More pics have been added!

There's still plenty of work to be done, even on a short budget. The stock exhaust will be going back under the car, the interior needs scrubbing out, body work needs finishing, rims need stripping/powder coated, and more... And all of that can be done without large cash outlays that the, suspension, roll cage, and seat/harness will take.

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10/5/05 - Well, had a little bit of time before sundown so I put the new inner and outer gear shift boots on. The old ones were cracked up & torn in muliple pieces! The little inner boot turned very brittle and dropped in the glass oil catching jar with a 'tink'. The shift turret was low on oil since the cracked up inner boot wasn't holding the oil in.

After getting the shift boots off the lever, I was in for a shock as everything was caked with crud. I picked up a turky baster at a local dollar store and used that to suck up all the old oil. Next I cleaned as much crud out of the shift lever and shift turret that I could and proceeded to fill the turret with new oil, stir it up, and clean it out. I did this 3 times to clean the turret out.

To reassemble, the new inner boot was installed on the shift lever, the turret filled with Mobil-1 75W-90, and the assembly bolted back in place on the turret. The new outer boot was bolted in place and the shift knob was put back on to finish it up. She shifts MUCH better now!

I also took the metal radio adapter (first time I've ever seen a metal one of those!) over to a friend's house and he cut an aluminum plate to fit inside it - he even beveled the edges!

(Nice friend, I need to take him and his wife out to dinner some time.)

I clamped it into the adapter and drilled a series of holes around it and riveted it to the adapter. I marked lines on it, drilled a starter hole, and used a nibbling tool to cut out the square holes to insert the DPDT, center-off, momentary switches for the windows.

I left room to put the emergency cut-off switch there as well as room for future switches. I would have done the wiring on the switches already except that using that nibbling tool left a nasty blister on the side of my finger that popped on the last dang squeeze of the tool. I'll leave out pics of the finger as there's enough gross stuff on the web already. Bleh.

10/17/05 - Hardtop has been purchased! While I wait for it to be delivered, Deb & Larry at OKMiata sold me a set of brackets to mount it in the car with. During the hardtop install I'll be pulling off all of the hardtop latch assemblies and selling them to recoup some funds.

10/19/05 While picking up the hardtop brackets at the OKMiata office during a quick business trip to Tulsa, I had to buy a new steering wheel. I needed one and had been looking around eBay, but you never know what the quality is on the cheap "tuner" type products. I like to know what I'm buying and since I'll be hanging on to this thing while driving, I wanted to get a nice one. They had 3 different models in stock and while I liked the price better on the leather one, the suede one just felt wonderful - very grippy.

Now to save some money for the adapter and quick release. The folks at OKMiata have a nice strong billet adapter and a very tight fitting quick release. No cheap tuner parts to be used here. You don't want to wreck when a cheap adapter bends or breaks or if the quick release has so much slop in it that it comes apart or breaks.

10/21/05 - The exhaust system under the car has been put back to stock... Cat has been left in the car to keep it street legal since I'll start out driving the car to/from the track until I get a way to haul it back and forth. The under car spare tire carrier has been removed and will be sold along with the custom exhaust to add to the car fund.

Hardtop is also in and on! The guy I bought it from helped me remove the soft top frame and also bought the old soft top from me. (It was still good except for a messed up back window) I haven't put the hardtop mounting kit from OKMiata in yet - that will have to wait until the roll cage is done. No sense in bolting it in just to have to unbolt it later.

10/23/05 - Finally got around to wiring up the switches for the power windows. There are 2 wires going to each motor. The power and ground connections are flipped to make the window go up & down so I picked up a couple of DPDT momentary, center off switches and wired them up. Window connections are in the middle on the switch and power/ground connections are flipped on the top & bottom connections on the switch.

All wiring is 16ga and the wires for power & ground were soldered, including the wires in the molex connector. The wires to the power window motors were 16ga and used crimp type insulated spade lugs.

Decided to strip a little more off of the car today so dug up under the dash and pulled out the airbag modules and the sensor under the hood by the latch.