anavrinIV builds an Exocet

[anavrinIV]

Originally Posted by smoogs12 So why an exocet? Tons of other kits out there. So why this? Just picking your brain here. Not criticizing your choice.

Completely missed this, glad @bigx5murf; quoted it.

There are a lot of reasons for an exocet.

1. I wanted a project car. This really could have been anything and was almost a Jeep. At times it has almost been an RX-7, an Evo, a b18 AWD original MINI, the speed....you get the idea. I needed something to work on, something with a long term goal. Something I could immerse myself into.

2. I wanted a race car, like something I could legitimately race. Needed to be street legal as well.

3. Despite this being a long term project I wanted to keep costs fairly low. I know that getting into an evo to do what I was looking for would be a monstrously expensive project. The RX-7 would have been worse. The mini was looking at 50k just in the planning stages...no thanks.

4. Something unique

5. Something bad ass.

When I saw the exocet it just felt right. In terms of other miata kits it's really irrelevant because I only got the miata to build the exocet, it wasn't just sitting around. The exocet is what I wanted to build so I just decided to do it. The only other kit I wanted more is out of production, the Superlite razor. The Nemesis is cool but it's a 1 seater.

I'm going the expensive route with the exocet and expect to put about 10k into the initial build. Some things will come later and they're already in the planning phase.

[Crarrs]

Originally Posted by anavrinIV When I saw the exocet it just felt right. In terms of other miata kits it's really irrelevant because I only got the miata to build the exocet, it wasn't just sitting around. The exocet is what I wanted to build so I just decided to do it.

I know this feeling. About 7 years ago, I had a huge fixation on doing a Locost. And then a couple years later (after I was out of college and found a job...) I found the Westfield. That seemed like the hot ticket (I don't have to weld a frame!). And then reality crept in and I decided it wasn't a good idea to plan on doing a project like that while I'm living in a rental. Who knows how long it would stretch on? 4 years later, I got an MSM last week. I guess you can call it reducing my expectations, but I'm happy with it. The credit card is getting melted with $500 and counting worth of parts ordered already.

Killer project man, I'm enjoying following along, and I'm envious that you're able to actually do this.

[anavrinIV]

Originally Posted by Crarrs I know this feeling. About 7 years ago, I had a huge fixation on doing a Locost. And then a couple years later (after I was out of college and found a job...) I found the Westfield. That seemed like the hot ticket (I don't have to weld a frame!). And then reality crept in and I decided it wasn't a good idea to plan on doing a project like that while I'm living in a rental. Who knows how long it would stretch on? 4 years later, I got an MSM last week. I guess you can call it reducing my expectations, but I'm happy with it. The credit card is getting melted with $500 and counting worth of parts ordered already. Killer project man, I'm enjoying following along, and I'm envious that you're able to actually do this.

To this point I feel like my life has been filled with lots of second guessing and over thinking plans. None of that will go on here. If I want to try something I will. I have a job that allows me to do this (slowly, but it's something) and I'm doing it. Too many times I've stopped myself for whatever reason. Screw it, I live in an apartment and pay all the bills. I'm going to build what I want to build and if I have to trailer it somewhere new so be it, I'll manage.

Also a locost or few is in my future. I have an idea that I would like to see play out. Cobb needs to come through though, and this forum needs to stick around for it to happen. Since no one else can do it I want to take a DISI sub-10s. With my future plan I think it will do a hell of a lot better than that.

[bigx5murf]

You keeping the BP, or are other powerplants being considered?

Here's probably a good fit. You could get a junk yard motor for ~$1200, and have 200whp right off the bat.

K24 Miata swap... finally a reality - K20A.org .:. The K Series Source . Honda / Acura K20a k24a Engine Forum

[anavrinIV]

For now i will be using the bp.

[smoogs12]

Turbo plans at any point? If so have you gotten as far as thinking about what route you would go?

[anavrinIV]

Originally Posted by smoogs12 Turbo plans at any point? If so have you gotten as far as thinking about what route you would go?

