1990 Miata Build by switched

6 minute(s) of a 297 minute read

OK, ALOT of progress. Here goes.

Had 2 friends come over and help me lift the engine off the stand and carry it on a 2x4 and drop it in- took all of 10 minutes to do, I could not believe how painless it was.

It looks much better in the car than on the stand. Don't mind the rear coilover.

I have a jack under the crank pulley so the engine isn't resting on the oil pain. 

Tapped the 2 holes for the throttle body adapter, made another TB gasket, and bolted on the FM adapter and the 1.6 throttle body.

Next, a quick one, very difficult also. JDM visors.

They fold up and tuck nicely behind the cage.

I went back and finished up the work on the adapter plate. It took me forever to find shorter 12x1.5 bolts, I couldn't believe it.

Here's a pick of the plate bolted to the block:

And a close up of the starter added on to the plate

I believe I am only going to use 2 holes for the starter, but I might run a tap through the plate and come up from the opposite side of the starter with the 3rd bolt.

Next up, put the tranny back up on the plate (I've only done this about 300 times :roll.

3/9/2008

Hmm... seems to be some minor clearance issues. Remove tranny (I'm getting good at this), and then bust out the grinder.

Problem solved!

Here's a closeup of the starter clearance cut

Put the tranny back on plate for the final test fit...and it fits!! I proceeded to bolt it down as I had to drill out 2 more holes in the plate and wanted to make sure they were spot on. I also decided to bore out the rest of the mounting holes for the TII tranny to accept a 12mm bolt, vs the 10mm that it normally had.

For these 2 holes I ran a 1/2x20 tap through, bored out the mounting eyes on the tranny, and bolted them on. The bolts were a little long, so I stepped them up with washers. Yes I will get the correct bolts when install time comes.

The adapter plate is now officially done! WOOHOO!!! Next weekend I'm packing everything up and heading over to my buddies house to weld the rear tranny mounts, and to fabricate/weld on front diff mount for the TII rear that is just waiting to get under there.

3/30/2008

made ALOT of progress over the weekend. I brought the car to my buddy's shop so we could start on the fabrication/welding of the new mounts for the tranny and rear end.

I took a lot of pictures, so enjoy!

My buddy has been working on a tube-frame rock crawling buggy which he is building from scratch. I took a few pics of both cars in the garage- it's the opposite end of the motorsports spectrum

I stood on the buggy's tires (37"), and snapped some overhead shots of the miata

tools of the trade:

Got the miata up on jackstands so that we could begin work on it

Pulled out the inferior rear end and muffler

I broke one of the bolts holding the ppf to the diff, so I had to remove it all in one unit...what a pain

here's a shot looking from the rear down the transmission tunnel

closeup:

Next, I bolted on the transmission bellhousing gasket, the flywheel and my adapter plate: