Amazon Cars LTD

22/9/2018

The past two weeks have been a bit frantic, having to work on customers' cars, and also turn around Amy's new steed: an MX5 NB (ie a Mk2) for Targa rallying.

• B20 Amazon: brake discs were down to 7mm (the spec minimum is 12.2mm), and the rear drums had adjusters fitted (we approve) but hadn't deleted the self adjusting mechanism (we disapprove) - so a new set of discs & pads, and the rear brakes sorted.
• Historic rally PV544: headed off to Demand Engineering to have a decent filler neck fabricated, and a Lambda boss fitted to the exhaust collector so we can tune the car accurately
  • It surprises us that so few "classic" garages use a Lambda, the technology is so cheap now (granted in the early days it cost us an arm & a leg to buy the wideband kit), and it is the only way to set carburettors up accurately - and infinitely better than paying £300+ on a rolling road, since you tune it for road use, rather than the redline.
• Amy's MX5
  • A heap of weight has been removed, sadly the trim all has to stay in situ to comply with the regs
    • Airbags deleted: imagine yumping over a bridge to a hard landing, and having the way obscured by a detonated airbag! It is legal on "modified vehicles", in our case a car that is used for rallying
    • Anti roll bars deleted: anyone who knows my views on rallying will be familiar that these are the first things to go on one of our cars, if you aren't, here's the theory borne out in practice on the London2CapeTown and other events...
      ARB's are excellent on dry smooth sealed surface, if the left suspension compresses in a RH bend, the R suspension is forced to compress - excellent.
      Rallying does occasionally use such a surface, but where time can be increased (ie speeds increased) is on the wet rough loose surface - exactly the place that you want fully independent suspension, since if the L suspension compresses on a bump, you specifically do no want the R suspension to raise the wheel off the surface and lose steering. So they get deleted.
      This has the added advantage that it softens up the suspension appreciably from the fast road spec that the Mazda is built to.
    • Aircon deleted as much as we could: ideally we should make up a jockey wheel to replace the compressor itself
      • Also the matrix in the car needs to go, doesn't look too difficult surprisingly
    • The alarm siren is deleted
      • We now need to work out how to remove the immobiliser without disabling the car: Cleverley's know this stuff, so I dare say we'll simply hand over to them!
    • All the boot trim removed, and a full size spare wheel fitted.
  • Then it received...
    • Nav desk, with plot & map lights, tripmeter, USB and cigar outlets (in the glove box), and just waiting for the Rally Timer to come back from Brantz.
    • Set of 185/65R15 Yokohama W-Drives, our favourite road rally tyre
      • Replacing the 195/50R15's, so we gain about 20mm ride height, and soften up the suspension all in one hit
    • Decent sump & gearbox guards - our own design since those available on the internet are a bit girly
      • I can probably add some apertures into the plates to lighten them further without losing their purpose

I have to go away on a course next week, so Emma and Jess-the-Spaniel get the place to themselves...