I have some plans that will reveal themselves in time. For now my focus is on getting it built and registered as a street vehicle, everything else will come later.

[anavrinIV]

Yesterday i cleaned the garage and changed the oil in the speed. Today I bought an angle grinder and some primer.

[anavrinIV]

Just spent $170 at rockauto. Wheel bearings, timing belt, spark plug, gaskets and seals, end links. And a couple other goodies that will remain anonymous for the sake of prosperity.

$120 in the hole plus a nearly stupid amount for shipping. But I won't count that. Much more to come anyway so who am I to complain?

[bigx5murf]

If you've got the time, highly recommend rebuilding your wheel bearings with high temp grease, even if they're brand new. Their lifespan would increase dramatically, stock ones die rather easily.

[anavrinIV]

I will probably do that, I only have so much going on right now anyway. I ordered a set of timkens, we'll see how I feel when the get here. There are some things I need to do before getting it all back together anyway.

I haven't done any big pictured updates in a while but don't fear, I'm just preparing for a monster. things have happened that must be spewed all over the internet because I'm just that important and everyone needs to know what it looked like.

[bigx5murf]

How to: Repack a front hub - Miata Turbo Forum - Turbo Kitten is watching you test compression.

apparently amsoil race grease is the best for this.

[anavrinIV]

Well, I got some good news today.

For 2014 the exocet will now look like this:

[mzr0818]

Originally Posted by anavrinIV Well, I got some good news today. For 2014 the exocet will now look like this:

Man, you would have been pissed if you had bought this already and 1 month later there was a new body style.

[anavrinIV]

Originally Posted by mzr0818 Man, you would have been pissed if you had bought this already and 1 month later there was a new body style.

Basically, yes. I'm trying to find out how long the preorder pricing will last because...well...you know

[anavrinIV]

TL;DR Weeks of work and I've removed some bits and dust. Oh goody.

Was my last real post over a month ago? Geez, that's not keeping up at all. I should get better about this again. But really there hasn't been enough to warrant it. Or so I tell myself, what do I know?

When last we spoke I was removing some bushings. When this process began I knew it would be best to have a press, I knew it would be difficult even with one, and I knew if all else failed I could just burn them out. Invigorated by all of this knowledge I went straight out to the garage and looked around for some kind of press. I have a vice, but no a very big one, and it's not mounted to anything which is, again, inconvenient for this process. The vice jaws are wide enough to fit he bushing but not wide enough to fit a couple sockets to press the bushings out.

A lot of thoughts went through my head but the one I stuck with was to, again, use a hub puller. I realize I haven't pulled any hubs with these yet, they seem to push better than they pull.

The jaws gripped the edge of the control arm and the center of the puller....pushed the bushing out. This worked spectacularly for 5 of them before failing miserably for the next 3.

In my frustration I quit for the day after and hour or so of working on it. a few had come out but there are 22 bushings to remove and a couple didn't go well.

Not wanting to screw it all up I bought a new tool that I thought would do the job, a hole saw. I sized this perfectly to fit around the crush tube in the center of the bushing figuring I could cut the metal bit out and have enough room to flex the rubber out. Don't believe me?



The crush tube is in the center of the hole saw.

Here's that crush tube:



Okay so that worked. Kinda.

See, what I didn't realize was that the crush tube was only one of the metal bits in the bushing. There's a rubber layer on it then another metal tube. So despite the good idea it failed miserably and now I had 5 bushings removed and one with no center to push on. And one with a punch stuck in it because I tried to hammer it out. We'll get to this one later.

So new plan I guess, we'll do that "burn it with fire" idea. Bought a propane torch and got to it.

When I say "got to it", I really didn't. Technically I lit a couple on fire but I have reservations about this process. I realistically had 2 options, do this in the garage with lots of burning rubber fumes and gasses or outside...in a parking lot...at an apartment complex....with lots of people possibly watching. They're cool with me wrenching but lighting the car on fire isn't really in the plan. Oh, and that garage contract says I can't have any flammable fluids in the garage. They may be cool with the jugs of oil, cans of brake cleaner and spray paint but I doubt a propane torch will fly. I mean, by definition all it is is a flammable liquid. It IS fire.

