I don't think my intake cam cap sealed well, it didn't seem perfectly seated and rtv coverage wasn't great on one side. This would make sense if the oil feed for the front cam journal was squirting pressurized oil into the gap and then onto the timing belt. I removed both caps, cleaned, and resealed them. I'm lucky I was able to fit my puller onto the ATI damper without removing the radiator - only about a 1/4 inch of clearance. Now to reassemble and try again.

I got Mazda OEM shims through my local dealer, Werner Mazda in Manchester, NH. They do online ordering a local pickup, which gets parts in-hand faster but is a little more expensive than Tasca.

What size shims are you looking for?

 

I carefully resealed my cam caps last night, cleaned and inspected the cam seals, and made sure the front main seal was seated. It still pisses oil out around the crank pulley, just from turning the engine over with the coils disconnected.

Last ditch at keeping the engine in the car: figure out a way to test for leak location. Maybe I can run air pressure into the crankcase through the dipstick and listen for hissing? Or remove the timing covers and have a helper crank the engine while I look for a gusher.

I'm afraid it's either the front half moon seal on the oil pan or the oil pump sealing to the block.

Swap in a VVT EFR setup they said... It'll be fun! Build your own motor. You'll be cool.
And if you're doing that should probably at least do forged rods so they don't bend.
And if you do rods, you really ought to have a machine shop do pistons so your compression ratio doesn't suck.
And if you're doing that you should get a 6-speed so the transmission doesn't break (but it might anyway).
Also a 3.63 to go with it so you have useful gearing...

I will not quit. The power of sunk cost compels me!

 

You'll get there.

• O-ring between oil pump and block was in there when you installed the oil pump? Did it have good oil pressure?
• I've seen the oil-pump seal edge flip the wrong way when installing an oil pump before.

 

I need some "thinner" shims for the exhaust side (I have ST exhaust valves and they're taller than stock); 0.101, 0.104, 0.108 & 0.109. I don't think that the Mazda shims go down that thin. I used Toyota shims when the new exhaust valves went in years ago but no es bueno now.

 

Yeah, Mazda goes down to .108 nominal. Most shims I measure have been .002" thinner than nominal.

It seems like you could have a machine shop grind some down with mag-bed grinding setup. I forget what they're called, but there was one in the school machine shop that was good for skimming material off a flat steel surface a thousandth at a time. Sounds expensive, but so are new shims at $10 a pop.

 

Surface grinder is that back/forth grinding machine with magnetic bed.

 

Right now, I'm good. Those thicknesses would make everything "perfect", but shuffling the deck has got me close enough so that the awful tick is barely noticeable. There a place "Down Under" that purports to have virtually any size known to man, so I might order some from there "for SCIENCE"!

 

Still leaking.

I put in a new OEM intake cam seal, carefully cleaned everything and checked for burrs, damage, etc, and used carefully applied RTV.

Next move is to rebuild a spare VVT actuator and try again.

 

Found you, you friggin bastard.

Machine shop removed oil galley plug, tapped it for npt, and left it like that. My dumbass didn’t see it. Presto oil leako.



Different VVT head for reference:

 

I started the motor last night and let it idle long enough to warm up and burp the coolant. No nasty noises, no smoke, no leaks noted, good oil pressure, hooray!




Next:

• Change oil and filter to break-in oil. Drain startup oil to remove any post-rebuild debris.
• Fix dash tach - no reading
• Fix dash Oil pressure gauge - currently relying on TunerStudio readout from 3 wire aftermarket sensor. I carefully repaired the OEM sensor, it gives the correct resistance but the needle on the dash doesn’t move.
• Tune idle
• Test new drivetrain - I suspect I’m going to have to do some clutch adjustments to play nice with the new tranny.
• Drive this bitch before the roads get salted.

 

Nice! Glad you got it sorted. You going to dyno somewhere? I need to as well...
Is tachout enabled in TS?

 

Thanks. Feels good. I took tomorrow off to do the first test drive and tune. Hopefully I don't discover any driveline gremlins to work out with the new transmission and diff (and motor).

I plan to dyno it next spring/summer but I haven't chosen a shop yet. I talked to another turbo Miata owner at a Cars & Coffee in Derry who had his Megasquirt tuned at Synaptic 3 in Northwood and didn't recommend them. Said they delivered a good tune but were kind of bitchy about it and rougher than necessary on the car.

Just checked Tachout in TS and it's not enabled. I'll have to double check my wiring on the LS coils to see where I sent the trigger wire. Maybe a good time to catch up on my documentation.

 

My LS coils are not wired for a tachout, so that made it easy. I'm not even sure a LS coil can send that signal. On the 1.8 NA only 94 and part of 95 have the 4 wire coils. 95.5 gets rid of it. I don't know what NA6 cars did for tach.

 

You were right, I just had to enable tachout.

I lost a couple days tracking down a funny rattle noise that turned out to be a loose bolt on my IM brace. I still have what sounds like an exhaust rattle and maybe a manifold leak (tickticktick)

Took 'er out for a spin to seat the rings and get gas. Nothing blew up and nothing fell off, so I'll call that a success. She pulls much harder down low now. Many smiles.

Now I have to do some cleaning so I don't have to look at dusty cat prints on the windshield.

 

I did some more break in and tuning yesterday, a bunch of 4th gear 3000-6000 pulls, trying to hold 0 MAP, then engine braking down, and I'm struck by how well the car drives. The motor's power delivery just seems to match the 6-speed/3.63 ratios really nicely. It's much calmer on the highway and the ratios don't seem too close together. I've only gotten into boost a couple times, but it comes on much quicker. I'm just running wastegate pressure with the medium EFR actuator and seeing 10 psi, and I can light my 205 width Rivals up from a roll in first gear easily. Second gear sometimes too, and this is without any VVT tuning or EBC yet. Much excite.

For reference, I used these OEM Mazda speedometer parts:

• M502-17-441 Gear Drive
• 1011-17-443 O-Ring
• 1011-17-442A Sleeve

With the dash needle indicating 70mph, a GPS app on my phone read 67mph. Close enough for me. I felt the urge to validate the speedo calibration just because I'm used to the original 1.6 drivetrain wailing away.

 

Sweet! Glad it is all coming together. I'm building up the courage*/motivation to swap my NA8 head for a VVT+Squaretop in the next few days.

*I have a perfectly working turbo car and don't really want to undo it...