Pushing Ahead

I'm really trying to maintain some forward progress on the '94 Miata refurb. It's way too easy for these kinds of projects to fade into the background and the next thing you know there's a car in your garage with crap piled on top of it and it hasn't moved in five years. So this weekend I'm getting into the engine compartment. I've removed the radiator and disconnected all the wiring harness connections to the engine. I'm starting to remove accessories and ancillaries in preparation for painting the engine compartment. Today I had planned to remove the cylinder head and intake manifold. I didn't quite get there, though, because the EGR tube fitting on the exhaust header was BEEYOTCH to get off and I didn't have enough steam left in me to get the head off. I also realized that the header is going to have to come loose from the cat so I can get it out of the way, so I decided to stop for today and continue later in the week. I'm really interested to see the condition of the cylinders and the valves, so that will be exciting.

When I pulled the cam cover yesterday, I was pleased to see how clean the top of the engine is. It's got a nice bronze coloration to it, but no sludge or varnish whatsoever. Just goes to show the benefit of running synthetic oil for the last 130,000 miles. It may be a different story inside the combustion chambers, though. This engine was supercharged for 10,000 miles a few years ago and it's been beat to hell on the track and on the street for 18 years now. Recently I had a lot of pinging caused by a dirty AFM so I would not but surprised to find the valves in poor condition. We'll see. Also, I didn't get a picture of it yet, but there is a pretty massive oil leak from the front main seal. This concerns me because I think it's my fault and I think it may be really hard to fix. When I did the timing belt last, about 35,000 miles ago, I replaced that seal but I had a REALLY hard time getting the old seal out. I pried at it with some rather unsophisticated instruments before I really learned the trick to getting stubborn seals out and I think may have scored the side of the recess. If that's the case, I may have an engine that's going to leak for the rest of its service life, and that's a shame because it's a solid bottom end with a lot of life left in it. It sure has made a mess of the front and bottom of my engine, though.

I also started the repairs to the cracks on the dashboard. Using some Permatex PermaPoxy Plastic Weld epoxy (available at your Friendly Local Auto Parts Store (FLAPS)) I welded some small strips of plastic to the underside of the dash, spanning both sides of the three biggest cracks. I also smeared some along some smaller cracks that radiated out from the big ones. There are a couple more I need to get to but I ran out of plastic scraps to weld on. I also ordered a plastic repair kit from Eastwood. My plan is to use this kit to tackle the top side of these cracks because the Eastwood kit can be had in black, clear, or white. Of course my dash is black so my hope is that I can effect a top-side repair that blends in. Already, though, the leading edge of the dash is FAR more sturdy and solid. I have high hopes that this will be a good repair.

Back on track at Sebring

After a long hiatus, I got back to the track this weekend. I co-drove with my buddy Mark in his '91 VW GTi at a Chin Motorsports track event at Sebring International Raceway. Compared to the absurdly fast cars that have become typical at these track events, our GTi was slow as molasses, but it was still a hoot to drive. Our day ended a bit early when the oil pressure sensor fitting sprung a leak and spewed oil all over the front of the engine and the right front tire, but disaster was averted and we didn't have an engine fire or a wreck. We don't think the engine was damaged so it should be a $5 repair.

Bare floors

So today I didn't feel like doing anything big, so I tackled a few small jobs. I drained the radiator so I could disconnect the heater core and pull the air handler box off the dash, which makes getting the carpet out in one piece a bit easier. So the carpet is all out. It left a bunch of old nasty insulation halfway stuck to the floor so I scraped that up and got the floor really clean. There were a few minor spots of surface rust where the carpet had got a bit wet a few times, so I used the wire brush to clean that up. I also spent some time cleaning parts and polishing up a few metal parts. I spent an hour sanding the raised DOT lettering off of the tail lights and then wet sanding them with 1000 and 2000 grit sandpaper. I saved the final polishing for later when I machine polish the whole car. The carpet is in decent shape. I'll clean it up and reuse it.
 

 

Pretty soon I have to start making decisions about how much work I want to do on the engine, what aftermarket parts I want to fit, what color to paint, etc. My objective is to keep the scope of the project achievable while still accomplishing a sufficient level of improvement on the car.

A little progress

Not a whole lot to report this week. I've just progressed deeper into stripping the car. I put the car on wheel dollies so I can move it around in the garage as needed, which is a huge help. I can get the car out in the middle where I can work on it, and then get it back in place so I can continue to use the garage for my other car. I even spun the car around so the front is facing out. The soft top is now out completely and I plan to just run with the hardtop from here on. It would need a new soft top for sure if I wanted to keep it. I ripped the crap out of it when removing it and the rain rail is shredded. I got 10 years out of it so I guess I can't complain. I have been using a die grinder with a brass wire wheel to clean up the chassis. I'm surprised by the amount of grunge I'm encountering in all the nooks and crannies of this car, and the beginnings of corrosion here and there on fasteners and brackets. I've not found any on the actual chassis of the car, but I'm glad to nip it in the bud here and now. It's just the natural aging of the car, and most cars have rotted away to nothing by the time they are as old as this car is now, but I aim to stop it and preserve this car for some more years to come.

