MK4 Ceramic White Recaro Edition

General Discussion Forums Readers Rides
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Hey folks, so I think I’ll try to keep a little blog of the car and the odd trip I take her out on.

As per the title she’s a ceramic white Recaro edition and she’s my 3rd MX5 having had a Highland Green 2.0 Sport NC and a Brilliant Black S-Special MK1.

I picked her up yesterday (Friday 4th March) but as you’ll see she’s on an 05 plate. I couldn’t find MX05 so had to settle for a slight lisp with “MS05”. BBR represents the fact that she’s heading in to BBR for their Super 190 package next week and I just wanted to have  gentle nod to that on the car for those in the know.

First impressions of the stock car are very promising, she’s fairly rapid, with a nice light fly-wheel so quick to respond to throttle blips. Heel/Toe should be pretty good and easy to learn in, although I’ll clearly be taking that easy / carefully!

 

Things I like off the bat:

Colour, throttle response, braking, handling, Sat Nav, Lights, view over the bonnet, proximity opening / smart key / push button start.

 

Things I don’t like off the bat:

Cheap Sun-visors covered in stickers, Electric steering’s a bit too light on motorways, means little corrections are always needed, aerial’s too long, music starts whenever you start the car,  irritating gear selection advice

 

The little things are just that, little. I already have a replacement aerial which I’ll pop on tomorrow and give a go to removing the damn stickers all over the sun-visor as well.

 

 Here’s a few pics from collection day, I’ll post more once I’ve had her sorted by BBR and done a few more miles and give you guys a view on what the difference is like with all of that on.

 

 

First road-trip’s in a few weeks’ time. Malvern Hills, Wales and Lake District with a Le Mans trip later in June and we;re just thinking about a Germany and maybe Slovenia trip towards teh end of Summer as well.

Can’t wait!

 

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Nice

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Make sure you park well away from the kerb. The car looks lovely.

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To prevent unexpected music from the last playing device/radio plug an unconnected 3.5mm jack plug or a spare lead into the aux socket. You can then select aux input and the car will remember that until you change it. This is better than leaving mute on which you will inevitably knock with your arm or elbow at some point.

If you do use the mute button while playing music from a usb source you might be interested in the Infotainment hack which pauses play when mute is pressed so that unmuting resumes in the same track. This and other modifications can be easily tracked down via the MX-5 Miata forum or the Mazda3hacks forum.

Then again you’re going to enjoy the drive so much you probably won’t need any music playing.

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Lovely car. More photos please. 

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Lovely cars but will owners please stop using camera phones as it make the car look as short as a smart car ! brrr

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^^^ Yeah I get that too.

Loving the colour,  looking very nice.

The gear selection  indicator.  I have this in my other car and strangely I miss it when climbing back into the Mk3, you get used to it I reckon.

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looks really good!  Looking forward to hearing the future reports - I’d be tempted by the BBR 190 upgrade, but perhaps later this year.

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No - it’s not phone camera’s - it’s the default options used on this site for including images…

…in the insert image (use the green tree icon) dialog box’s ‘appearance’ tab untick the ‘Constrain Proportions’ option.

You can edit this for existing pictures.

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I stand corrected but still think its awful!!!

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Lovely looking car. Will be interested to hear about your BBR tune.

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The gear selection icon is actually an EU requirement for Type Approval…

 

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So it begins - in for the Stage 2 package this morning!

 

First Motorway schlep as well although it was seriously foggy this morning. Surprising how many muppets drive in fog without any lights on. Took it easy accordingly although that said; it is easy to get into troubling speeds in the car as it’s pretty quiet even with the roof down and faster than my old MK1 where you knew you were pushing it!

 

Can’t wait to pick her up tomorrow :smiley:

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Very nice Mannginger, almost as nice as the one parked on my drive.   Well I guess you’ve picked the car up from BBR, so come on, don’t leave us in suspens, let’s see it and hear your views. 

Side note, brother picked his Soul Red Sport Recaro today, we had a good trip home the long way, he’s over the moon with it.  

