Oh cock, not another MX-5!

well a decent drop and it looks great.
 
Adunaphel said:
DON'T drive without the rings. The hubs take all the load, bolts and studs are NOT designed for such loads, and will shear off badly if you continue.
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I don't see why four M12 bolts/nuts per corner couldn't support the weight in every possible situation, but you're still 100% right. The nuts don't center the wheel well enough, and after 90km/h it' starts to shake horribly, so tomorrow I'll try to hunt the right rings.


public said:
I'd say the jack fail was a decent drop =P
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Yeah, I'm trying to start new trend to replace the hellaflush-scene. There's stll some problems with driveability and transmitting the power to the wheels...
 
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Nice paint work, by the way! Is that the original?
 
Yeah it's original, at least most of it. It has been buffed by the seller so it looks shiny, but it's full of deep scratches and there are couple of different shades of red. At least from bumper, passanger front wing and passanger rear quater panel are repainted. Actually the quater panel has been hit twice, because there's a dent and scratches, and undearneath some filler :p. But because of all those imperfections, I managed to get the price pretty down.

I've been thinking about repainting the car after I fix rust issues and at the same point I could fix all the dents. From the front view you can see the hood is about as smooth as the moon. On the other hand, I'm slowly building it to be cheap driving tool for road and track, so paint is not the most important thing.
 
I went to France for the weekend. I had to switch back to the original wheels before I sort out the shaking with new wheels. I got new centric rings, but they require some machining to fit the wheels, and I also thought about checking the balance of the wheels at the same time. I also learned that in Germany your wheels have to have certificate for the car even for your wheels (Gutachten), and because my wheels are made for VW, I only got certificate for all the VW models. I'm going to ask about it from local MOT place (T?V/DEKRA), but if somebody had some info how it goes in Germany that would help.

Anyway, 500km with one stop is maybe a bit too much with the MX-5. It's totally fine to 90km/h, but after 110km/h it start to get really noisy, roof up or down. Maybe it's a bit harsh to compare to the 406, which can do 1000km trips in a day without any problems, but it could be a bit quieter. But at least it worked like a clock and drank 6,7l/100km with the roof up (and the pop-up lights up) and it only rose to 7l/100km with the roof and the lights down, and the streets were average French country roads with speed limits between 90 - 110km/h. Not that bad for '93 car.
 
Probably the best driving roads in the world.

Probably the best driving roads in the world.

One of the worst things in Finland is the location. No, don't get me wrong, I love good winter. I mean the sea which basically disconnects us from the rest of the Europe. Travelling to south is pretty expensive, and in last 10 months when I've been living in Stuttgart I've been driving around quite a lot.

One day I got an idea to take the Mazda for a little trip when I still can, because going to the south of France from Finland would be fun, but I'm pretty sure I'd never do it. A friend of mine agreed to join and the planning started. Both of us love Top Gear and read Evo magazine, so it's no suprise where we got our inspiration.

The journey started from Stuttgart with a quick Autobahnblast until we crossed Schwarzwald to Freiburg for a lunch. From there we headed to France through Mulhouse and Belfort before we started to head south.



The first day was the longest, we wanted to head Geneve before sunset, but we had some time to capture beautiful landscape along the way.


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Sometimes it was obvious that my TomTom had a bit different view of the way than that was really possible. Huge thanks to my friend Juho for letting me use the picture!

Near Geneve the road started to rise which was unexpected. Soon I realized there was mountains also on the north of the city, and after one hairping curve we got a pretty awesome confirmation that we're indeed heading to the right direction.



Seeing the Geneve from the mountains as the sun was going down was a beautiful sight. We didn't have too much time in there though, because our destination still a far away



Next day around twelve o'clock we started to head south through the Alps. Intresting thing about the mountains is the changing weather, but luckily the soft-top is really quick to use and you can also drive with the rear window open, sort of like "anti-targa" way.



