Andrew's '93 NA6 - KL V6 swap

bruce · Postby **bruce** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 6:17 pm

Beelzeboss wrote:OK I'm on holidays now so I can finish the car. I'm part way through making a washer tank to go in the boot as there's not a lot of room in the engine bay.

Make an alloy Nopro washer bottle for the windscreen cowl. Like this one (not sure if link works). Looks rather simple;
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mazda-Mx5-Eun ... 3cc6003dd9

Beelzeboss · Postby **Beelzeboss** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 6:36 pm

Thanks guys

bruce wrote:Make an alloy Nopro washer bottle for the windscreen cowl. Like this one (not sure if link works). Looks rather simple;
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mazda-Mx5-Eun ... 3cc6003dd9

That's a good idea but I've 90% finished my boot mounted washer bottle. I've put a new hose under the carpet and I'm going to use a wire which was part of a previous alarm install which runs to the boot.

Beelzeboss · Postby **Beelzeboss** » Fri Jul 06, 2012 12:24 am

New intake manifold just finished. It doesn't look like it flows well, the plenum is too small, the runners are too long and it looks like shite but it should at least work.

A couple of wire extensions and reassembling the front bodywork and I'm ready for tuning.

I've signed up for a semester of TIG welding classes at TAFE, 4 hours every thursday night. Hopefully that will improve my welding

Beelzeboss · Postby **Beelzeboss** » Sat Jul 07, 2012 1:16 am

I bought 20L of E85 on the way back from uni today, any tips on tuning? With any luck the car will move under it's own power for the first time in ~8 months in the next few days.

I've also booked my emissions test for the first available spot at Botany, 1st of August

zossy1 · Postby **zossy1** » Sat Jul 07, 2012 1:22 am

Beelzeboss wrote:I bought 20L of E85 on the way back from uni today, any tips on tuning? With any luck the car will move under it's own power for the first time in ~8 months in the next few days.

I've also booked my emissions test for the first available spot at Botany, 1st of August

Scale req fuel up by about 30% from your basemap.

You will need quite a bit more cold fuel and a bigger priming pulse to get it going when it's cold. Otherwise it will be a dog to start.

There are a few other things, but this will get you going. Dann is the e85 guru

Jace · Postby **Jace** » Sat Jul 07, 2012 6:14 pm

could you use thick alu. for intake manifold flanges? or would the lower surface get to hot and make the alluminium soften and expand making it not seal properly between studs?
a thick alloy flange with some tube runners milled then welded onto it, would look better and probably function better (i know nothing of flow requirements etc)

and could you bend up piping for the coolant routing rather than the square ones?

i feel like i'm mostly coming from an aesthetic position but maybe functionality as well. oh and it's obvious you have skills to do what i've mentioned.

Sean · Postby **Sean** » Tue Jul 10, 2012 12:24 pm

Man it looks super close to being on the road now - good work.
Can't wait to hear the story of the look on the first policemans face who looks under the bonnet!

Beelzeboss · Postby **Beelzeboss** » Tue Jul 10, 2012 7:06 pm

zossy1 wrote:
Beelzeboss wrote:I bought 20L of E85 on the way back from uni today, any tips on tuning? With any luck the car will move under it's own power for the first time in ~8 months in the next few days.

I've also booked my emissions test for the first available spot at Botany, 1st of August

Scale req fuel up by about 30% from your basemap.

You will need quite a bit more cold fuel and a bigger priming pulse to get it going when it's cold. Otherwise it will be a dog to start.

There are a few other things, but this will get you going. Dann is the e85 guru

Thanks Chris, I don't have a basemap set up yet

it looks pretty simple to do though, especially with the adaptronic self tuning feature to help out.

Jace wrote:could you use thick alu. for intake manifold flanges? or would the lower surface get to hot and make the alluminium soften and expand making it not seal properly between studs?
a thick alloy flange with some tube runners milled then welded onto it, would look better and probably function better (i know nothing of flow requirements etc)

and could you bend up piping for the coolant routing rather than the square ones?

i feel like i'm mostly coming from an aesthetic position but maybe functionality as well. oh and it's obvious you have skills to do what i've mentioned.

I tried bending the pipes and they just cracked. If I had the right tools or the inclination to make my own then I could probably put bends in there but the amount of work/cost for minimal gain puts me off.
As for the manifold the final version will use a thick piece of ally for the baseplate, spanning both banks, and then have a simple box over the top of it. I'm still up in the air as to whether to go supercharged or just leave it N/A, though I'm leaning toward N/A just because with the charger I'd have to get a stronger gearbox.

Sean wrote:Man it looks super close to being on the road now - good work.
Can't wait to hear the story of the look on the first policemans face who looks under the bonnet!

Thanks Sean

The leak between the engine and gearbox is now a bit worse so I'm going to have to take the engine out a final time before the end of the holidays. I've cleaned up the workshop and garage and I've got it all ready to come out so it shouldn't take too long to get it back together without any leaks

Beelzeboss · Postby **Beelzeboss** » Sat Jul 14, 2012 11:47 pm

Over the last three days I've had the engine out to fix a leak, tap a few holes on the adapter plate for the starter cable P-clips, and to tighten the steering rack. What a drag. It's now back together minus fluids and almost ready for driving/tuning.

It's pretty rare that I make something which actually looks good

but I just made a new air filter box and I think looks great

The coil pack fits down here

The rice-spec intake hose will be gone as soon as I find a supplier for 2.5" aluminium tubing, all the places near me just have 60mm.

T-minus 18 days until emissions testing

Jace · Postby **Jace** » Sun Jul 15, 2012 12:07 am

air-tight air-box. that's genius!

Beelzeboss · Postby **Beelzeboss** » Sun Jul 15, 2012 12:11 am

Jace wrote:air-tight air-box. that's genius!

It's not airtight lol, it's only a 3 sided box so there's a huge gap at the bottom for air to get in where the coil pack is. Not exactly a cold air intake but the best I could come up with in 3 1/2 hours.

PaulF · Postby **PaulF** » Sun Jul 15, 2012 4:58 am

Did you consider doing a Mania-style cowl intake?

Beelzeboss · Postby **Beelzeboss** » Sun Jul 15, 2012 11:31 am

PaulF wrote:Did you consider doing a Mania-style cowl intake?

Not really, AFAIK you can't modify the firewall and have it engineered. Not sure if the barrier between the cowl and engine bay counts as firewall but I didn't want to risk having it knocked back. Also the pipe routing would be pretty difficult unless I could put the filter in the cowl.

Beelzeboss · Postby **Beelzeboss** » Sun Jul 15, 2012 10:20 pm

Well the car was finally put back together ready for it's first drive, all coolant leaks fixed, tuning was going well, idling properly at 14.5 AFR, starting easily from cold on E85. Then my mate spotted this:

I thought I'd fixed this leak when I replaced the rocker gasket but it turns out it's much worse than that. Here are some bad pics which don't properly show the problem.

It's the head gasket

luckily I have a spare set but it's going to take a while to get it all apart and then back together.

This was me when I discovered where the leak was coming from:

At least the engine and gearbox can stay in the car to fix this.

*edit* thinking back this could have been caused by my 7000 rpm run down the street in the donor car. It had only done 100,000k's in 17 years and was automatic so it's possible it had never been dríven that hard.