So among other stuff I bought a Davefab oil catcher and an IL motorsport coolant tank for my NC from a well known mx5 parts company. This is not about the mx5 parts company rather than a discusion about the quality of the aftermarket parts or better put it… lack off.
When I opened the oil catcher box the other day I saw it was unused but the product was opened and boxed back so I thought no biggie was possibly a return. Since the oil catcher is supposed to hold the vacuum I thought best I check this before I fit it. So I closed with my thumb one end and blew on the other and yup you guessed it… it was leaking. I source the leak coming from the emptying plug. So I thought oh ok it just needs some tightening. Nope. The lovely chaps at Davefab threaded a 2mm aluminium flat sheet and expected for the thread to hold. So this goes back with an explanation note what’s wrong with it and hopefully it wont go back to an unexpected customer. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone if I’m honest and I’d be looking at an oil catcher made by someone else.
IL motorsport coolant tank… nice shiny tig welded polished aluminium. The coolant tank on my NC works ok but its… well as old as my car and the system works under pressure is so I’m a bit worried whether it splits due to age and well results to a ruined engine so I’m attempting to do preventive maintenance. I already seen a bit on the IL motorsport coolant tank that is not welded but its on the overflow cap so I’m hoping the tank itself will seal ok under test by tomorrow. If this fails I aint got a clue what to do as I don’t have any faith on the Davefab stuff and the only other option I know of is well another OEM coolant tank (so open for ideas here)
I fitted the IL coolant tank to mine which was perfect. The only thing I didn’t like was there was no way to visually check the level without taking the cap off and dipping it. So I sold that to a mate (and it’s still 100% fine) and bought the Moroso tank. I have to say that the Moroso item quality wise is (IMO) far far superior.
The Davefab coolant tank is fine, studily made. It also has the sight glass on the side to show the level but you can only just see it due to its position.
I fitted one, but only after carefully checking the welding and doing a pressure test. I can weld reasonably OK (ie functional), but I also know enough about how it should look to see the Davefab welding is a lot better than mine.
My only two quibbles are
The seat for the pressure cap seal has sharp edges and will damage the rubber seal, so I dressed it smooth.
The overflow spigot points differently to the OEM , so just reverse the overflow tube. As with the OEM remember to swivel the free end to point up when topping up the tank.
This shows the welding and sight glass. I also made some poly washers to prevent damaging the paint and to allow a bit of float with heat cycling.
So, if it was a return, as explained by the opened packaging, shouldn’t it have been checked for the return reason by the MX5 parts company before selling it on to another customer?
two options here.
a) customer that returned the item not bothered to tell them or did not want to tell them and get blamed he broke it.
b) MX5 parts company employee not bothered checking or missed checking the fault.
I have to say this is entirely a product design issue. I would not expect any thread to hold a bolt in a 2mm aluminium sheet. They should have welded a nut and screwed the plug onto that.
As for the IL motorsport coolant tank I have not noticed the level indicator before and although it seems not to leak not having a level indicator starts to bug me a bit.
In late May last year I had my OEM alloy wheels stripped and powder coated.
My wheel nuts were looking very tatty and showing their 14 years of age so I bought a set of IL Motorsport Chrome wheel nuts.
This was 11 months/2300 miles ago. The wheel nuts are already starting to go rusty, noticed a few weeks agao, so another little fiddly job to do every now and again with the WD40.
I wish now I had saved my money and either hand stripped and painted the originals, or bought a different set in another material or colour/plating… .
I’m guessing that the chrome plating on these items isn’t particularly thick or good quality.
The stick on chromed plastic light trims from ILMotorsport don’t last long either. Chrome pits and losses shine. Previous owner had fitted them to the front fogs and rear clusters on my previous NC. When they went crusty I replaced them with new. A couple of years later they had gone again.
Sometimes the planned obsolescence is quite subtle.
eg1.
FE Victor. At the time it had the “most rigid body of any mass market car” (apparently), and it had positive chassis ventilation and underseal, superb roadholding, etc.
HOWEVER, the much vaunted chassis ventilation was taken from the plenum chamber in front of the windscreen via stiffeners to the A-pillars, and guess what, with lots of salty wet air the A-pillars rotted through from inside so the door hinges pulled out long before any signs of rust in the sills or box sections underneath!
I was sad to scrap that one. It was actually quite a nice quick car after I sorted a few obvious production-idiocies on it.
eg2.
Audi A4 in 1996. I was looking for our first brand-new family car, and looked at everything, including the Audi, which had by far the best driver comfort of all of them. We sat in a lot of cars!
HOWEVER, that particular year each rear strut went up into a semi-closed pocket (ie salt-mud-rust-trap) stuck on top of the wheel arch which had a loose fitting (s-m-r-t) plastic liner, and no underseal in sight.
Those pockets popped off after a few years because of rust trapped in the stressed seam to the wheel arch. So you never saw a rusty A4 on the road.
Later ones did it differently and a lot better, but I was buying in 1996 and I was all too aware of rust traps, so I looked elsewhere.
eg3.
Austin-Morris 1100. Touted as the modern replacement for the cheap, durable, simple Morris Minor.
HOWEVER, the vertical cross-panel in front of the rear subframe was expected to fail at eight-ten years, but because of lack of sealant in crucial seams trapping salty mud it more often detached from floor pan and under-rear-seat panel in about four, usually writing off an already worthless car.
After looking at a few of these I bought my rust-free bitsa instead.
