Honestly man once you have the engine out and the timing stuff apart it's not that much more work to throw in an old style head gasket and add a reroute housing. It took me maybe an hour do that job on my dad's MSM. Pop the head off, clean the surfaces, pop the new HG on, torque down with new studs. Easy.

 

Ed, any issues with skipping resurfacing?

@OptionXIII Harry from DCBE here; sump baffles are back in stock today, so let me know if you need one (and if you are OK with waiting for it to arrive, as it takes more time than shipping from the US).

 

Aaaaaand ordered! Thanks for letting me know! It's awesome to have such engaged vendors.

The concern about resurfacing/head sealing is in line with why I am leaning towards keeping the factory head gasket. It's not that I'm afraid of pulling a cylinder head, I just trust Mazda more than I trust myself to do good sealing work. Maybe I'm just too cautious.

 

IDK. If there's a problem with the head/if you already have a failed HG, then skipping resurfacing is a bad idea. If you're gonna put a bunch of boost through it, skipping resurfacing seems like a bad idea.

On a basic NA build on an engine that hasn't been super overheated or anything I don't think it's an issue.

Note that this is very much Ed speaking, and does not represent the position of 949 Racing/Supermiata

 

If you're swapping to the JDM engine I'd definitely try to get it running on the stock ECU before swapping to the standalone, especially if there are any wiring differences between the JDM and USDM engines.

Good call on the oil sump baffles. I didn't do those when I had my engine out and wish I had.

 

Last night I gave the car a wash to get off all the pollen and took it for what I plan to be the last drive on the original engine. It ran like crap during the warmup, as usual, with missing under load in second gear as I tootled around the neighborhood. I had to rev up the engine at a stoplight to keep it from missing, so I only took it for a short spin around the block. On returning to the garage, when I clutched in I heard a grumble grumble, like a worn out ball bearing. I'm guessing the throwout or pilot bearing has decided I needed more confidence in my plans and joined in the chorus of voices saying I need to give this car a big service.

I gotta say, I'm pretty impressed on the whole with how much abuse this driveline has put up with. I've never replaced the clutch, or even seen it. Basic maintenance and a big radiator has taken this car through almost 200k miles and 7 years of track days. The used oil analysis I had done in the past indicated the engine was doing alright internally. It pulled hard last night once warmed up. I have no idea what caused the engine to look like it sat with water in the cylinders, but it's been steadily running worse and worse for years now. The idea it's been running so strong for so long, and possibly had that cylinder damage the whole time, is insane to me.

I had planned to go get an engine this weekend, but I realized I should make the most of the 1 month warranty most used engines come with. So this weekend will be focused on getting the engine and transmission out of the car and doing as much prep work as possible. In the meantime I'll keep placing orders for parts. My Rockauto cart is getting to feel pretty complete, but I may still need to place an order to a Miata specific vendor for some of the more specialty parts.

I would tend to agree as it's what the oil will be at immediately prior to going into all the bearings, but industry standard is to monitor the bulk temperature in the sump. At my old job we thermocoupled both the sump and the oil galleys. On the BP engine, people that have data for both sandwich plate and sump temps tend to notice a 15-20*F difference after the oil goes through the pump.

Honestly, I might want to consider just removing it. Sure, it looks cool and I like having extra data, but I've watched it long enough now to feel it's unnecessary. The hottest temps I saw was 260*F at the sandwich plate last year during a long session at VIR, so likely 240-245*F in the sump. That's perfectly acceptable for a decent synthetic oil like Rotella T6. And having it there has given me a false sense of security. A few weeks ago I failed to check the oil level regularly enough because if I've got oil pressure and temp data, well, clearly the engine is fine. It got way too low on oil. The upside is I'll have two oil pans, so if I drill the pan and don't like it, I'll just swap to the other pan.

I want it, but I'm torn on if I should install it now as part of the service, or later if/when I decide to upgrade to a 36-2 trigger wheel and have to remove the balancer anyways.


I've already started talking to Jesse at BMM, and he's still local, so that'll probably be the move. A lot of these JDM take out engines seem to include the ECU and wiring, maybe I could run that for a while and not have to swap that stupid VTCS manifold.

 

Oh, and when I was washing the car I noticed this little bit of joy.