After descenting to Albertville we stayed in the bottom of the valley all the way to Grenoble before we got some sleep. The next day was going to be special.

From Grenoble we took the N85, also known as Route Napoleon. On this road Evo magazine has done at least one Car of the Year test, and I can see why. Especially on the north it's not super twisty, but more quick curvy road through beautiful landscape, which should fit very well to more exotic machines. But the MX-5 shines on more twisty roads, where it's light weight and small dimensions are bigger advantage than pure horsepower and extremely stiff suspension setup.



Gorges du Verdon. A small departure to the south of Route Napoleon. Combination of blue water, green plants and hard rocks with a tiny twisty road on both sides of the river. This is the place where Clarkson's RS4 vs Climbers took the place, and trust me on this, it's even more spectacular when you see the dimensions with your own eyes.





The drop was 100% vertical and maybe more than 150 meters. Lack of rollbar wasn't an issue here.



The road on the northern side of the river was really rough and bumby. It also had total lack of armco, so as a driving road it wasn't great, but that suited us well, the beauty of the landscape took all our concentration anyway.



Once again we got lucky with the weather, because we got dramatic backdrop from stormy sky, but everything was already dry.





Maybe it's the lack of mountains in Finland, but I find them maybe just as pretty to look at as drive on the roads built over them.

After getting some sleep in a small town of La Palud-sur-Verdon we took the D955 and D21 to get back to the Route Napoleon which took us to Grasse. Because I already have bad experiences of the traffic in the coast of France from 2007 when E36 switched lane totally forgetting the existence of my parents IS200 I was driving, I wanted to take a shortcut around Cannes and Antibes to the main road going right next to the beach of Nice. The city itself has traffic reminiscent of bumper cars at amusement parks, but luckily the roads were quite empty just after midday and we got away unscratched.

Driving in France is fun. High speeds in the mountain passes feel much safer than city traffic.



From Nice there was only one obvious way: D2204 heading north. After going through couple of small towns the road got smaller and started to head higher. Hairpin curves became a standard sight in every few hundred meters.

That revealed a huge lack in the MX-5s dynamics. Grippy tires, a bit worn suspension and sometimes hairpings tight enough to lift the inner rear wheel were not a good combination with open diff. On open mountain roads there just wasn't a possibility to upset the tail, and it never got enough momentum to make the both tires spin, so we kept exiting the hairpins with a sporty sight of only one smoking tire. :)



That wasn't such a bad news, as the road was one of the best in the world. Indeed, it's called Col de Turini and it's one of the most famous special stages in Rally Monte Carlo and was also featured in Top Gears search of the greatest driving road in the world.



If uphill is sometimes a bit stressing in the MX-5 when you've constantly rev the engine to the redline, downhill is totally different story. With the extra power provided by the gravity It has easily enough oomph to accelerate quickly enough to be seriously good fun and also a big surprise to many tourist bikers.



I changed the brake discs and pads before the trip and choose EBC Yellowstuff mainly because I wanted to keep brake fade as low as possible. That was probably overkill of the year, as the pads barely stopped squealing as a sign of reaching proper working temperatures. Brake feel and power were excellent anyway, so I'm not complaining.



If you've ever watched old rally videos you should probably recognize these curves, which were also featured in Richard Hammonds old Zonda Roadster & Wallypower 118 film as well as in the Greatest Driving Roads Episode.

That's everything for Part 1, thanks for reading! I'll try to make the Part II tomorrow!
 
Awesome view. I didn't know the rear window was removable without effort, where is it stored then?
 
Hey thanks! I was a bit worried that they're overprocessed mainly due to the low saturated screen of my MBP :)

You can't fully remove the window, but it's attached to the rest of the top with a zipper. When you open the top, you have to unzip the window, which then falls to the area behin the seats before the top is opened. If you don't do this, the plastic window is twisted 180? which might cause it to crack.

DSC01833.jpg

Back picture because of the wind blocker, but should give the idea.