As I'm taking things apart, I'm finding plenty of seals and gaskets that are shot and need to be replaced. So I placed an order at Rosenthal Mazda for the seals around the tail lights, the beltline moldings on the doors, and a couple other odds and ends. The costs add up quickly but it's cheaper than buying a new car!

I spent quite a bit of time cleaning up the trunk of the car. A leaky rain rail deposits quite a bit of dirt in the nether regions of the trunk. I plan to respray the inside of the trunk so it needs to be clean. I removed the rear fascia, the battery, all the hardware inside the trunk, the center brake light, the trunk lid seal, the frankenstein bolts with the chrome hardtop mount trim plates, and the radio antenna mount. I pretty much had to destroy the frankenstein bolts to get them out. The head of the bolt came out but left the stud in place. I had to twist the stud out with vice grips. I'll just install new bolts.

Here's a goodie. A perfect, new HVAC control panel faceplate. The original one has become very yellowed and shabby looking. This piece was just over $20 from Mazda Motorsports and replaces the entire front face of the HVAC control panel. The part number is NA01-61-C04A.

I also got a new windshield molding, so I can take the old one off when I paint. That will make masking a lot easier and allow me to paint right up to the glass and have a much nicer edge. Part number is NA01-50-601A (MLDG UP, FRT WNDW) (LOL @ their part names).

The Reconstruction Has Begun - Spider 2.0

At long last I've returned from the United Kingdom, land of small cars and narrow but wonderfully curvy roads. Upon my return I have immediately undertaken the biggest project I've ever done on my venerable old '94 Miata, "Spider". I've talked about it in previous blog posts but basically this car has been rode hard and put away wet for the last 14 years and a bit neglected on and off during those years when other things took precedence in my life. So in the interest of keeping this car for another 10 years and not being ashamed to drive it (aside from the whole Man Driving a Miata stigma), I've decided to just take it completely apart and put it back together with new parts.

So the plan is to take the interior apart, seats and dash out, with the goal of fixing the cracks in the dash, replacing the heater core (a leak is an eventual certainty), refurb the gauges and switchgear, do something about the seats (the leatherette covers are not holding up well) and yank the soft top out permanently and generally just clean everything up.

Then, the engine is coming out so that I can work on it easier. The goal is to replace the clutch/flywheel with a lightweight flywheel, fix the BIG oil leaks the car has had for the last few years, clean everything up, install a refreshed cylinder head, and while the engine is out, paint and recondition the engine compartment.

Meanwhile, in what is probably going to be the largest part of the job, the exterior is going to get painted. I have some small dents to fill, and I'm going to eliminate the badging on the car. I have not yet decided on a color but I do think I will be changing the color from the factory red. Finally, when it all goes back together, new wheels and tires will complete the package.

Fortunately, the suspension, exhaust, and electrical in the car do not need much if any work. Just a general cleaning up. I've also got a Flyin' Miata frame rail reinforcement brace kit on order, to restore some of the stiffness the car has lost over the years.

As you can see from the photos, the dis-assembly of the car is well under way. The seats and dash are out and almost all of the exterior trim is off.

United Kingdom rental car

I'm in the United Kingdom for a couple weeks and I have a VW Polo as a rental car. It doesn't have much power but it likes to rev and is reasonably fun to drive. Of course the steering wheel is on the wrong side and my skill for shifting with my left hand leaves a bit to be desired. Of course in the US it's hard to even get a rental car with a manual transmission.

I haven't had much time to get around much, but did do some driving about the countryside. All kinds of interesting cars here, and many quaint small villages.

CompuServe Magazine, September 1995

It's by pure coincidence that I saved this issue. I didn't own a Miata in 1995.

BMW M3 Valve Adjustment, S54 Engine

My M3 is way overdue for a valve adjustment. The maintenance schedule calls for doing it at every inpection interval which is roughly every 30,000 miles. I've had this car for 19,000 miles but I have no record of it ever being done. It probably was done at least once, but I'm betting it's way overdue. When I measured the clearances, every valve was out of spec, and all were on the "loose" side of the spec, which is actually better than them being on the "tight" side. They weren't really TOO far out of spec, considering. Just a few hundredths of a millimeter, on average. The worst one was 0.08mm out of spec. The car has 102,000 miles on it now so I want to get it in spec and give everything a good going-over so it will be ready for the next 100,000 miles. As usual with this blog, this is not a "how-to" but rather a "you can". On my difficulty scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being putting air in the tires, and 10 being an engine rebuild, this is about a 3. Seriously, it's not hard. All you need is your basic hand tools, the BMW shim removal tool, and a digital micrometer. I paid about $30 for a cheap-ish micrometer specifically for this job. I paid $30 plus a crazy $20 for shipping for the shim removal tool, and I'm spending about $50 on shims. If you need to get this done in one day you'll need to buy the full shim kit which is about $375 but that includes the removal tool and when you're done you can easily sell it online for most of what you paid. I didn't do that so my car will be down for about a week while I wait for the shims to come from Pelican Parts. So I'm into this for about $130 and maybe 4 hours of labor, probably 5 by the time I'm done. A shop quoted me close to $1000 for this service, so it's a good DIY project. I referred to an excellent video on YouTube that covers the project in good detail. I definitely recommend you watch a couple of those before you start.

