btjtaylor

Bought a set of (very) budget semi-slick tyres "Accelera 651 Sport Xtra" from a company called Tire Streets that i'd seen advertised on various youtube channels. I don't have particularly high expectations as they were extremely cheap (£280 for a set of 4) but according to various internet comments/reviews they seem to be reasonable. I can always upgrade them in the future if needs be. The rubber seems soft which is a good start for a track tyre. Normally I don't like to order tyres separately to fitting (as usually the fitting cost removes any savings) but I couldnt find anything suitable supplied and fitted so I paid the local tyre place £15 a tyre for fitting and balancing which seemed reasonable. Look forward to getting them on the car soon... Finally got around to finishing restoring an MG ZS 180 rear anti roll bar I picked up from a friend a few months back. It was in pretty sorry condition but it seems like they are not sold new any more. Fortunately, you can still buy drop links, poly bushes, and all the bolts so it was just a case of stripping it down, removing the rust, painting it and replacing as much of the hardware as possible. The bushes were a real pain to install without a press but after a lot of farting around in the vice I got there eventually... For reference here's how it looked before (!)

Yeah fingers crossed I'll get to have a quick spin in it, the plan is once the wheels and tyres are on, better front brakes fitted, and a few other small bits are sorted I can take it for an exhaust at least as somewhat of a test drive. Hoping to avoid the cost of getting it delivered there as we don't have a suitable tow car unfortunately. The car came with 12 months MOT when I bought it so we have a bit of time.. technically I am sure it's not valid any more as no exhaust is a fail but just to avoid getting in trouble (hopefully)... that is the next priority item as starting the car up is really antisocial at the moment for the neighbours! The car does run and drive but I've literally only been up and down the driveway in it so far 😂 but nothing flew off/leaked out of it yet so that's good progress... It still needs a proper map on the ECU and there's still a whole bunch of other work to do on the suspension and then safety gear inside (half cage, seats, harnesses, etc) but we can sort that over the winter and be fully ready for a show/track day in spring. To be honest that is all fairly straightforward fitment wise and more about saving up the money to buy everything than actually fitting it that will take time!

Been chipping away at jobs the last few weeks and should be ready to drive soon. Everything in the engine bay should be done now - had a quick tidy up any loose pipes/wires and made sure everything was bolted down securely. It's not a super tucked show car but I think it's neat and tidy enough for the type of build that it is. Plus everything is easily accessible for servicing! Fitted a small washer fluid bottle - £10 from Amazon so it's a bit cheap and cheerful but it connected straight onto the factory washer pump connector and lines! Removed the rear washer pipe as we've already removed the rear wiper. The Hybrid Racing cold air intake bolts into where the factory washer bottle sits so it had to go. Picked up a set of Enkei RP01 (15x7 ET35) wheels for a reasonable price (about the same as i'd pay for a set of Rotas or similar). Will get some tyres on them this week and see how they look on the car. The main thing is they fit fine over the MG ZS front callipers with plenty of room to spare. I wasn't sure they would initially as the ZS came on 16s, although admittedly with much less offset. They've been rattle canned by the previous owner but honestly he (or she) has really not done a bad job at all. Initially I was looking to change the colour but for now they will do as is, for now I'd rather spend money on getting the car working than cosmetics!

Thanks, it's an alpine unit so even though it's new I think it fits with the 90s-ish vibe of the car. It's no doubt the brand I would've gone for if I had the money back in the day haha. It has RGB lighting so I can change it to march the dash which is nice (I'm being picky but I don't like it when the colours don't match!) The car came with a pretty retro looking JVC CD player but only 1 channel was working for some reason and it had a really shoddy aftermarket Bluetooth kit (calls only) with wires bodged in all over the place so I thought it was best to bin it all and fit something new I did consider not bothering with a head unit but even though the build leans towards track car, I've been in cars which are totally stripped before and whilst you might be able to get an extra 20kg out by removing the heater, stereo, half the dash, etc, it makes the car unusable for anything other than trailering really Yes he basically said he managed to get it all down the side by sticking a pair of long noise pliers through the popped out hazard switch and holding the cables out of the way of the head unit I've stripped everything from the front seats back and deleted the air con (it was broken anyway) so I'm not even sure I'll be able to hear the radio over the rattling but that's about the extent of the weight reduction for now. It should be a lightweight chassis anyway as it doesn't have a sunroof or other luxury features 😂