Yep, those beads of water are inside the car. The back window leaks. I'd heard some extra wind noise after the paint job so I had my suspicions. If you want something done right, do it yourself. Or at least be willing to pay a lot more money than I was!

The whole car is just begging for attention. The tachometer backlight went out recently, and the driver window motor is groaning. It's time for me to take care of some other things too.

 

I had some fun this weekend.



The patient, awaiting surgery.


I printed out these files off thingiverse to keep my fill of the precious Motorcraft XTM5QS all sealed in the 5 speed.

The butt plug cork on the left worked great with a wrap of electrical tape to give it a smooth sealing surface. Only about a drop came out. The shifter tower thing on the right didn't fit well, so I just used a piece of duct tape and it didn't leak a drop.


One last look at the original engine in it's home.


And with it removed you can see the mess it left behind. Hopefully I'll do a better job of sealing the next engine.


I went to town with a can of engine degreaser and a toothbrush. I also gave the motor mount pads on the subframe a quick rust removal and paint.


Surprisingly, the clutch and flywheel look pretty good. I believe these are original to the car, as the transmission to PPF bolts I pulled out were immaculate with no dirt or corrosion on them. 195k miles, countless track days, a few accidental clutch burnouts, and hardly any wear on the flywheel. I'll try to get this resurfaced in the coming days. The throwout bearing was fine, but the pilot bearing was seized, so safe assumption that it was the source of the noise. I never heard it before, and the trans input shaft tip looks fine, so I think I caught it before any damage could occur.

I'm getting parts shipments in still, and looking for the right time to go grab an engine. Unfortunately it's wedding season again, so I have to find the right weekend when I'll have the time to go through it and install it as ASAP as possible to make the most of that warranty.

 

Let's overthink things! That'll show everyone why my efforts to mod my car take forever.

I gave the old engine a scrub before tearing it down further. It'll probably be in the shop for a while longer before it inevitably gets sold to a Lemons team.



I mounted it sideways because I didn't want to deal with the alignment dowels on the bellhousing side. The jaunty angle is because Harbor Freight decided that having their engine hoist and engine stand actually work together well would be a silly idea, so what should be a 3 minute job to transfer the engine from hoist to stand is a much longer, more precarious ordeal, so I'm not doing test fits for beauty points.

With the oil pan off, I realized I forgot to do some research I had planned prior to pulling the engine - locating the best place for me to put the oil temp sensor into the sump. I don't want a Glowshift sandwich plate on my car any more. I always had to retorque it every time I changed the filter. Since VVT oil pans have a boss for an additional bolt the earlier engines don't, I was able to tighten that one bolt down well and put it back in the car without the rest of the engine attached.



Most of the conventional wisdom on Miataturbo says to put the temp sensor on the passenger/intake side of the pan, near the drain plug. I don't think I'll be going that route. It seems like most people here have non-VVT engines with a turbo strapped to the drivers side. Who would expect such a thing on a site like MiataNaturallyAspirated.net?

With my VVT engine mounts, I have very little space on the passenger side of the pan. It's crowded.



The upper scored line shows where the Innovative mount (currently attached) lines up with the pan. The lower scored line is for the larger factory mount. The vertical Sharpie line is where an internal baffle wall is - can't drill there. The horizontal Sharpie line is the minimum height to clear the subframe by 50mm (45mm for the sensor height, 5mm clearance). That small triangle left is the only area I could install it without being uncomfortably close to anything else, and that's directly under the motor mount. Sounds like a pain to reach in the future.

Without a turbo, I have way less exhaust heat to worry about on the drivers side. I have plenty of extra sensor wire to snake around the engine bay. I'll mount the sensor low on the drivers side, roughly opposite of the drain plug. With the motor mount between the sensor and the exhaust, it'll be protected from everything and have plenty of access. Just like this.

The DCBE baffles came in and look amazing! When I test fit them I was a bit disappointed to see what I thought was a large gap between the vertical wall and the floor of the oil pan. But it turns out pretty much every off the shelf baffle I could find had the same gap. I find this a bit baffling, but maybe there's more to designing these parts than I'm aware of. Maybe the stand offs are at different heights? Production tolerances? Idk bro.