So now I'm stuck. I couldn't fall back onto my fallback plan.

With a last ditch effort I grabbed the hub pullers one more time and tried with a last ditch effort to get them out.

To my surprise, they came out. All of them. Easily. Well, relatively easily.

The trick here is that I did this in quite cold weather. I'm speculating that the cold weather contracted the rubber just enough to have it break free easily because as I pushed them out they all made distinct popping noises, almost like dried glue popping.

So boom. done.



Now I only have a couple issues left, one is that bushing with the big hole in the middle. How do I go about this? Oh, I think this will do...



Who doesn't have a 30mm socket laying around? Use the socket to form a cup around the metal piece of the bushing remnants and no problems.

The other problem is this



The good news is that it's out so I just have to cut it. But that was a bad idea. Don't do that.

Okay, bushings out of the way.

At this point I took a weekend to clean the garage. Everything that could fit on a shelf was put there, tools were found, sorted, and put away. Trash was picked up and tossed, spare parts were sorted and put away for safe keeping. This opened up enough room to get most of the speed in there for an oil change.

Onto the tedium that is cleaning the car parts. Being a male I'm not fond of this bit, it's long and boring and really not very rewarding not matter what anyone says. But I got to buy a new tool, one I've been needing a reason to buy for a while.



Sweet.

Okay, lets tear it up.

I started with the sway bars. These were in rough shape, missing lots of paint and had a good amount of rust.



Looking a bit closer...





So that needs to go. Put on the scary bit



Clamp it up



And get to it. Clean half on the left, rusty on the right. This is a pretty quick way to do it, and seems to be quite effective.



Both sway bars looked basically the same and both cleaned up well. With that done they were primered and put aside



If I may make an aside here, I'd like to talk about safety. Yes, I dropped a car a few times but this is not the time to joke around. These wire wheels are nasty and the parts are worse. When combined they throw off lots and lots of dirt, dust, paint, rust, and often wire bristles. Protect your eyes and lungs. Even I did this. See?



Beards are recommended but not required.

Okay, that's out of the way. Sub frames.

These are trickier for a couple reasons. 1, they're larger. The sway bars were fairly quick but I wouldn't call it a fast process. And they don't have a lot of surface area. 2, the shape is much more complex with deep voids and sharp corners to hit. Ladies first...



That's the rear sub frame, and a lot of that brown is rust. Not terrible rust but it needs to be taken care of. Here's a close up



Lots of grinding and 3 different wheels later (wire knot cup, flap wheel, wire bristle cup) and I got next to nowhere. The flatter surfaces are easy, especially with a flap wheel. But the small contours are tricky because nothing wants to get in them. I somehow managed to get exactly 0 pictures of the "finished" product, but lets just say it isn't actually finished and I'll have much more work to do.

Okay, the front. The front had a different problem. It really had no rust on it but lots of dirt and grime. Possibly and oil leak at some point? No idea, just lots of nastiness.



Don't see it? Well lucky for you I had brake cleaner and a scraper. The schmutz around it is the...stuff....I don't know what it is.



I felt no need to get that in the air so I knocked it off first. THEN I used the grinder

Due to the large expanse of flat areas on the front sub frame I tried the flap wheel first and it worked quite well but is time consuming and tedious. Again I managed exactly 0 pictures of this but the process isn't finished yet so they'll come in time.

That does't seem like much. Kinda sucks but there's only so much I can get to right now, I'm at a point where all I can do is clean and I need a different process that will come in time.

Oh, remember that safety ish I was talking about earlier? Yeah, that. Well I haz proof.

Wire brush wheels are pure evil, they're just projectiles. This one stuck in my pants.



