Housey's MX-5 Race Car Plans!

...and with lightweight battery and fire eater system fitted.

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I am insanely jealous you're turning this around so much faster than I am able to. Money wise it's a pretty big stretch for me, but I shall be doing it. This only further encourages me!

I think if things goes well I'll have the money to start turning mine into this around summer time. Most likely too late to enter any racing this year, boo!
 
It helps to have someone doing the work for me, but I keep putting money in other peoples bank accounts which you don't have to I guess.
 
Housey this looks fantastic I'm currently scraping together some funs for a potential mk1 trackday car we already have a mk2.

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Progress has slowed a little as we await a bit of space and also some of the final designs from our suspension people but I thought I would share some internal shots from our first car which is pretty much there now, bar the suspension modifications we are awaiting.

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I shall be getting a similar Momo wheel and though I am not a fan of flat bottom wheels having seen this one yesterday I think it makes sense as it helps with space in the car, which is a challenge when you are 6'1 and 17 stone. Feels and looks great so I can see £170 going on this. Also we now have the first carbon fibre insert for the dash which looks good and mine will have the same.

I expect my car to run for the first time in March!
 
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Looks awesome :)

No idea if any use to you (probably not as it looks like you know what you are doing).

Q:
I think you have a Mazda car that you've kept for a long time and use for your experiments?

Masao Furusawa:
The MX Miata. It is 18 years old. I've changed it a lot: Reinforcement to increase the rigidly and I put a performance damper into the car body to create a damping force. This is an idea from Yamaha Motors because all of the automotive companies just increase the rigidity of the chassis, but sometimes we need a damping force.

Now I increase the stiffness and the damping force. My Miata is fantastic. Only one problem: The torsional stiffness [twist] because it is an open-top. This is the last thing I have to fix, but I've been too busy!

My Miata has almost no mileage, less than my rental car. I also have three cars and two bikes and no time to use them.
Click to expand...

From here
 
Our stiffness is aided by a fully welded cage of course which helps, but we are limited as to what we can do but damping is a very interesting area that is room for much debate at the moment...
 
A little update as at today. We now have 2 cars with their race engines run in after a few hundred miles at Bruntingthorpe yesterday. Today we had the first car on the rollers too and saw 125bhp which is good, though the fueling and mapping needed sorting. I'm not having a rebuild so it will be interesting to see how mine compares when I am able to run it. Progress has slowed a little as we get the first 2 cars finished as both plan full seasons so need to be ready first.

My engine is now done, fully serviced and all the bay elements we no longer need removed. Wiring went in last week and the interior is being sprayed black to make it look tidy. Cage should go in next week, suspension early March as we have some bespoke dampers to test at Silverstone before we decide on final set up. I expect my car to be running mid March. Today ive been spending monies at Demon Tweeks and have acquired a new Sparco Race suit, gloves and under clackers, together with a Cobra Monaco Pro seat, 6 point harness, Momo race wheel and quick release hub. £1500 lighter!

It's getting serious now...
 
Oooh, shiny things! It's amazing how much money you can sink into these projects but on the whole it's a relatively cheap venture for you to be racing a popular race series that gets a TV spot. Certainly going to consider entering one year I think but I'm living with my parents at the moment so moving back to a place of my own is priority.. ish...

I should be flush enough to get my MX-5 painted in a couple of months and then the month after it should be sat on some nice wheels hiding some shiny coilovers. Then I can dress up the interior and find a nice seat to hold me. All for the road but I've always wanted a little project to call my own. Should all be ready for when I get my license back in May and when the sun comes out for 5 mins, not that the sun has any bearing on whether I have my roof down... it's always down (and probably why the interior has gone mouldy while it's stood still the past 6 months).

It's a shame you can't play with any serious tuning for this series, but from a drivers and budget point of view that's the beauty of it. No need to worry too much about reliability, just about cartwheeling into a grandstand or doing a bit of grounds keeping :D
 
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