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Page 1 of 3  So... What do you do when your motor has been acting up (and has seen 150K+ miles)? What if you're helping out around a race shop and a "new" Spec Miata donor rolls in with a healthy sounding motor? Apparently, the correct answer is to ask "Hey... what are you guys going to do with that motor?"Then you put up a post and con your friends in to an all night engine swap party. Don't forget beer, Mountain Dew and cold pizza. Our own Evil Speeder just did this and I got the pleasure of hanging out and watching while some more competent folks helped out with the dirty work. I also took some pictures and notes. I hope you enjoy this somewhat unconventional and certainly irreverent engine swap report...
You've gotta keep an eye on POS... He's always scouting out new and better parts for the POS Racer. Surely no one would notice bright red hinges... |
POS Racing, IMVivid, onething, Mrs. onething and I met up at Khaki's Fresh Food for a bite to eat before embarking on our all night journey. After spending some time making fun of Majik, we trekked in to the "slums" of Dalworthington Gardens to begin our task. Evil Speeder and ray_sir_6 (from dallasimports.net) were waiting for us when we arrived. They ran out to fill up the cooler while we pulled the victim, err... Evil's car in to the garage. We poked around a bit - drooling over the race cars, admiring the race hauler and tinkering with the car. Shortly later, fwMiata showed up and took the 50 cent tour. 
How many Miata drivers does it take to pull a radiator? |
Around 9:00, the hood came off, and work began in earnest as we began draining coolant, disconnecting the radiator, airbox, a/c and harnesses. Hmmm... harnesses. Let's take a moment here to poke a bit of fun at fwMiata for deftly unplugging everything before leaving to go home and go to sleep. You just know we're going to get back to that later...
Smart alec observers that we are, we all had a bit of fun at Evil's expense listening to him remove the skid-pan bolts with an air ratchet. Those bolts sure sounded long... 
Are you sure this guy should have a knife? It looks like Dr. Sammm is about to perform surgery. |
Somewhere in there, Dr. sammm had the privelege of performing a little surgery on some old hoses. The lower radiator hose was just a bit brittle, as were the hoses leading to the heater core. There were good heater hoses on the "new" motor. A new lower radiator hose should be easy enough to find at the all night Autozone later. During a break in the fight with the transmission bolts, we spent some time trying to slide the Obex header out of the way. In a word... Not gonna happen. 
ray_sir_6 hams it up for the camera... apparently, he felt that he needed to look like he was doing something when the camera fired... |
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