Many others followed. One hit me in the face and another stuck in my arm. Eye protection is a must for this wheel.

Oh and that dust? This is 2 sway bars and a bit of sub frame work. You really don't want to breathe all this in, or at least I don't.



A full mask would probably be better but this will do the trick for the time being.

More to come, some parts should be selling soon and even more will be ordered.

Lets call it 75 hours, I really have no clue but it hasn't been much more. That sounds about right.

Oh, and I'm scheduled to visit Exomotive on the 23rd to see the Exocets in person. Since I haven't ordered a chassis yet I'm hoping this all goes well and that I still like what I see. Kevin Patrick there has been very communicative and was quite inviting when I asked about it. Since they're dealing with 30+ frame builds right now, a shop change and being slightly understaffed during a big upgrade process I'm happy that he's even willing to give me the time.

[anavrinIV]

TL;DR Just kidding, this one isn't very long. No excuses.

Last night I tried to enact a plan to clean these pieces once and for all. Instead of the grinder I was going to blast them, and since I already have a blaster this seems like a decent plan. What I don't have, however, is an air tank. Inconvenient, but then there are others who have air tanks. Like @Travisms3; for instance, who brought his over. This one.



That should do the trick. "Should" being the operative term here

To do some blasting I wanted to build a cabinet. This would be great if I had anything other than my car to transport materials, or indeed the time to do it. I also didn't have a lot of space. So we improvised and made this.



That looks like it will hold a subframe...



...and indeed it does.

So I just get out my blaster bucket



And hook up all the lines like so



Then go!

Almost. After all the prep work we got a sum total of about 3 seconds worth of spray.

This blaster was bought with the original purpose of cleaning valves. It failed miserably. I figured I'd keep it and try it for something else, and this was to be that something else. But this didn't work at all. I think the problem is that the media is too coarse and just clogs everything up, but in the pursuit of cleaning it found that the nozzle is broken.



Really the problem is that this is another harbor freight item that just doesn't work well. I'm not sure what to do with it but putting it in the trash is my current leading option.

After a couple hours of work I got this done



Yes, just that brownish spot. That's all it cleaned. I'm currently looking at other options.

I won't add any additional time for this since I basically just fumbled around for a couple hours and accomplished nothing.

Oh, yeah, I traded my clutch disc for a second power steering rack and returned the spare diff I had.

[anavrinIV]

Sold the seats this morning, another $125 up. Not sure what the total is, not going to bother to figure it or now.

Went down to exomotive on Monday, as many details add I feel I can spare to follow when I'm ona real box

[bigx5murf]

I think FM just mentioned exomotive prices will be jumping soon, unless you lock it in somehow quick.

[anavrinIV]

Originally Posted by bigx5murf I think FM just mentioned exomotive prices will be jumping soon, unless you lock it in somehow quick.

Yep, as of today each kit price is now $500 more than it was yesterday. I talked to Kevin about it wheni was there. The increase is necessary given what exomotive had been doing and I'll just have to deal with it.

[anavrinIV]

UPDATE!

Sold most of the remaining lights to @Rokusek;. This puts me back up by $100.

In other news, there is no other news. Things are sitting exactly as I left them. I'm planning to get back out there soon though and really get to it.

[anavrinIV]

As more and more time passes my hatred for my previous employer deepens. Thanks to their worthless accounting and general laziness it looks like I'll be owing a fair bit of money to the government this year. Unfortunately I was hoping for a decent return to help fund the new chassis but I'll be lucky to break even on taxes. And I just get to deal with it.

So what that means is I won't hit my deadline. Not by a long shot. I don't want to give up on this build so I'll keep moving on with what I have and what I can do, no reason not to at this point. I think.

[DSIT995]

Damn that sucks... I always look forward to your long update posts with plenty of pictures!

tapping....

[smoogs12]

Keep you head up man. Just think of it as more planning time

I am looking forward to the day when you post a "first start up" video.

You'll get it done.

