Momo?

Got a steering wheel cover yesterday at Autobacs. Stepped into the place as it was on the way to where i was headed, and decided to pick up some air freshener that I've been putting off. So this was a totally impulse purchase.

I don't think its even made by Momo, seeing that there were Manchester United as well as Liverpool variants as well, but the quality wasn't too bad(for the money), and it kinda looked the part too. More pictures below.

I'm just glad that this makes the steering wheel nicer to hold as I'm not particularly fond of racing wheels that takes away the airbag.

Shoot!

The month of march began with a photoshoot. Apparently a local automobile magazine wanted to do a shoot of my car.

The pro getting everything set up.

Here's a shot of the shoot in progress.

You know the guy's a pro in the automotive photography business when he drives the stuff. Take a look at the guy's ride.

It looks ordinary from this shot, but on closer inspection, the landrover's got a fully functional winch, lockheed martin brakes and a wicked suspension, among other things. The car's even equipped to cross rivers. The air intake was the first thing that caught my eye.

In any case, the article will mostly focus on my sound system setup. I haven't had much engine mods, so I think the editor will be hard-pressed to come up with stuff about the car itself. I don't even know how comprehensive the article will be though, perhaps it might just be a tiny column.~shrugs~

I tried to take a nice shot while the photographer was busy, and this is one that i liked best. I've always had side or frontal shots so its not often i tried to take a picture from the rear.

Blitz

I had been pondering getting this for the longest time, and I thought today was a good day.

The Blitz Power Meter i-Color Flash. Its basically a diagnostic display device pretty much similar to the older Apex'i RSM, although this installs in seconds and requires no wire splicing, unlike the older RSMs. I wouldn't go into what the device can display since its all here. There's even a whole PDF document over here that goes into specifics.

Anyway, here are some actual pictures in-car.

Now I'm not exactly sure if a position as low as this is a good one. It could be a bit too low for my liking, although I kinda like this setup. I'll drive around with this for a while to see how it goes. My next alternative location is right next to the wiper stalk, on the air-con ball vents.

Night view. Minor quirk. The blue doesn't really blend in well with the red and white interior of the NC.

Close up of the device. I've gotten it to show 6 parameters.

You can do further customizations of the view, such as colours, warning tones, background, etc. I think its quite a neat device, although it costed me a pretty penny. But since my suspension seems to be in limbo at the moment, I guess I won't be spending any mod money in a while.

Bling Bling

Had something totally beng/chav/rice done over the week. I've always liked the look of the latest GTR R35, especially those little LEDs on the front bumper collectively know as the HyperLED edition. Not hard to see why.

The GTR is a handsome car and I'll probably go for one when I can afford it. Hopefully this will happen in the next 5 years? But i digress....

As I was saying about the LEDs, here's what I've come up with.

3 superbright LEDs on each side of the Au-tobahn lip. On closer inspection, these are even brighter than the GTR equivalent although the finishing is not quite up to scratch since its a put-together part.

Didnt really take daytime shots, but suffice to say its quite a discrete look. The whole car looks more "aggressive" only in the dark but I guess I am not capturing that look as much as I would liked with my puny cellphone cam. I'll probably come up with better pics when I have time. Been raining quite a bit lately, so the mood to take pictures gets dampened somewhat as well.

Still Bouncing

Had military service the last 2 weeks and was unable to make any entries. Nothing much happening, although i received some bad news from my workshop. There were some complications in bringing in the JIC suspension. Turns out my workshop gets their stuff from Japan and JIC specifically released their NC coils to the US market ONLY. So the local agent is "restricted" from selling it here. Its all very strange if you ask me, since you can clearly see the NC available in Japan if you go to the Japanese JIC webpage.~shrugs~

So now the only way for me to get JICs would be to purchase online from US dealers. I'm not comfortable with online options for something like suspensions, since I'm not exactly a super techie guy and I need the assurance of someone in the event something breaks down or if servicing is required. Buying online would be tricky in the unlucky event of a lemon. So now its back to the drawing board. Same old choices now, KW, Tein, HKS. I guess its going to be a while before my car corners properly. =(

Breathing

Fixed up the air intake yesterday. Took me more than an hour. Well, the actual install actually took at most 30 minutes, even for a layman like me. The reason why I went overtime was because I couldn't figure out how the heck did everyone fit the filter so nicely. Look at mine.