On later cars (NBs) the plastic window was replaced with a glass one which of course is a fixed part of the top
 
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Probably the best driving roads in the world. Part II

Probably the best driving roads in the world. Part II

After the Col de Turini we headed to our hostel in Menton, which is only a few kilometers away from Italian border, and also conveniently close to Monaco, where we spent couple of hours. When coming to the intersection just before the famous tunnel Bugatti Veyron actually stopped and let me go first, even though he had the right of way. And then he gave a bit of gas in the tunnel, just enough so we could her "BWAAAAAAARB" and that was it. Sadly the road was closed only a few hundred meters after the tunnel, because the first F1 transport trucks had already invaded the harbor area.



In the morning we had to go to the highway first time after leaving Germany. We wanted to cruise along the coast to La Spezia in Italy, but it would have taken way too much time, around 7 hours, while on the highway it was just 3 hours. Sadly the highway turned out to be rather expensive also, exactly 10 euros per 100km, so 27 euros.



La Spezia was just a waypoint, from there we took the small roads over the north Apennine Mountains to Modena.

Most of roads were very typical mountain roads with some hairpins and slow trucks bogging down our progress. They got much better before the Modena though. Smooth curvy tarmac through beautiful landscape with nice elevation changes and fast corners with some additional second gear hairpins were proper fun. Our plan was to descent to Maranello, which lies directly after the mountains on a huge couple of hundred kilometers long plain which goes across the whole northern Italy. These are the roads seen often in Ferrari test drive videos and also in the beginning of Clarkson's Italian Job DVD.

Sadly my TomTom decided to invent its own roads and in the end we missed Maranello by 20 kilometers. But to be honest I wasn't that disappointed to see the newest Ferrari-branded crap and cheap looking restaurants surviving only because of the Ferrari-clothed tourists coming to check out cars they can never afford. I've done this myself, so I'm allowed to say it aloud :p



In Modena I met a good friend of mine, who had kindly booked us to a Lamborghini factory tour. It's 30 euros if you're a student, but worth it. It lasted around 1,5 hours and most of the time was spent around the Aventador production line. We got to see guy installing piston into the cylinder block, people cutting and sewing leather together and finally installing various bits and pieces in to the chassis and suspension. We also got to see the parking place for cars waiting for delivery, and at the time there was some Gallardos, 13 Aventadors (matte white one is just magnificent) and a 458 Italia as a surprise. Apparently Ferrari and Lamborghini do loan their newest models to each other, because it's just the most convenient way of seeing what the others are doing, and it would happen anyway. And yes, photographing during the tour was extremely forbidden, and because Lamborghini is nowadays owned by Audi, it's German Verboten, which is a very serious way of forbidding. :p

For the 30 euros you also get an access to the museum where this really production ready Estoque prototype was.



Then we headed to Lago di Garda. Our plan was to drive along the coast of the lake to Riva del Garda on northern corner of the lake, but we were running short on time to get to the hostel before 10PM when the check-in was going to close, so we had to stay on the autostrada as long as we could.



Early in the morning we left beautiful and surprisingly tourist free Riva del Garda and headed north for the climax of our journey: Stelvio Pass. Sadly about 50km before the beginning of the pass we saw a disappointing sign: "Passo dello Stelvio closed". Down here we were getting burned by the sun, but at the altitude of 2,7 kilometers the winter was still going on and the road lied under a thick layer of snow. We hoped that the italians would be just too slow to update the signs, but even right before the entrance to the pass the message was still the same.

We took a quick coffee pause and thought what to do. We already had a hostel in Davos, so our only way was to get around the Stelvio, and the most convenient twisty way was first through Ofenpass and then to Livigno, which I had heard from Alok's great article on Speedhunters.

The way to Livigno goes on a dam which costs 12 euros, but at least we got to see some other cars going there. The Z06 had really epic soundtrack!



