Dubai Mk1 Duratec

[Retromotorsport]

As long as the box cant be seen when looking across the chassis rails its fine,

[Spotmatic]

Looking great! Is the MX-5 box a straight fit to the Ford Duratec engine?

[Pikey15]

Awesome work you've done there mate, I'm going to enjoy watching this build Do you ever fly down to Christchurch at all?

[dobuy]

As long as the box cant be seen when looking across the chassis rails its fine,

Thanks Gary, that is what I thought

Is the MX-5 box a straight fit to the Ford Duratec engine

Yup, straight bolt up, no mods required. The 2005 onwards MX5 (NC Model) has Duratec engines in it.

Do you ever fly down to Christchurch at all?

Well I used to go a lot, as I fly for a Middle East airline that goes there daily, but they have changed the aircraft to a type I don't fly, so not at the moment. However will be down in November for holidays

[mk1matt]

Cool cheers for the info

[dobuy]

Whipped the top of the gearchange house off



Was told by Dave from RetroFord that a RX7 Short Shiter like this will fit



so bought one on eBay for £32 delivered

Started up making a gearbox crossmember, quite fun as all the angles are off-cock due to the 10 degree angle of the box in the chassis





Used up a set of spare Watts link bushes as the rubber mounts



Then recycled a set of rear leaf hangars for the chassis mounts, nice thick steel they are, no doubt they are collectors items and this is heresy of some description, but they are no use to me





Tidied up the butchered tunnel brace, welded a couple of bits of thick plate on the inside of the tunnel to spread the load





The bottom of the mount is just about 5 mm below the chassis rail, so all tucks up pretty well



Finally made up a couple of alloy plates to fill the gap between the rear inner arches and the rest of the boot firewall, just needs a bit of seam sealant to finish it off

[Retromotorsport]

On the rear 1/4 sealers.. make sure you have few mm#s of gap between the plate and the 1/4 ... if its touching you'll see it when you polish the outside as it will push through.

[105Ian]

Doing a great job and some very impressive fabrication work

[dobuy]

just as well I have a few mm already in places then, but I will shave a bit more off before I permanently rivet them in. I guess being aluminium they should cause less damage as well

Doing a great job and some very impressive fabrication work

Thanks, considering I started this without having done any metal work, its amazing how quickly you learn, it gets better with every new thing I do, that is for sure. Still no where near the pro's though, but I guess that is to be expected

[Retromotorsport]

I always use ally aswell..but when i was young and foolish... only a few years ago mind, i butted it tight..took me fecking ages too.. and after about 4 polishes and countless bums leaning on that area ..i had a line show up ... so now.. solid seam everywhere before paint ..then after paint, silicone those to the 1/4 so its a rubber cushion

[ocztony]

I always use ally aswell..but when i was young and foolish... only a few years ago mind, i butted it tight..took me fecking ages too.. and after about 4 polishes and countless bums leaning on that area ..i had a line show up ... so now.. solid seam everywhere before paint ..then after paint, silicone those to the 1/4 so its a rubber cushion

use mirror silicone as it has no acidity and will not eat into the steel.

There is a special silicone for sticking mirrors onto things if you were wondering

[GAZZAMK2]

Top work there fella, real quality.

Gotta say too, great advice from the Gary there, spot on.

One to keep an eye on this....

[Med]

u're damn good in fabricating those works...! RESPECT!!!

is there many oldfords' in doobye..? i dun think so...

anyway, GOOD LUCK mate..!!!

[dobuy]

Mirror, silicone, you learn something new every day, once again thanks to Gary for the save of the day.

Med, couple more Escorts in Dubai, not common tho, but we are trying to build interest

[ocztony]

Normal silicone is actually corrosive, it will eat into Alu and steel, especially if moisture is present. Mirror silicone was developed to stick mirrors to walls etc and not eat the reflective backing stuck onto the glass to make it mirror.

Mirror silicone is actually less prone to silicone paintwork also...although I would never use it in a body shop and only apply it after the paint has hardened etc.

[R1.Andy]

excellent thread m8..and cracking job your doin..

[rwdalltheway]

excellent work mate keep it up it coming along nicely

[hansgti]

Some hard graft going on there , the end result should be a winner
What goes on at the Dubai aerodrome?

[dobuy]

What goes on at the Dubai aerodrome?

well they are still building terminal 4, albeit a bit more slowly

Otherwise not much. Looking forward to flying the new A380 soon, which will mean lots of BKK flights.

Would love to come and see what you lads are up to over there as the Old School scene looks to be alive and kicking, with some interesting local solutions

[rvf-boy]

your doing a cracking job there you be up and running befor i finished welding,
is there a reason you have put your wing rails on the wrong sides like easyer
fitting of glass fiber wings ??? just thought i would ask

[dobuy]

First one to spot it or mention it, which surprised me, but yes, tried the rails on both ways and after a lot of head scratching decided that the GRP wings sat/hung much better with the rails the wrong way round. Also Rivnuts are hidden n the inside of the wheel arch.

