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So I don't have a bunch of tear down pics but there wasn't much to see except for oily dirty parts. I really expected to see something catastrophic as far as failure however everything looked OK there was no obvious evidence of a blown head gasket or stuck rings. My cylinders looked OK and there was no excessive scratching on my Pistons. Although there was no obvious smoking gun the motor was shot, old and obviously was experiencing excessive blow by. I was now ready to start throwing more money at this thing than I would ever let my wife know.
Once I tore the motor down I took the head, crank and block to the machine shop. Had head cleaned up, had new springs and seals installed. Block cleaned and bored .5mm over. Decking wasn't required. Crank was balanced and polished.
New Engine Parts List
Manley Rods
Supertech 8:6:1 83.5mm Pistons
ARP Head Studs
ARP Main Studs
ACL main and Rod Bearings (standard size)
ATI Super Damper
Boundary Engineering stage 1 oil pump
Gates water pump
Gates racing timing belt
VS855 Valve springs
OEM Head Gasket
COOLING
Q max coolant re-route
Meishimoto aluminum radiator
Mishimoto slim dual fan
While the block and heads were at the machine shop I ordered all my parts. It took about three weeks for the machining to get done and when I got them back I was ready to throw things together.
Plastigauged rod and main bearing clearances. No pics of rod clearance but it was within spec as well.
Getting ready to drop Rods and Pistons in. It was a bitch getting the retaining rings in for the wrist pins but I eventually got it.
Outstanding build and story. My engines doing the same thing, sorta! I replaced my valve stem seals, but in the process I also noticed that one of my intake and exhaust runners was coated in soot.
I intermittently smoke off boost, but once I get on it, if a cop wanted to pull me over, they wouldn’t be able to see me!
Started getting last few pieces cleaned up and put on. Cleaned up my intake manifold and got the first look at how everything looked together.
I painted the turbo manifold with 2000' VHT paint. I'm sure it will flake off but I liked the way it looked on the stand.
I decided I wanted to try the wrinkle painted valve cover like I see so many doing and gave the valve cover a new wrinkle finish which honestly turned out like crap. I'm not sure what I did wrong but the top and flat areas turned out great but the rounded parts seemed to not wrinkle very well.
The picture actually looks much better than in person and seeing it up this close really shows how bad a job I did. Oh well I'm not building a show car so I don't care.
Finally I'm ready to drop the motor back in. In total it took me about three weeks to complete. This was my first complete engine build so I took my time and made sure I checked and re-checked everything I did. I went as far as marking every bolt with a paint pen so I didn't accidentally forget to torque something. I meticulously looked everything over probably more times than I needed to. I turned the engine over by hand a few times just to make sure nothing seemed bound up or notchy. Honestly I'm real pleased at the way it turned out. I am confident this thing will be able to handle whatever I throw at it.
I was was so nervous and excited to start this thing up for the first time and the time was here. I had gone over everything in my head on how I would go about the start up procedure and what I needed to check immediately after it fired up and before driving it for the first time. I double and triple checked everything under, in and around the engine. I wired my wastegate open so I didn't induce any boost while seating my rings. I was scared I missed something and kept hesitating turning the key but finally said screw it and went for it.
It turned over maybe twice and fired up!!!....... than immediately died!! I was happy it fired up but pissed that it didn't stay running. I was a nervous wreck at this point my heart was pounding and I had a lump in my throat, I felt like a kid in the backseat of a car with a girl on prom night
I turned the key again and same thing!! Than It dawned on me. I had remembered the night before I was looking at all the pictures I had taken of the tear down and this picture caught my eye.
I went back to my build pictures and compared it to this picture.
