Day 4

Hallelujah, The bumper is off!! After breaking 3 drill bits, excessive use of a hammer and chisel and a few swear words, the front bumper has finally given up and come off. True it is still attached to the left wing, but I count it as a victory.

Also once it had finished attacking my finger, I managed to get the dashboard out, along with a few other bits so the car is now starting to look genuinly stripped out.

Hopefully it won't be long until the shell comes off. Just a few more bits to be removed such as wiring loom, rear bumper and seats. Then disconnect the engine, suspension and exhaust and it's away :-)

How hard can it be??

Day Three

Today was a bit mixed. Got a fair few things taken off. The headlight brackets, coolant bottle, cigarette lighter, steering rack & wheel, battery clamp, front grille, boot latch, dials, radio, heater controls, centre console, sun visors and undertray all came off.
Now the engine bay looks a lot less messy and its possible to envisage the day when the engine will actually come out.

 The dashboard almost came off, but not quite, which left the car looking like this.

 

A bit of a mess but it's getting there. The main problem is that behind the dash and steering wheel, are so many wires you wouldn't believe it. And I have no idea where most of them go, including the one which goes in the ignition.... that might be a problem.

And added to that, we still couldn't get the front bumper off. We did manage to find all of the necessary bolts, but 4 are so rusty and rounded that they will not come off, and we snapped 2 drill bits trying.
Next time, the angle grinder is coming out.

Help today was provided by Elliot Newman and Matthew Potticary

Bits Sold

Had a flurry of potential sales today. Before I was even awake properly I had enquiries about the roof, horn, cigarette lighter, jack and battery clamp. And now just had another for the indicators, front number plate mount and rear number plate light brackets.

£££ :-)

Day Two

Day two of the disassembly begins, and I must admit, I made a bit of an error.

I'd left the manual which tells me how to disassmble everything at home, a 3 hour drive away. Not the best start but oh well.

First things first I felt like draining the engine oil. After all its been a while since I was covered in the stuff. Got the thing up on axle stands, you can just see axle stand number 3 in the middle. Its not actually sitting on that one, its just an added precaution becuase I really didn't want to die by Mazda.

Leaving it to drain I got to work removing the bonnet and pop up headlamps. Gingerley I reconnected the battery to raise the headlamps so they could be removed, hoping all the time that the infernal aftermaket alarm didn't go off. It seemed to like going off just to make me jump, which was why I pulled the battery out in the first place.

The bonnet was a piece of cake, just 4 bolts. The pop up lights were another story. How Mazda manage to make everything be in the way of everything else I will never know, but eventually me and my companion for the day managed to get the bleeders off.

Next came the radiator. First it had to be drained, and a large quantity of suspicous smelling bright green crap came out. I'm assuming this is just anti-freeze.




Next the pipes had to come off. Now these pipes have probably never come off in 17 years, so they were rock hard and completely unmovable. I didn't have time to be dictated to by a radiator pipe so out came the stanley knife and they were quickly removed.

And we tried and failed to remove the front bumper. Without the aid of the manual we just couldn't find all of the bolts to undo it, not to mention the fact that most of the ones we did find were so corroded they either snapped clean off, or will have to be drilled out next time I'm there.

Day One

Today I start to disassemble my donor car with the aid of a trusty companion, and The Mazda MX-5 1.8 Enthusiast's Workshop Manual by Rod Grainger.

As you can see the garage I'm using to work on it isn't exactly huge, but it keeps the rain off.

The roll bars came off without too much hassle, and sold for £90 on eBay after about an hour, so no complaints there.

After a day of toil, it ended up with no doors, no roof, no boot lid, no petrol and no roll bars. Not a bad first day I think. Cramming that lot in the boot of my fiesta was a bit of a mission, still I didn't have to fill up for the 150 mile drive home which was nice.