Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

Charcoal canister delete and washer bottle relocation I approve, but I reckon you'll miss air con. If I didn't have a throttle bodied car I'd car I wouldn't have gotten rid of air con. I technically shouldn't have power steering either as it's a parasitic draw on throttle response.

Track was good, it was good to shakedown the car.

We discovered the steering rack is not centred on the car so I couldn't get a proper alignment done. The drive to Wales was sketchy AF, the wheels had no alignment at all, my new proper semi slicks hadn't seated on the rim properly so I had to stop at every services to top up one of the tyres (luckily the other 3 got hot enough to pop on), it was chucking it down, so as well as wandering all over the road the steering wheel was immensely grabby as each front tyre independently did a micro aquaplane, and I had to also keep adjusting the tension of the throttle cable because it would either stick open at WOT (terrifying) or be too slow to return.

Kwik Fit in Bridgend managed to get the front wheels vaguely pointing in the right direction after discovering the steering rack issue, so I headed back to the track to try out the brakes which had been iffy so far.

Even with all the issues, the car was massively capable. Jumping kerbs seated the last tyre, but I was getting heavy scrubbage on the front right when cornering hard into "Bus Stop". I didn't want to harden the suspension any more because it was on the verge of getting skittish and I was getting some understeer but inflating the rears some more helped that right out and I was able to properly steer the car with the throttle mid corner.

It took me about 10 laps to get into the groove of the car, and then it was just back like it used to be, it felt the same, but different. It took me about 20 laps to remember how to change gear from 2nd to 3rd quickly, but once I got the hang of that again it wasn't an issue. Unfortunately I ripped the upper shift boot in the process, so don't buy a Jass Performance shift boot, I had to modify when it was new to get it to fit, and according to the service/modification schedule I keep, it's lasted approximately 1,000 miles. Given that it's more expensive than an OEM part which should last about 50,000 miles, it's a bag of shit.

I am reluctant to roll my arches to accommodate the 8" wide, low offset wheels, as the car is so original and mint, but it may be inevitable. Now I've had a taste of how close I can get to a sorted forced induction MX5 on track, I'm too competitive to take a step backwards with narrower wheels.

Oh the brakes finally came alive on track, the Carbotechs that were on the car when it was sitting still for 7 months were dead, in terms of meat on the backing plate, they looked brand new, but they had "gone off" and just wouldn't grip the discs at all. So on the Thursday when I picked the car up, we swapped them for brand new EBC Yellow Stuff pads which Skuzzle Motorsport had on the shelf, they didn't really do much either at first, but I drove home riding the brakes with my left foot and dragging the handbrake at times, and repeated that the day after on the way to Wales. As soon as I'd done a few laps on track, the hard braking got the Nitrac grooved discs and Yellow Stuff pads properly up to temp and I think it wiped off the old Carbotech deposits and transferred a decent amount of Yellow Stuff onto the discs really improving bite and feel. The pedal has gone a tiny bit longer after the weekend so a bleed is required, plus the initial bite is still quite hard so I'm wondering if there's a vacuum/servo issue.