Cyberpunk Mx-5 Build

For those who don't know me, I've been on here for a while and currently own a '96 Mazda 323 grocery getter, a Mitsubishi Lancer gsr coupe with an evo 4 front end conversion, and my '88 S13 Silvia, which has it's own build thread:
https://www.driftworks.com/forum/threads/backyard-build-fj-s13.267069/

Now my newest project will be turning this mx-5:


Into this:


I grew up watching Ghost in the Shell as well as later watching movies like Blade Runner and Akira, so I think Cyberpunk is pretty sick, and it seems like over the past few years there has been growing interest in the genre so I thought I might as well get started on this sooner rather than later.

The car when we bought it was in a pretty good state, it had adjusties fitted, very nice wheel choice, some cosmetic mods, exhaust, aftermarket steering wheel (guess a previous owner wanted the nardi), Bride seats and re trimmed interior, full vinyl wrap over the factory silver body, and a mint condition roof.









The goal for this build is to create a functional vehicle with heavy futuristic styling, Insane widebody, external oil cooler, exposed lines and components, and LED underglow. I make no attempt to have any part of this car be subtle.

This may be a controversial decision to work mostly on the body of the car and leave the internals alone, but I have done all that stuff before on my Silvia and now I want to practice some bodywork, making a RWB styled widebody kit for the mx-5 will be the first step as frankly at least here in NZ, mx-5's are everywhere but as far as body kits go there are virtually no options.



I have lots of plans for this and It will keep evolving. Somewhere down the line I'll fit airbag suspension and swap an electric motor in and get into that side of it all as well but for now I just want something that works.



Step one will be stripping off the wrap so we can start repairing these panels and then it will be on to making the widebody.

Hopefully I actually get to drift this one!

 

I know right?! It's a shame this is probably my nicest looking car and I haven't even done anything to it, and what I'm about to do might even be worse to some than how it is now Yeah did the illustrations my self so I can go in and tweak all the lines, colours, and even add or take away parts from the design.

It's funny, someone said that yellow and green one reminded them of Jet Set Radio Future, which I wasn't even thinking about when I made it but I used to play the shit out of that game on the x-box when I was younger.

I think with this build it's go hard or go home eh? It's gotta be super bright colours all the way, and if anyone has suggestions of colour choices or things to add to the design, feel free to let me know.

It's difficult with this style since it's all about throwing on a whole bunch of future tech without looking tacky, so if anyone can think of any genuinely useful thing that I could incorporate like an external oil cooler or maybe a fire suppression system that would be awesome.

 

My best guess is that they are some kind of Volk CE28 knockoff. Square setup 16x9J et15 all round with 205/45/R16 tires and some rolled arches, I had a look behind for markings and all the original stamping and branding has been ground off and no signs of original stickers.

I do have further plans for the wheels though, since the only way to get an mx-5 this low is to set the suspension as stiff as possible, I was thinking of swapping down for some cheap steel wheels that I would band to 15x10 in the rear and 15x9 in front with nice meaty tires just to help cushion the ride a little. Then cap them off with some aero wheel covers also sometimes called vaned brake cooling covers.







Of course to keep the budget down I'll be making my own and incorporating some way of powering the wheel hub so I can send power to LEDs either on the wheels themselves or mounted on a rigid frame attached to the brake caliper bracket.

 

WARNING! LOTS OF NERDY WHEEL SHIT. TLDR AT BOTTOM

So I got some work done on this, unfortunately I had to shift my attention to my other cars, getting moulds made and sorting out engine rebuilds for a broken Silvia. Did manage to get some panel repair done though.

Starting off just focusing on the rear quarter panels for now. The drivers side was much worse at first but I found that under the wrap there was at least 3 stages of repair on each side and the passengers side actually had a full replacement rear quarter welded in 2 repairs ago.









Knowing that I'll be cutting these guards I was only interested in straightening out what would be visible over the flares, so I left the ghetto fender roll job alone.

Then it was on to finding some wheels that would have worked. I must have gone through nearly a dozen combinations of width and offset before finding what would work, and then when tyre selection came in on top of that I had to go through it all over again.

It's not the kind of printout you're use to seeing here on Driftworks, but this spreadsheet for wheel selection shows my slow decent into madness



From this I was able to figure out that a 15x10 et-50 (3" backspacing approx) would be ideal for this build. Any narrower and the flares wouldn't work proportionally, and any wider and getting wheels to fit the flares would be a nightmare for anyone else.

Here's a pic of a car running 15x10 et-50 with 225/45r15 tyres, pretty much exactly what we will be doing.



And another with 15x10, 3" backspacing, (et-50 approx) on 245/40r15 tyres and less camber.



Plan a was to band some steelies, found that nobody in my area really says they do them and getting them certified would be a nightmare. Plan b was to buy wheels the exact right size. Apart from a few custom wheels, it was basically just Diamond Racing Wheels from the states, and although they had the exact right offset for only $87.50 USD per wheel, when shipping to NZ came in, as you'd expect it was just not realistic. Over twice the price of the full set of wheels again just for shipping. F*ck. Back to plan a.

Finally found some 15x5 et40s (4" backspacing) from the 2010 - 2016 Suzuki Swift, these wheels are only $40 NZD per wheel. Plan is to send them away to get the front of the barrels widened to 15x10 keeping the backspacing the same so effectively et-25, then buying a set of 25mm spacers.

