Miata into Exocet Build thread!

[Gator Bait]

I'm extremely unimpressed with anything FM is doing. They are doing cheap swaps and in most cases aren't even cleaning off the sub frame.

My frame will be here Thursday.

Interesting. Having just spent a half day in their shop, I can tell you the cars they were doing swaps on in the shop were spotless as was Bert. Did you have a bad experience? Luckily my experience was great and I personally wouldn't hesitate to use them for anything I didn't want to take on myself. I will enjoy watching both these home grown builds though. Always fun to see how each enthusiast solves various problems that arise during the course of a build.

[jeff_man]

Looking at there build stuff before I even ordered my frame I was not impressed. They all look lazy as in they just stripped a car as fast as they could and dropped the frame on. Don't really want to talk about it publicly as a lot of what everyone is doing wrong on the Exocets I'm in work with some people to make some exocet designed upgraded that FM would already have on the market after 1.5 years if they cared. They also are not racing them so maybe they are contents with ok instead of amazing.

[Bluegs03]

Ah. I was thinking of the geometry of those tabs in a stock Miata in relation to a stock seat. It looks like your geometry is okay. Sorry about that. Just looking out for you.

Cwisenheimer, thanks for looking out. To be honest this is my first complete build. Ive done engines, Ive done suspensions and brakes and most everything. Working as a pusdo mechanic for 3 years will do that. But I haven't basically started from scratch where you have the huge range of choices to make that you do with this project. I mean its tiny things like you have to choose mirrors, then choose where you want to mount them tailored to your best visibility. Then there's brake lines, do you recreate the factory supports or do you use all new lines fittings etc. Plus with the seat belts being about safety (one thing im very big on) I want as many opinions as possible.

Jeff_man super excited to follow your build, Im looking forward to seeing how it goes! One thing I ask is when your disassembling the donor car can you check the bottom of the fuze box. Does it have 2 white plugs going into it? If so where is the smaller white plug attached too. I cant seem to find it anywhere in my harness.

[Sharpie]

Looking at there build stuff before I even ordered my frame I was not impressed. They all look lazy as in they just stripped a car as fast as they could and dropped the frame on. Don't really want to talk about it publicly as a lot of what everyone is doing wrong on the Exocets I'm in work with some people to make some exocet designed upgraded that FM would already have on the market after 1.5 years if they cared. They also are not racing them so maybe they are contents with ok instead of amazing.

Looks like Jeff-man's editor got fired again. Just kidding Buddy.

[Bluegs03]

Well, ive been busy. Between my hours being cut at work (sucks), and a few other things I found alot of free time on my hands. I cranked the music and went to work on the kit. I'm still not happy with the way the seat is mounted I might have to buy a different seat adapter. Aka one alot less complicated than this one. But we shall see for now it will do as all im trying to do is get the car ready to start.

I cut down the fuel filler neck to better fit the chassis and secured it the best i can for now. I got all the grounds drilled and attached to the frame as well. I secured the fuel lines to the bottom of the car and made sure all was attached and no pinched lines. I got the midpipe on the exhaust header for the rear 02 sensor, so that will work when i try and start it. I also went through and connected every single connector that I could find in the car. This sounds easy but it required lifting and replacing the harness multiple times to ensure all the wires were not stretched tight and risk breaking a wire or 2. Then of course I discovered a few torn intake elbows a broken ground strap from trans to frame and other things that required fixing.

Oh oh oh! I also found out that the plug i was worried about on the bottom of the fuze box is not used at all. Stupid me, I pulled the tabs apart on the fuze box to get a better look and there are no wires or fuses running to that plug it is completely empty. There arent even pins in there for wires to connect too. So that answers my big mystery of where that plug went.

Sadly there isnt much for pictures to show besides a growing mass of wires and increasingly dirty parts as my grubby fingers spread the grime around. Next up though is trying to start the damn thing, there will be a video and I am hopeful that it might even run. Although there is a real chance I missed something, I'm just hoping for something to not explode! Wish me luck, we are getting really really close to the "its time to drive the damn thing" stage!!!!!


Heres a pic showing that nothing is attached to the mystery plug, I was worried for nothing!


This is the fuel filler neck that I modified, the idea being that it is still inside the roll protection if needed, hopefully I will never need to test that! It turned out blurry probably because it was so fricken hot outside the camera was fogging



Finally here she is all ready for the big first start (hopefully) nothing is in its final place I just attached things to see if it will start! I might need to adjust toe a bit before I drive haha!