 

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Nice! I do prefer the Ceramic but that red is really striking. Lovely pair of cars, have fun with them.

Update post to follow shortly…

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OK so here’s the update post. Firstly my thanks to Neil and his team at BBR, they cracked on with the car nicely so I was able to leave it with them overnight, collect it this morning and get over to my mates in time for lunch, giving me a good opportunity to stretch her legs on a few A roads and also see how she is on the Motorway now.

First impressions are…great! I think the Oz wheels look good on the car and prefer the subtly lowered look. The brakes are good with very good stopping power although they do squeak with the harder compound so may not be for all.

The suspension and alignment is just what was needed. It’s that little bit firmer now and doesn’t roll as much and it’s sorted out the slightly odd “jiggling” that I felt the car had, it just felt…unsettled. That, coupled with a good alignment has given me more confidence in the car to push on. I need to pop my CG-Lock onto the seat-belt to give just that little bit more control as well and then I’ll be properly happy (I love that little gadget)!

Then of course there’s the impact of the Starchip, manifold and exhaust. I hadn’t really driven the standard car very much truth be told but the additional 30 odd HP is noticeable, as is the higher rev limit and 30 NM of torque which comes in a little earlier. The car also really races up to the redline now, feeling much more willing to rev than the standard unit which is great fun. There’s no real kick to the extra power delivery, just a nice sense of linearity and smoothness and much more willing to be revved out.

I became a fan of the fairly light fly-wheel in the MK4 straight away (Been a while since I had my MK3 but it certainly seems more responsive from memory?), lending itself to little throttle blips and I love how the exhaust give a little bit of grunt to those blips now. It’s noticeably louder than the standard exhaust although off throttle is very close to standard. There’s very little booming I noticed some in 1st/2nd when pottering through a village and frankly I was hoping for a little more burble / pop/crackle. Maybe because it’s so new on and the engine’s got so few miles? I do think it’ll coke in a bit and maybe free it’s lungs up a bit after a few more miles. I am pleased with it generally but as I say, if only it gurgled a little bit more! Oh and I also happen to like the subtly different exit pipes, they work well on the car

So overall after another couple of hundred miles with the Super 190 package I’m very pleased overall. Service from BBR was great and I love the fact that I got it tweaked so early on, allowing just that little bit of differentiation and improved dynamics over the standard car. I’d say the buying order should be as follows if you’re not going all in: Chip & Suspension then wheels & tyres, brakes, exhaust and lastly the manifold.

I’m done for the moment but I loved chatting to Neil about his turbo work and, despite thinking I’d want to stay NA, the gains I saw on a couple of NC charts were pretty damned compelling! Maybe in another year or two!

Few pics to follow:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking forward to a blat out tomorrow morning, now all I need to to is try to rescue my .itn files from my Tomtom with a few good routes through the Surrey Hills on!

Laughing

 

 

 

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Looks great Mannginger and I bet it feels really rapid now. I was initially tempted to go for the BBR OZ wheels and lowered springs, but when I took delivery, I was surprised by the actual Recaro wheel, it looked much better than I thought it was going to.

However, I still can’t get over the want of the USA/Canada only BBS wheels and Brembo’s.   I would dearly love those, but just can’t justify the price of over £3200 for wheels and probably another £1000 for the Brembo’s.   But maybe in the future their be more affordable? Yeah right, Dream on. 

 

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Hmm just noticed that my post from a week or so ago didn’t save properly, oh well the pics were a bit crap anyway!

Here’s a snap from the weekend “Sunday Service” courtesy of Pistonheads at Mercedes Benz World. Got a few nice comments and interest in the car and have had a few people approach me randomly in the street to chat about the car, especially the colour which I find a bit odd!

Very happy with it, the exhaust’s starting to mature a little bit as well with the beginnings of a little gurgle on over-run so I’m hoping that comes in a bit more. Road-trip through Malvern Hills, North Wales and Lake District coming up in a couple of weeks so very much looking forward to that!

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And here’s another one I found, for good luck!