Valve cover is off and I'm ready to start measuring clearances and removing shims. It takes about 30 minutes to get to this point.

Here's my spreadsheet where I recorded all the clearances, the thickness of each shim, and do a little math to find out what size shim would give me the exact clearance I want. I calculated the Theoretical Best Shim (TBS), and compared that to the shims I actually have (24 of them) to identify which shim should go in each location. Doing this, I was able to reuse 14 of the 24 shims. I have to buy the remaining 10 because none of the 10 I have left are the right thickness. No way I could have kept all this straight without a spreadsheet. It took me a couple hours working slowly to measure and record all the data.

Here's where I laid out my shims to keep them straight until I did all the math. A few have already been put back in the engine in this photo. Now that I have the exhaust side all done, and none of the remaining shims can be used except two on the intake side, I no longer have need of these shims or this sheet of paper.

Here's the official BMW shim removal tool. I say removal tool because it was far harder to put the shims back than it was to get them out. This little plastic tool was almost $50 with shipping and everything, but it's a necessary evil. I finally got the hang of using it to put shims back in, but not before dropping a few shims. It is IMPERATIVE to block all the little oil passages in the head so that errant shims can't disappear into the engine.  That would be BAD. A magnetic pickup tool helps fish them out from where they fall. God help you if you lose one in the engine.

This is the micrometer I bought for this job. It was in the $30 range at Harbor Freight. It may not be extremely accurate, or it could be that I just had to learn to use it. That thousandth's decimal place should definitely be taken with a grain of salt.

UPDATE: 5/14/2011

The shims I ordered from Pelican Parts on Sunday arrived via USPS on Friday. Perfect timing. So this morning I finished the job. Unfortunately, when I put the new shims in place, most of the clearances turned out tighter than I had calculated them to be with my spreadsheet. A couple were just under the minimum and I wasn't comfortable with that. Upon re-measuring things today, everything was measuring bigger. Checking my technique with the micrometer with the new shims of known thickness, I think I was cranking down too hard on the micrometer last week. You can definitely influence the measurement by how hard you turn down the dial. Once I standardized my technique and got consistent results, I ended up re-measuring all the clearances and moved several shims around to get closer to the clearances I wanted. My main concern was to not leave any valves too tight as that can lead to problems. In the end, I got all the clearances on the lower end of the tolerances. The minimums are 0.18mm on the intake cam, and 0.28 on the exhaust cam, while the maximums are 0.23mm and 0.33mm for the intake and exhaust, respectively.

Most interestingly, and to my surprise, the engine really does feel smoother and a little bit quieter after the adjustment. I swear I can feel and hear the difference. I didn't expect to. The S54 really likes proper maintenance. I also took this job as an opportunity to inspect the bolts on the VANOS system as there have been internet reports of them backing out and causing catastrophic failure of the timing gears and chain. Everything looked absolutely perfect so I didn't touch a thing there. I feel better having had a look at them, though.

Removing Valves from the Miata cylinder head

The '94 runs well but not like it did back in the day. My goal is to get it back like it was, and make it run like a scalded cat on the track again. So I'm starting on this extra head I've had in the cabinet for the last six years. The mating surface needs to be cleaned up so I'm going to take it to a machine shop to get planed and cleaned and the valve seats re-ground. I can to do the reassembly here and then I'm going to yank the motor and swap the heads out of the car so I can also address the leaking rear main seal, install a light flywheel, new clutch, new timing belt, water pump, and front main seal. I don't believe the bottom end needs a rebuild, however. The existing timing belt only has about 30k miles on it but if I've got it all apart I'm going to replace everything I touch.
So today I disassembled this '96 head with 60k miles on it. I bought it on eBay about six years ago and ended up not using it, so it's been sitting in a cabinet ever since.

RAM iPhone, Camera, GPS mount

iPhone and camera mounts for motorcycle, from RAM
I got mine from Amazon for around $30. Very well made piece of hardware and works great. I do not think my phone is going to fall off in normal riding conditions. Of course it's not waterproof so at the first hint of rain the phone or camera have to get put away. I believe they do offer some waterproof options.

aSmartHUD app for time/speed/distance/music

MotionX GPS app for navigation

Standard camera mount

Fully articulated arm. Swapping camera and phone mounts takes just a few seconds.