I really wanted to avoid spacers, but I couldn't find any 15" factory wheels in the right stud pattern with the right offset. And yes I thought of banding them myself, but I don't think that would ever get certified.

Then tyres. F*ck me...

In NZ we effectively have a single tyre size for wide 15" wheels, and that is the Ultra High Performance 225/45r15. And of that size there are only 3 options that I could find,

The Nankang AR1: $295.00 NZD ea



Nitto NT01: $359.00 NZD ea



Kumho Ecsta: $259.00 NZD ea



For reference, the 15x10 -50s above showed 225/45r15s, but race tyres tend to have a wider profile compared to road tyres, making a 225 look more like a 235 in some cases.

However, when searching, I was able to find the 225/45r15 Nankang stretched onto a 15x9:



This tyre option was what ruled out the possibility of 15x11s, and looking at the 15x9s above, it'd be a bit of a stretch getting these onto 15x10s (mind the pun). But last night while doing my routine browse through Trade Me I stumbled across them...



The TOYO R888, 225/50r15, $394.13 NZD ea. The tyre I had always planned of using and the tyre I've been frothing over for weeks.

Yes it's $100 NZD more per wheel than the next most expensive, and yes the 50 profile would mean that I cant slam the car and my speedo would read -4.95% out but f*ck me if these aren't the sexiest tyres in the whole country.

The 225 fits a 15x10 perfectly, this ones the R888 in 225/45r15, so in 50 profile, it'd be even less stretch.





The R888 is notorious for having a wider profile than most, and in this case I think it's given me the perfect tyre for a 15x10.

And that's where I've been the past week, slowly sorting out all the steps involved in these f*cking wheels, and now I'm finally ready to bite the bullet and buy some steelies.

So TLDR:

Step 1: Realise that NZ has only 1 tyre option for wide 15" wheels, the Toyo R888 in 225/50r15
Step 2: Use tyre size to dictate largest wheel size, 15x10 et-50 (effectively)
Step 3: Find steel wheels to band to 15x10, the factory wheels from a Suzuki Swift will work with spacers.
Step 4: Modify widened wheels by creating custom aero covers.
Step 5: Cut and weld guards to accept wheels.
Step 6: Adjust to final ride height.
Step 7: Take for alignment.
Step 8: Start working on bodykit.

Currently at step 3, will update at step 4.

 

And I just found the R888 in 225/45/r15.

Done

 

Updates on the wheels.

First up, cut the wheel centers out of the Suzuki wheels to get them ready to swap over to the new barrels. I started off by grinding the welds off the original wheel.



I thought that would be enough to push the centers out but they are pressed in pretty tight and so I ended up having to cut both halves of the barrel off all around to get the centers free.





With the centers free we figured out that they were a little larger than the new 10" barrels and were going to need some force to press in. We ended up getting a cheap 20 Tonne hydraulic press and then set about pressing the centers in.



The wheels are designed to 15 x 10 et - 50 offset and so I used that to figure out how far to press them in, came out at exactly 90 mm from the back of the rim so the wheels were slowly pressed together carefully checking after every mm of movement.





We were able to get to 90.0 mm +- 0.25 mm on all 4 wheels.

After pressing all the centers in I checked runout on the new barrels and compared to the runout of the original wheels using a dial indicator.



The total runout of the original wheels was about 0.25 mm at the outer diameter, with the factory steel wheels slightly worse at around 0.5 mm excluding some defects. (curbing / small dents)

Unfortunately when testing the runout of the new barrels we found that they were off by about 1.0 mm, but it was a non uniform runout, meaning there's actually nothing I could fix by adjusting the center position at all.

The new barrels are just cheap speedway barrels and are not really designed for road use, hence why the tolerances are a bit lower than the factory wheels. They should be fine for what I need though.

With the wheel position finalized I welded the two pieces together, being careful to keep the heat down to avoid further warping of the wheels.





a quick coat of primer to prevent rusting



The welds came out pretty well, There were some I was unhappy with so ground them back and re-did them. But overall there's more weld now than there was from the factory so I'm happy with the strength of them.

Then we were finally able to get a look of how they sat on the car.

The original fitment:



And the new fitment:









The fitment is exactly what I was after and should give me a good bit of width to design the widebody.

That was were we sat up till this morning when the parts for the aero-covers arrived, here is a quick mock up of what the wheels will look like.



The tapered section has around 130 mm of dish and then the center section a further 55 mm on that giving a total depth of 185 mm. This is just the very first test and I will need to spend the next couple of days figuring out methods of mounting the covers to the wheels but happy with the progress so far.

My goal is to have these wheels finished by the end of the week and get them down to get tires fitted and the wheels balanced. Then I can start cutting up the guards and get ready for an alignment.

 

I'm making them. Drew up the design and then just had to buy existing pieces that had the shapes I needed and find a way to join them all together. If I decide to make them a little more professional looking in the future, might look into going to a metal spinner but they'll work for now.

 

Maybe some of the finer components yeah, but from my experience with 3D printing I doubt I could get the size / strength I would need. Also these covers are metal and printing metal is crazy expensive still.

I am thinking about 3D printing for some other parts of this car though, like the canards and the oil cooler housing.

 

Yeah I just finished my engineering degree and in our final year we had this supervisor with access to a titanium 3D printer. It was pretty sick and I'm sure I could go back and ask to use it if I covered the cost of materials.

I also know the technician there so I might be able to use the milling machines and the workshop which is what's really tempting. Probably the only good thing I got out of that degree was workshop access and getting to play with the wind tunnel haha