Well ****!!! guess all the work I did tuning my engine before the rebuild was all done on a motor with the timing off
No problem!!...... jumped over to Trubokitty.com and downloaded the base map for my car (Thanks Brain!!!!!) loaded it into tunerstudio took another deep breath turned the key and BAM!!!... Car fired up beautifully!!! Idle went up to about 1400 and started settling down nicely. My focus was on the oil pressure gauge and oil pressure registered almost immediately which made me breath a sigh of relief. AFR's were a little rich but that was fine. Jumped out checked my timing.... dead on!! My heart was F%#*ING pounding, layed down on the ground looked for leaks didn't see any, jumped back in the car almost forgot to switch from fixed timing but remembered last minute, put it in reverse and off I went.
As I nervously drove out of the neighborhood I was on high alert listening for anything out of the ordinary. I was terrified I would hear something catastrophic and see a trail of oil or smoke behind me but that never happened. Honestly the motor sounded different than before. Almost like as if the timing belt was to tight? Maybe it was from the Gates belt I installed or maybe I was just making things up in my head but it was for sure tighter than the old belt!!
I felt some strange vibrations I hadn't noticed before in my drivetrain and that freaked me out a bit but figured it was from tearing everything apart and putting it back together and things were settling back into place. Either way I was able to get it out and followed the FM break in procedures.
After about 15 minutes of driving around I made it back home, pulled into the garage, popped the hood and looked for leaks again as it was running and all was good. I jumped back in the car checked my temp gauge it was good, idle was a little high no big deal I'll tune that later and shut it off.
I sat there in the quiet listening to the little ping ping ping of the exhaust and thought.......... HOLY F%#*K!!!, I F%*KIN DID IT!!
Now I know it's not a huge deal to build your own engine but I've spent so much time reading, researching this site and thinking about this moment, all the while wondering if I could actually pull it off and here I was with my first full engine build and nothing rattled off or blew up or pissed all over and I was happy!!
Since getting the engine fired up for the first time I've been doing a lot of driving in the evenings trying to put on miles and do some autotuning. Since this isn't my daily driver it's tough to go out and rack up any more than 20-30 miles at a time. Like I said I followed FM's break in procedures, WOT from 2.5k up to 6k in third and fourth gear than let off quickly and go full vacuum than repeat about five times. During this time I had my wastegate wired open as well.
Im always looking for leaks when getting back to the garage and so far so good. Once I hit 50 miles I decided to drain the oil and see if there was anything sparkling or otherwise out of the norm for first run Dino oil with tons of assembly lube mixed in. I was super pleased to see nothing but a hardly noticeable greasy smear of assembly lube. No sparkly bits and the oil actually looked like it did when I poured it in for the first time. I even dragged a magnet around in the oil and found nothing. I figured everything must be going ok with bearing clearances and I felt a sense of accomplishment and relief since my nightmare visions of oil that looks like a bass boat metal flake paint job didn't happen. I went ahead and refilled the oil with fresh dino oil and changed my filter. Almost forgot, I cut my old filter open as well and found nothing but clean oil.
Fast forward a few weeks and I now have 200 miles on the engine.
I've now hooked up my wastegate and am starting to go out and slowly get into boost. My first few times out I only got into about 5-6 psi. It was so boring only going low boost after having felt 10-12psi before the re build. I should mention that most of the strange noises I heard from my initial start up and drive have now gone away. I figure most things just needed to settle in except a vibration I had around 3-3.5k that had me a little concerned but turned out my downpipe was contacting the rear of the engine bay. Once I repositioned it vibration was gone. I auto tuned the car in boost and it did a good job but I still needed to go in and manually change some cells since it always wanted to go richer than I'd like under boost.
After making a post on this site asking if I should ease into the boost or just go for it the overwhelming response was to go for it so that's what I did. I felt like my tune at idle was was pretty solid so I locked those cells out in VEAL and slowly adjusted my home made manual boost controller until I hit 15psi on my boost gauge. It was awesome to feel that boost kick in and by 4K I was making 15psi only bad part was I was feeling something breaking up and I figured it was spark. I closed the gap on my plugs to .028 went back out and problem was gone.
