Handbrake cable routing

Here's a quick pic of my handbrake cable routing.
I bolted the handbrake cables to the big diff mount washers which hold them in place and stop them fouling on anything.

Front Diff Mount

I finished my front diff mount off last week and fitted it yesterday.
I forgot to take any pics of it before I bolted it on, but here it is in place.  It's in a bit of an awkward position to take photos of, but you probably get the idea:

I fabricated it out of 3mm steel plate, and it's bolted via a pair of landrover engine mounts to a 6mm plate welded into the chassis seat back.
I'm not particularly keen on using the rubber mounts in shear, but I think (hope!) they'll be ok.

The mount is attached to the front of the diff using a pair of 110mm M12 bolts.
The bolt holes in the diff are sleeved down using some ally tube to get a better fit on the bolts.

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EDIT:
This was another bad idea on my part!
After 650 miles of driving the landrover mounts sheared off resulting in a broken diff and damaged propshaft...
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Rear Upright Holes

One issue with the Saturn wishbones is that they use 12mm bolts all round.
Unfortunately the MX5 rear upright uses a 14mm bolt at the bottom and a 10mm at the top.
For the bottom I simply slipped a length of 14mm OD 1mm wall precision stainless tube (from ebay) into the upright, to 'sleeve' it down:

The tube couldn't be a better fit on either the upright or the bolt :)

For the bottom I purchased a pair of MX5 poly bushes from StrongFlex.  They agreed to supply the crush tube with 12mm holes instead of the usual 10mm which was nice of them!

Steering Column Revisited

Decided to revisit the steering column/shafts last week.
There were two problems with my original attempt.
Firstly the Escort rack to Sierra column linkage was too long and posed clearance problems with the chassis, and secondly I had too many UJ's meaning I had an unsupported shaft between the column and rack:

I got rid of the modified sierra column and replaced it with a length of thick walled steel tube welded to the mx5 shaft at one end and a group4 shaft from Rally Design at the other (thus losing the UJ to the mx5 shaft).
I then replaced the old long coupling to the rack with a much shorter group4 coupling:

Now no clearance issues, and a nice direct, well supported, shaft :)

Battery

I got my battery this week, a dinky little Odyssey PC680 Battery.
Because it's nice and small I can mount it in the passenger footwell without losing too much space (not that I'm too worried about passenger leg room!), rather than the usual place in front of the scuttle bulk head.

 

Seems to fit quite well.

I'll make up some bracketry to hold it in place and a panel to cover it up at some point .

Lock Stop and Two Smoking Tyres

I noticed I had rather a lot of steering travel this week (this is with my MX5 uprights mated to a 2.9 ratio Mk2 Escort Rack):

As well as looking daft this causes some clearance issues at the extent of the travel.  The rack extensions touch the lower wishbones, and the track rod end skims the inside of the wheel.  I suspect I'd have futher problems with the brake lines and cycle wings were they fitted too:

The Sierra version of the car doesn't have this problem, so I can only assume the MX5 uprights have a shorter steering arm.
I'm guessing this will mean I'll have quicker, but heavier, steering than the Sierra version.

To reduce the steering travel I decided to fit some kind of extra lock stops to the rack.
After pulling the gaiters back and measuring the diameter of the rack I figured a trip to B&Q was in order.
Verniers in hand I went round measuring things until I found something with a suitable diameter, and this is what I settled on:

They're plastic couplings for overflow pipe.
I cut one into two sections (each ~20mm in length), then put a split in them.
I also warmed them on the hob to allow me to open them up enough to slip over the steering rack:

They fit on the rack nicely and I used jubilee clips to hold them in place:

The amount of steering travel is much more sensible now, and things don't touch that shouldn't!

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EDIT:  Turns out this was a crap idea!
The jubilee clips have taken quite a battering, and have worked loose, and the bits of pipe sort of got embedded in the end of the rack tube (or whatever it's called?) .
I've stripped it all out, and come up with a better solution which will get it's own post shortly.

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Rolling Rolling Rolling

Reached a major milestone in the build today and dropped her onto her wheels for the first time :)