What have you done to your car today?

ND4SPD
My air pump failed.....Yay.
Click to expand...

Heh, good old Fix Or Repair Dailys :D At least it's nothing too major.

Changed my sidelights today. I enjoy how everything is so much easier to do on the Mazda than it used to be on the Fiesta. Changing bulbs, or indeed entire lights, is an absolute doddle.

I do need to figure out though why the headlight switch sometimes doesn't raise the pop-ups. It still turns the actual lights on, but occasionally the units don't raise. They raise fine if you press the other button on the console so it's not too big a deal, but ideally I'll have it all working as it should. Probably just a dodgy connection on the switch or something.
 
Got my Mustang back with a new air pump after not having her for two days. Dear god did I miss it!
 
Passenger side CV Axle boot exploded on the Civic. I don't know how many miles are on these axles, so I bought a re-manufactured unit from NAPA and replaced it last night...

...and while replacing it noticed that the drivers side outer boot decided to explode as well. :( Aren't Honda's supposed to be reliable? So far I have had a water pump fail, an input shaft bearing almost seize up, a motor mount explode and two CV axle boots come apart and make a complete mess. And I've only had the car since February. :lol:
 
A nice 20 mile run down the local twisty road in a thunderstorm at 5 AM. Perfection.

Random lightning, heavy rain, empty and unlit road.
 
Saturday > Replaced the clutch slave with a new one... Didn't trust the used spare I had tossed in. Flushed the fluid while I was at it.
Sunday > Picked up (yet another) set of wheels & tires for it. Oddly enough, off a Subaru SVX. 16*17.5" +55et with 225/50-16 Nokian WR snow tires.

This brings me to... five sets for the car.
-Stock 1Gb swirlies with Falken Ziex 512's.
-1Ga Turbines in crap condition with mismatched tires that I ran when I was rallycrossing.
-Random set of split-five spoke wheels with dead Azenis RT615's.
-FD RX7 wheels with good RT615's.
-SVX wheels w/ snowies.
 
S2K, Sat-> I bought OEM oil filter at the dealership, but I have a set of AMSoil race-grade motor oil (6 bottles) on my garage and went to Jiffy Lube for an oil change ($20). Unable to do the change myself; no tools & 110F degrees is no joke in Las Vegas. A car wash too. :)
 
Only an idiot would go through such great lengths...

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It's missing a few small pieces, but i'll go back tomorrow and search around.
 
Hmmm, funny you say that, I was just putting in my new boost guage tonight, when I was inserting the lamp I saw there are 2 different lamp covers in the box, to change the colour, one red and one green. My battery and fuse box are still out of the car, so I held the wires onto the terminals with the guage in my hand in the garage to see what they looked like, and red looked quite good, however the rest of my instrument cluster is just a standard colour, so I left it without a cover to match.

But yeah, as I was saying, got it installed, but obviously can't test it yet (I sucked on the pipe and it went into vacuum, but didn't want to blow into it and get spit up in there)

Picture, taken from cell phone in the dark garage so... yeah great quality.

boostguage.jpg
 
We've done one or two things to our cars in the last few days.

Notably these:

minusonemiller.jpg


plusonemiller.jpg

(white car = recipient; left engine = old engine; green car = engine donor; right engine = new engine)
 
Is that a Miller Cycle engine going into the mx3? Now I don't have alot of on-hand experience with engines, but that's one hell of a belt and pulley system on the new engine.
 
Yes it is, and yes it is.

From left to right there is:

Top: Exhaust cam (rear bank), supercharger, exhaust cam (front bank)
Middle: PAS, idler pulley, water pump, idler pulley, alternator
Bottom: Crank, vacuum generator, A/C

Physically the engine isn't as wide or as tall as feared, though it's pretty big considering it's the same block. There may be a hammer required (to the engine bay, that is). The engine mounts are pretty funky too - one will require a custom bracket. We've also got three gearboxes on the floor - the auto off the Miller, the 5-speed manual off the K8 (G25M) and a 5-speed manual off a KL (G25M-R) - the latter will be going onto the Miller.

Venari's gone to town a bit and has included in with his Cougar/Corvette parts shipment, a Mazda K-series clutch rated to 350lbft and a set of Tokico/Ford Racing struts for the US-market Escort ZX2 which uses suspension based on the MX-3 (the only car that shares this). There's also scope for some brake fun - he's acquired some parts from a nice nutter by the name of Will Riley...

Oh, also, http://www.mazdamiller.com (occasional crudities inside - no, not raw vegetables)
 
Mad props. Should fit... people have been doing the 2.5 swap into the third gens for a while... of course, those are bigger cars, but the engine bays are quite similar.

BUT:

I've never seen a Miller-swap. I'll be following this one closely!

BTW: Tokicos rock. That is all. ;)
 
There's never been a Miller swap :D

Though, obviously, I have a Blog and I'm telling GTP, I'm aiming to keep it as under wraps as possible. My plan is to just rock up to some Japanese car show in it when it's done (preferably an MX-3 show), crack the bonnet and wait :D
 
Where we're going we don't need... luck :D

Actually we do. A lot of it.

Incidentally, the total project cost to date has been:
MX-3 - £250 + £120 getting it home
Xedos - £770 + £100 getting it home
MX-6 gearbox - £50
Pair stainless 3-1 manifolds and downpipe - £100

We've tacked on about £300 of extra stuff (clutch, suspension), we might need a 323F for the hubs and the brake conversion could probably run about £200 or so. We'll need some wheels (£500 in the budget) and tyres (£200 in the budget) too. I've made some coins back on selling parts but nothing massively significant yet (I need to start listing the bits we've removed) and scrapping the Xedos shell should probably realise about £150 back.

By my maths we've spent £1,690 so far - projecting the anticipated wheel/tyre/brake costs and scrapping gains, without other parts, we're under £2,400 all-in. For probably 220hp, 220lbft in a chassis weighing a flat metric tonne. My aim is to be faster anywhere than a DC2 Integra Type-R - anything else is a bonus - and since it's supercharged and not trick-cammed, it should do the job.

Edit: I knew I'd forget something. £300 in the budget for a stainless "cat back" (though there will be no cat) to be fabbed. 2.5" through.

Also, the original engine in the original car nets about 30mpg (Imperial, not US). Marvin weighs just over half what the Xedos does and his original engine managed 38mpg. If I've got the gear ratios right we could be seeing mid-40s on the road and DC2-destroying performance at the same time :lol:
 
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Mhmm... should give you nice and short gearing... though first gear on these boxes is uselessly short. Get the right fifth cog and you should have a decent cruising gear, too.

👍
 
My order arrived today. I've spent too much time solely on restoring this car, so I figured I'd buy myself somewhat of a present to keep up my motivation for the future project.

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The outer housing is chrome, as you can see by the strip running back behind the top of the lenses. I'll get around to coloring that black... in time.
 
Pretty Awesome Project Famine!

About the aesthetics, I hope your going to clean that engine and the engine compartment a little bit, so its good looking too.

Keep up the awesome work! 👍
 

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