In the meantime
So, about 1.5 weeks after the previous post, things moved forward again this weekend. After the car was towed to the workshop on Monday (10.02.), as previously mentioned, the decision was more or less made on Friday (14.02.) to have the engine prepared for installation by SPS Motorsport to keep everything on schedule for the first race.
With that, my decision was also implicitly made: I'm taking the red and black NC and competing in the Roadster Challenge!
Unfortunately, the parts for the dry sump conversion from England are taking longer to arrive, so we couldn’t start installing the engine this weekend. However, it should be ready to go next week.
Aside from that, we realized that having two MX-5 NC1s makes it quite tricky to differentiate them in conversations. That’s why the question of a name for the red and black NC came up—after all, my gray NC is already named Helena. Since we kept referring to the red and black one as 'Erik’s NC,' the name 'Erika' naturally stuck.
Making it pretty
Since the engine isn’t ready yet, I spent this weekend focusing more on appearance than performance 😉. So, I started by removing the old sponsor logos from Erika. That took quite a bit of time, as there were also some small and intricate lettering decals. I only managed to finish everything by Sunday. Unfortunately, removing the adhesive residues affected the paint in some areas, so it will probably need to be polished again. But since Erika is a race car, that’s not exactly the highest priority!
After that, I at least rinsed Erika off with water. It was definitely necessary since, after sitting for so long, she looked more gray than black.
Assessment
This also gave me the chance to finally take some decent photos of the NC. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that Erika still can’t be pushed properly, despite my desperate attempts. Nevertheless, we somehow managed to get her out of the workshop and back in again.
This gave us another opportunity to check out Erika in daylight. Since the seat is currently fixed in place and I can only just touch the brake pedal with my big toe, we decided to remove it. Over the next few weeks, I'll need to make some modifications, likely with rails instead of a fixed mounting. This is because we currently suspect that, with the helmet on, I won't be able to get out of the car, as in my optimal sitting position, the sides of the seat are very close to the A-pillar.
"Additionally, we discovered that the bowden cable from the external main disconnect switch is stuck."
So, things are never boring. But hopefully, next week we can finally continue with the engine installation.