MX5 Fisher Fury build diary

David Elliston very splendidly suggested in an e-mail that I leave the weeds until they are taller because they will be easier to pull. (He's got his SVA on Friday so I hope he's out on the car too.) Beautiful day so get everything ready, the fuel filter I had belatedly remembered to order arrived, and of course one of the toilet cisterns starts overflowing. Once that was done (bodged) I wanted some things from the shed. And of course no one (self included) had tidied it so the Workmate was totally buried. At that point a rare moment of responsibility cut in so I emptied the shed, cleaned it, loaded a ton of stuff into the car and headed for the tip. By the time I had some lunch and got ready again it was 2.30pm!



Last night I made a cardboard template to cut the gearlever aperture from the tunnel top. I don't have a large enough hole saw so drilled a series of holes round a scribed circle, then joined them with a file and finished it off. Not too bad though I scratched some of the powder coat on some aluminium filings. Once in place with Clecko fasteners the handbrake opening needed relieving slightly, but otherwise OK.













Gearlever aperture















Once that was done I started looking at the fuel pipe runs, pump etc. The high pressure pump from Demon Tweeks looks great but of course there is no "in" or "out" and the terminals are merely marked + or -. The copper pipe and compression fitting that came with the Spridget tank give me about 0.75m of run. Neville suggests running the fuel lines down the side of the car but I really don't want pump, filter or lines anywhere near a potential impact. However I was concerned about the space in the tunnel down which the loom will have to go as well. After having a shot at running the piping round the drivers side and toying with putting the pump in the space below the additional side impact protection I had had fitted, I realised that I did not really have enough of the beautiful braided pipe to risk it. The cushioned P clips that came with it gave me an idea and in the end I've decided to mount the pump on the sub-frame Nev made for the tank, run a short flexible pipe to the filter which will sit in the area above the passenger side of the back axle, then run the feed pipe down one side of the tunnel tucking the pipes into the angle formed by the frame and cockpit inner side. As they are flexible and very robust this will work well. The pipe will then run along the pedal box and be fed up into the inlet manifold exactly as the standard MX5. The return will go along the opposite tunnel side.



You can see the round pump with rubber body and rubber P clips on the transverse fuel tank sub frame. The shiny pipe connected to the tank is the return.









At this point Catherine got back from a church meeting so I started packing up and then the boys returned from Castle Coombe. Alistair had wangled some free track time somehow and grumbled that the track was boring because it is totally flat and his engine does not have enough grunt to make the rest interesting. Poor him! At least it meant I had an MX5 to check that I'm putting the fuel lines in the right places. It was all so much easier in 1970 with an 848cc Mini, a simple carb etc.