Right, my first update!
Finally got the car back home again after keeping it at my Nans for a couple of months or so while we cleared the garage out for it. It needed an MOT, and as it was SORN this seemed like a good time to drive it home via the MOT centre.
The night before the MOT I checked the obvious stuff like bulbs, wipers etc, only to find the rear washer wasn't doing anything. After finally tracking down the leak to inside the rear 1/4 panel it was good to go.
It passed the MOT the 2nd time around, after being ten times over the emissions limits! Sorted by a bottle of Redex (or something) and an Italian tune up.
To get to the wiper pipes required removing the inner panel of the back of the car under the rear side windows:
(Awesome photobucket editor FTW!)
Sadly, I'd wasted a massive amount of water trying to find the leak, and had soaked the entire left carpet/underlay, and the back seats.

So I decided the best thing to do was to remove it all, save it smelling, and doing any damage to the floor of the car. Most likely going to keep the under-lay out to save on weight anyway, seeings as it's mainly going to be used for track days/fun.
I'll do a guide when I re-assemble it all on how to remove the centre console, as there's nothing on here that I could find, and some of it is pretty well hidden.
Those black things by the handbrake tunnel are footwell vents for the heater system. Never knew this had any, and was a pleasant surprise to find it did. Always found it odd my old Fabia had them, and this didn't!
The front seats weigh about 20kg each!

Reckon I'll have knocked 50kg off the weight of the car if I keep it as it is, although, it's not easy to drive without the drivers seat!
My long term plans for the car are to turn it into something I can hoon around tracks in, while learning a bit myself (as much as I love cars, I've not really worked on them before) and a budget. I'm doing a computing degree atm, but am on a placement year, so can give it some time now. I intend to do as much as possible myself, and leaving the electrics to someone else.
Planning on doing: brakes (got G60's waiting to be fitted), weight reduction (stuff like rear speakers, sound proofing, remove seats & fit lightweight drivers seat) suspension, bracing and rear ARB, and engine work. Engine wise, I'm thinking an AFH head with some high lift cams in, throttle bodies and whatever is needed to support those. The mechanical side of that should be doable at home with help from my dad, but will need to ask my university nicely if they'd be willing to map it/wire in a standalone ECU. Things like manifolds etc I can get made up cheaply by a friend who runs an engineering firm.
That's all for now, but should get the brakes fitted in the next week or so, then it's just a case of saving up some money to buy stuff as I keep wasting it all/ spending it on the Mazda (£40 a spark plug!

)
Thanks,
Joe.