Sometimes life surprises us, when you think it’s all planned out there is always something that comes along and tests your resolve.
The plans for BOFI in 2018 are pretty simple, or rather, they were an awful lot simpler than reality. Our goal with this business is to continue to debunk myths, provide accurate information, well priced and well tested products that we can stand behind – we aim to do this bigger and better than ever and continue to learn from our customers.
We all know how winter can bring out the hibernation in all of us, especially for rust prone MX5s – this was certainly the plan with most of our fleet and the push more or less was going to start from March.
But enough rambling, our 2018 has started with a few.. hiccups.
The Fleet
Dan – Blue NA (The Blue Peril)
James – Red NA (Winston)
Matt – Silver NA (Mecal)
Leigh – Silver NB2 (Gail)
All of these cars are pretty extensively modified, 3 of them turbo 200WHP+ cars and one soon to be 300WHP stripped out weapon (WIN-ston).
All of us had issues the past few months, in no particular order..
Winston
Required a facelift after a low speed rear end collision, a new bonnet and headlight mechanisms were in order – oh, and new hood pins – the main irritation being the bonnet was fully gutted which takes quite a lot of time to replicate.
All involved were OK and it took a few days to fix and a week or two for pride to heal, as normal.
Mecal
This car is driven by our resident caged animal and the issues of that really started to show – the 5 speed gearbox was developing a horrible whine and generally was on its way out. As was the 4.1 Torsen.
It started the year fighting the rear main seal constantly leaking and the front main – both of which were fine on a known good engine. It also managed to blow a lower coolant hose while at the santapod drift day.
Considering this car had an engine and gearbox change last year we’re starting to think it’s the driver, rather than the car being cursed. So – both of those needed to be sorted.
Then, the crank pully decided to sheer its m6 bolts and somehow manage to not take the engine with it or anything else for that matter at a considerable “70 MPH”.
Gail
The car basically lay dormant since the Cadwell Park trackday in November 2017, which was an absolutely awesome day but claimed Gail’s PPF – shearing it at the diff.
This wasn’t a great concern as the car wouldn’t be used until the first autosolo in March anyway.
But, now the car lays dormant again – perhaps egged on by James’ upcoming EFR build Leigh thought it a good idea to turn up the boost – queue death rattle, more on this one later – it’s an easy enough fix, bash a new stock vvt engine in there and turn the boost back down.
The Peril
This one, is a little more complicated.
For lack of a better word, the car took a hit – a pretty big hit – and all involved are frankly, lucky to be here. That’d be me and my passenger.
The details are a straight road, wet, greasy just after a farm entryway – caused the car to spin its rear wheels and violently throw it into the grass verge – rolling the car and landing in a drainage ditch.
The first response with something like this is that the driver was ‘being a knob’ – this wasn’t the case, but at the end of the day, it was me who was driving.
I’d always been of the view that you’d be hard pressed to roll an MX5 – but after seeing what a 60MPH crash can do on soft mud no less – the more people I see with proper rollbars, like the TR Lane GPV that was on the car or a GC Fabs – the better.
With that being said, without the TR Lane GPV bar, this story would be much more sombre and if anything, wouldn’t be published at all. Be under no illusion how lucky we both are, the rollbar itself is buckled, the chassis twisted and yet all the running gear was unharmed, it was a tough pill the swallow but the shell had to be scrapped.
This happened mid February, realistically the car wasn’t due to be let outside for another month.
When you’re involved in a big accident, you are presented with many choices – in this situation, unlike many who aren’t so lucky, we’re able to get back on the horse as it were and after the support of the team and extended BOFI Family a plan was hatched.
A replacement car was found, it wasn’t going to be the same as the ‘japan fresh’ peril, but perhaps that would be somehow freeing and allow us to do more with the car.
This new car, being a Neo Green ’91 Import, now has a name – Leaf.
A new Chapter, a new Leaf.
The month of March consisted of arguing with insurance companies on the value of the blue car, and stripping the blue car – in my single car garage. A task that was only made possible by the rest of the members of BOFI.
Frankly, it’s been a little difficult.
Leaf is what we’d call an honest car, it’s got a little rust but it’s generally not been messed with too much, has original spot welds – that kind of thing. The car was an Auto, recently converted to manual with the associated gutless 90hp 1.6 engine.
That’s no issue for our purposes, considering the crash basically all of the Peril’s running gear, engine, suspension – everything – was re-usable. With that in mind, a pretty substantial plan was hatched. Over the next few weeks insurance needed to be resolved, the peril stripped and the shell picked up for scrap all in prep to bring leaf, now stored at the long suffering parents for the past 3-4 weeks to be picked up on the 28th of March. With a 4 day weekend of wrenching planned.
In this weekend we stripped the leaf down completely, and replaced everything from the peril into it – down to the wiring harness with a successful start up on the afternoon of the 2nd of April.
There are still a number of things to finish, the rollbar which this time around I’ve opted for a GC Fab GCR2 bar and DoorBars – which take a little time to build. If everything goes to plan, the car will be back on the road this coming weekend.
Sufficed to say, it’s been a pretty hectic couple months for us and has highlighted something we’ve all been aware of for some time now and that’s whats been taking up the past 4 weeks.
Out Growing the Driveway
At more than one point over this year alone no less than 7 MX5s have been on or around my place, of which, only one can be actually worked on in a small, cramped, cluttered and disorganised garage.
We’re expanding what we can offer more to customers and realistically, we’ve just plain out grown our respective driveways – so, this weekend (21/04/2018) we’ve made the decision to rent out a unit.
This is a brilliant step forward and now we’re able to develop, test and have a space to consistently create content as well as prep for track days and other events we’re looking to attend.
With that in mind, we’re looking to broaden our product catalogue for the MX5 community and improve our overall order processing time and potentially diversify further into offering our tuning and workshop services time permitting.
The past couple weeks have consisted of us getting the unit up to scratch, here’s how it sits now. An easy 4 car workspace with room for 5 or 6 if required, over 6.5 Meters of workbench and space to breathe for a change!
Hopefully you’re all as excited as we are for this change of pace and change of direction, it’ll allow us to do more, faster and allow us to take on the kinds of projects that got us so excited about this hobby in the first place. Now, Leaf isn’t so unimaginative that it’s green and therefore a leaf – it represents ‘a new leaf’, a new chapter and unlike the OEM+ / Factory fresh ‘Peril’ – i’ll be taking a lot of inspiration from the teachings of the Tarmac Terrorist.
