Mark (smokey mow) Posted May 13, 2012 Share Posted May 13, 2012 As a follow on from the recent quest for more power thread and having spoken to Westfield and several owners at Stoneleigh it go me thinking, what upgrades would you like to be able to buy for the Mazda SDV's? And what would you have liked to have bought at the time of building the kit? For those with the more conventional modular build cars there's plenty of choice of parts and chassis tuning components but less so for the Mazda donors. I'm told that over 300 SDV kits have now been sold and with the growing interest in the MX5 as a donor from the locost builders and other kit manufacturers i'd expect there to be much more of a market for the right parts from Westfield than there has been previously. For me as an upgrade I would say... Wide-track front suspension Anti-roll bars front and rear And at the time of building I would have bought... A dedicated wiring loom Exhaust manifold Anything else? Brake upgrades? Fuel tanks that would allow us to use the FW rear? Dedicated induction kits? Propshafts? Lets have your ideas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darve Posted May 13, 2012 Share Posted May 13, 2012 at my early stages of the project...... tank so fw rear can fit wide track wiring loom arb (Simon mentioned when I was there they may be developing this as the market is growing) some sort of engine upgrade packages at different bhp levels I'm tiered so it's hard to think right now lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darve Posted May 13, 2012 Share Posted May 13, 2012 regarding the quest for more power thread, I've been in a lot of correspondence with a certain American company..........watch this space Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark (smokey mow) Posted May 13, 2012 Author Share Posted May 13, 2012 regarding the quest for more power thread, I've been in a lot of correspondence with a certain American company..........watch this space I shall expect a debriefing at lunchtime Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dommo Posted May 13, 2012 Share Posted May 13, 2012 Didn't I tick enough boxes on the options sheet?? More money could have been extracted from my wallet with: Exhaust manifold Shortened sump FW tank (though it would be a bit lower capacity than the standard tank if I recall) I've not driven it yet, so I won't comment on wide track or ARBs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanoecosse Posted May 13, 2012 Share Posted May 13, 2012 Definitely a wiring loom Mark. They supply one with the other kits, so why not the MX5 kits? The loom was the sh1ttiest, most drawn out part of the build for me without a doubt. Shortened sump should be in the kit no question as the MX5 sump is ridiculously low. A flat dash option from the factory would be good as there seems to be less than a 50% uptake on the curvy factory MX5 dash As for supplying a prop, thats probably a bad idea as we've seen from the numerous steering columns that they have supplied cut to the wrong length. Personally I'd like to just see them actually supplying a kit that didn't have numerous missing/wrong parts in it . Based on my experience with my MX5 kit, It seems every damn builder reported the same wrong parts ie rear wishbone bolts the wrong length, which was fed back to Westfield, yet they still continue to pump out kits with the same errors. Having had mine on the road for for 17 months now, I'm on the quest for more power and I'm very interested in going down the supercharger route. I've seen a blog from a guy building a Mev Sonic 7 who is fitting a supercharger from a Mini Cooper S to his MX5 engine. To assist me with my plan, I've recently bought a Cooper S as my daily runner which will enable me to take some critical measurements. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dommo Posted May 13, 2012 Share Posted May 13, 2012 To assist me with my plan, I've recently bought a Cooper S as my daily runner which will enable me to take some critical measurements. Now that's man logic at it's best Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KugaWestie Posted May 13, 2012 Share Posted May 13, 2012 From my perspective...... Things I would have definitely purchased before/during the build:- Wiring loom - a plug and play one would have been brilliant! Shortened sump and pick up pipe. Custom Air intake. Battery relocation pack to put the battery in front of the engine. Coolant Re-route. Things I think they could develop a market for:- Exhaust manifold and downpipe - with a further option to ceramic heat coat the manifold or upgrade to a stainless downpipe Front and rear ARB's Widetrack Brake upgrades What about a half hood? And of course - a supercharger, throttle bodies, ECU etc etc etc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KugaWestie Posted May 13, 2012 Share Posted May 13, 2012 I'm told that over 300 SDV kits have now been sold and with the growing interest in the MX5 as a donor from the locost builders and other kit manufacturers i'd expect there to be much more of a market for the right parts from Westfield than there has been previously. Over 300 kits sold? That not bad IMO, how long have they been selling them, approx 4 years? If so, thats an average of over 6 per month getting sold. I wonder how many of those 300 kits have been completed? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark (smokey mow) Posted May 13, 2012 Author Share Posted May 13, 2012 Over 300 kits sold? That not bad IMO, how long have they been selling them, approx 4 years? If so, thats an average of over 6 per month getting sold. I wonder how many of those 300 kits have been completed? Mine is a 2007 chassis, with a number in the 170's so at my guess manufactured within the first half of that year although sat for a long while at the factory and not bought by me until March 2008. The oldest i'm aware of were from the middle of 2006, and the main promotion and magazine articles weren't until The latter half of 2006. IIRC the Flyin Miata car was a 2006 chassis. http://www.pistonheads.com/roadtests/doc.asp?c=111&i=15484 http://www.evo.co.uk/carreviews/evocarreviews/202575/westfield_1600m.html 6 years in production, 300 sold, thats still a very impressive 4 per month Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mooch Posted May 13, 2012 Share Posted May 13, 2012 Custom Loom Shortened Sump & Pickup Flat Dash Option Those are the 3 that would have made me get the cheque book out again. 