TRANSFORMED… IN ONE WEEKEND
We challenged the MX-5 Owners’ Club to work its magic on David’s Mazda Eunos Roadster at last weekend’s show. They agreed – but had they bitten off more than they could chew?
’Even the beefiest machine polishers couldn’t rescue the Mazda’s nose cone’
‘Errr, sorry about that boss. Maybe some tape’ll fix it?’
It was the day before the restoration show and with work well underway on this week’s bumper-sized CCW, I decided to treat my long-suffering Eunos to a professional clean before its appearance in the NEC’S halls. Unfortunately, a clumsily applied jet hose (despite prewarning my usual car cleaners to go easy on the soft-top) managed to blast through the stitching holding the bottom of the rear screen in place, leaving a semisoaked editor and yet another thing to add to NRX’S to-do list. Not a great start to the weekend...
Thankfully the sun shone the entire way from my place in Lincolnshire all the way to the NEC where it would be joined by a trio of first-generation MX-5S – Andrew Stott’s 1994 Tokyo Limited, Ian Mchattie’s 1989 1.6 and
Iain Fleming ’s (no, not that Ian Fleming) Eunos Roadster, plus the Ant Ansteadengineered Tipo 184, a single-seat thriller based upon bulletproof Mazda mechanicals.
I don’t mind admitting that my Eunos was by far the scruffiest car on the stand and that the club’s experts gave me a few quizzical looks as to how much they were actually going to be able to transform it.
The club’s north west and midlands coordinator, Marcus Ward, got to work examining the Eunos’ ailing cosmetics even before the show had officially opened its doors on Friday morning, initially going over every inch of its bodywork with a paint measuring gauge to find out where it was wearing its thinnest armour. This in itself was a fascinating insight into my own car’s hidden history – he believed that it had received remedial work on its rear wings at some point in the distant past. The gurus at MX-5 specialist Autolink were surprised to see it still sporting a set of numberplates sporting their logo, too and even remembered originally importing it from Japan nearly 25 years ago!
With the show well underway and the mechanical demonstrations focusing on Iain’s MKI next door, Marcus got to work on H521’s cosmetics, ably assisted by a steady stream of machine polishing pads supplied by fellow exhibitor
Autopaints Brighton (01273 326981). It quickly became apparent which areas couldn’t be tackled during the show and would need remedial work further down the line – in particular an area of mild discolouration on the boot lid (which Marcus reckons is down to water getting in through a small crack in the paintwork) and some areas of cracked lacquer on the edges of the hood assembly. The single biggest area that still needs attention is the nose, which, having been sentenced to seven years of hard labour scooping up dust and stones on various Simister adventures, was beyond rescue by even the beefiest
of machine polishers. Solving it will either involve a replacement nose cone section or a re-spray of the existing one; I’m leaning towards the latter because with the cone itself is still in good condition.
The club’s experts also remedied another niggle that I’ve been meaning to resolve on the Mazda over the last few weeks – the passenger door, which decided to stop working in conjunction with the central locking system during its visit to the Bicester Scramble (CCW, 23 February). Andrew Stott managed to strip out the passenger door card and traced the problem to a seized solenoid, which he successfully managed to free off while the Eunos was still on the stand.
Clearly, there’s still a lot to do on the Mazda – including a potential re-spray further down the line if I want to turn it into a show-stopper – but I was stunned at the results achieved by the club’s experts, which have taken away years of grime and left it with paintwork that I can now see my reflection in. While it’s still far from a concours example, which is down more to jobs that I still need to do, I am still in awe at how some expertly applied cosmetic magic has managed to transform the Mazda from being one of Britain’s scruffiest examples to one that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to leave at a show.
There is one big obstacle between then and now, of course – I was planning to replace the roof anyway but this job has now been punted a few increments up in terms of urgency on account of the jet hose incident. That’s another job for later this spring but for now a hastily taped-up roof is letting down the (beautifully polished) side.
It’s a big job, obviously, but one that should transform the car further still. Wallet braced and at the ready, then…