The 12 euros toll wasn't that bad, because we could fill up the car with nice 1,092eur/l 95E gas. The village is totally tax free! :)



Just as free of taxes it was from water! This was supposed to be a lake...



Then we continued south to the Bernina Pass.



The Bernina Pass had some of the feel of Stelvio, but without the epic vertical drops. Really nice road nonetheless.

After the Bernina Pass the road settled down as we headed to west to the direction of St. Moritz and then to north on a totally straight country road full of traffic. We knew the epic roads were over. From Davos we would continue to north through Lichtenstein and then to back to Germany. Little did we know, that the road connecting this large and boring road 28 would be something we could have never expected.




I had actually never thought why in Top Gear's "Greatest Driving Road in the World" film they said "From Davos to Stelvio" because the fun parts lie on the italian side of the border? Well, the road from this big road to Davos is called Fl?elapass, so it should mean some curves. And it really didn't disappoint. Going first quickly through surprisingly Finland-like area of pine trees while steadily ascending and finally leaving the trees behind it was proper quick and twisty driving heaven, finished with a smooth tarmac only the Swiss can make.





When the sunlight turned to beautiful golden colour we arrived to this deserted valley in the middle of nowhere. Between two massive inclines there were only two twisty lines through the rocks, a small river and black curvy tarmac. Compared to Stelvio the Fl?elapass is much quicker with only a few hairpins and the whole rhythm of the road is different. It's more made for an italian supercar than Impreza or an Evo, but it worked superbly also with an MX-5. Quick curves meant we could keep the speed up through the pass while only slowing down to admire the views and take some pictures.



I've done Stelvio in 2007 and I do agree it's one of the most memorable roads in the world. Compared to the Fl?elapass, I'd say as a driving road te Stelvio nowhere as good. You do get bored of the hairpins at some point, while the Fl?ela has more interesting selection of different curves and instead of steady uphill and then downhill it has some elevation changes along the way. It was by far the most suprising road on the whole trip and it more than deserved to be the last one.



We woke up in a cloudy and rainy Davos and got out of beautiful, but ridiculously expensive (Greetings (to) Lip :p) Switzerland and headed back to Germany through the ordinary roads. It was the only totally rainy day during the whole trip, but it didn't matter anymore. Probably the greatest roads in Europe were behind us. Until the next trip.

Oh, and the car. This trip increased the mileage I've done in the MX-5 by 30%, so I was a bit worried how it would work, especially because the poor little engine really had to work for its living during mountain passes.

On the other hand it would break because of being constantly trashed to the redline, it wouldn't be suitable engine for a little roadster. But it never missed a beat and only once rose the water temperature by a bit. After being on full throttle in first gear for minutes we got stuck behind a Fiat Punto which did about 1,2 km/h and that killed my idea of letting the whole engine bay cool down a bit by cruising and letting the wind blow through.

The only thing that broke on the car was the fuel filter cap opening cable. With fuel gauge showing empty that caused some worry before I realized you can open the cap from the trunk as well. At that point I also realized the cable snapped off because of pushing too much stuff to the the trunk. Yeah, the trunk could be a bit bigger, but in the end you can jus save weight and leave some random junk at home!
 
Lastsoul said:
We woke up in a cloudy and rainy Davos and got out of beautiful, but ridiculously expensive (Greetings (to) Lip :p) Switzerland and...
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Expensive? - The petrol is cheap, and the roads are great. - What more do you want? ;)

Great trip report. Just awesome.
Thanks.
Greetings, lip
 
Haha, yeah petrol is cheap and the roads are just amazing. And it's also really comforting to park the car in Swiss after surviving France and Italy.

But to be honest, paying 10 euros for a basic pizza reminds me of Finland and I've gotten used to German price level :D
 
Wow, what an inspiring package, tour, pics and car!
 
Thanks! Actually I'm a bit sad we didn't have enough time to explore the roads you posted Beni, looked really awesome! But there's always the next trip! :)
 
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