Very Early Eunos 1.6

[goodwoodmx5]

I run Goodwood Sportscars and I’m constantly looking for cars for stock and thought there may be a profit to be made on this rather interesting Mazda Eunos 1.6. I acquired this a few months ago and what caught my eye was the chassis number which showed that it was very early indeed, in fact perhaps the 3rd or 4th oldest known Eunos in the UK. (Chassis number is NA6CE100113).

Its finished in Mariner Blue (my favourite colour) and looks pretty well unmolested. Closer inspection showed that it had all of the correct features that appeared only on the very earliest cars such as the smooth dif casing, single hole in the under-bonnet slam panel and the gloss black hood catches. Its covered around 180,000km, has a huge box full of receipts and paperwork and it drives just beautifully. I quickly decided that I really didn’t want to sell this one and as my daily driver was currently having its engine and gearbox removed as part of a major overhaul, I thought I’d use this one as my daily for a while.

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I’ve got to say that this is just brilliant to drive. I’ve probably had 1500+ MX5s through my hands over the years but this one just seemed to sum up why they can be so good to drive. Its not fast but its so satisfying to drive; beautifully weighted steering and incredibly precise handling and with an engine that loves to rev. I immediately replaced the rubbish stereo with one that has Bluetooth etc, dug out a good set of original Eunos carpet mats and carried out a small service (spark plugs, plug leads, oil filter etc).

The more I used it and looked it over, the more I realised how good it was. The problem I now have is that I don’t actually need it. This is the car enthusiast’s recurring problem: we just can’t be satisfied owning one car; why own just one example of an MX5 when you can own lots!
My daily driver is back and is driving better than ever (its a Porsche 996) and I have at least three other MX5s/Eunos plus a Boxster S, which all demand attention. ButI know if I sell it, I’ll regret it. I have therefore decided to start tackling some of the jobs that had appeared and I’ll work out what to do with the car later.

I’ll post a few photos and updates as we go along. Despite running a car sales business, I’m not a mechanic and anything I have learned about repairing cars has been done by trial and error over the years. Most of the cars I deal with are Mazdas so I’m quite good at tackling the usual MX5 problems. It means that some of the stuff you see here might not be the textbook way of how to carry out a repair but I usually get there in the end (or pay someone else to do it!)

[Zed.]

any more photo's?

the really early cars differ massively to the later builds - dash clusters, wiper motors, antiroll bar thicknesses and exhausts were altered in the first year of production as well as the diff case / slam-pannel & catch colours

theres legend of early cars having either aluminium doors or aluminium door-skins on steel frames but I've yet to see this in the wild

I've a feb 90 Eunos that I'm slowly gathering parts to restore to standard (one of the lasy 'early' single-hole slampanel / central-pointing wipermotor cars )


Rich.

[goodwoodmx5]

The first job was purely cosmetic but I really detest a dirty engine bay. For this one, I used a simple degreaser, worked in with a paintbrush and careful rinsed off. Its not perfect but its a lot better. This highlighted a problem that I hoped was just a figment of my imagination: I had an oil leak.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a simple cam cover gasket or the usual cam sensor ‘O’ ring issue. No this was a proper big oil leak, dripping all over the place and it was coming from the front crankshaft seal. And remember that this car has the short nose crank engine so I really wanted to make sure that I was extra careful when replacing the seal. In reality, its not any different to the usual seal replacement though you must – MUST – use a new crank bolt. And of course, if you’re going to the trouble of replacing the oil seal, it makes sense to replace the timing belt and tensioners along with the water pump. I started ordering the various parts required, ready for a bigger job than I had planned on doing.