The filter element is a little to the left than it should be. Its not lined up with the intake hole in the bumper at all. Its kinda hard to twist the flexitube onto the mouth of the filter element. I took everything out twice, but no go. End result still looks the same. And I was sure I wasn't missing out any important steps. And the weird thing is, if you look at the spacing of the tubing leading towards the intake, it sure seems like it was meant to be in that direction. There doesn't seem to be enough wiggle space to "shift" the intake to the right.

The fitting of the silicon tubing to the MAF sensor adaptor doesn't look fantastic too. If you look closely, there is a slight gap, even though I've fastened everything tightly. But then again, it could be me doing a shoddy job. ~shrugs~

I refitted the intake again after taking these pictures, so now the filter element is a little bit closer to the intake, though not by much.

Initial impressions on driving; throttle response did seem a little bit better, though it could be a placebo effect for all I know. I've only driven about 100km or so on the new intake so I'll see how it goes once the ECU gets used to the intake. As for the sound level, I was surprised by how quiet the intake is, I was expecting something similar to the suction sound from the Apex'i cone, since the K&N element basically looks like a smaller version of the Apex'i. There isn't much induction noise from the intake, in fact, you've got to concentrate to hear the sound the intake is making, which is a good thing in my book.

More carbon

Had the eyelids fixed up yesterday. I thought I'll just go with the carbon look first and in the event I feel body-coloured is the way to go, I'll just take them off and spray them. Here's a look at the eyelids before fitment.

Looks kind of thick but that was the effect I was hoping for.

Here are some pictures of the eyelids fitted on the headlamps. Didn't occur to me to take any night shots with the HIDs on. Maybe I'll do that in a later post.

Top view.

Frontal view.

Full frontal view

Nice top-down shot. I like this shot.

These are a continuation of my interior sticker mod. I was tinkering with the idea of converting the glossy piano black trim to the same look. But on second thought, I figured it would be too "carbon overkill"

starts from the left....

all the way to the right...

Apollo

The Apollo intake is in. It took about a week, which is amazing fast, considering the billet grille I ordered previously took about 2 weeks to show up. Looks like I'll be getting stuff from mx5parts again. Anyway here are some pictures of the kit.

Quite a big box. On hindsight, it looks like a belated Christmas present to myself. The packaging was so well done that it was a pain to unwrap.

tada!

Comes with everything you see here. The colour copy of K&N's fitment instructions is rather helpful. Doesn't seem too hard to fix, I had a look through the steps and its rather straight-forward. I think a normal person would probably take about 30-45minutes to install this, a hour if you're anal about where everything holds up within the engine bay.

Here's a close-up of the filter element. Has a glossy black finish. Not too sure how long this will hold up in the engine bay but for now, it does look nice.

I also ordered some eyelids. These were more or less purchased on a whim. I'm not even sure if I'll fit them up but we'll see.

The PITA to unwrap box.

Front of the box. You can see a big I.L Motorsports right there. I can never understand why I.L's products are cheaper everywhere EXCEPT on I.L motorsport's website.

I must admit the packaging does looks rather professional. It almost seems as though they sell tons of these everyday. And yep, everything is in German.

A template is included as well, which is nice, but I don't think people actually use that. The instructions also recommends removal of the bumper for fitment, which is probably overkill as well. Mx5parts still included a translated copy of these instructions though, which is a nice touch, I suppose. I'm not sure if I should paint them in galaxy-grey, or if the 3M carbon sticker thing I had for the steering wheel would be a better idea. I'm leaning towards the latter though. Of course, that is if I do decide to fit them.

Breathe

First entry of the new year!

It has been a turbulent year for most, with the financial markets in the state they're in, and banks crashing all over the place. Its a good year to buy a car, but unfortunately, also a bad year to sell one. Almost like being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Same goes for almost every other thing out there. Its literally a buyer's market these days, especially in the pre-owned market. If you're been holding it in, now's the time to splurge.

