Finished welding up the wheels. I couldn't find any safe way of fitting the aero covers without holding them out the outer lip as well, so unfortunately I ended up needing to weld on some pointy metal death spikes onto each wheel that the covers will bolt to. {} 16 tabs in total, and to make sure the wheels still looked centered when they were bolted on they all needed to be bent and cut to the exact same angle and size. {} The two on the end have been trimmed to final size, the others are still oversize. To make sure that every one of the tabs got welded at the same placement and angle, I made a quick metal guide that held each on in place while welding. This was also the guide for bending and cutting them all {} With all the welding done I covered the welds with some primer and then dropped it off at TyreTech in Auckland to get a set of R888s fitted and valve stems installed. Even after scuffing the surface of the new barrels the paint still wouldn't stick so I ordered some etch primer for when they get back. Heading back to pick up the completed wheels in a couple of days and then we can finally get a look at them on the car, then hopefully start cutting up the guards and get into making this widebody.
Had a go at fitting the fronts as there is no way the rears are going on without cutting the guards. Drivers side, {} {} Passengers side, {} I think I prefer the look of the primer grey so I'll probably paint the aero covers that colour once they're finished. Passed the shoe test, {} Other side already sitting on the tyre, guess they're coming back off until I cut the guards. {} And one more from last night, {} Toyo Proxes R888 R, sexiest tyre I've ever seen. The guys at the tyre shop were pretty stoked for this, even some guy coming in for $800 Pirelli's stopped and thought they were nuts for an mx-5. Real happy with the fitment, not too insane for others to replicate once I make the kit but should definitely enhance the look of the car once it's done. I'll start cutting up the guards as soon as the Mitsi is out of the way. Will update again once I start on the guards
Time to h*ck some shit up. {} Marking out where to cut my guards. The mx-5 isn't really designed for big wheels so you can only cut about 50 mm before you end up bottoming out inside the wheel well. {} Outer skin cut, tabs cut from inner skin, and all hammered out. {} Welding the edges of thin steel like this sucks donkey nads. {} But at least the guards are cut now, and sealer put over top to protect everything. From my measurements, these wheels sit about 100 mm out from the body, so that's going to make a really aggressive widebody for it, I just can't get enough of it. {} {} The overall proportions of it feel so different now, keep in mind its up on ramps so it would be even lower, but this car is almost as wide as it is long now. {} Currently working on the widebody, got some expanding foam arriving in a couple days so I'm just refining the sketches a little bit now that the wheels are on for reference. I was going to get an alignment first and make sure the left and right side were identical, but I think the better idea is just to focus on one side and then once its finished, mirror the final shape, might be using a 3d scanner on the finished side, not sure yet.
Cheers man, The wheels are rusting like a bitch, it didn't occur to me that water would get trapped on the bead around the tyre, I should have painted the outside of the barrels before getting the tyres fitted, oh well. So the foam arrived, Eco-pour two part expanding foam, mix it together in a cup and pour it into a mould. I didn't order enough though so I had to fill in the rest with spray cans of expanding foam. {} {} Its pretty easy to work with, cut the large sections by saw and then remove finer areas with a surform file and then some 80 grit paper to smooth it all out, {} There were a few spots where more foam needed to be built up, this was when I realised the spray foam wasn't that great, it just peels off and rips when you try to work with it, so I ended up ordering another 8kg kit of the 2 part stuff. {} The shape of the guard just sort of naturally formed, I knew some spots where it needed to line up in order to look good, and it also had to join on to the existing lip. I finished off the cans on the rear flare, and will leave it until the other foam arrives {} {} It's difficult figuring out what shapes will work. My initial inspiration was from Nakai's RWB kits, but I feel like the proportions aren't exactly right on this one. I also want to make the flares a bit more edgy and sharper, but they still need to work with the softer lines of the rest of the mx5. I have no idea how to shape the rear half of the front flare, and since the front and rear need to work together I think I'll get the rears roughed in and then try to tie them together. Until the foam arrives I'll start getting some work done on the interior. Should be more updates in a few days.
