I can do that. It will be a while. We are supposed to get close to a foot of snow Saturday. I used a T5 but went to 3.73 gears so my mileage will not be what it could be. I am confident that low 30's would have been possible had I left the 3.2 or whatever gears in it that the diff came with. You can get 2.8-ish ratio if you want.

 

Like?
I can only think of a few-
Wiring harness (NB's have a seperate engine harness where the NA's are very intergrated)
Cluster (NB's are electronically driven)
Radiator (obvious differences)

 

I can't speak to any real differences other than what Chapman pointed out. There is more room to work in on an NB due to fixed headlights, which is a bonus. That said, when I worked from scratch on one car I have no point of reference.

 

beautiful car and great work
what are you going to have to do to get the cluster functioning?

 

I don't know yet.

 

NA cluster swap?

 

Could, but I don't want to hose up my title when the mileage changed. I have a 24K NA cluster.

 

Don't you have a 94R cluster?

 

Great job John,
Looks beautiful so far.

but

MOAR PICS AND MOAR VIDEOS (should go without saying actually )

I wonder how much cheaper/easier this is to do vs the LSx swap.
Biggest problem on LSx is headers, and w/ CA **** emissions that's a no-go. If the headers on this thing drop right in that means there's much more room which means (hopefully) the stock headers will bolt right on and POSSIBLY pass a state ref here in CA?

I'm probably dreaming

 

+1
vids please
i really want to see wot run - even if you can't tell what rpm your at lol

 

"Vids or it didn't happen" is the new "Pics or it didn't happen."

Really though, how do you not capture the first start-up, first drive, etc? We need moving pictures.

 

I do now!

 

Looks great John. Milestone for sure. Even with all that's ahead, it must have felt great!!

Time to change your sig, bud.

 

You will never be able to make it happen in CA. I'm technically in violation of fed emissions laws which state you cannot put an older engine into ca newer year car. All of the 5.0 motors are 95 or older. That's why almost all people do 5.0 in early NA's.

 

LOL, it was 9:30 at night, I couldn't think of anything else to do on the car, it was 50* and I just said hell with it and went. Really not that smart on something that I just built. Even forgot my phone so couldn't have even called my wife for a tow.

 

I have them turned off so forgot that I had one. Updated.

 

Okay, so I've been contemplating a V-8 swap for some time now, in various platforms. One question: knowing the work it took, and the time invested, would you do it again? If so, would you do it the same, or not? What significant changes would you make with the benefit of hindsite?

 

Shatter my dreams why dont you.

 

Not entirely true... in fact the v8 exploders they made till 2000 were 5.0 v8s with better heads than the 5.0 mustangs came with. throw a cam and some cheap headers on one of those and you should hit 250-270whp pretty easy.

 

So you think a 00 exploder stock motor+t5 in a 00 miata done cleanly and correctly (retaining emissions equip) would actually sneak past the ref over here?

Sorry for semi-off topic quesiton

Stein,
How much did this approx cost? I know you did tons of fab yourself and didn't buy off the shelf (which is something I'd do too) but whats an honest figure to be looking at all said and done? I think I saw you throw 10k out in some thread. is that for everything or just motor+swap not counting original car?