It must be a real treat working on “as new” parts. 
She’s going to be a beauty.
Nice one! Hopefully you have a press for all those bushes. I did mine with a vice!
They are Polybushes, so they go in really easily. I use a wood clamp to squeeze a little harder if need be.
The back end is pretty much all together now and the car is back on the ground 
We need to torque everything up correctly and adjust the handbrake as we installed new rear cables.
It’s looking very shiny and new!
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Looking amazing. Much, much better than new.
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Currently designing the HV battery pack. It looks like we could easily fit 32kWh in the engine bay and this would weigh about 135kg + cooling plates + enclosure. We have just weighed the car at 587kg, so we are very confident we will hit our 970kg target weight. We could fit more batteries where the petrol tank used to be but we are more interested in reducing the weight than adding more range. In theory, we could match the original weight and have close to 200 miles of range if we wanted.
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200 miles would appear to be just about enough to enjoy the car for a general run out.
The recent run out in the Highlands would have meant a stop somewhere to charge up so some planning will be likely for longer trips out.
Have you decided what you’re mainly going to use the car for?
What a waste!
Really, really impressed with what you’ve done.
I run a ZOE (in addition to my wonderful ND 1.5) and get around 200 + miles range in summer and about 180 in winter. This is great for local runs and can just manage the coast and back on one charge. The ND is my go to car for any long hauls, Wales, lakes, Cornwall etc - and pleased to have that choice.
Is the weight thing such a big issue? Given the paucity of reliable charging facilities, and improved battery range, my personal view (from experience) is that 200miles is not enough, given that many new EV’s are 300 + now.
Which is why my 5 makes touring possible - my trip to Cornwall would have been 2 hrs longer relying on charging up - even on my rapid charge.
Just a thought.
Still think you are doing an amazing thing. 
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We have a Cupra Born V2 58kWh. It’s a great car and does 220 miles in summer and about 190 miles in winter. This easily covers 99% of the journeys we do and we have not had any issues going across country in it and using public chargers.
My previous sports car was a 450kg Fisher Fury R1 (motorbike engined, 400hp/ton) and did about 80 to 120 miles on a full tank of fuel (depending on how you drove it). It met my needs perfectly and this is why the MX-5 is being designed to this range too. As the technology improves, it would be fairly easy to upgrade this later should we wish. The car is purely for fun, local driving around the B-roads of Suffolk and Norfolk.
The MX-5e is a test bed for our next ‘scratch’ collaborative EV build which will have over 200 miles range, 350+hp and weigh less than 1000kg. The Open Source Sports EV (OSSEV) project is the reason we are building the MX-5e first. https://ossev.info
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What will the fore aft weight distribution be with these batteries?
We have some control over this. Bear in mind that the engine and gearbox removed weighed 197kg. Then you have a whole load of other stuff associated with the ICE: Exhaust (20kg), air intake system (4kg), cooling system, fuel tank (22kg), fuel (40kg), heat shields, sound deadening, etc.
We have fitted a motor and reduction box which weight about 82kg and these sit where the gear box was. The full 32kWh battery pack is about 140kg. Inverter is 22kg. So 240kg in total.
Then there are all the other things we have done to reduce the weight such as completely rewiring the car from scratch, to remove redundant wiring. We are using a much lighter 12V battery as we don’t need to turn and engine over.
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So seems like a few tens of kilos moved forward, and an overall reduction.
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Just got up to speed. This is phenomenal. What a way to save an old car.
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As you have already said it would be possible to add additional batteries in the fuel tank space would it not be adventageous to use this as a way of getting 50/50 weight distribution?
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I would much rather have less weight over pretty much anything else.
Last bit of tidying up in the boot, before we add the new wiring for the lights. We have resprayed some the boot internally to to remove the scratches. We have don’t require the metal covers over the petrol tank as we don’t have one and have removed the pipework too. No need for carpets either as its all shiny metal now
We have even refurbished an repainted the boot hinges / springs. My wife was not impressed that I washed the rubber boot seal in her bath but, it’s come up like new 
One thing we have had to do is fabricate a metal cover for the hole in the boot that led to the petrol tank. This part will be powder coated soon.
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I look forward to hopefully seeing you driving around the B roads of Norfolk & Suffolk when it’s all done, as I’m only just over the border in Harleston 
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