Is it a one piece bushing or are there two halves?

If one piece it looks like it might just not be centered in the arm -- the right side looks like it might be in too deep. If your all-thread is long enough, you can push it over by bracing against the other bushing mount. Yeah, yeah, everyone says not to do that because it can theoretically bend the arm, but it shouldn't take all that much pressure to get the poly bushing to slide a few mm over.

If it's two pieces then the same might be true, or they might just be a fraction too long. Theoretically you could take one piece out and shorten it with a very sharp knife.

I have a press if you need one.

--Ian

 

Thanks Ian,

It’s a two piece bushing. I thought I had it, but then I didn’t and I’ve put the arm aside for a while so I don’t heave it into orbit. I’m making progress on other arms. The fronts are going quickly, knock on wood.

I’ve got a press here, I just don’t know how I’d use it in this case.

The good news is that despite not being on the ground and ready for an alignment, I’ve got the rear bearings installed, the sway bar brackets modified, and … yeah. I’m making progress.

A word to the wise: install inside bushings first. Always.

 

Shortly after replying to Ian, I futzed about with the bushing a bit to move the sleeve a little, then I hit the subframe a few times with a medium sized hammer, and eventually got the arm in.

What a pain in the ***.

Hat tip to Ian for the assist on this one, not sure what it was you said, but I’m giving you the credit.

 

Glad you got it sorted. These are such a pain in the ****.

 

Oh, it's not done being a PITA yet.

It took a stupendous amount of physical violence and curse words to get the rear upright into the arm. And then last night I realized I forgot to put the f'in hub into the bearing before putting the upright on the car. FML.

The other side had similar issues seating the first RLOI bushing. It would seat fully against the arm, then pop out a mm.

Thankfully, I hadn't yet put in the outer, so I whacked it back out without too much trouble.

I'll go over the insides of the bushing tubes with some sandpaper again to make sure they're smooth. I may even (against advice) use a smidge of grease on the RLOIs to get them sliding. I don't think that'll do any harm in this location. I will not do this at the alignment bolt locations.

For those playing along at home: the upright is 80mm wide at the bolt flanges. The distance between the faces of the bushing tubes in the arms is 90mm. The lips on the urethane bushings are ~5.5mm each. TIGHT.

Thankfully all the other arms went smoothly. I'm going to have a re-assembly party tonite where I just slap bolts into everything to get it back on the car.

 

I think you'll be fine with grease in those locations. Basically anywhere that you can't easily cookie cutter the bushings, rear upper outer bushing can be greased as much as you want, that location won't cookie cutter.

 

I’ve got a chubby.

Four actually.

This upright went back in much easier than it did the first time.

Stupid me.

 

It's a beautiful thing.

 

We're getting down to the wire.

The good news is that the client on-site visit I had scheduled for M-W of this week didn't happen, so I'm not completely exhausted at 5pm every day and can spend some extra time in the garage between meetings.

Three corners are bolted up. I cheated a bit on the second upright and ground some small chamfers into non-critical parts of the casting so I could wedge the part in more easily. I also now have a pair of tools for aligning the rear lower outer through-bolt: a 1/2" diameter steel bar that I've ground to a cone tip. Once that can be hammered through, I have an old OE bolt for that location that I ground to a cone tip AND flattened the thread-to-shoulder transition.

Passenger front corner left to assemble today between meetings. Then the passenger side sway bar bracket and radiator support. Then torque all the fasteners other than the alignment bolts. Then install the new parking brake cables (already disassembled, surprisingly fiddly). I bought new vinyl tiles at Lowes so I have good surfaces for my alignment platforms. I loathe Lowes, but Home Depot doesn't carry the tiles individually, only in $90 boxes. Lowes can kiss my pasty white ***. Bolt the alignment jigs on, run some strings, and spend a lot of time cursing and measuring.

Maybe I'll hold off and align it at the track Thursday afternoon. If I bring all the tools and don't forget anything stupid, it might be nice to have some friends around to help, or at least mock me.

I'm glad I talk to you folks, sometimes it brings out good ideas without you even having to post!

 

It's going to be pretty warm at Thunderhill on Thursday afternoon.

--Ian

 

True, but the sun stays out until 8pm and the awning over Tech is large enough that I can "borrow" some space to work.

It might even be cooler/shadier than my unshaded, west-facing driveway in the afternoon...

 

Events conspired and then I fought traffic, so I didn’t get to the track until 8pm on Thursday. I had stayed up until 2am putting the car back together, so no time or energy for an alignment on Thursday.

Woke up early Friday, got the alignment jig on the car and the car on the alignment cribbing. Then I decided to pay Magic Developed to align the thing. Justin is my kind of nerd and builds fast cars. He wrote down some numbers that aren’t too far off the SuperMiata race alignment, then had one of his minions do the work. I’m always happy to put cash in the hands of a kid paying his way through Spec Miata by working for a team. So Aaron got some cash, I owe Justin a coffee, and I only missed the first session on the track.

Aaron did a great job and marked all the bolts too.

My next ECU will be a MaxxEcu from Justin. We’ve already geeked out about the CAN bus stuff it can do that my Haltech CAN’t. (This was already in place before this weekend).

So if you want a new ECU and are more geek than PlugNPlay, I recommend Justin and MaxxECU. (He’s a dealer, and yes this is an unpaid plug)

Looking at my car in the sunshine, I think I have a new motto for it::

Not one cent for paint or compound. (Ref the Fighter Mafia and “not one pound for air to ground”)

It was a battle, but I’m on track, having fun!

 

Needs paint.

 

I've got a non-running K-swap again.

I had one of my best driving days at Sonoma on Saturday - I did four out of five sessions and with the input from the Garmin Catalyst race coach in my ears, I got my potential best lap down to 1:57, with my actual best lap around 2:00. I'm sure there's even more in the car, but I was consistently hitting the 2:00 mark despite traffic and some foolish mistakes here and there. I spent part of a session working on passing an E46 that really didn't want to let me by and I stayed in traffic sometimes just for the experience. A very enjoyable day at the track.

I went out in the first session on Sunday and on lap two or three, accelerating down the straight coming into T7, I shifted up, hit the gas, and nothing happened. I pulled off and could not get the engine restarted. I got towed back to the paddock and spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what the heck was wrong.

I learned, or re-learned, some very important diagnostic lessons:

1. Repeatedly cranking the engine is a fast way to kill a small lithium battery
2. Good jumper cables are an absolute requirement when diagnosing a no-start, even if you've got a fully-charged H6 mega-battery providing the juice
3. Those little lithium booster/starter packs won't do anything if you don't have some sort of battery hooked up
4. The ECU will absolutely cut out given the voltage drop accumulated between shitty jumper cables and cranking the engine.
5. The ECU will not store logs when it cuts out this way

And so forth.

So far I know:

• The engine sounds fine when spinning on the starter with the plugs out
• There isn't any forbidden glitter in the oil
• No oil was lost during this event
• The ECU logs may be pointing to a lack of synchronization
• The ECU does see both cam and crank signals
• The ECU is trying to fire both injectors and coils, but I don't hear any ignition events
• The timing chain has not slipped or come loose
• Fuel pressure is fine
• Oil pressure is built during cranking

I was able to back the trailer up to my garage and with the help of a neighbor, roll the car gracefully into the garage. So at least it's ready for some deep-dive diagnostics.

I was able to grab some logs of the crank and cam trigger events, but I haven't had a good chance to really look at them other than to see "yeah, there's signal there". I need to remind myself of the tooth count/spacing on both the cam and crank, remembering that the crank is some really unusual number.

So far, my spirits are up, but if I've somehow destroyed another K24, I'm going to be very sad.

 

Shoot, that’s a bummer man. What does the sync status show in the logs/ecu while you crank it? If you have the “quick start” enabled, then the ECU should at least attempt to fire the engine in batch/wasted during cranking with a good crank/trigger signal. Does it have any CEL codes?

 

Bummer... sorry to hear about another problem.

The failure mode sounds more like something electrical **** the bed, less like something physical broke. Air/fuel/spark... I would start with ignition wiring if you have fuel pressure.

 

Basics are: fuel, spark, compression. You've got pressure, but are the injectors actually opening? If you take the plugs out are they wet, and can you smell the fuel?

Are you actually getting spark? There are various ways of testing this to varying levels of cost and danger (screwdriver, special spark plug tester, oscilloscope w/ current probe on the plug wire).

Compression test?

--Ian

 

Crank trigger signal doesn’t look at all right. Should be 60-2.



Engine will happily crank away, but Haltech can’t sync the triggers. Makes sense.






Pulled the crank sensor (a complete pain in the ***). Sensor had a couple of metal shavings on it, and this groove that was probably cut by the trigger wheel.

I can’t watch the trigger wheel through the almost-inaccessible sensor opening while turning the engine by hand, so I’ve got an inspection camera arriving tomorrow. I hope the trigger wheel separating from the crank isn’t a thing…

 

Engine is coming out again and I am sad.


Crank trigger teeth have gone all British

Oil pickup tube bracket is missing the bolt


Yep, crank trigger teeth are FUBAR, apparently the bolt that holds on the oil pickup tube came out. It was torqued properly, and I used Permatex orange, with the prep spray.

I am sad.

 

Man, that is such a bummer. Reliability is supposed to be the strong point of this swap at 'stock' power levels.

I would definitely be considering safety wire for everything at this point if I were you.