[anavrinIV]

It's already planned, right now is all money unfortunately. Los of maintenance parts plus hard parts and it adds up fast.

I have other projects to plan as well so I'll be spending time on that, far more planning to do there than on the exocet.

[Rokusek]

Damn this is shitty news...

Well keep your head up brother and in time all will come together!

-PJ

[anavrinIV]

good news!

found out the donor was an A package car and came with a torsen diff.

bad news!

I broke a bolt trying to take the diff apart. The casing is seized together but I have some kroil on the way to remedy these fiddly corrosion issues.

[mzr0818]

When are you gonna order the kit? I think I might get one started with in a year. I want to find a wrecked 01/ 02 with under 80k I have heard the 99-00's are easier to turbo if I decide to go that route.

[anavrinIV]

I have no idea when I'm ordering a kit. I haven't saved enough to pay for it outright and I don't see it happening for 6 months at least at this point, too many things going on. I'm actually looking into some....things.....right now that would put me on a more interesting, albeit more roundabout, path. stay tuned.

[fredricktsang]

Originally Posted by anavrinIV good news! found out the donor was an A package car and came with a torsen diff. bad news! I broke a bolt trying to take the diff apart. The casing is seized together but I have some kroil on the way to remedy these fiddly corrosion issues.

You should be able to take the rear cover off of it with the broken bolt, I don't remember it being threaded on the cover. It takes quite a bit of persuasion with a mallet to break the seal.

[anavrinIV]

Originally Posted by fredricktsang You should be able to take the rear cover off of it with the broken bolt, I don't remember it being threaded on the cover. It takes quite a bit of persuasion with a mallet to break the seal.

I know i can remove it but even with a chisel at the seam I couldn't get the thing to budge. I'm going to put kroil all around the seam as well as on the broken bolt to try to free it. I really only have to remove it now so I can replace the broken bolt, otherwise I wouldn't bother. If I had been able to pop the stub shafts out originally i would never have had this problem.

[anavrinIV]

Today I'm officially half way through my original year deadline.

Diff should finally be separated in the next few days, I broke down and ordered some kroil in the hopes that it's as good as everyone says. If it is I should be able to remove the busted bolt, replace it, and seal the case back up.

After that it's decision time on this project. I'm currently in the black and have gotten some cool tools out of it as well as a mass of ideas that I'm ready to follow up on so I don't feel the pressure that I probably should.

[anavrinIV]

Did my taxes today. That was a highly depressing experience. No way can I afford this anymore, not even close. I'll be fixing the diff and putting everything up for sale.

[DSIT995]

Sorry mang, that sucks
Was looking forward to seeing your progress

tapping....

[mzr0818]

WTF Man that sucks.

[anavrinIV]

Originally Posted by mzr0818 WTF Man that sucks.

yeah, a bit. Since I was already many months off from a chassis I'm now well over a year behind that.

By the time I get around to building this thing I'll be ready to buy a house and still won't be able to afford it. And I don't want to move half a car's worth of parts. Realistically this wasn't a great life decision but I'll actually be walking away with some extra cash from parting the car so really no harm done. I've had a bit of interest in some parts already and the engine may be finding a new home with a friend and getting a new lease on life.

In the mean time another project is calling. And it's more interesting than this one, at least to me.

[SpencerC]

So... For Sale Thread? Sad to see it come to an end though.

[anavrinIV]

Originally Posted by Spencer@CorkSport So... For Sale Thread? Sad to see it come to an end though.

it's all going through craigslist right now. anything you need in particular? I'll see if I have it and post up a f/s thread and whatnot, I just didn't see much use for it as I don't want to ship most of the large items...ya know, like an engine.

[anavrinIV]

Engine sold a week and a half ago. Glad to see it go to a guy who plans to forge it for a massive turbo build.

Diff is headed up to @alphasaur; when I figure out the best way to ship it.

[Chief_Wiggum]

For Exocet build 2.0...or make that 6.2

https://www.flyinmiata.com/projects/...index.php?UID=