Technical Bilstein B14s - Ordered

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Technical Bilstein B14s - Ordered

Those are not the photos I was looking forward to seeing.

Better?

venice-M.png


:D
 
Droplinks should arrive tomorrow which means I can quickly measure them up and then put the beast in to the garage on thursday for fitting. Woo!
 
Roll on thursday

Or creak, clonk and knock until thursday as is more accurately the case. :D

I've also been using madams mk3 mx5 this week with the weather being as nice as it is. The 2.0 with the 6 speed and lsd is nice to punt around if a little prone to understeer and wallow. But YIKES on the fuel bills. Drive it like I do the 500 and I get about the same miles per tank. But the tank is 50 litres and costs more to fill. Boo.
 
Or creak, clonk and knock until thursday as is more accurately the case. :D

I've also been using madams mk3 mx5 this week with the weather being as nice as it is. The 2.0 with the 6 speed and lsd is nice to punt around if a little prone to understeer and wallow. But YIKES on the fuel bills. Drive it like I do the 500 and I get about the same miles per tank. But the tank is 50 litres and costs more to fill. Boo.
Could be worse, could be driving our Subaru. 500 gets 400+ miles on a full tank of 42 litres and the Subaru can do well under 300 miles on a tank of 55 odd litres.....
 
Or creak, clonk and knock until thursday as is more accurately the case. :D

I've also been using madams mk3 mx5 this week with the weather being as nice as it is. The 2.0 with the 6 speed and lsd is nice to punt around if a little prone to understeer and wallow. But YIKES on the fuel bills. Drive it like I do the 500 and I get about the same miles per tank. But the tank is 50 litres and costs more to fill. Boo.


Thats what i love about the 500 1.4, you can drive it like a complete nutter at 4000+ revs permanently and on an open road you wont go below 35 mpg!
Cheap performance motoring!
 
Could be worse, could be driving our Subaru. 500 gets 400+ miles on a full tank of 42 litres and the Subaru can do well under 300 miles on a tank of 55 odd litres.....

No, that's about what I'm getting from the mx5 :)
 
Or creak, clonk and knock until thursday as is more accurately the case. :D

I've also been using madams mk3 mx5 this week with the weather being as nice as it is. The 2.0 with the 6 speed and lsd is nice to punt around if a little prone to understeer and wallow. But YIKES on the fuel bills. Drive it like I do the 500 and I get about the same miles per tank. But the tank is 50 litres and costs more to fill. Boo.

Getting into the low 20s on a MX5 2.0 is not unheard of. I had a 1.6 Eunos model and I have to advance the timing to 14 BTDC to get anywhere near the high 20s. I could never understand how such a small car was so heavy to push (no buzzer on leaving the lights on) and was so thirsty. A big plus for it is that the engines are highly regarded and for a 16V are non-interference. That's a nice bonus to get a LSD with the 6 speed.(y)

Looking forward to outcome on the B14s.
 
Right, I realise I've been completely lazy about updating. In short, I've been driving madams MX5 for the past 2 weeks and have largely ignored the 500. :eek:

I did however order the goodies required for making the drop links from McGill motorsports on eBay. Complete list of parts and prices below if anyone else wants to replicate the experiment:

180851727933 M10 x 1.5 mm Half Nuts / Lock Nuts Right Hand - Pack of 1014.75 GBP4.75 GBP
160561203053 M10 x 1.5 mm Half Nuts left hand pack of 1014.75 GBP4.75 GBP
380444144576 Sealing Boot for M10 and M12 Male and Female rose joint, rod end Dust Cover43.90 GBP15.60 GBP
160465862236 M10 Male Left Hand thread HIGH PERFORMANCE Rose Joint27.25 GBP14.50 GBP
180544075604 M10 Male Right Hand thread HIGH PERFORMANCE Rose Joint27.25 GBP14.50 GBP
180790423987 Turnbuckle M10 Link. Adjustable from 300 mm to 340 mm26.70 GBP13.40 GBP
Subtotal: £67.50 GBP

Added to that will be a handful of bolts, washers and spacers so call it £75 in total. The Fiat originals are £36.60 for a pair, which makes my little experiment about twice as expensive as just buying a set of droplinks but it keeps me amused.

Those of you with too much time on their hands (yes Maxi, I'm looking at you) will have noticed that the turnbuckle is adjustable from 300mm to 340mm while the Fiat factory ones are 290mm non adjustable. The reason I chose these is because I'm planning on a 30mm drop which means that ideally the droplinks have to be 30mm larger than the standard which means 320mm to keep the arb at the correct height to be properly effective.
 
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They might be more expensive but there is nothing like creating your own parts, although you should stop slacking and get those billys on ;)
 
They might be more expensive but there is nothing like creating your own parts, although you should stop slacking and get those billys on ;)

Lol. Yes yes yes. I'll do it shortly. Getting tired of tripping over the bloody things in the living room. Just want to get all the parts I'll need together before I start doing anything. Cars in bits and discovering that you need another part sucks :)
 
Those of you with too much time on their hands (yes Maxi, I'm looking at you) will have noticed that the turnbuckle is adjustable from 300mm to 340mm while the Fiat factory ones are 290mm non adjustable. The reason I chose these is because I'm planning on a 30mm drop which means that ideally the droplinks have to be 30mm larger than the standard which means 320mm to keep the arb at the correct height to be properly effective.

Hmph:mad:

Bet you'll feel a big difference. The front end of the Subaru felt so much more responsive when we replaced the standard plastic droplinks with hd alloy ones :)
 
As I mentioned earlier, I've been using madams MX5 and the 500 has sat in the drive, filthy and awaiting parts. I haven't yet changed the front T1R's that took the abuse at the Nurburgring. I actually have brand new ones sitting here waiting to go on. I've been waiting, thinking that I'll do this when I do the suspension this week.

This morning on the way out to breakfast I noticed something:

TyreBulge-M.jpg


This is what happens when you push a T1R slightly outside its intended design envelope :D
 
Question time. I just had a poke around the coilovers and discovered 3 of these things in this box:

weird-cable-tie-things-L.jpg


Any idea what they're for? 1 was in the same bubble wrap as one of the front coilovers and 2 were in the bubble wrap with the other front coilover. I'm puzzled. No obvious place for these to connect to? Thoughts?
 
Question time. I just had a poke around the coilovers and discovered 3 of these things in this box:

weird-cable-tie-things-L.jpg


Any idea what they're for? 1 was in the same bubble wrap as one of the front coilovers and 2 were in the bubble wrap with the other front coilover. I'm puzzled. No obvious place for these to connect to? Thoughts?

no idea, call Bilstein?
 
no idea, call Bilstein?

Possibly but that seems like a long fruitless series of call centre miseries. It seems odd to me that they obviously don't fit anywhere on any of the components and there are only 3 of them? Weird.
 
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