I found someone saying they still showed oil pressure dips with the wall and flap style of baffle, so I went ahead and bought another baffle in the horizontal plate style. I chose the one from Speedsage mostly because it's cheap, but also because I prefer the rounded corners it has over the sharp cuts in the unit sold by Mazda Motorsports. I haven't received it yet, but here's the image shown online.



Basically, I've recreated the belt and suspenders approach of the Circuit Sports baffles, but from more niche vendors. I've no regrets about my DCBE baffle purchase to be clear! It's a very nice part and is still my favorite of all the vertical wall, Viton flap style baffles. I just want a little more overkill.

I'm almost ready to source a new engine. A local shop resurfaced my flywheel and exhaust manifold flanges and hot tanked the oil sump. Every other bracket and bolt from this engine has been cleaned (love my ultrasonic cleaner) and prepped. Look at how nice the oil pan is now!



The intake manifold is off as well. I won't spend too much time cleaning that, I'll save my efforts for the flat top that will hopefully only be off the engine for a few short weeks/months.



Almost every part is on hand now other than the second baffle and a few small OEM bits coming into my local dealer.

On Hand:

• Spark plugs - NGK BKR5E-11
• Rear main seal - Felpro
• Transmission seals and gaskets for 5 Speed
• Clutch, throwout bearing, pilot bearing - OEM
• Fork boot - OEM
• Timing belt and tensioners - Gates
• Intake manifold gasket - Mahle
• Oil pan gaskets - Felpro
• Valve cover gasket - Felpro
• Thermostat - Motorad
• Cam plug - OEM
• VVT Screws - Rspeed
• Thermostat O ring - OEM
• Copper VVT line washers - OEM
• Resurfaced flywheel
• Master and slave cylinder - Exedy
• Front crank seal - Felpro
• Cam seals - Felpro
• Exhaust manifold to head gasket - Felpro
• Exhaust manifold to downpipe gasket - Felpro
• EGR gasket - Felpro
• PCV Valve - Beck/Arnley
• Radiator cap - Motorad
• Baffle - DCBE tech

On Order:

• Baffle - Speedsage Engineering
• Dipstick tube seal - 9954-10-0906
• EGR tube clip - FS0120313A
• Heater pipe o ring - E301-15-287

I'm looking at taking a day of vacation next week to run up to an importer in northern VA. Then it's hopefully going to be a very straightforward process to install all the cleaned and prepped used bits, as well as my new replacement parts and upgrades.

 

Good to see the updates (and that I am not the only one that is constantly overthinking projects hehe). Glad you liked the baffle as well! The spacing at the bottom is more of a tolerance/safety precaution; we did not want the baffle to be able to physically touch and vibrate against the sump in any circumstances, creating metal shavings in the process. This keeps things safe, without causing any significant performance drop.

 

Not gonna lie, I spent way too much time looking at the first pic of the engine mounted sideways in the stand trying to figure out what was wrong

Great updates and attention to detail as always. I never realized how few spots exist to mount a temp sensor in the sump.

I grabbed one of those Speedsage baffles for my NA, but never mounted a vertical wall type baffle in addition to it. Never noticed any oil pressure drops on track, but I also wasn't logging, just taking quick glances in certain sections when the coast was clear. I'm sure your setup will be bulletproof.

Stoked to see the progress keep coming!

 

First, nice baffle pun. Second, have you found other people report issues with the glowshift sandwich plate? That was on my list of reliability mods so I could mount sensors (oil pressure/temp) there and get rid of the brass T that my oil setup is currently hanging on.

As always, good attention to detail. Excited to see how it feels when things are back together.

 

While I await the opportune moment to go get an engine, I've done some detail tinkering.



Since the car was living outside for a few weeks, some areas I'd been just keeping clean began to rust. I found that Rustoleum metallic finish silver is an extremely close match for the stock silver paint!



Last year I posted about an eye-opening experience of finding my brake caliper loose after a track day at VIR. I got away with it once, but I don't want to tempt fate twice. These caliper safety brackets have been available for a while now, but only for the 1.6 and 1.8 brake sizes. Planet Miata now has Sport sizes in a reasonable price range, so I added more weight to my car.

Side note: I really wish these were zinc plated. Paint is not something you really want under a bolt head of a highly torqued safety critical fastener. I'm debating taking these back off and stripping the paint off of the bolt area.



