5th & now 6th (🙈) MX5 & the beginnings of a Rocketeer build

[Fivealive]

Hello one and all.

I again apologise for the delay between posts! Inclemental weather, an insane work life balance and my health mean that whilst i’m managing to spend time with the car every day, finding the time to do the updates isn’t as easy! Anyway, I think little and often is probably the way forward so lets see how that goes.

I thought i’d start with a link to one of my favourite YouTube car reviewers who this week happened to review the Rocketeer, albeit on a Mk2 NB.

Rocketeer MX5 Review - Is This Jaguar V6 Powered Miata The Perfect Sports Car Mazda Never Built?

Starting with this wasn’t my original plan, but it oes gibve everyone an overview of the conversion and brings some interesting conversation points, which actually make a good starting point for my story. Namely:

• Cost
• Building yourself
• Only an MX5 nut would do it
• Only £2000 + VAT for Rocketeer to fit it for you
• What does it involve?

Costs

Ok, so first off - I know some people find money an akward thing to talk about. But these figures are all publicly available and I imagine some of you may be interested in doing this conversion ot even just interested wjhat it costs to do it. So the kit costs are as follows:

Rocketeer Kit - £6000
Electronics Kit - £1500
Engine from Basset Down - £5500

I decided to buy the engine from Rocketeer who get it rebuilt by Basset Down along with the inclusion of some of Rocketeers own goodies. The cost is high (relaitvely speaking I mean), but I am planning on keeping this car for a long time, but also if I came to sell it or needed to sell it having the knowledge that the car had a properly rebuilt and balanced engine is paramount. To buy a used engine costs around £500 but as you may have seen from Jazda’s build videos, his first engine was kaput. And it looks gorgeous. I think this is the gen 1 finish:

Extra costs

Because I wanted to find the least stressed and best condition car I could for my budget, I bought an auto. Which for some reasons, i’m regretting slightly. But anyway that means that I required:

• Manual gearbox - used (but warrantied from eBay) - £150 delivered with 60000 miles on the clock (*do gearboxes have clocks!?)
• Appropriate propshaft
• New diff - choices here

Non-essential extras:

• Mishimoto Radiator - £200

As well as that, you need to factor in any tools and lifting equipment you might need:

• Low Jack
• Axle Stands
• Ramps
• Impact wrench
• Additional sockets

Building Yourself

I am sure I am not the only one reading this (although I am the only writing it!), who has always dreamt of restoring/engine swapping a car. For me personally, this is my 4th Mk1 MX5 anbd my first for ten years or so. I always promised myself i’d boost an MX5, but as I got older I began to get a preference for more cylinders (especially v6’s) over Turboing/Supercharging. Blame the Busso I had in my Alfa Romeo GTV for that!

However, there are a lot of things to consider, some I had thought of and some that didn’t really become apparent until after i’d started.

Firstly, life and time. I read somewhere that they reckon it will take you 50 hours to do this conversion, which in my opinion is highly optimistic, although as I said right at the start, i’m a normal guy with little experience of doing tinkering to this level. Double it and I reckon for the average person, that’s more realistic. And even that might be well out, from my relatively early days. But clearly, it’s a job that will probably take a few months, and you’ve got over £10,000 tied up in something that you can’t use, and the success of the whole thing is entirely dependant on YOU :D. Now, I suffer with anxiety and depression which doesn’t help, but I go to bed every night worrying about some aspect of the built; whether its nuts that are rusted in place, the swapping out of electronic looms between the new manual gearbox and the auto box, the cost, hidden costs etc etc etc

Next up, is it practical for you?

I work from home and am self employed which gives me a little more freedom, but I work 6.5 days a week, have a partner and 3 children and I also have Multiple Sclerosis. My Mum thinks i’m insane. Only you can decide whether your life allows it, but as well as that is it practical from a working on a car viewpoint?

I remember watching the CarThrottle Rocketeer build on YouTube and he did it on his driveway. It can be done. I am doing it on a gravel driveway which fills me with dread every time I even consider going under my car. I have erected a temporary garage which is sits in, so makes it a little more practical if the weather turns.

Rocketeer charge £2000 + VAT for labour, doing the kit for you. But remember there may be addditional costs with Rocketeer that you could delay if you were doing it yourself. Anyway, if you aren’t 100% sure you want to do it yourself, thats the route I would go.

Just in case you are thinking this is sounding negative, don’t get the wrong impression - i’m 100% sure I wanted to do it myself and I still am!

Only an MX5 nut would do it.

I’m not sure I agree with this. JayEmm who I respect quite a lot for his car review videos, suggested you couldn’t do the build for under £25k I think. Even allowing for the cost of the car, I wouldn’t imagine it will cost me more than £16k. Now I know his viewpoint was that he’d like to restomod it, which is more expensive, but that is also my plan. Still, the thing is - to get it on the road and driveable will probably cost £16k and then over time i’ll add and improve it as I go.

