I am not sure if I was semi serious or mostly joking when I wrote this, but having seen some of the nicer drift car builds using this motor and even the regular 2.0 4cyl VW swap into RWD layouts, zee germans do seem to have more base level durability built into their stuff. Also any big project moving away from a balance shaft deleted K24 makes my heart warm.


Many Cats awarded, and as always, you're insane, keep going.​​​​​​​

 

Subbed -- this is amazing

 

Great idea! I was watching a savagegeese video where they reviewed the new Testarossa - one of the things I noticed was that they included a flex section between the engine and turbo, might not be a bad idea here as well. Also the entire turbine housing is Inconel. At least you're getting something for your $700k.

 

Got damn, that thang is mounted LOW! Super sick.

That oil feed at the front of the head is pretty damn convenient. Looks like the final package will be pretty clean and compact all things considered.

 

A bit late to the party, but I'm super excited to see how this one goes. Great work so far. Do you expect to buy an off the shelf wheel/paddle setup or try to design the paddles and/or mounts yourself?

Wingman's Blue Miata, now with 50% less threadlocker required

 

I didn't see any good photos in the one video I skimmed, but can't really picture how this would work for a normi . Pre-turbo is a no-no for braided flex joints due to the risk of shedding wires being ingested by the turbo. They do make "solid" flex joints that more slide together, but it's not something I would trust to hold 30-40PSI of EMAP. And adding this pre-turbo would be a total nightmare with the room I have for exhaust tubing.
Good timing on this question, as I just finished setting these up.
Seems Legit Garage offers a drop in paddle shifting kit. It looks very nice, comes with an aluminum bracket to mount it to your wheel, twisted wires, carbon paddles. I'm sure it's a fantastic and well made bit of kit, but it's $350. Guh, no thanks.
So I sourced some paddles from Alibaba for $80
Nothing fancy, think it said they were fitment for a Mini? Nice clicky feeling, seem built fine, no glaring issues. They had ~negligible~ resistance when open, and a solid ~1200ohm when closed, which was very easy to turn that into something the Maxx ECU would read as a shift command.


I built a flat bracket to mount them between my wheel and the quick release hub, put the wiring on a curly-Q for taking it off the hub, and a deutsch connector at the end if the entire assembly needs to come out of the car. Then proceeded to sit in the car, mash pedals at random, and click the paddles while pretending I was a real race car driver. 10/10 experience.





More cooling stuff.
VW inlet(hell, the entire cooling system tbh) is a mess of proprietary push fit connectors and plastic housings. Yah know how the Mazda rear neck to front mixing manifold is a push-to-fit tube, sealed with only a single Oring? Yeah imagine an entire engine sealed like that. Except plastic. Only thing that solidly bolts in is the water pump.
I'm not using a VW water pump, so I converted that three bolt flange into a mildly phallic inlet that will connect to the CWA400 outlet via rubber hose. Also has the turbo 6an return feed on it(not shown from this angle).


Beside it is somewhat of an experiment... The VW alternator setup is... oh god, its PRIME VW design logic. The crank only turns the AC compressor directly, but the compressor is dual pulley, with another belt BEHIND the first that then uses 2 idler pulleys and a tensioner pulley to drive an alternator and water pump.


Absolute disaster for servicing, and none of this would fit in the car very well. So all that mess got tossed, and in its stead is the CWA400 and the tiny ES1015 alternator. Its very light and compact, but rated only for 80amps. Which *should* be enough for my power demands, but might be cutting it close during high load operations(water pump full bore AND power steering pulling a ton of current). If this alternator doesn't cut it, I have room to move to a larger, ~150amp alternator like is conventual, but it would be sweet if this thing does the job.

The backside of the VW block was still open(that's where the push fitting nightmare starts) so I said NOPE and welded it up to put the lid on that can of demons.




I dropped the mockup engine and trans assembly into the car and put the entire thing onto the ground- it was time for this car to see daylight for the first time since October.
I've gotten a lot of concerns/questions about how close the transmission pan sits to the ground, but since the entire firewall/transmission tunnel has moved, this is basically a non-concern, unlike most 8HP into Miata swaps. The leading edge of the trans pan is level with the frame rails, and the pan tilts upwards slightly from there- I might change this to making it closer to perfect level.
But these two photos are taken as level with the frame rails as I could manage. I don't think whacking the trans pan on anything will be a concern unless the car is already high-centered.



I rolled it outside, directly onto the trailer, and then into the garage of a competent fabricator... Its gonna live here for the next few weeks for some work that I can't pull off on my own.

 

Here's the video I was referring to, 7:20-ish:




Not saying you should do it, just thought it was an interesting design detail.

Can't wait to see what comes next!

 

Oh that's interesting, especially how they only flexed on one runner. I'm sure an actual engineer can provide some guesses as to why just that one runner has a flex joint(longest run? Hottest cylinder? Biggest temp differential?) but that's above my paygrade and isn't feasible to design into this manifold.

 

With a good enough imagination, you don't even actually need to finish the project.

Also reading that belt diagram made me wince. So glad I don't work on European cars.