[MoonieGT]

Leave the alignment. You can run ovals with it. Looks like it wants to go left, why fight it?

[Bluegs03]

Leave the alignment. You can run ovals with it. Looks like it wants to go left, why fight it?

haha true, put a stock car body on it and you have yourself a mini nascar car.

I hope its okay, I put together a small video of trying to start it for the first time. I've never shown my face online so I guess its first time for everything today. Also excuse the intro its not that long and we get to the good stuff in a bit.
http://vid84.photobucket.com/albums/...pse58c3b92.mp4

[general default]

enjoy your car.

[CosmosMpower]

What do these things weigh completed?

[OZMDD]

Anywhere from 1200-1700 lbs.

[effse7en]

It lives, awesome!

[jeff_man]

What did you to with the tub? I can have a junk yard come haul it off for free as they are going to use it for $50 in scrap metal but they make you sign over the title. I need to keep the title and vin for registering the new car as a "kit" car to avoid registering it as a 2014/15 with 14/15 emotion requirement.

Took 2 people 9 lazy hours to get the tub stripped. How long did it take you?

[Bluegs03]

Hey grats Jeff_man! your most of the way there already just make sure to label everything, although you wont have the 6 month wait between dis-assembly and reassembling the kit. i think a lift like you had would of significantly sped up the process but I wasnt in any hurry as the kit wasnt even made yet. I dont know the exact time, but I think it took somewhere around a week? I also completely disassembled it as you see in the pictures aka everything possible unbolted from the car. For the shell, I actually sold it to a gentleman in Oklahoma. I have no clue where it is now as I think his plans for it didnt work out. Either way I got the keep the title which im hoping will assist me in the registering part of the process.

So first off I had a confession to make, I can make really really stupid decisions on occasion. Shortly after getting the car running a stupid decision was made. I decided to snip off the extra wiring connectors that weren't being used anymore. Assuming that this would be harmless because they dead end into an empty connector. Somehow in doing this I have messed up the wiring harness pretty badly. The instrument cluster no longer works except for turnsignals and high beams. Ive spent a week going over every single wire to and from the wiring harness. No luck in fixing it, ive pulled all the wiring diagrams which would be useful if the harness had not been messed with before. Unfortunately I found far too many non oem splices with crimps and electrical tape for my liking. Someone has been deep inside this harness. Now alot of the wire colors dont match, which is driving me crazy.

I figure I can bash my head against this over and over or suck it up and buy a new harness for $185 from mazda nissan heaven. They have a 2001 harness which should work with all of my sensors etc. Its still incredibly frustrating as I have no one to blame besides myself. At this point it could have been nothing more than me moving the harness around caused a wire crimp to detach who knows. Still an unneeded setback.

Couple that with being sick for the past week with the local virus which is making the rounds at work and I have been very unproductive. Also unmotivated, hopefully taking a break from the project ill find the joy in working on it and less cursing. Ill update it when I have a solution and have made progress on the kit.

Oh and cosmospower im shooting for a nice even 1500lbs completed with a nice even 150 hp to the wheels. Should be fun hehe! That is after the megasquirt tuning of course!

[Titus]

Unfortunately I found far too many non oem splices with crimps and electrical tape for my liking. Someone has been deep inside this harness.

Believe it or not, those may in fact be OEM.

[pepperinyoureye]

Any updates on the build Jackson?

[Bluegs03]

Any updates on the build Jackson?

Ive gotten alot done but not much to show mainly 2 steps back 1 step forward type of stuff, life hit me like a ton of bricks when they sliced my hours in half at work. Ive been focusing on more important decisions for the present time, but thanks for the interest. Things are starting to stabilize so I should have a driving car here in a month or two. Hopefully

[Bluegs03]

Well for those who know me or have met me, this probably doesn't come as a surprise. I am most often my own worst enemy, much to my dismay. Its funny how easy a project can seem when you are thinking about it but its much different when your actually doing it. All these custom brackets and stuff are things I never accounted for when planning the kit. I figured of course they would have radiator brackets included which work with a nb radiator (they only work with a na radiator) Of course they have a bracket to install the instrument cluster (they dont), of course they have all the attachment points for a nb gas tank (its for a na gas tank and only 3 of the holes line up in a nb) etc etc etc.

