Eunos Roadster

After picking up the car and giving it a good look over it was clear it needed a full service and the cam angle sensor o-ring replacing. Ordered all the parts off mx5parts.co.uk for a very reasonable price and they arrived very shortly after. Took a few hours and was pretty easy as you would expect from general maintenance. Runs a bit smoother now with the new plugs and oil. Changing the gearbox and differential oil has not made any difference, but the oil was old and skanky so worth doing. The same goes for the fuel filter (note the pik with the old petrol from the back of the filter is rather horrid) All genuine Mazda gear used as its only a little bit more than the budget stuff. I also popped my Alpine iPod stereo in it. Rainbows and amp coming soon.

The next job was to paint the cam cover, satin black was the weapon of choice and a bit of yellow highlighting to the Mazda lettering and a new gasket results in a non leaky stylish fresh look to the engine bay. It wasn't leaking before I started but the gasket was rock hard so glad I changed it!

When I bought the car I knocked the chap off the price of a new hood as the one on it was split and cracked over the passengers door and it let loads of water in that ran and filled the seals before dripping all over the seats. A nice chap from Mazmania came and fitted a new mk3 style mohair for me with a heated glass rear screen. I probably could have done this myself however due to the price of the hood and the fitting being very reasonable I thought id let the pro do it! Only took him 2 hours and it fits great and looks stunning. Don't think I could go back to a plastic screen now and the mohair is so much softer and smarter than the vinyl. That evening I decided to have a play with the rotary on the nearside wing. good results showed although not perfect I don't have a paint depth gauge and the scratching is very bad in places so just a general polish should make the car look a million times better.

After waiting a whole week for a good day I got cracking with the machine on the rest of the car. As I use G3 and G10 compounds I thought it best to cover the nice new hood up to save splattering it with polish so a cheap polythene dust sheet from wilkos did the job. People might flame me for using G3 and G10 but I've never had bad results with it and find it much easier to work with than the small Menzerna bottles I got to try. After finishing with the machine polish I cleaned all the panels up with a blast from some SRP and then two coats of Dodo juice blue velvet. I'm very happy with the results now. Also in the mix I swapped the front number plate for a vinyl one and fitted some front fog lights as the car already had a genuine Mazda switch and wiring.

With a few days worth of good weather I cracked on with the sound system install. I ran two RCA leads and the remote power for the amps, from the back of the stereo down under the centre console trim, under the rear carpet and under the steel sheet that goes over the tank to form the rear shelf. One RAC onwards to behind the passenger seat for the component amplifier and one around the side of the fuel tank into the boot for the woofer. Power was taken from the battery into a double fuse box and then one lead to the woofer amp and one through around the tank to behind the passenger seat. I found a handy earth bellow the passenger seatbelt mounting and fed a cable from that to the amp for the speakers.

Next job was the run the speaker cable from the amp to under the dash for the crossovers. This was the easy bit as I just popped off the passenger side kick plate and tucked the wires under the carpet and back up under the dash one behind the glove box and one over to the drivers side. The door speakers were the next step. Not too hard there just a bit fiddly. The door cars were removed and the old speakers chucked out I measured, marked and cut holes for the tweeters. Due to previously using the metal fittings that hold the tweeters and them being a one shot affair I resorted to a hot melt glue gun. Speaker wires were poked through the door gaiters with the aid of a coat hanger and a bit of swearing. I utilised old E46 speaker adapters to fit the 130mm speakers to the holes for the original ones and used some spare 106 speaker baffles to keep the speakers dry. Finally I connected up the cross-over units under the dashboard to the speaker wires from the doors and the signal wires from the amp and then tucked them up and secured them. The passenger side one is stuck to the rear of the dashboard to the left of the glove box and the drivers side one is stuck similarly placed under the heated screen and fog light switches. Trim all refitted and I'm very pleased with it! The tweeter looks pretty smart and not too out of place.