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biznatch wrote: ↑Tue Jun 26, 2018 11:21 pm Good number Dave. That's a bit more than I would have guessed, I was expecting it to come in around 140-150ish
Any intake mods yet?

I was expecting around 140 so it's a good result. Engine had good provenance though, having previously resided in the engine bay of a certain hershel orange RX2! Built using new plates, good housings and S3 rotating assembly.

Now if I was back home, I'd be getting someone to mod the nikki and massage the intake porting. Plan B will probably involve swapping the nikki out for something.......

It came out of the red one Dave.

Doh! Easier to spell than herschel orange anyway

OMG. I can't believe it's been 8 months since the last update. It's surprising how many reasons i can find not to leave a warm house for a cold workshop.

Got a couple of small issues sorted yesterday. First was the seemingly simple matter of replacing a hatch strut. I'd ordered one Strongarm strut from RockAuto a few months back after reading about Casey's install. I'd decided that one would do the job for now and I'll tackle the issue of swapping the electrical connections over when I replace the other side at a later date.

I say 'seemingly simple' because nothing ever is with TWiR when it comes to removing nuts or bolts. And indeed, it came to pass that the base of the strut would not unscrew, No way, no how. The only option was to fire up Mister Dremel and cut the ball end off, thus leaving room to get a socket on the end of the remaining fixing.

Dremel applied



I had to lean quite hard on the socket to extract the other bit. Little victories though



Comes with all the stuff needed to needed to re-install



And one is indeed enough. Lifts up very easily and most importantly, stays up on it's own. I'll tackle the other side later.

And the other little task was replacing the headlamps. The Lucas items on the car were already second hand from a MX-5 and were showing their age with frosting inside the glass. EBay came thru with these
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mazda-MX5-Mk ... :rk:4:pf:1

Not a bad price with bulbs included although I've used some up rated Philips bulbs which I had spare. The lenses are domed rather than the flat fronted Lucas lamps that they are replacing.





Replacement on the left is stronger and whiter than the old Lucas on the right.

I decided to investigate the source of my coolant loss which has been quietly occurring for some time.. It's nothing really bad, there's never any evidence on the floor after being parked up. It's just a small top up here and there.

But here's the thing. Having swapped the inlet manifold O rings for frost plugs when the new motor went in, I didn't use o rings with the frost plugs, only a little sealant. And I know that a few of you have used o rings in conjunction with frost plugs so the suspicion was always there.

Time to investigate then. Remove carb .



Remove inlet manifold, Evidence right away of some weeping. Also, I shall be making a new gasket all Blue Peter stylee as this one has clearly seen better days ( and I re used it from the old motor anyway) Note also, the difference in the port height between the gasket and the actual port. More on that later.



This is immediately after removal. I guess that whatever weeps out, evaporates on a hot exhaust manifold anyway. So I'll be needing some O Rings then!





And coolant egress is not just confined to inlet manifold area either ...









I think that is due to swapping out the water pump housing. Either the bolts are not tight enough or the gasket has failed. Further investigation is required. Oh well, it's about time for a coolant change anyway

the 1st time I used core plugs to block those channels off Dave I had problems too because I didn't use new 'O' rings and I'd slightly damaged one of the core plugs driving it in. When I redid it I put new stainless core plugs in, filled all around them with rtv and then used a new gasket ( which I made myself out of 1mm gasket paper and new 'O' rings.... never had a problem again.

Thanks for that Ian. Do you know if I can buy the O ring set from Mazda. Or failing that, the dimensions of aforementioned o ring?

Dave if you get stuck let me know, I am sure I have a couple.

I've made a paper IM gasket and installed a pair of generic o rings for now until the mazda parts arrive. This is all part of my next upgrade.

But for today, I've made do with a little improvement instead by replacing the 3 fusible links in the engine bay with PAL fuses. Unplug the old fusible links and plug these bad boys in their place. SIMPLES.

Thanks for sharing Dave. I try to get them from amazon!