Stripping

Most of my car time is still being spent stripping parts off of the old Miata. Last weekend I finally got the wiring harness out. It was a total of 30 pounds of wiring!

And it all had to squeeze through two little holes in the firewall. As you can see, I’ve left little tags all over it. Hopefully that will help when I start removing the parts I don’t need and putting the rest of it into the new chassis. But I can tell that’s going to be a slow, confusing process no matter how many tags I leave behind.

This morning I got the steering column out.

That needs a bit of modification before it goes into the new chassis. The kit comes with a different rack which is quite a bit narrower than the one in the Miata, and that bracket you can see needs to be removed.

I’m itching to start putting some of the parts together. The first thing which goes into the new chassis is the handbrake. Well, the build manual says that doesn’t go in for a while, but everyone who’s built one seems to agree that it’s a lot easier to do it first. But to attach it, I need some M8 rivnuts. They’re not the sort of thing I can find at the hardware store down the street. I’ve ordered some, but they didn’t come yesterday, so I’ll have to wait a little longer. I’m also hunting for some 22mm spacers which are supposed to be in the kit somewhere, but I haven’t found them yet. They’re probably in a bag I haven’t searched yet.

I’m also hoping to get nice enough weather that I can give the engine a good cleaning out in the driveway. We were very lucky with that storm that just swept across the country. We got some wind and rain, but most of the action when around the north and south of us.