Im having a great time with this car so far. I had to pretty much start from scratch on my tune since my old tune was jacked. I still like to manually tune my boost in higher kpa cells since it wants to go way to rich even with autotune but I think I've got it dialed in decently up to 15psi. It's nice not seeing a smoke screen behind me under decel or under boost and I can't wait to see how far I can push this current setup before something breaks or needs upgrading. For now I'll keep tuning and driving and tuning and driving.
So had my first setback. While out tuning and making some hard pull I've started to notice a clanking noise coming from my transmission. It happens when I'm letting out the clutch and it's halfway up. Here's a link to the post I made the other day about it but surprisingly enough nobody has any input on it. Mines not quite as bad as the video but the sound is spot on. I now obviously have the transmission out.
Since nobody seems to know exactly what is going on with it I think I've got a game plan in place. I'm going to replace the input shaft seal and make sure my transmission fluid is serviced properly with Amsoil MTG and put it back together. I'm hoping the noise was simply the fluid being too low and possibly not the right fluid since I used Lucus gear oil and maybe this contributed to the problem. I'm wrestling with the idea of just replacing my transmission but just figures I can't find one available locally or anywhere close by. Ive also considered just upgrading to a six speed but again I can't find one close by. Funny enough I've seen several over the last year in my local craigslist but when I need one I can't find one. I would be really pissed to go through all the time and effort to reinstall the transmission just to have it do it again.
Little fender flare install pics. I just like the wider look they give. I went with a set of Carbon Miata fender flares. Installation was simple once you get over the nervousness of cutting your fenders. Every video I watched seem to cut way more than I felt it needed to be. Anyway here's a few pics. I ended up using self tappers until I decide on paint colors for the car but so far I think I'm gonna stick with white.
I didn't like how high the flare was once the body lines lined up so I lowered the front ones about an inch and will rework the body line later. The rears were fine though.
Still deciding on what route to take with my transmission. If I happen upon a good score in the next few days I might just upgrade to a 6 speed if not I guess I have plenty of time now that the colder weather is here to wait it out and see what shakes out.
Small update.......... after several hours of mental deliberation I thought about just sealing up my tranny and sticking it back in. When I pulled the input shaft cover and found the seal torn and leaking a lot of gear oil I thought maybe my problem was oil getting on my clutch and flywheel surfaces making it slip or chatter when letting out the clutch. There was oil slung around inside the bell housing and pretty much everywhere. I kept looking on craigslist hoping a 6 speed would magically appear but that didn't happen.
Upon closer inspection of my tranny I noticed more than normal slop when I turned the input shaft by hand. In any gear it seemed to turn about a 1/4 inch before I could feel it engage the gear and I confirmed this by holding on to the output shaft and feeling no movement until I moved it 1/4 inch. It also sounded very "notchy" when turning the input shaft by hand. I knew there were a few 94-97 Miatas at my local LKQ so I headed there to check out the transmissions there. As luck would have it someone had already removed the engine from the 97 that had 100k (I had already removed the driveshaft a few weeks ago). When I grabbed the input shaft on this one there was a noticeable difference from the one I had. It was much less notchy and there was almost zero slop in the gears when I turned it by hand. Luck ally the PPF bolts came loose easily and I walked out with the tranny.
I replaced the seals and put on my TOB since it only has a couple hundred miles on it. Sadly I'm getting pretty fast at removing and reinstalling the transmission. I hate the fact that I'm putting the 5 speed back in since last time I did this I swore if I did it again I was putting a six speed in. Oh well I want to drive my car and have fun so I'll just wait to upgrade till a latter date. If all goes well I'll have this back together in a few hours and fingers crossed my problems gone!!
11-04-2017, 12:15 PM
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I was happy it fired up but pissed that it didn't stay running. I was a nervous wreck at this point my heart was pounding and I had a lump in my throat, I felt like a kid in the backseat of a car with a girl on prom night 
. I had remembered the night before I was looking at all the pictures I had taken of the tear down and this picture caught my eye. 
