This ain't no build thread!

[chiefmg]

Went out with the wife last night, car was idling high so this morning I checked my rerouting of the throttle cable. I moved it to a slightly different position which seemed like it would improve things. Went to start the car before heading to lunch, crank, crank, crank, start and immediately to redline. Shut her down and checked, the throttle cable had jumped off the bellcrank. Took a look after lunch, I didn't get the holding bracket for the throttle cable oriented correctly which is what caused the problem. FYI, that bracket must be parallel to the ground or slightly higher, otherwise because the throttle body is at an angle the cable will not align properly and will come off the bellcrank. This is a bad thing.

When I got that all back together I noticed there wasn't any slack in the cable, causing the throttle to be held open. A couple of washers on the bolt behind the cable bracket to move it closer to the throttle body fixed that. Took a test drive and all those problems are now solved.

[chiefmg]

After some thought, I decided to pull both the JR header and FM muffler. There's just a little too much obnoxiousness on the noise front for me, plus something is causing the car to vibrate under some loads. There was also a metallic rattling noise that was new, but I found out what it was when I pulled the stuff off a little while ago. I forgot to put the tab for the metal hardline for the heater connection to the mixing manifold under one of the exhaust mani nuts.

It's getting kind of scary how fast I can pull stuff off this car. Granted I've done a lot of things to it, but it only took me a little over an hour to pull the 'charger, exhaust mani and muffler.

Got it all back together, I took the time to clean up the muffler and pipes of the Brainstorm dual, it was looking kind of ratty. Rattle canned it flat black with some high temp paint from Ace, came out well. Took a test drive, no more vibs and it sounds nice and throaty without the edginess that the FM dual had.

[chiefmg]

Was at cars and coffee yesterday morning and finally had the chance to get a good shot with all the latest visual mods:

[— Agent☣Orange —]

Hey Chief, I know the feelin'!

[chiefmg]

Never got around to posting these, what you can find on eBay if you have time on your hands:

[— Grip Driver —]

my favorite NB color combo, looks great. How much did you score the car cover for?

[chiefmg]

$50 for the cover, $25 for shipping. That was a bit high but I've never come across another like this so decided it was worth it.

[— Dandy —]

That's a great score for an enthusiast.

[chiefmg]

Thanks, I'm pretty stoked about it.

Did some tuning on her this morning using the VEAnalyze autotune feature. AFRs are a lot better already, I'm back to around 14.3-.5 at idle. I think what happened is when I was burning coolant and did the tuning, it was putting too much fuel in to make up for things. While I still have some fuel smell after getting on it, it is less. It just takes some time getting the upper rev range tuned as you have to have your foot down to keep the boost up.

[chiefmg]

Screw me sideways part II: yesterday while out driving, I started getting the same stutter as I had before when coolant was leaking into the cylinders. Pulled the plugs last night and sure enough, coolant in cylinder 4 (again). Dammit. This is getting frustrating. It really sucks as I planned to go on a cruise today with a local group, and autocrossing tomorrow. Taking a break from car work today (spent three days fixing a friend's Taurus), will pull it all apart tomorrow to see if anything presents.

[chiefmg]

Got the head pulled, there is absolutely nothing apparently wrong that would have caused the coolant leak. I'm taking it to the shop that milled it tomorrow to have them check it out.

[chiefmg]

Shop found some extra clearance in way of the exhaust side of #4 cylinder on the head. So that will get milled again, and I also asked them to adjust the valve lash since I had several with too much clearance (FYI Mazda's shims don't allow fine tuning of clearances, there are a limited number of thickness available).

[chiefmg]

Picked up the head last night. Got started putting everything back together after lunch today. Job completed and a successful test ride done just a little while ago. I may have discovered the source of the gas smell under heavy throttle, it looks like a couple of the injector O-rings have some minor leak-by. I just sent an e-mail to 5-O Motorsports to see if they have replacements available.

When I was putting the timing belt on I had the same problem with some looseness between the cam gears as last time. I ended up slightly modifying the factory procedure for tensioning the belt. I ran it around the 1 5/6 turns as required, then continued to move it until the belt was tight between the cams and on the idler side (in other words, so all the looseness was on the tensioner side). I then tightened the tensioner. Turned the engine over several times and made sure the timing marks lined up the way they are supposed to. Worked like a charm!

[chiefmg]

Been back to work for four weeks now. I've been doing some research (difficult since some of the sites I need to go to are blocked for some inexplicable reason) to try and get a handle on some of my issues. First thing I've found is that I should not have put the MAF back on. The MegaSquirt has an integral MAP sensor that it uses, and with my having the GM IAT sensor that's all it needs for fueling. I'm wondering now if any of the input from the MAF has affected the other inputs. Removing it and reloading my base map will be the first item once I get back home. I just have to see if the air filter will fit directly on the pipe mounted to the supercharger, or if I'll have to get a short extension piece. None of my pictures allow me to see that. I may also be able to use a longer Mazdaspeed air filter I bought off eBay several years ago thinking it would fit on the Speed6 (it didn't).

[chiefmg]

After a lot of thought, I decided to just go ahead and buy a new clutch. Went with the SuperMiata one from 949 Racing this time. There is something going on with the FM one, I don't want to pull things apart and then have to wait for a replacement. This way I can either return it if something is wrong, or if my problem stems from something else then sell it and recoup some of the expense.

For those few souls who look at this (I'm never really sure since I never get any comments, only the amount of views), you may notice that all my pictures have disappeared. I have taken them down for now, as I have had a personal issue with a company using my pictures without permission to advertise items on my car that they sell (which were not purchased from them). Once I figure out how to better protect myself from this then I'll put them back up again. Flickr defaults to a copyright all rights reserved for each picture, but apparently that doesn't hold water with some folks.

Update: Turned out I didn't do something right so my pictures were still visible. For now at least, I've deleted all the exterior shots but everything else will be visible so this thread isn't a total loss.