Thank you very much for confirming this and your post - makes my car build a lot easier as I was expecting to have to modify the stock seat structure (which in itself is a problem because my passenger seat was accidentally disposed of - best not to ask)

Got this photo from my father in law this morning that he got the head unit in in about 5 mins on the first try, always the way 🙃

More progress MB6 dash installed and MB6 cluster fitted Modified the centre console slightly (basically just removing the tray in front of the gear stick) to accommodate the shifter box Cut a hole in the back of the glovebox and mounted the ECU inside Installed a steering wheel boss and OMP 300mm wheel Unfortunately I wasted a couple of hours trying to get the head unit to fit in the dash as I was struggling with all the spiders web of cables behind so I couldn't get it rolling today 🥲 but it's a marathon not a sprint!

No pics unfortunately as had my head down but some good progress on the car: Engine back in the car and running without any timing codes, great success! Managed to fix an issue with the shifter, I wasn't able to select 1st or 2nd gear. I tried getting another set of shifter cables as the ones I had with the shifter were a bit too short and didn't look like the pictures of "correct" sets i'd seen. Turns out I had set the gearbox cable bracket up wrong - for future reference the brackets should be in the "forward" position as per this image (thanks to the helpful soul on facebook who pointed this out when I posted a last ditch question in a kswap group!): Started to fit an MB6 VTI dashboard that I was kindly gifted by a chap called Sam who I bought a few other bits off. My original one had the fake wood trim which wasn't my favourite and some absolute vandal had attached a phone holder directly to it with wood screws! Removed the passenger airbag, removed the cover from it and refitted the cover back into the dash to cover the ugly hole that was left Another solid day on it and I reckon first drive soon (a very short one out of VTEC as driving on the wrong engine map, with open headers on 15 year old budget tyres isn't the greatest idea!!)

Spent the bank holiday installing the new timing chain/guides/tensioner, service manual print outs in hand and triple checking everything. All sealed up now, should be able to get the engine back in next weekend, all being well. Chain that was on was stretched - not by as much as some i've seen but the main difference I noticed is the chain tensioner was quite far extended whereas the new one is much less extended, maybe it couldn't take up the slack or something jumped on first start. Anyway, hopefully this is all sorted now. Also changed the crank pulley seal as I don't ever want to be going in there again!

Do I still need disc rear arms for this by the way? I assumed I would

100%! According to Google the amount it's stretched probably isn't enough for mr valve to meet mr piston so I think weve got away with it. Every cloud has a silver lining at least, it's given me an opportunity to change a few oil seals in the engine and sort out a few hoses that were bodged together quickly from the junk pile!

Thanks for that - totally missed your reply - thats great info Since this post I found the mistake and bought a set of MGZS 180 front 282mm calipers and carriers second hand for £80 delivered which wasn't bad at all really. The seals etc looked ok but they were a bit grotty so we soaked them in evaporust and then my father in law stripped them down and painted them in high temp silver and they look a lot better now. Still not got any pads or discs yet but that will come in time... A running engine first would be a good start 🙃 (see my build thread for the fun i've been having there...) I definitely plan to change to rear discs at some point but as it's quite a lot of work/parts required so I'm going to see how I get on with rear drums to start with until budget allows (currently diverted for more important topics) - whilst it doesn't look or sound very good it's not as bad as you might expect...

Well, one step forward, two steps back Engine wasn't running great with a lumpy idle (almost like muscle car sound!). At first I just put it down to the open header being super loud but we started to get timing codes logged on my ODB reader (p0341). I checked a few easy things like the wiring to the sensors etc but unfortunately after removing the cam cover we found the timing is out, most likely the chain was stretched and we didn't realise (even though we were able to set it right, which I can't quite get my head around) Moral of the story is, don't re use the existing chain even if you think its ok New chain, tensioner and guides ordered...

Big moment this morning after a few days of battling with electrical problems we finally got the car started! It sounds terrible as theres no exhaust, various vacuum leaks and things not plugged in, but feels great to get to this point, absolutely buzzing that we can start to tidy everything up now and get it driving To be continued...

Another good day of progress today Radiator in Hybrid Racing power steering kit in and connected up Fuel lines connected Radiator hoses and heater hoses connected Started to wire in the engine harness - lots of mess and unnecessary wires to tidy up but I'm going to wait to hear the engine run first before I go mad chopping out something that we might need! I reckon another solid day on it next weekend and we might be able to hear it run...