Stoked to see what's next. If it's above your pay grade in the fab department, it's gonna be good haha.

 

I need to add this to my signature.

 

 

What racecar project is ever finished?

 

I've been planning on bleeding my brakes for the past 14 years.

 

The number of times this page has to refresh due to giving is too damn high.

 

You stop it with that anti-motivation for finishing project cars

Car was absent but progress continued. Final touches to the lower oil pan with a baffle and DIY trap door added. I never saw lateral starvation with the K, only longitudinal, so I built the baffle to focus on preventing for/aft slosh.



I had hoped to be able to reused my old driveshaft and just have one end changed to the dodge flange, but unfortunately a slip joint needed to be added and the smallest slip size was a 3.5". The old driveshaft was a 3" diameter. So the shop had to build a new shaft, savaging the joints from the old.


I had a minor fiasco with the engine... I had been intending to do a cheap "rods only" build for the first engine in this thing, to really allow me to shove all the low end torque at it and see if I could snap a crankshaft. So I ordered a set of super cheapo rods, not realizing the that 07k uses a 19mm wrist pin, and the smallest aftermarket rod uses a 20mm wrist pin, with most going to a 22mm wrist pin(as shown). For some reason, NO ONE makes a rod you can drop into this motor with stock pistons. Pretty annoying, and I don't feel like dropping the money for a pistons+rods build currently. So plans changed and the completely stock, untouched motor I had sitting in a corner with the intent of saving for emergencies got pulled out and prepped for service.


While pulling the oil pans off the motor, a chain guide I didn't realized existed fell out and I was worried I had de-timed this motor. So I got a crash course in VW timing chains. Its somehow not terrible, overly complex, and stupid simple, all at the same time. Aspects of timing it have to be exact(a special tool that interfaces in ONE specific hole in the crank to lock it at a NOT TDC position), aspects are dumb simple(The lower chain just goes on whatever way you want, no teeth or marks to line up, and frightening amount of chain slack) and of course some bits are way over-engineered(the highly specialized tool that threads into the cams to lock them together in one specific position, dual tensioners and a bunch of chain guides). It took me a few tries to wrap my head around it, but after the fact I could probably time these from scratch in under 15min. I will say these chains are much thicker and appear stronger then anything I've run across before, and this is backed up by many people going the full lifetime of the motor on original chains/guides.


Car came back from its week long stay in a fabrication shop, now sporting a turbo manifold. I expressly requested the manifold be built as beefy and overbuilt as possible. The fabricator was the same guy that built my cage and while it may not be the most aesthetically pleasing manifold, it certainly is a heavy unit. Only time will tell how it holds up.






After getting the car back I played engine jenga swapping parts around, pulling things off the motor I thought I would be using and installing on the stock motor, bolting up the adapter plates and transmission, and prepping everything for "final" installation. As it was the first time I'd done a full buildup for this driveline it took me a looooong time to get everything together, figuring out what needed to go on before what and how to access things easiest. Lining up the transmission/torque converter and bolting everything together is a challenge that makes AZ6 to BP installation look like child's play. Part of me is glad that the driveline has to be removed to get at any major head or timing components, because installing the transmission with the engine still in the car would be an impossible task.
On the bright side, the entire assembly is perfectly balanced with no fluids added. I think with oil in the transmission and a dry engine it should shift to a slightly tail heavy angle making install into the car an absolute breeze. Its a tight, but perfect fitment that's incredibly easy to install solo.




Part of what makes the installation so easy is every fluid and air line is an AN fitting, aside from coolant. Additionally, the fuel and transmission lines are on drybreaks, so its a matter of seconds to cleanly separate those two systems from the chassis, with no need to cap them or drag around leaking lines. The pneumatic system for boost control and ECU mapping are all 3AN soft lines, making them both easy to disconnect without risking damage from hose clamps/seized rubber, and resilient to heat/chafe damage. Doing full AN/drybreaks was an expensive and time consuming process but I think it will pay off in time/energy saved during engine removals down the road.

The transmission cooler wasn't plumbed yet, none of the exhaust has been built, the front coolers weren't installed yet, but I grabbed 10gal of E85, snugged up the 3 lines that hadn't been tightened and were leaking fuel, cranked to establish oil pressure and good crank signal, and fired it up.

The starter was shimmed too tight, I'm not 100% sure it was running on all 5 cylinders, the open turbine dump is horrendously loud and cooks the bay, the transmission isn't co-operating yet, none of the EGT sensors are wired in, oh my god there's still so much to do,

but the world's first 07K swapped Miata has officially roared to life.

 

IT LIVES!!!!

 

No words. Congrats dude!

 

Did I read that right?
And it didn't spit trans fluid all over.... so it was still dry?

Brave.....

 

Transmission inlet/outlet were just plumbed into each other. Would have been hell of mess otherwise.

 

Ah, didn't see a reference to trans fluid and monkey brain latched onto the "lines not plumbed".

Neglecting to fill the fluid is something I could see myself doing "just have the clutch in and parking brake on, it'll be fine" and it definitely not being fine.