Anyway, ordered the K&N Apollo intake the last week from www.mx5parts.co.uk. Was looking at a few options, but narrowed it down to the beatrush kit posted earlier as well as the Blitz open pod. In terms of looks though, i guess the beatrush kit still looks the best.

The Blitz solution seen here doesnt seem so elegant. I don't like the idea of the filter element exposed in the engine bay. On top of the heat from the engine, the element gets dirty faster. I checked with one of the local dealers for Blitz and he wasn't sure if Blitz had a box-in version for the NC.

That was when i found the K&N Apollo kit. This seems like what I need. Coincidentally, it so happens to cost less than either of the two. And to top it off, installation seems straightforward. I can even do it myself. K&N provides some very detailed step by step instructions on their website.
Anyway, here are some pictures of the Apollo kit.

Pictures are from mx5parts.co.uk. Seems neat and unobstructive enough. I've read comments about the airflow being inadequate due to the kit's "tube within a tube" setup but I'll reserve judgement until I've fixed it up and taken the car out for a spin.

No more bouncing soon

Ordered the JIC Magic FLT TAR coilover set.

More information of the coilover can be found here. I actually had a few options in mind. Along with the JICs, I was looking at the KW Variant 3, Tein Monoflex as well as the HKS Hipermax III. Went for the JIC in the end because it was the cheapest. I don't think I'll track, so I guess the added performance I'll get with a high-end coilover would be kinda wasted on me. The KW came a close second though, I've heard fantastic reviews from a lot of people on these, but I got 2 quotes from different sources, and the price difference was about 500 bucks. I don't know, but I get a bit uncomfortable when prices fluctuate like this. No idea why though.

In any case, its going to be the new year soon, and I suppose its going to get sluggish in Japan as well. It'll probably take them a while to ship. I reckon I'll probably only be fitting the suspension in the later part of January.

I'm also getting the garage to check on this air intake kit from Beatrush.

More pictures can be found on the laile website here. Looks like a decent piece of gear. I like the Apex'i intake, but I have my doubts on how much more performance this kit has over the stock setup, seeing that its a boxed-in cone and there doesnt seem to be any heatshield or anything funneling air in through the front nose. I would actually prefer Autoexe's carbon ram air intake system. It looks really nice and it really does seem to do what its supposed to. Only problem is I can't bring myself to fork out more than 1.5k SGD for something like this. Thats almost 2.5 times the Beatrush's system!

And to top it off, I think Autoexe doesnt even use their own filters. From pictures I've seen, they seem to be using stuff from K&N. Quite a premium to pay for an OEM-look kit. Problem is, there aren't much MX5 users on these two pieces of equipment out of Japan, so its almost impossible to see/hear/feel/compare the real thing in action.

Soundup

Sent my car in for an audio tuneup the day before. The car spend about an hour with the tuner on the RTA setup. Here you see the mic in the driver's seat and the tuner looking attentively at the spectrum analyser.

After the tuning session, he mentioned that the MX5, like any other coupes, isn't really an ideal vehicular environment to do any serious sound quality setup in. I am a bit disappointed by this, but the sound did improve after the tuning session, although I will have some modifications on the door panels to rectify some of the troughs we see in the spectrum band on the RTA. I'll probably arrange another session with him come Feb next year, as both our schedules are kinda packed till then. Hopefully, I'll get closer to the sound I'm looking for.

Had a slight change to the steering wheel mod I had done previously. Now its virtually indistinguishable from a stock MX5 wheel.

Well, not exactly something to shout about, but I figured it does look unique, and its a mod that incurs minimal cost. And the best part is, I wasn't even the one who thought of it.

Lights

Its been a while since my last posting. Didn't managed to take any pictures of the HIDs since my phone decided to die on me and thats about the only digital camera I've got.
Anyway, here are some shots. I have replaced the small lights at the side with white LEDs as well, so it'll contrast nicely with the HIDs.

Here you see the side LEDs by themselves.


Frontal view.

Here's a pic with the HIDs.

Also had the silver parts of the steering wheel stickered up, as I would rather prefer the steering wheel not to have contrasting colours.

Close up of the sticker.

It looks a lot better in the flesh, Handphone camera doesnt really do the carbon stickers justice. Now I'm racking my brains as to what else I can stick next. LOL.