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Old 10-11-2018, 05:16 PM   #106
John V
No more BMWs
 
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Carmudgeonly Ride: Ram, MS3, CX-5, RX-8
Location: Glenwood, MD
Posts: 14,753
Quote:
Originally Posted by ff View Post
$1,450 for just the PP? Or does that include the clutch disks?
pressure plate, discs, and an aluminum flywheel. Not a bad deal, really.

So I mentioned I had a productive trip to the pick and pull yard. I initially went there because my RX-8 was missing the front crash beam. The local yard had an '08 RX-8 and it didn't look from the pictures like it had been in a front end wreck. Turns out the car was pretty nice, and the bumper was already gone. So I nabbed the crash beam (four bolts per side, literally took a minute to get it on the cart). While I was there I saw that someone had removed the front wiring harness but left the bottom part of the fuse box. The one in my car had two broken tabs that I had planned to repair, but when I saw this fuse box I just grabbed it. Score.



While I was there I noticed that there were a bunch of Mazda 3's around. I remembered that the belt tensioner that came on my 2.5L engine was for a Ford, which uses a different belt (different number of ribs) than the Mazda engines. I deleted the power steering pump from my car and am putting a tensioner where the pump used to be. On a Miata with the power steering pump deleted, this would just bolt on.

Unfortunately, because of some packaging weirdness with the RX-8 and this engine, the intake manifold and the fuse box want to occupy the same space in the engine bay. Moving the intake manifold closer to the engine by shortening the runners would solve that problem, but then the manifold would hit the tensioner. The solution was to take the tensioner down to the milling machine and remove a bunch of material from the mounting legs, re-drill the outer legs so I could flush mount the bolts, then re-drill the inner part of the legs for the dowels, and reinstall everything. The result is just about perfect... but was a ton of work.





It also bothered me that the aftermarket subframe didn't have provisions for securing the factory brake line clamps nor the ABS sensor wires. So I went out to the boneyard and cut those tabs off of the factory subframe and hammered them flat so they could mount up just like stock. Eventually I'll just tack weld these onto the subframe, but since I also cut the factory control arm mount with the tabs, they're secured just like stock.





I also finished up a bunch more with the wiring. I ran the hot lead from the battery (re-located to behind the driver where the rear seat used to be), deleted all unnecessary wires from the engine-side harness, ran new wires to the alternator, re-pinned the factory harness for the Mazda3 alternator (moved from the passenger's side of the engine to the driver's side to make room for turbo plumbing on the exhaust side of the engine), and ran the wiring to avoid possible contact with any moving parts. The engine bay actually looks pretty put-together at this point.



I got the MX-5 radiator installed with some custom brackets I made... I'll end up running a better radiator but I wanted to use MX-5 parts here rather than RX-8 parts for reasons that should become apparent later. I verified the stock fan fits. I started measuring for coolant hoses. It's starting to come together.

I ordered a bunch of metal for the transmission crossmember, so it's sort of a race now whether that stuff arrives first, or the turbo setup, or the rear suspension arms. Or the clutch and flywheel. Either way, lots of work yet to go.
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