weak on the MX5 and you don't need a valve to get trhough IVA.
4. Chop a half inch or so section out of the brackets that hold the end of the handbrake cables to the rear calipers and weld them back together so the cables clear the chassis.  I raised the ride height a bit too just to be on the safe side.
5. Rotate my rear flexi line slightly so it didn't touch the chassis any more.


Though not on my fail sheet I also:

* Made the clutch pedal longer and replaced the master cylinder with a 0.625" one.  The clutch was rediculously heavy and snappy before I did this.  Still not great but vastly improved.

* Re-packed my exhaust with wire wool as the first lot blew out on the way home from my first test!

* Re-work the front wingstays to make them a bit stronger.  One of them sheared off within hours of booking my re-test, and I had two evenings to re-make them!