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[Mazda Mender]

The first job was purely cosmetic but I really detest a dirty engine bay. For this one, I used a simple degreaser, worked in with a paintbrush and careful rinsed off. Its not perfect but its a lot better. This highlighted a problem that I hoped was just a figment of my imagination: I had an oil leak.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a simple cam cover gasket or the usual cam sensor ‘O’ ring issue. No this was a proper big oil leak, dripping all over the place and it was coming from the front crankshaft seal. And remember that this car has the short nose crank engine so I really wanted to make sure that I was extra careful when replacing the seal. In reality, its not any different to the usual seal replacement though you must – MUST – use a new crank bolt. And of course, if you’re going to the trouble of replacing the oil seal, it makes sense to replace the timing belt and tensioners along with the water pump. I started ordering the various parts required, ready for a bigger job than I had planned on doing.

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I must add that it is "very important " to re torque the SNC bolt back up to the lesser torque settings and and apply heavy duty thread lock, other wise you will hit issues, on the oil ,crud side of things, yes that is a major weep of oil from the crank, but i would also check the cam seals as they will be of the same age and dry , get the jizza clean on it Ste, just been through that myself over the weekend, nothing worse than trying to sort and correct everything with thick oil and dirt everywhere..
M-m

[goodwoodmx5]

Yes got all cleaned to a reasonably ok standard in the end though the sheer amount of mucky oil that had spread all over the lower engine took some shifting. I also cleaned the various timing belt covers, gave the cam cover a minor clean and painted the water pump pulley. And you're right, the cam cover seal (though not leaking) was past its best and the Cam sensor 'O' ring was rock hard too - that was definitely leaking. Both were replaced.

I torqued the crank bolt to the lower setting and used Loctite. I have also marked the bolt with a corresponding mark on the pulley so if by any chance it moves position, it will be easy to spot.

In the end it was all pretty straight forward. Apart from replacing the obvious stuff, I flushed out the cooling system and in particular, the radiator, replaced the thermostat, replaced the radiator top hose and finally reset the ignition timing. It started perfectly first time which is always a relief.

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[goodwoodmx5]

The oil leak job turned out to be straight forward if a bit messy and a lot more involved than I had hoped. I ended up replacing a few more parts including a new lambda sensor but the car ran very nicely. Next job on the list was to replace the ageing tyres. These were 'Tigars' and were so old that they pre-dated the system of date stamping the sidewall of the tyre. They had 'Made in Yugoslavia' on the side; thats very worrying because Yugoslavia ceased to exist many years ago. Some say this happened in 2003 though other reckon it was actually 1993. Whichever you choose, these tyres are VERY old and were appalling, especially in the wet. My favourite choice of tyre for everyday use are Uniroyal Rainsports and these are not that expensive either (around £45 each including fitting). Fitting these made a big difference.

Finally the car was approaching the condition and state that I wanted - well serviced, quite standard and lovely to drive. But there was still the issue that I mentioned in my first post: I loved the car but simply didn't actually need it. It was also too nice to use over winter as a daily driver. My daily is a Porsche 911 complete with four wheel drive, perfect for our rubbish Northumberland roads in the winter and I tend to jump into that whenever I need to go anywhere. While I was mulling this one over, someone made me a very good offer to buy it and I very reluctantly I accepted. The chap who wanted it will be able to look after really well and really seemed to appreciate the car. Again this may be one that I regret selling.

And funnily enough this brings me on to the next project, a Eunos I sold back in 2013 and immediately regretted selling. In fact I bought it back again in 2016 - only to sell it again - and of course, I regretted selling it all over again. See: there's a pattern here. Part of this is down to years working in the mainstream motor trade where I got to drive many new cars every week, never getting the chance to get attached to anything and getting bored very quickly. I have owned hundreds of cars over the years (and maybe thousands) but rarely keep anything. As I've got older, this has improved a bit: I bought a 5 year old Porsche Boxster 3.2 S back in 2006 and have owned this ever since and still love it. I drive it regularly and its now covered 130k+ miles.

I have to have a good reason to own something so having the chance to buy back a car I have owned twice before - and regretted selling both times - was a good enough reason to buy it back again. But thats a different story that deserves its own thread...[img]

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