Alright. I'll explain my situation. I was in the middle of turning my 95 miata into a track car. I picked up a 97 1.8l from tastydanish and built that up. I did rods, pistons (9.5.1 compression), BE oil pump, bearings etc. and got the motor running again and just done breaking it in... Then I had a little accident with black ice and totaled the car. The engine still runs and drives fine. But insurance money helped me grab a 2002 NB LS with about 100,000 miles.

What I was wanting to do is take the built 97 bottom end and mate it to my Vvt head from the 2002 and drop it back in the 2002 with all the 2002 accessories and eventually boost it (I'm waiting for TSE's Turbo offering). Besides new head bolts and engine head gaskets, what else should I grab to make this swap painless that I'm missing?

And searching, I read something about the oil port being different for Vvt heads. Anything I should be concerned about mating it to a 97 bottom end?

 

It should work fine.

Except the oil pump. You need a vvt oil pump

 

This.

 

Alright. I'm not a big fan of reusing oil/water pumps, this should be fine then.

PUMP,OIL (BP6D-14-100) - $266.86 - BP6D14100

 

get a be pump with billet gears.

its the only pump you should consider

 

BE is Boundary Engineering for the uninitiated.