My wife blew the car up..
 

it's true. I had been avoiding this post for a few days while I confirmed the truth, but a leakdown test confirmed the bad news today.

Cold engine, from 1 - 4, 18%, 45%, 18%, 45%

Yikes..

Engine is out of the car, already lined up another engine to drop in this week with only 5k miles on it.

Wife drove the car 40 miles on the interstate at 75-80mph without ever looking down at the temperature gauge.. apparently my cooling issue was worse than I thought, and my 6 mile commute never really showed the true problem.

Holy shit man, make sure you find out what your problem was on that motor and inform some of us so we can catch it before it comes our way.

That sucks...

Didn't you just add Hydra too?

^^Yeah, like what the condition of the engine/radiator and cooling mods (if any) you had done. Sucks to hear man.

WOW. :td:

I may never know exactly what happened.

Stock radiator and fans. I had the under shield in place. Recently replaced t-stat, and a pretty low concentration of anti-freeze + water wetter.

Because I was not actually driving, I do not know exactly what happened. I know a couple of things.

1) At no time did my wife look down at the gauge.
2) She drove approximately 35 miles at high speed/load but likely never saw boost.
3) Upon exiting the interstate, steam started to come out of the hood.
4) She drove it another 1 mile to a service station where she turned the car off (argh)
5) The coolant system was pretty much bone dry by the time I arrived.
6) I found a burst heater core line upon removal of the engine.

So who knows. I can only make assumptions. It fucking sucks and I'm drinking instead of being pissed.

bourbon is the liquor of choice.

https://www.miataturbo.net/forums/showthread.php?t=5693


also, that sucks.

Well, I bought a 5k mile engine delivered for $1250. Should be here tomm or thursday. Stock engine. I was happy with what I had before, so I should be ok. plus I have a good block and head to do a future build if I want.

I wanted to build the current engine but it was going to cost me $1200+ for just pistons, rods, and bolts/studs, not including any machining costs. Maybe one day.

Ouch. I'm looking at maybe $800 for rods, pistons, and main and head studs.
I may not do the head this year. :-(

Well you needed to install the clutch anyway. Put those fancy parts in your shop to some good use. GL man.

The goose is good (grey that is) or how about some sake since the flying M is from Japan.

Good luck.

He can't affor grey goose with a motor to buy time for the heaven hill man :p

hmmm, thats a good one....blame the wife next time.

My g/f can't drive the miata, no idea how to drive a stick. She's scared of clutches. So she is perfectly fine with driving her automatic protege. The Ranger is standard too so unless she runs into one of them i'm doin fine.
Except for having the ability to blame her for something going wrong of course, not that I would ;)

I drink a lot of grey goose too.

that is why your hair was standing up yesterday duh :rofl:

New engine is in the car... car runs, but is not firing on all 4... not sure what the problem is..

Normally, the first question would be coils... but with the 01+ cop.... hum....

Did you miss a ground at the back of the engine? Everything plugged in, and no missin parts?

EDIT:

Have you checked the timing marks for the belt? Maybe the cams are off a tooth?
Compression test?

Dave,

do ya have any clue how warped the head is?