1990 Miata Build by switched

4 minute(s) of a 297 minute read

Sorry I moved to a new house this past week, and packed the camera in a "safe place", which I couldn't find until last night....sigh. Here's a couple pics of the more or less "finished" car. I still haven't been able to wet-sand yet either.





















I also painted the lenses on my TSI's amber...


7/23/2010

Well things didn't go 100% as I had hoped . We set the base timing, it started right up and then we broke the motor in on the dyno. Ran it for about 30 min, at which time we noticed the coolant bubbling out from the rad cap. Shut it down to cool, and decided to change the oil. When I pulled the oil drain plug, I noticed coolant in the oil. Arg ! The guys at the shop seem to think it's my copper head gasket, as they haven't had good luck with them sealing properly in the past. I'm going to try and do a leakdown test this weekend and see where that gets me. I did get to drive the car off the dyno and onto the trailer though. Granted it was only 15 feet or so, but it was the first time it's moved under it's own power.

I'm a little bummed at the outcome, but it was still neat to hear it run. Hopefully it's just as simple as the damn gasket and not a cracked block.

7/26/2010

Couple pics the guys at Dent Sport took of my car:











8/9/2010

http://api.viglink.com/api/click?for...13605412930112

8/24/2010

Well, good news and bad news. The bad news is there is still an oil leak- I'm going to yank the engine back out as I believe it's leaking either between the block and the pan, or the block and the oil pump. The other thing that happened was I blew out the diaphragm in the vacuum booster on the last pull we did. The car technically is drivable now, so once I fix the issues I'm going to put some time on the engine before I head back to finish the tuning.

On the last pull, the car made 256whp. I took some videos, I'll post them when I get the chance.