For instance because the steering wheel shaft wasn't long enough so, I ground off the nubs at the back of the brake/gas pedal. This gave me the half an inch I needed to make the steering fit. Of course this meant that the brake pedal was pressed in half an inch and due to the lever point this equated to the pedal being pressed down half way. I think you can see the problem now. When bleeding the brakes I ran into the issue that I couldn't get the brake pedal to return far enough to draw the air out. Thus the brakes were perpetually stuck on... After much head scratching, I realized there was no other way and tore the whole thing out. Then I took the steering shaft, clamped it too my workbench and beat on the collapsible shaft until it was back to oem length. As I have said the donor vehicle was in an accident. This had compressed the steering shaft to the point where it wasnt long enough to reach. This meant of course that everything had to be redone again. With it moved half an inch farther forward the throttle cable had to be readjusted, then the seat, then the ebrake handle. I think you see where im going with this.

Then another week was wasted messing with the seat trying to get it in to the right position. As it sits because of the tunnel slope It is angled slightly which is making the entire seat move towards the outside of the car. I still dont have a good solution to this and will see how annoying it is when driving, for now I just want to drive the damn thing.

I got the battery bolted in and secured, with only minimal difficulty.

The main time sink in the project came when I realized I would need a bracket to hold the instrument cluster in place. After 4-5 failed attempts I welded together something that works and puts it directly below the top of the steering wheel rim. The other efforts had it farther back but the rim of the steering wheel was blocking some of the tach and speedometer. Then yet more custom brackets to fix the plastic hood to the top of the cluster to make it look pretty.

Oh and remember that awful wiring harness problem I had? No? Well it was awful and I had no idea what was causing it. Turns out it was my worst enemy again, myself. I somehow damaged the circuit board on the back installing and removing it all those times. A quick patch to the tune of $40 (such a ripoff) at a cellphone repair shop and I had a working cluster. Plus I now have an extra wiring harness to strip down to the bare minimum in all my extensive free time!

Then came the final straw so to speak, After bleeding the rear brakes correctly this time, I noticed something strange on the lower plexiglass covers, they didnt look right. Upon closer inspection I realized that somehow I had cracked the rear end of them in several places. Just touching them caused a huge chunk to break off the top. When installing these I put too much of a gap between the round tube and the plexiglass. So when I lowered the car onto the jack stands it was pressing against the plexiglass and not the jacking points. They were never designed to hold 300 lbs of frame so they cracked. This is what caused the month long break from the project as I decided I needed a break since I'm doing more harm than good working on this. I have an email into exomotive inquiring how much 2 new lower plexiglass covers are, if I can even get them. Hopefully they will take pity on me and cut me a deal. This doesnt stop me from driving the car but is so frustrating as the only person to blame is myself.

Fear not though because time heals all wounds and I am ready to pursue the project once again. Hopefully, most of the problems have arisen and been fixed. (ya right...) The goal is to get the car driving down the driveway by the end of next month so stay tuned.

Here are some pictures of the carnage, because everyone loves pictures! Plus no ones going to read that without some pictures at the bottom!

harder to see in this one but its cracked in the top right

[jeff_man]

Just to let you know... You are lucky you are doing a straight swap with no real custom parts. I have ran in to countless issues and spent 1/2 of the total build time fabricating parts or working around Exomotives poor design decisions.

[Bluegs03]

Just to let you know... You are lucky you are doing a straight swap with no real custom parts. I have ran in to countless issues and spent 1/2 of the total build time fabricating parts or working around Exomotives poor design decisions.

God tell me about it... I spent 3 hours today trying to get the seats in a position where they arent pointed toe out because of how the tunnel is shaped. I would of been done 5 months ago if half of the things im running into wouldnt of been designed that way. These things have worse seat clearance than a miata. The rear tire clearance is laughable, you need a 0 offset to run a 15x8 etc. Gas tanks only work if its an NA other wise fab your own brackets. Steering column mount is offset too far to the outside of the car so another custom mount to realign it. As you can probably guess I took a few months off to try and be less fed up with progress etc. I can only imagine how bad it would be if there were custom parts involved. Anyway rant over.

Im sure exomotive had good intentions on designing it the way it is. Overall its still a hell of a value for a kit car, its just alot more work than I had anticipated putting into it. If I had too start over would I do it again... maybe? I'm reserving judgement till I get to drive this thing in anger and not just up and down the street.