a little hint to what ive been toiling away on for a little while now
 

 

Hey shaun, didnt even see you at SFS, like so many others...
 
Wheels specs are 
Fronts -   15x7 +5       175/50R15
 

 
Rears -    15x8 +20     195/50R15
 

 
not hugely happy with the tyre sizing, little bit too much of a difference between sizing front to rear. but im growing to like it, and if push comes to shove ill only need to change two.

Hi GMU,
 
The initial motor from the conversion was from a TX3 using MX5 parts to get the configuration correct.
 
As for the distributor, i am using an aftermarket ECU that allows for a different triggering method, so i run a crank angle sensor and tone wheel (chopperwheel) mounted to the balancer. another fix for this may be to utilise a later model mx5 BP engine that runs a sensor in place of the dissy and runs a coil pack block of 4, all depends on how much clearance you have at your firewall.
 
The reason behind the astina bottom end was that they were the later model motors with the larger nose on the crank, a fix for earlier motors snapping cranks and destroying oil pumps. and as i was driving the car daily i needed to do a build without having the car off the road.
 
hope i have answered your questions, feel free to shoot me anymore that you may have
 

ok, digging this up for old times sake...
 
not a whole heap happening to the car these days as im currently building a house so all money has been directed that way for quite some time,
 
although i have been slowly gather parts so make up my rose jointed rack ends which im almost ready to offer up to the car. if all goes well ill be able to ditch my gipsy spacer / cutdown rack ends set up that is currently hold me back.
 
another thing that has been bugging me was how un impressed i seemed to be with the new wheels that i built for the car.  having played it a little too safe with the specs left me a little underwhelmed with the wheels and considering the amount of effort that was involved i had to do something about it. 
 
so cue a little bit of boredom and a bit of 'what if' moment and ive worked out that the front will easily swallow the 8's that were on the rear of the car with a slightly narrower tyre and a little bit less of a bolt on spacer, leaving me able to re lip the old fronts from 7 to what ever i can make fit. 8"+
 

 
clearance will be greatly improved once the wheel alignment is proper and the correct offset is achieved via the bolt on spacer needed for the front, but for how often the wheels will actually be on the car and driven on im willing to sacrifice a bit of comfort for the super agressive look i think it needs. keeping in mind i run the superlites most often. along with the other 3 sets of wheels for the car,
 
i think i may have a problem
 

The front to rear overall diameter is out of the maximum recommended 3%, and that's probably why it looks wrong. They're out by 3.6%. If the front tyre size was at 175/55R15, they'd only be out by 0.44%. See the chart in the first pic.
 
With the rears, if you're looking for that fat rear tyre look compared to the front, then with a 8" rim on the rear, you'd want to look at a 225/45R15 tyre. With the 175/55R15 fronts, they will only be 1.74% larger in diameter. Hardly noticeable. Have a look at the chart in the second pic. Not sure a 225/45R15 would fit under the back of a standard Escort tub though.