So lets use £16k as the starting point. I am an MX5 nut, so this may be biased. But i’m trying to be pragmatic also! What else can you get for £16k? Well, i’m not going to give an exhaustive list but the cars I was considering as my next purchase before I went down the Rocketeer route were:

• Lotus Elise
• Porsche 911 (996 probably)
• BMW M3
• Take out a loan and spend more and get a v6 Lotus Exige.

Now, Lotus Elises are by all acccounts, brilliant. But they all have 4-cylinfer engines. I’ve never really liked the way the 996 911’s look (I had a Boxster S 986 with the same light setup) and I still haven’t boguht my first house so didn’t really want to go down the loan route. BUT, in the back of mind for the last year or two has been the march of Electric Cars. Now, i’m not a dinosaur. I owned a Nissan Leaf back when they first came out and loved it. BUT, I also love noise and I love theatre.

Which leaves me with the Rocketeer MX5. I get to own a mk1 MX5 (my personal favourite), which weights 900kgs, and has a 270bhp v6 under the bonnet. I don’t know what the acceleration figures will be, but I imagine it will be comparable to one of the quicker Elises, but will sound better and most imporantly of all will be almost UNIQUE and i’ll have built it myself which i’m sure will be a fabulous feeling.

haha little and often. Yeah right Andrew. Sorry, that was an essay! I’ll try and make them more interesting from now on.

First build update and photos/videos later today.

Andrew

[Fivealive]

Right, time for actual update number one!

After i’d convinced myself, my bank manager, his wife and his tortoise, Alan that I should spend lots of money converting my MX5, I sent the money to Bruce at Rocketeer and started the conversations with him regarding my swaps. This was in mid February. I was told that i’d get my kit at the end of April, and against a backdrop of a nation of missed deadlines, he was right and it in fact turned up a bit earlier than expected!

Back to February, I decided to make a start on removing everything I didn’t need before the kit itself arrived.

First things first, a garage. As you’ll remember there was quite a lot of inclemental weather in February and you neve want me doing a car restoration outside. So I tried to find a temporary garage. Much like lots of other industries during lockdown and the pandemic in general, actually finding anything in stock anywhere was quite tricky, but eventually I got a Clarke garage. Below you can see the start of the build process and the finished result.

Next, the driveway and lifting the car.

As i’ve intimated previously, i’ve got a gravel driveway. A massive no-no for jacking a car let alone a full engine conversion. But, it is what it is. I’ve tried to do it as safely as possible. So first, I wanted to lose some weight from the car.

• As part of the build, the bonnet needed removal anyway, so I took that off.
• I removed the seats (as i’m going to replace them anyway), which is just the easy removal of four bolts and disconnecting the headrest speaker connector.
• I also removed the bootlid
• I disconnected and removed the battery.
• Once the correct size socket arrived, I remove the wheels.
• The above was probably somewhere over 100kgs removed from the car.

Now to jack it. Carefully.

I scraped away the gravel from the underlying material which is a comination of mud/hardcore/tar (where the jack and axle stands were to go) and tried to make it as level as possible and then carefully lifted the car using a low profile jack until I had all four jacking points on axle stands.

Once I was (relatively) happy the car was safe and secure, I set about removing the front bumper. This was a PIG. This was one of those things that I hadn’t thought about. I’ve got no idea why as I have done plenty of work on these cars before, maybe I’ve to amnesia…rusted bolts. Generally the bodywork is excellent, no signs of any rust outwardly in any of the usual places, but all of the bolts that held the bumper in place were rusted to rounding and the plastic screws were just turning in their holes.

Anyway first job - manually raise the lights because you’d disconnected the battery too soon Andrew, you moron.

Then remove the sidelights to access screws within the cavity.

There are then two hanging points on each side of the car forward of the front wheel arch which holds the bumper in place.

Then to the front scuttle mounting point - this is where I had issues. As I worked on this area, I noticed that the bumper was actually in fairly ■■■■ conidtion with a lot of spider crazing in the plastic. So, I took a saw to it.

So at some point i’m going to have to drill through the screws at either end, remove the scuttle, buy a new bumper and then remount it on the newly fixed mounting areas. I wouldn’t ordinarily react in such a way - I found it disproportionately frustrating; hey ho.

Next episode - the beginning of removing the engine/gearbox/PPF and so on.

Hope that wasn’t too dreary - let me know if I need to completely change my writing style

[carl_s]

Writing style all good good to see a Rocketeer build thread, just need popcorn on hand now for the updates

[TOGs_driver]

Excellent stuff Andrew. It feels like we’re standing alongside you, having a chinwag as you go about your tasks. Keep it up

[longrider]

no need to change your style at all - very natural - and that’s your style!

