It’s been a long time since I’ve done meaningful work on the Exocet. I’ve had 3x 3000+ mile trips this summer (NYC, Boston, and the UK). Even though I haven’t felt all that great this long weekend, I still managed to get into the garage to work on the poor, leaky Exocet.
When I bought the car, the previous owner had mentioned that it probably needed water hoses soon. Well, there have been so many drips over the last few months, that it was actually hard to tell where it WASN’T dripping from. I ordered a pressure tester from Amazon (yes, I know I could have rented one for free but I like owning tools) and got a blacklight.
When I put some pressure into the radiator and started poking hoses, I had one of those “oh shit, DEPRESSURIZEEEE!” moments. I wiggled the upper radiator hose and it was someone cracked a hydrant. All told, both upper and lower radiator hoses were leaking and there was a leak from the water inlet - which was looking suspicious to begin with.
Well, I methodically worked through them on Saturday and low and behold, when I got the water inlet off, there wasn’t a gasket. There was a thin smear of gasket maker around 2/3 of it but clearly not enough. Someone in the Miata community recommended using a gasket and a bit of maker on either side so that’s what I did.
But wait, there’s more. Something’s missing from this picture:
If you said “coolant overflow”, you would be correct. There’s really not a standard place to mount an overflow on an Exocet. People have done everything from $4 autozone generics to soda bottles to fabricating something fancy. I went on the upper end and got a nice looking polished one from amazon.
Mounting it was a PITA. Yes, that’s an interesting assortment of crap from Holmes Depot (where you must be Sherlock to find the hardware you need). It’s not perfect and I’m waiting for my new swaybay mounts to come in this week before I call it done. The bottle is pretty large. That is good for safety but bad for fitment. It’s unclear whether the button section of the mount clears the sway bar without further modification. Time will tell!