So the past few days have been working on the interior, the seals around the roof just really don't cut it so the carpet was completely soaked from all the condensation. To take the carpet out the whole interior had to come out, I also took this opportunity to remove the soft top since I will be going with the fiberglass hard top from here. The dash proved to be difficult so I just left it and cut the carpet to get it out. Here's a tip I found for mx-5 owners that want to take their center console out: If you go online and try to figure out how to remove it, there will be a few complete BS videos where you feed some shoelace or string through the air vents and somehow reach behind and hook it out, then pull the vents out to get at the 2 screws up top. {} Fuck that. What you do is, go get some plastic trim removers, these things are cheap as chips and will save you so much hassle, you should definitely have some. {} Then all you have to do is pop the tool into the air vent, then swivel the ball vent down and pry them out. I used the top slot in the vent, then pulled down and out to pop the vent out from the top. {} Shoelace method ~10 minutes? This method ~ 5 seconds? Anyway, once the center console was out I could finally remove the carpet. {} {} The rust was pretty bad from all the moisture trapped in the carpets, but I was able to remove the passengers foot rest and the metal underneath was ok, {} Then basically just went around with a wire wheel on a grinder and took all the surface rust out, removed some of the ugly sealer and re-did some spots that needed it, hit all the rusted spots with rust converter and then primed it all {} {} With the whole thing primed and ready for paint, I hit it with 3 good coats of silver gloss, going heavier in foot wells and saving paint on spots you wont see. {} {} {} Turned out really good, will look great once the bride seats are back in but I'm going to give it a while to harden before reassembly. The foam has just arrived and I've figured out where I think I'm going with the kit so hopefully in the next few days the final form will be roughed in.
This is awesome. You really know your stuff, i was gutted when I got to the end and there wasn't more updates.
Cheers bro. Thanks man, but really I have no clue what I'm doing. Just trial and error and a lot of expanding foam I have been working away at this, and this morning just managed to finish up the shaping of the foam. The gap around the tyres were pretty inconsistent so I removed all the foam and covered the tyres, lowered the car the whole way down and poured some new foam, this way I wouldn't need to shape the inner line as the tyre would do it for me. {} The foam has this weird thing where if you don't mix it enough or work it too much or don't put it in a form so that it becomes more dense, the foam will expand then collapse after a couple days, so I had to leave the foam for a while to make sure it wouldn't move after shaping, but then I could finish it all up and this is what we got. {} {} {} {} {} There are still a few lines that need adjusting but this is pretty much 90% of the way there. I'll give it another couple of days after exposing all this foam to make absolutely sure nothing moves before I start covering the whole thing in body filler to get the smooth final shape. In other news, the interior is back in and I'm loving it, imagine this but with maybe 3 small 5" monitors inside as well as a functioning computer/laptop for the co-pilot. {} {} Since the new roof doesn't have glass and I wont be fitting any, I'm going to be molding a rear view camera into the roof spoiler when I get/make one, so the monitors inside will act as screens to see out of the car, I plan to have cameras instead of wing mirrors as well and a front facing camera mounted on the roof as well, hopefully with something like night vision so that the car could be driven at night with no lights on. (Really it's a prop car, I want it to have some story behind it, and I'm slowly figuring that out.) This is the concept sketch now that the guards are pretty much done. {} You can see all the extra details that I would like to add in the future, things like antennas, LED lights, external oil cooler, etc... I'm slowly finding new things that need to make their way on the car, but first off we have to finish the kit. If anybody has any ideas for changes on the kit, go ahead and let me know. I plan to sell these when I'm done and since they're ultimately for you guys to put on your rides, you should have a say in how they look.