[H1S_VRB]

I’m loving this Andrew - and already eagerly awaiting each new episode. I’ll never be able to afford a Rocketeer conversion (although I’d dearly love to do it) - so living yours vicariously!
The little insights into your personal struggles just add a whole other level of human interest.
Keep up the great work!
Steve

[Fivealive]

Thanks everyone

If my personal ■■■■ gets too much, just say - i’m a bit of a venter (ventor looks more correct!). Better out than in they say, but maybe not on a car forum

Anyway, glad you are all enjoying, and now its legal again - i’m more than happy for visitors - I make great tea and there’s always a beer in the fridge! I’m really hoping to get to meet more people (actually any, ive never met anyone from the club!) through the OC, so that’s ^ a genuine offer, would be good to have some likeminded souls here to be involved.

My BIG anxiety at the moment is over the driveway and lifting. I can’t really get far enough under the car, comfortably to tackle the rest of the gearbox/exhaust/PPF mounts.

I bought some of those SwitZer hydraulic car ramps, thinking that i’d be able to jack the car up far enough just to place the wheels on the raised part of the ramp, but of course the jack didn’t get the car high enough and now ive disconnected half the ancilliaries from the engine I can’t move it!

Do you think one of these would work?

HAWK 1.5T 1.5 TON 1500KG MOBILE GARAGE SCISSOR TILTING CAR LIFT RAMP HOIST JACK...

They are expensive, but as my parner put it, you can’t put a price on your life!

My only worry with those are that the support is on parts of the sill which aren’t meant for jacking - or is it OK with these because the weight is spread across the length of the support?

Failing that, i’ll have to work out some way in the limited space I have, of towing my Rocketeer up the ramp with my NC, but to be honest i’d rather take the hit (i’d be able to sell for at least 75% of the cost afterwards I guess) and feel safe. I could use the above in conjunction with my axle stands i’m guessing.

[H1S_VRB]

Safety first every time Andrew. Otherwise, EVERY time you’re underneath you’ll be anxious - which will kind of negate any of the ‘pleasure’ of a project like this.
If you can afford it, go for it. As you say, you’ll recoup a goodly percentage when you come to sell. Bet you won’t sell, though

[TOGs_driver]

A question that’s been circling around my tiny brain is how will you wheel any engine hoist about on the loose surface?
If you get one of those car lift jobbies I shall be very eager to hear how well it works. It isn’t a cheap thing but could be worth it’s weight in gold if it works well.
The number of times one jacks one’s car up even for routine maintenance and servicing means it’ll be a godsend.
Btw, do avoid buying any of Halford’s cheap trolley jacks. They’re worse than a chocolate fireguard. Ask me how I know

[Scottishfiver]

Precisely.
Axle stands are dirt cheap…one on each corner for insurance and on a firm base of some sort.
Let the car down onto them.
Lost a good pal 25 years back when the trolley failed and his SAAB crushed him.
Single bloke.
He was there 5 days…

[Fivealive]

Hi guys, thanks for the replies.

Just for the avoidance of doubt, it is currently on 4 axle stands and i’ve also got two jacks semi primed under the diff and front axle. However, it is just the knowledge that jacking and using axle stands on a not 100% hard surface is a bit of a no-no.

I was looking at one of those scissor hoisr things (in conjunction with axle stands) because it spreads the weight over a larger area.

Also, i’m a big chap and it’s currently a squeeze to get under the car and probably doesn’t leave me enough room to remove all of the gubbins. Anyway, we’ll see.

I’m off to remove t’starter motor on my lunch break!

[Roadster_Robbie]

@Fivealive

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Probably none of my business, but it looks like you’ve got that axle stand 90 degrees out…

[Overdrive]

An 8’x4’ sheet of osb/Stirling board or plywood would deal with the trolley jack issue, and make moving around under the car far easier.

[Overdrive]

Oh, and fwiw the axle stands look 90 degrees out to me as well.

[carl_s]

If the car is going to be in the same spot for a while, why don’t you dig some gravel out and lay four paving slabs on a bed of mortar where the axle stands go. It should just take a couple of hours and give you peace of mind for months to come!

[SatoshiOmiya]

Good suggestion, I have always placed wheels under the car too for extra insurance.

Good thread btw

[Fivealive]

Hi yes, you are correct…!

I’m clearly keen on doing myself harm.

[Fivealive]

I would do something like that, but its a rental property and fixed for a year, so i’m not sure my landlord would be keen on me repurposing his driveway

[Fivealive]

Thanks Overdrive - good idea

[Brembo1]

I think the Hawk will work for you for the following reasons.
The pivoting function is a good idea, with a couple of drawbacks, once the engine and front subframe are out of the car it will be very rear heavy so any alteration to the cars inclination will have to be done by lowering and raising the lift. You may want to support the back of the car.
Further to this I think the rocketeer engine goes into the car mounted on the subframe from underneath, with the car being lowered onto it.
Ideally you will have mounted the gearbox to the engine prior the intsallation, this may fowl the cross members of the Hawk but at least you should be able to raise the front high enough to get the engine/gearbox/subframe under the car.
For stabilty I would mount the whole lot on a sheet of 24mm 8x4 ply, you may want/need a second sheet in front of the car because you will have to wheel the engine/box/subframe under the car at some stage.