Hello all,
I’ve had my 5 for just over a week now, and I think I’m in love already! I had a Mk1 MR2 a while ago, and really missed having a car that makes any drive a bit more special.
The 5 is a 1997 UK car on an R plate, so quite a late one I believe. It’s had some work done on the sills (not the tidiest job in the world) but I’ve bought it to drive, not enter into concourse competitions! I made the most of the weather on Saturday, with a jaunt over to Welshpool, then back to Cheshire via Llangollen for lunch. I’ve had it sat on the drive all last week whilst I got rid of my other car, so it was a bit grumpy getting up for work this morning - quite a lot of tappet noise and ‘notchyness’ going on, but this soon stopped after a couple of minutes.
The car is on 78k miles, but has very little service history. I’d budgeted enough to get a well-sorted car, so I think I’m going to take it over to Paul Sheard in a couple of weeks for a possible cambelt (if it needs it) and a good once over. I should be able to tackle an oil change by myself, but not too sure about diff / gearbox oil, so I may get this done whilst it’s in.
It’s got a bit of a rowdy exhaust (pictured below), which I’m not too sure on yet. Looking at the back box it says IL Motorsport, no idea if this is a good piece of kit or not. Also has a K&N cone filter with some kind of home-made cold air snorkel thing below the front bumper. I’m not too sure on this either, so may remove the piping from below the bumper and hope it won’t make too much difference to the way it runs.
No plans for heavy modification, as I just want to enjoy driving it. I’ve got a new steering wheel on the way, and have replaced the blingy gear knob with a standard one sourced from eBay. I need to change the head unit, as it’s a tape deck (!), and I probably want to change the speakers too. I had the door cards off to grease up the window winders and the speakers have a sort of orangey coloured paper cone – does anyone know if these are the standard ones? They have no branding that I could see.
Enjoy the pics! (and if you see it, do excuse the duplicate post in another popular MX5 forum :-) )
Nick
