So if building GreddyGalant's engine, Mobius' engine, Turbofan's engine, OregonMon's engine, fixing my own car, pulling a bad 1.6 for a good 1.6 for a friend, installing half a dozen MegaSquirts, fixing my own car (again), building a VVT NA chump car, parting an '05 MSM, and tuning nearly a dozen MegaSquirts since July of last year wasn't enough, let's tackle a complete build in my own single car garage. Yeah, that's a grand idea.

This one is '05 MSM GT #2, aka The Worst MSM Ever. It's black, has 92,XXX miles, and is from Houston Texas. I now hate Houston.

Anyways, here's a recent picture of the engine. It's down to the block and head now. Right after this I took the timing covers and valve cover off to check if the moron of a Ford mechanic did the timing belt correctly, which it appears he magically did. I'll get to why he's a moron in a minute.



Biggest problem #1. Clutch, note: these pictures are of both side. No idea how someone did this. Pressure plate looks ok, throw out bearing feels worn out, and the flywheel doesn't look bad either. But wow. Also pictured: Mobius' hands.





Problem #2 was a plethora of missing bolts. One missing off both motor mounts. This picture also shows another problem: there's no turbo brace. The stock MSM turbo has a great brace that mounts to the top 2 bolts of the motor mount, and braces to the turbo, you can see the boss on the turbo in the top of this picture. Anybody have a spare floating around?



And the other side, again, missing a bolt:



Then the next few pictures are mostly from before I touched the transmission. For starters...the starter. Sorry for the blurry photo, but yes, they used a lug nut as a spacer.



And let's ignore the mess that someone left me on the clutch fork, I guess you are supposed to put a LITTLE grease on that location...But look at the bell housing bolts. Yes, 2 are missing. And another one was missing on the other side. Out of 8, this engine had 5. They were all torqued to ~15ft/lbs, instead of 45-65ft/lbs. It's like someone discovered the clutch issue, then put it back together and decided to just get rid of the car. Maybe it REALLY failed a PPI (pre purchase inspection)? Who knows.



Lastly (for the engine), this is the rear lower exhaust "stud". Looks like it pulled out and someone replaced it with a bolt and a few washers. The exhaust gasket looks brand new, so who knows what I'll find once it comes out.



Here's the sway bar mount, with some missing bolts. I thought maybe a small front impact sheered them off, as there's slight damage to the front crash beam...block thingy. However thinking back, I don't think that's what happened. There were no bolt threads in the holes, so someone must of removed them, and just left them out. Who needs sway bar mounts anyways?



And then this pile of hardware is from when I removed the front bumper. The small group on top is 100% NOT OEM Mazda. The lower pile is. Someone's definitely removed the bumper and mainly the plastic fender liners, and completely failed and properly replacing them.



Luckily, after the first MSM part out, I have a huge supply of OEM bolts available to me, so I can solve most of these problems. The owner is also installing a 949 flywheel, FM2 clutch, MSpro, Manely rods, among other things.

100% of the exhaust studs are being replaced, along with 100% of the bell housing and starter bolts and nuts.

I should also mention, there are 2 brackets on the clutch line that bolt to the transmission. One to a bell housing bolt, another to a starter bolt. Neither were attached. The downpipe brace was present on the bell housing, although missing one of the two bolts, and not bolted at all to the actual down pipe. Downpipe was also bolted on with 2 different kinds of nuts, but that's hardly a problem. Timing belt idler pulley was finger tight, crank pulley bolt was at 122in/lbs, not ft/lbs.

Background was, my customer bought it after viewing some blurry pictures online, had it shipped to Oregon, where it shook like crazy at idle and starting steaming after the mile long drive home. Dealer did a TB/WP job (without replacing the timing belt pulleys mind you), replaced the motor mounts and most of their hardware, fixed the coolant leak, and discovered rod knock upon start up.

So far the engine is actually really clean inside, I'll be pulling the oil pan later today hopefully to see why it was knocking.

It's led a hard life, I will bring it back to life!

 

haha you are a beast. do you even sleep/eat?

I'll look around for a turbo support brace for ya, not sure if I haz a spare

 

What's it look like? I wonder if there's any chance I have one in the box of spares that came with my MSM.

 

No.

That would be epically awesome.

It's a plate with two legs coming off it. Lemme paint a picture for you:



The dashed line is a bend. This is all off memory, sorry purists if it's a little off.

Also finished taking the motor apart.