[dobuy]

Well its been a busy couple of months and not got much done to Svetlana, however finally the stars aligned so that I managed to get 6 days off in a row from work and my mate Gareth finally got his pipe bending machine down to his new garage, so it was time to do a cage. Did a bit of research and happily plundered the MSA Blue Book and Custom Cages website to choose a design that works for me

All the structural welding was done by Gareth, so I take no credit for that part of the cage construction, likewise he was the technical advisor, having done a few of these in the past

First order of the day was to make some boxes out of 3mm plate, to sit the main hoop legs on

The purpose of these was to allow the main hoop and front legs to be tacked together





Once the main hoops were bent and tacked together we then knocked the boxes out and dropped the main hoop to weld the top joints that sit up against the roof. Once the top welds were done, we reinstalled the boxes, welded them in and attached the main hoop legs as well




Wish I could weld as well as this with 2 hands, never mind one handed


Gareth doing his welding duties

Time then to link up the rear turrets to the cage and also a cross bar that will be used for the seat belts







Decided it would be a good idea to link up the front turrets as well, so I put the tubes through the front bulkhead and chopped them longitudinally, then plated the half tube and welded them to the strut cups.

Bit fiddly to do and I will still need to tidy up those side panels, as I have never been happy with them, but there should be plenty of strength in the old girl's front end now

While Gareth had his welder out, we put a couple of gussets on the link boxes


Put a wee gusset to tie the cage to the gearbox tunnel


Fitted the seat bars on the LHS, as initially this will be the side



I will set up the car for LHD use in this country. I plan to make the car ambidextrous, so that is is just a mater of undoing a few bolts and swapping a steering rack to change it from LHD to RHD, depending on what country I am in

Fitted the door bars after that, bloody fiddly to get right


One thing that made the whole exercise a lot easier was an £80 purchase from eBay in the form of a tube knotcher, made blood quick work out of the trimming and shaping of the tube ends





Used up 3 hole saws to install the whole cage, but reckon it saved a shed load of time.

Here is the largely finished cage, I trimmed the bottom of the dash so that we could get the cross bar as high up as possible to mount the steering column onto it.


The obligatory test session



So that was my week, bloody hard sweaty (36'C) work, took five, 9 hour days to get it all done. Big thanks to Gareth and Jason at a2b Garage & Motorsport here in Dubai

In for another hiatus until the next edition as finally getting to do my conversion onto the A380 next month, so Svetlana will have to languish in the shed untouched for a month or so.

[exboyracer]

Nice work there, cage looks good

[gareth]

looks good seems you took it to the rite place

[M11rf]

Nice work with the cage mate

[dangerousdave]

Great work neil, well worth the weeks work it looks great and a must have been much cheaper doing it yourself

Cant wait for the next update, not long til its in paint at this rate

[MK1_Oz]

Fan-blooming-tastic!

[Wessie]

coming along nicely

[dobuy]

Thanks lad's really appreciate the comments. Dave it sure did save a bit of money to say the least, but more importantly like all things to do with this car, I learned a lot. Really made me understand what a lot of work is involved in putting a cage in and that it is defo not a career I am aspiring to

Think I will keep it to once every 2 years or so

[sperrin44]

top class work great welding skills

[ExtraHot]

A1 cage dude
perfect joins & welds

[Pikey15]

She's looking brilliant mate All the best with the conversion to the A380.

[qcadta]

lookin good A380! the escort would pass as carry on baggage compared to that

[dobuy]

Well the A380 course is coming to an end, so a quick sneek out to the garage to do a few jobs. Firstly picked up a couple of kick/bulkhead panels from eBay for £20 each.



Never was happy with the look of my old patch up sides, so thought I would do them again





Lot happier with that now, here is the other side



Then Christmas came early, one of my mates Jason who is racing in the local Saloon car series here donated a set of discs and calipers from his Civic Type R, after doing an upgrade to even bigger ones
So one set of Brembo 295x28 discs...



With the bells removed (actually these are another mate, Spencer's old discs, which already had the bell removed)



Then after a bit of head scratching on offsets, I made up a quick and dirty, mock-up bell out of 2mm steel to try out positioning on the back of the Capri hub



Still a bit of clearance on the TRE, I reckon I can get about another 5mm out of the gap, which should be just enough to make a 7mm flat bell. Don't know if a 7mm flat bell is thick enough for strength, the original Brembo one is 7mm but of course it is bell shaped so may be stronger. Dunno, any thoughts



Here is the caliper (yes it is the wrong side for the arrow), looks pretty meaty



Looks like the brackets at the back should not be too much of a hassle, never done this before so a bit of a voyage of discovery



Fit nicely inside the wheels, think the caliper has to slide out a bit from the centre once mounted, but all looks like it will fit.



Piccie of wheel just in case you were wondering what it was.



So all in all looks like a very decent set of brakes, big thanks to Jason and Spencer for the donations to the cause

[dangerousdave]

Nice brakes and nice wheels

Flat bells are fine as far as i know, i have seen a couple around like it, and i think the ones my brother had made are flat too If you want more meat you could always go monster on them and have the disks fitting to the bells from the front, then you wouldnt need to take the hubs off to change the disks?

[MK1_Oz]

Your build has me drewling

Great work mate....well done

[merp0]

Nice cage

[Hoogi]

All looking

[PIG]

aint seen this thread for a while bud,you are still doing some stunning work on this real credit to you buddy.i had flat bells on my wilwoods on my mk2 and im pretty sure the ap bells on the new brakes are flat as well so i cant see that being a problem m8.as said lovely work so far

[Retromotorsport]

Does A2B want a fabricator ...

You'll soon be polishing the paint on this, keep up the hours