About time for a small update. At the end of the last post I was getting some body filler to start going over the foam and finalizing the shape, but since I wanted to do things right I waited until I had some new tools to help me out. {} Laser levels are incredibly cheap and it has finally given me some actual reference points to design this kit with, no more string and spirit levels. {} I started off by shaving a good amount off the foam so that there would be a decent base for the bog to sit on, then just covered the flares in filler, took a lot more than I expected to coat them, but once the rough layers were on I could use the laser level to get the outside profiles right. {} Shaping these edges was pretty easy, just had to line up the top of the flare to be parallel with the lip of the wheel, then with the tops marked both front and rear, use the laser to get a perfectly straight line down and then just sand until you hit the line. I was also able to get an accurate mark for the center and top of the flares which will make shaping them just a little bit more accurate. Could have used this when I was welding the mounting tabs on the wheels. {} The laser is obviously much more visible later in the day but the problem with our barn is lighting, so the last few days we have been refitting the whole barn with LED lighting and it has made it much brighter and so much easier to work in at night. {} After a couple days of slowly building up the filler, I was finally able to get both flares to final width {} I've started hitting it with a belt sander to get nice flat edges on the tops and sides, but I need to get the inside lines finished before moving any further with the outer profiles, this will let me know where the lips on the flares start so I know how much to take off with the belt sander. {} It's been a little slow lately as I've been stuck between more university work and helping out on our neighbors farm. Hopefully I should have the insides of the flares finished soon, I need to trim some more of the front guards as the wheels are catching, but it's all getting a little easier now. Next update should be something that resembles a set of flares.
Great work dude, I hadn't considered using a laser in this way, but it makes sense. I want to get a mk1 MX5 now just to play with, this forum is deadly for my wallet.
I take it you're going to be using that as a mould for a kit then knocking all the filler/expanding foam off? there was a guy local to me, back in the Max Power days, that had a mk3 Escort and he made the full bodykit from wood and expanding foam... It was an absolute sight. He spent a fortune getting it sprayed and within a couple of months it was cracked everywhere.
Bang on mate. It's all just there to get the shape, then I will be making the moulds on the car which should give me most of the flanges I need. Like you say, that foam is not a structural material at all and I wouldn't recommend even rolling a car with it on. Luckily I was able to get a good bit of practice making a pair of 3 piece moulds for some evo 4 conversion fenders I did on one of my other project cars. Typical that I would choose to learn mould-making and start out by making a 3 piece mould.
Fair play man, fair play! I'd say there would be a good market for those kits too, Taylor Ray on youtube (LS Miata drift car) was saying he'd love to wide arch his a good while ago
I'm sure hoping there is, would be pretty awesome to see this kit on cars all over the world too, coming from a shed in rural NZ. But I think the main reason people tend not to put 15x10s on their mx-5s is because it's fucking difficult. I just realized that I never tried turning the front wheels after cutting the guards, so naturally I wait until after all the foam and body filler is on before discovering that the wheels turn about 10° before they hit on the inner guard and they are going to need some much more aggressive persuading to get the wheels to fit. Since I couldn't get to the drivers side anymore with all the foam in the way, I swapped the drivers front wheel for one of the skinny factory wheels, and started out by cutting away as much of the outer skin as I could. {} That gave me a few extra degrees of turn, but then it started hitting the inner guard, mostly on the seams, so they got cut out with a grinder and then welded back up. {} Again, a little better, but still only making it to about half the steering travel. So out came the sledgehammer. This was not a pretty process, but after about 30 minutes of 'gentle' persuasion the wheel wells finally had enough space and the wheels could make it lock to lock. {} Since I couldn't do this to the drivers side and I needed to know whether the wheel would turn under the flares without rubbing, I used some wire to create a copy of the outside line of the flare on the passengers side. {} Luckily the wheel has plenty of room to turn under there so we're all good. This meant I could move on with the shaping, starting off with finalizing the inner line. When I was happy with that, I started on the outer line, this was all done by eye. I tried measuring it all out and doing it that way, but ultimately it just needs to look correct, and I was able to get far better curves by stepping back and eyeballing it. {} {} {} Really happy with the progress on this, still got the front section where it joins on to the lip and then just gradual sanding until its all perfectly smooth. There will probably be a few stages of primer and then additional layers of filler until it's where I want it, but pretty stoked with where it's at now.
Finished groove on bottom rear section where flare lines up with door Refined the outer line of flare for smoother curve Finished front edge joining onto lip Cut slot for front reflector Trimmed edge over front bumper Smoothed out the curves on the whole flare Rounded over the bottom front corner {} {} {} All that's left is to sand the underside and round over the outer lip then it's on to primer and final shaping for the front.