Like I said, the head looks really good under the valve cover.



The oil pan, did not look good.



Thrust bearings looked ok, and measured .098 and .099. Brand new thrust bearings measure .1".



I don't know what order myself/photobucket/myphone put these in, but here are the rods and their bearings. Holy **** ****.









And the main bearings, which really don't look too bad.



The motor is 100% taken apart. Nothing else remains on the block that can be removed. I'm going to make sure my machine shop takes extra care cleaning the block, and make sure they take all valves and springs out when cleaning the head. It's also spotless by the way, cam journals look great.

Anyways, can anyone tell me what destroyed these rod bearings so drastically? I'm going to check if the pulley has slipped, although that might be a fair bit into reassembly before I can. Even if it did, don't NB engines time themselves or something? It's been...never since I've tried timing a non MS'd NB engine. That's a lie, my damn DD. But factory instructions don't say anything about timing like NAs with the CAS do.

 

I'm gonna go with oil issue. Like contamination or something. Based on that ugly oil pan

 

Wow. It's like they fed the intake with the shopvac in reverse. Ugghh.

Yeah worst MSM ever. I helped Curly pull the engine, and omfg, missing bolts everywhere. And most of the bolts that WERE there, were barely torqued.

Curly has so far failed to mention the 20ft/lb crank bolt !

Josh I can just add a turbo brace to the order if you want. I couldn't place it tonight due to Mazdaspeed AGAIN having late night downtime outside published downtime windows. WTF.

 

13-520, "Bracket, Trubo", yes? $41.99

Edit: and bolts&stuff?

 

might as well change the oil drain too cause the chances of it leaking will be 99.99%

 

I have your brace. Send me a pm.
You'll need 2 of the longer motor mount bolts

 

PM'd

Very good point. There are some dents in it already, who knows how close it is to cracking.

PM'd. Orderalltheparts

 

Oh yeah, the car.



This was it as it showed up around 6 on the 7th.

 

Did you ever find out what the poor sap paid for it?

 

His name is Mikev, I'll let him answer any questions regarding costs. He already feels bad being the poor sap who bought this car. I seriously think, and hope, we've seen the worst of this car with the poorly maintained engine and dirty under carriage.

 

Ah, I'm sure he does. Poor guy.

Gonna be pretty awesome when all done though.

 

Damn, the car looks quite clean in that photo. Kudos to you and the owner for being the ones to bring this car up to speed. In the end the money is spent but the owner is gonna have a super fun miata to drive.

 

The dumb **** paid $8K for the car. Plus a grand to ship it out to OR from Houston. I know better than buy a car sight unseen without an inspection of course, but really wanted a black MSM, so prematurely ejaculated.

It was clear there was going to be things wrong with the car with that mileage and price. Since I'd planned to do everything Mr Curly is doing to the car anyway, except for that uh completely trashed bottom end part, it isn't a complete loss. I just feel like a dumb ***. Not the first time of course, but I'll get over it.

 

epic first post, propped.

Could have been a lot worse. Owned a Miata before?

 

Thanks. Yup. My first was a 96 M Edition which was a wonderful little car and still lives with the friend I sold it to.

Then came a 97 built out to full FM Turbo II spec. Fast fun, fragile, and impossible to smog when I moved into southern Oregon where I have the honor of living in one of only two smog controller areas in the state. Sold to a guy who lives in a smog free zone.

In between I had an SM that I played with in NASA.

I had a 99 NB for a few months and decided I wanted an MSM because I think I can stealth it past the smog police by swapping out the MS and injectors every two years.

 

Love it lol. I'm not looking forward to moving back to a smog controlled area. Looks to be a nice car with all the crap figured out.

 

Honestly, if your plan was to buy a decent MSM with your only intention to pull and build the motor, you didn't get that bad of a deal IMO. My only complaint if I were in your shoes would be the lack of quality from the "motor guy" at the Mazda dealership, who was actually a Ford mechanic. But should of been better than this. Had your bearings been in good shape, you engine would of been toast in a few hundred miles anyways. The rod bearings may have actually saved you in the long run.

The carpet, seats, interior, and soft top, are all in great shape. There's some peeling of the black paint inside the MSM headlights, and the side mirrors are a little dull, all from that Texas heat I'm sure. Yes, there is some bumps and bruises on the paint, but that just makes it a perfect candidate for my tiny *** garage. Perfect paint jobs only slow me down.