What have you done to your MX-5 today? (Part 2)

I would just put normal nuts on ! Gone are the days of wheels being stolen cant remember the last time i see a car on bricks without wheels! now most cars have alloy wheels and not steel, the tyres are probably more of a temptation to the scrotes

Can’t fault a set of shiny nuts :clap:

Gummi Pflege’d my rubber kinda day for me

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Strongly agree. One of the snags with the Mazda locking nuts is that if someone puts them on too tight, the metal in the tool is quite soft, so it is easily damaged. I took mine for new tyres and the garage told me that they could not remove one wheel. Of course, the tool was wrecked. To cut a long story short, it made for an easier life for me to remove the locked lock-nut myself which I did by sacrificing a socket and lots of patience. I will never, ever fit locking nuts again. When my wife took delivery of a new Mazda, I asked them to not fit the locking nuts (it is a PDI job). So none of my cars have locking nuts now and all have standard nuts, torqued up to 120Nm. No more stress.

Totally agree, complete nightmare and a waste of time nowadays. Ps as a newbie five owner of an NC 3.5 with std 17"alloy wheeks can anyone advice me on the correct nut to replace the locking version?

That’s probably the sensible solution - but I don’t have any, and this is the quick & simple solution. We’ll see how it goes

I have to say, whomever last took the wheels off mine at the garage must have confused ‘torqued to spec’ with ‘How much torque? All of it’ and then beaten on it like it owed him money and ran off with his sister.

(Who am I kidding, we all know they use the rattle gun and just give it what for!)

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My locking wheel nut key decided it had had enough and it was an awful job to get the locking nuts off. When they did come off they went straight in the bin and now I’ve got normal ones.

Same problem of locking wheelnuts looking scrappy.
Then I found 4 pristine nuts in the bag in the boot.
Seems the locking nuts were dealer fit as standard and if you’re lucky, there will be 4 pristine nuts in your boot as well

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Done the front drop links this morning ready for my first track day at Blyton tomorrow.

Luckily noticed that the rear left tyre has developed a bulge in the sidewall. Don’t fancy risking that on a track at all so I’m replacing the rear two tyres.

Unfortunately can’t match the front tyres (Falken FK520) as they’re not available anywhere locally and don’t want to bin them for a new set of 4 as the fronts are less than 9 months old.

So it’ll be a bit of an unknown as I’ll have FK520s on the front and Avon ZV7s on the back. But I’d rather face that unknown than have a blowout on track!

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MOT day…

Pass.

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Got the car tuned on the dyno at Performance Link Ltd. Deerhurst near Tewkesbury was a worthwhile trek from Cambridgeshire. Little more power, little more torque across more of the rev range, with better fuel economy, and the torque limits in first and second gear removed. Tom and Alex were so kind, and knowledgeable, I can’t recommend them highly enough.

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That’s correct. New MX-5s arrive at the dealer with 4 standard wheel-nuts on each wheel. As part of the pre-delivery inspection (PDI) the main dealer rips open a plastic bag containing the locking nuts, scratches 1x standard nut per wheel when removing it, fits 1x locking nut per wheel, uses a compressed-air tool to tighten the locking nut to a totally random but probably much too high torque without giving a damn. The 4 spare standard nuts are then put into the ripped plastic bag which is left in the car. My SOP when ordering a new car (most recently a Mazda 3 for my wife) is:

  1. Do not fit the locking wheel-nuts.
  2. No stickers anywhere, about anything.
  3. No painted-on dealer name.
    Over the years I have found that a patient, clear request that cannot be misinterpreted is generally acted upon, especially if it saves the dealer work.
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Yet more painting, grinding, stonechipping and waxing. Took a little time out for this very important performance improving mod…



Desplined the lower hub pinch bolts… Getting the old ones out was an utter ******* of a job, mangled the bolts, slightly bent my 12 ton press, all because of the bloody stupid splines on the bolt that helps them get stuck then prevents you from easily breaking them loose by turning them. I have a set of RX8 hubs that I just cannot shift the bloody things out of, I’ll have to drill them which will be no picnic.

The splines do absolutely nothing useful, no idea why they do it. But future me or future owner will not have to fight these like the last ones.

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So did you weigh them before and after? Gram Strategy and all that. :wink:

Cleaning jobs today.

Roof cleaned
Initial wheel clean with iron fall out remover
Outside of the glass degreased and compounded, ready for glass sealant application
Mats removed and wet vac’d
Seats cleaned and wet vac’d
Interior surfaces vacuumed, cleaned and sanitised
Air con ‘bomb’ used to clean & sanitise HVAC system and interior
First wash done. A quick ‘maintenance’ wash really, to get the first week’s grime removed after yet another week of rain!

So far, so good!

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@Roadie, I was knocking rust off the diff at about the same time so I wasn’t thinking much about grams after lifting that cast iron lump onto the bench :slight_smile:

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You’d done a super job of cleaning and shining that car, Steve!

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Head unit fitted, sub fitted, with cables to tidy.
Works a treat for an inexpense sub.

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Cheers Nick. I haven’t actually done much to the paintwork… yet :wink: