I will confirm this tomorrow, but I am almost certain that all of the blocks are tapped BSPP. You can thread any BSPT fitting into a BSPP port.

 

in for the answer, because I just bought a VVT head to put on my 94 block.

 

here is a post from dorzok on miata.net that helped me out. I started this project months ago and lost track of the fuel pressure and return lines:


Hard lines connected to the tank:
front is return
rear squirts gas

 

I am nearing the end of my swap and I have quite a few hanging grounds off the 1.6 harness on the passeger side of the car near the cylinder head. I am using a square top IM and do not see anywhere immediately obvious to ground these wires. I am thinking to just extend them and ground at the chassis.

What is the accepted "best practice" for this?

 

I attach all the ECU grounds to the intake manifold. I typically repurpose one of the EGR studs for this.

e: To clarify, this is for a 90-93 car. The 94-97 cars use a bolt/stud bracket thingie that bolts to the block and connects to the ECU grounds next to the throttle body, and you can just transfer that over to the 99-05 motor. The NB fastens all the ECU grounds to the intake manifold, so the IM is a good place for them.

 

Define quite a few. There are 2 black and green/black pairs of wires attached to two ring terminals, I grounded these to chassis on the "shelf"

Edit- listen to the smart guy. I changed mine later.

 

Perfect, thanks!

To Ziggo, I may have exaggerated a bit, yes, I am referring to the two ring grounds coming off the harness with the injector connector.

 

So, I need some help (admittedly, very explicit hand-holding here) as I don't want to do this twice.

A 6-speed went in with the VVT motor. On the car side, I have the following

-two bullet style pins, and two white plugs

on the transmission side there are

-two white plugs, one black plug with two spades

I have seen notes written on MT that you just switch the plugs and it works, but can someone be very explicit about what exactly goes where? I have no clue which is the reverse or neutral switch.

Thanks,

 

Take a multimeter and probe the two connectors. In neutral, one of them will show continuity. That's the neutral switch. In reverse, the other one will show continuity. That's the reverse switch.

To figure out which one is which on the car side, look at your old transmission and do the same thing, then match the connectors up.

 

UGH FINE

For reference if anyone is as lazy as I was trying to be, for a NA chassis with a 6 speed going in, the bullet connectors from the car go to the black connector on the trans. I ended up crimping spades where the bullets were and jammed them into the black connector (keep in mind, the connector is tight and you _will_ need to isolate the spades somehow. I used silicone tape). The white ones just plug together and are a non-issue.

Got my swap running at the last minute on Saturday to make a cruise Sunday. Beat on the car mercilessly for 250 miles and it was the best. Thanks Savington and everyone who posted information in this thread for the help!

 

Glad it was helpful. It's nice to have de-mystified this swap for so many people

 

I can confirm that all the VVT parts bolted up just fine to an earlier block.

 

Just for anyone doing this swap, to reiterate my earlier comments.. Make sure you do the wiring for the coil packs so both wires are long enough to reach both coil packs. An earlier version of the original post had the coil pack wiring colors mixed and my car would start until I switched them on a whim. I just experienced the same thing yesterday helping my friend get his vvt swap car started. I suspect he had a very old printed version of the original post that he was working from, but it doesn't hurt to have the cables long enough just in case.

 

Does anyone else have trouble with the hood fitting over the motor? I rub in a couple locations, mostly the throttle body and the VVT solenoid/oil control valve.

 

The TB shouldn't rub at all, but yes, the VVT solenoid will brush the hood ever so slightly.

 

That's where Blackbird Fabworx lower engine mounts are a plus. I removed the cups from the motor mounts to lower my engine down to clear my hood, but I have a custom hood vent.

 

I have not seen any of that in my car after hundreds of laps at Sebring and Homestead. Are you aligning the powerplant frame correctly? If you have the angle on the powerplant frame wrong it will raise or lower the front of the engine depending on which direction it is off. I have seen the intake tube hose clamp at the TB rub the hood ever so slightly when the adjuster is in the wrong spot, but the VVT solenoid shows no rub marks.

 

When I say rub, I mean polish. The contact is so slight that the top of the VVT oil line gets shiny. It would not surprise me at all if tolerance stacking between the hood bracing, hood mounts, body, subframe, and motor mounts will cause you to either have or not have this interference based on nothing but random chance.

 

Might have been answered already I cant find it but will the 2000+ three wire engine temp sensor run the 1990-1993 dash temp gauge or do I need the separate 1990-1993 gauge sender installed?

 

Afaik you need a different sensor.