4 per month is pretty impressive. How does that compare to the number of non SDV SEiWs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark (smokey mow) Posted May 17, 2012 Author Share Posted May 17, 2012 When I started typing this I weasn't expecting to write quite so much, so appologies for the length The evening job is quiet for me tonight so I thought I’d bump this thread back up and do a little bit more research and fuel the debate. It's interesting to see that we've all got similar ideas about what we want and indeed there's a few things I'd forgotten. Some would be relatively easy for Westfield or another manufacturer to do for very little cost, and also other parts that may be available now that could bolt straight on or be easily modified to fit. ARB’s Starting with anti-roll bars, this is probably one of the easiest upgrades since there are already a few different companies making them for the different models. The biggest issue with fitting a front roll bar would be the standard Mazda airbox getting in the way. If this has been removed and an induction kit fitted (I’ll come onto them in a minute) as several of us have already done then any of the ARB’s available for standard track suspension should bolt straight on without modification. At the rear it’s slightly trickier (but certainly not impossible). The rear ARB’s normally mount with a piggy back bracket above the rear most upper suspension mounts, and with an SDV this wouldn’t need to be any different as the diff frames are inboard of these brackets. At the wishbone end the Westfield ARB’s are designed to attach to a clevis mount built in on the lower wishbone which the Mazda SDV doesn’t have. One option would be to weld a mounting plate to the wishbone as with the Playskool kit, or alternatively the Siltech roll bars have a bracket that clamps to the wishbone tubes and it looks like these would be suitable for our cars. Flat dash Another fairly easy upgrade, since someone wrote a wiring guide for it! But in seriousness this could be made even simpler for a builder by producing a couple of small extension looms. To my knowledge the pin out of the column switches and the instruments is the same on all the MX5’s from Mk1 right through to the Mk2.5, so with two extension looms (one for the dash and another for the clocks) that then plug or splice onto the Mazda loom it would be possible to fit the standard Westfield dash. The only other thing that would then be needed is a small bracket to rotate and relocate the upper steering column. Induction kit Dead easy to do and most of us already have, only two different kits would be needed for the different air flow meters. All the parts needed to make one are available already straight off the shelf. The ridged inlet hose needs some modification to weld on a couple of barbs for the cam cover breather and the idle valve, or alternatively like me you can use self-sealing hose take-offs in the silicone hoses. Widetrack So Wide track is where it starts to become more fun. This is the single most useful upgrade I’d personally like to see for the Mazda SDV, and I never could quite understand when designing a new car why it wasn’t developed with wide track from the outset? Obviously a combination of tooling costs and market demand is I’m sure the reason why it hasn’t been offered as yet. The design is simple enough; the laser cut parts already exist in the standard track wishbones so it’s only the wishbone tubes that would be a unique component. Wiring looms Oh yes please, if only. I think we’re almost unanimous on this one and I’d have quite happily handed over my hard earned to the parts guys to buy a bespoke loom and still would. I reality however I can see the loom as being the most difficult for any company to develop if retaining the standard ECU. Over the years there’s been about 7 different ECU’s for the Mk1-2.5 MX5’s not counting those with auto transmissions. Then there’s also the physical difference within the looms such as the Mk1 1.8 that came with both 3 and 4 pin coil packs. So potentially there could be in the region of 10 different looms. Oh how I wish It would be possible, but my engineers head is telling mew different Manifold and Sump I’ll discuss these together as the design philosophy would be the same for both. 1.8 isn’t interchangeable with 1.6 as the engines are different lengths, but there is interchangeablility throughout the years. The sump is something I’d forgotten about as it was so long since I had mine modified but it would be so useful to have been able to buy a bespoke one off the shelf, I notice that other kit manufacturers have mounted the engine a lot higher than WF to increase the available ground clearance. If there were a manifold available I’d buy one simply to loose the hateful S-pipe, since there isn’t anything off the shelf at the moment then I may end up taking my car to Powerspeed over the winter for them to make a new manifold and utilising the existing tub cut out. FW Tank The way I see it there’s a couple of options for this. If you’re not worried about having a boot box then a narrower tank would fit quite neatly behind the diff in the original ZK location, this would also give a reasonable fuel capacity. If a boot box is desirable then the tank would need to go above the diff between the diff frames, this would need to be about half and therefore half the capacity of the standard FW tank. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark (smokey mow) Posted May 17, 2012 Author Share Posted May 17, 2012 Personally I'd like to just see them actually supplying a kit that didn't have numerous missing/wrong parts in it . Based on my experience with my MX5 kit, It seems every damn builder reported the same wrong parts ie rear wishbone bolts the wrong length, which was fed back to Westfield, yet they still continue to pump out kits with the same errors. Dean, that's a fair comment and I agree entirely. There was a very comprehensive list of all the errors and omissions that were in the manual and the parts pick list over on the Westfieldmiata forum, but that resource now appears to have closed down? To keep this thread on topic I shall start another tread in the future where we can collate all our comments on this in one place as I think a list of comments/ errors etc in the manual would be very useful to others and just maybe we can also influence some chage for the better 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted May 17, 2012 Share Posted May 17, 2012 Mark, clamp on lower clevices are available from WF for cars like mine without the factory welded in mounting plates. Cost £40 ish plus the Vat mind, but easier than getting welded in plates done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark (smokey mow) Posted May 17, 2012 Author Share Posted May 17, 2012 Mark, clamp on lower clevices are available from WF for cars like mine without the factory welded in mounting plates. Cost £40 ish plus the Vat mind, but easier than getting welded in plates done. Thanks Gadget, that's good to know, I might have to see about borrowing a kit then to see if it will go straight on without any mods. If brackets are already available then there's a good chance it will Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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