They mount under one brake bracket bolt and keep the caliper from pivoting off of bracket if the hidden pin comes loose, so that it won't wedge into your wheel.

Also, while picking up some exhaust hardware at Autozone, I had a bit of a brain fart.



"I mean, I probably wouldn't expect to find valve lifters on the racks... OHHHHHH."

I've not seen anything negative about it online, just my own experiences. It seemed to come loose whenever I changed the filter (I do tend to put those on too tight), so I retorqued the extended male to female adapter fitting every time. During the engine removal, I tried to remove the electrical plug on the sensor and found it was butted up hard against the oil pressure sensor, and I couldn't unplug it. Those aren't dings on the quality of it, just the reality of a sandwich plate. It's a good option to avoid pulling the engine, but with it out, why not upgrade?

I'd say it's yours if you want it for shipping costs, but to be honest between that and considering if you'd want a new seal for it, it's probably best to just buy new.

 

I appreciate the offer. I'll definitely consider it. Just having a part in my hands might push me to actually get the job done instead of procrastinating more.

 

Ooof, scary story about the brake caliper! I had a buddy run into the same thing last year. One of his calipers removed itself while driving to a trackday, destroying the wheel and tire in the process. Talk about highest of highs to lowest of lows. After that, I started triple checking my brake bolts much more often, and probably overtightening them a little bit too...

Those safety brackets are a nifty piece of kit! Although I don't see any reason they needed to be painted bright green lol.

 

Big day today, I went and looked at some engines. I'm not as thrilled as I hoped to be, but I've got a new engine.

First place I went had it pulled out. It wasn't the cleanest operation, and the engine was quite dirty with the ECU case torn open from an impact and the water neck broken off. More concerning though was what I saw with the borescope.



Now, maybe that's just a bit of dark oil or something, but turning the engine over smeared some of it and I wasn't convinced it was "the one". So I went over to another importer just 25 minutes away.



I left poorer, and hauling what is at least externally the cleanest Miata engine I have ever seen. I could not find even a drop of oil on the outside, and it looked like the extraction was much better with caps over all the radiator hoses and such. The yellow zinc plating looks two years old, not 20+. I don't have any year, mileage, or compression info, so I'm hoping for the best.



I wish they had been as thorough on oil changes as they had been on cleaning it and keeping it inside. It's definitely dirtier than my 195k mile engine. I'm hoping it's not a mess when I pull the valve cover off, and that I don't regret this...



Hopefully I wasn't too swooned by the owner seeming to be a more pleasant guy with a cleaner shop and an externally cleaner engine. At the end of the day, this wasn't his engine he cared for over the decades, he just imported it.

By my measurements of the shifter, it's a later 01+ 6 speed (the shifter bushing is crumbled of course). No VIN plates, and yet it has EGR. I thought the JDM BP6D engines didn't have EGR, so I'm not entirely sure what I've got here. Anyone know where to find any identifying info on literally any of these parts?

Externally, it's so impossibly clean that I'm almost considering installing it as is other than the intake and exhaust manifolds, without most of parts I've bought. That'd get me the most out of the warranty for sure! But I'm probably overthinking things and should give this engine a once over.

 

Dang, 6-speed, motor, flat top, and IIRC, a decent header if you can make a downpipe. Good score. What did that cost you, if you don't mind me asking? You should have a VIN plate on the oil pan and transmission, right hand side for both. No idea if they take those off though. I've definitely gotten some imported engines without them.

 

I think the VIN plate thing is US-only. At least EU and UK do not have them.

 

I did a quick Google search and said they did have VINs. Just the plates aren’t used on the drivetrain? Might be why I haven’t seen them on imports.

 

No VIN plates on either the oil pan or transmission. The pad where the tag goes is there, just nothing riveted on. I can't find even a date code on any of the accessories either.

I paid more than I would have liked, and most of my purchase price for the car to be honest. $3k. I figure even if it all goes to crap I can get at least $1k for the transmission and a few hundred for the flat top, plus whatever else from the engine itself and hopefully not loose my ***. The JDM importers seem to charge $2k for the VVT engines on their own and all the local listings were around $1,200 for native US market engines listed online. No VVT engines came up for sale locally on Marketplace during this time, so I figured the cost increase for JDM would be worth it.