Cylinder Head replacement

[brock]

Would the head from a 1.8 DOHC protoge or escort fit the 1.8 in my 97? Are there any mods that would need to be done to make it work?

[Kags1969]

not a good head for swapping, or at least I've never seen it referenced or mentioned anywhere. I think there are probably casting differances, b/c when you here about using a protege motor, they always swap heads.

Chris

[black roadster]

not a good head for swapping, or at least I've never seen it referenced or mentioned anywhere. I think there are probably casting differances, b/c when you here about using a protege motor, they always swap heads.

Chris

Me thinks it may be due to the fact that it's a FWD layout too. Could be the cooling lines? Dunno.

[Adam Payrot]

You take out the freeze plug in the front, where the Miata water neck attaches to the head. I had a Protege head on my Miata engine.......

Swap the cams, I had a surge of power to 5500 and then nothing all the way to redline w/ the Protege cams in there.

That's all there is to swap over.

[Adam Payrot]

not a good head for swapping, or at least I've never seen it referenced or mentioned anywhere. I think there are probably casting differances, b/c when you here about using a protege motor, they always swap heads.

Chris

No difference between the casting, ports, etc. Just the cams are different and that one freeze plug. And if you read into it enough at Miata.net in the Power section, you will see that a lot of people use the Escort, Protege, Tracer and Sephia engine configurations when they are on a budget. There are minimal differences between those and the Miata, mainly it's just the cams.

[brock]

No difference between the casting, ports, etc. Just the cams are different and that one freeze plug. And if you read into it enough at Miata.net in the Power section, you will see that a lot of people use the Escort, Protege, Tracer and Sephia engine configurations when they are on a budget. There are minimal differences between those and the Miata, mainly it's just the cams.

I was wondering about that, since they use the BP engine. I'm finding that Protoge heads are about $75-$150 less than that of Miatas in the DFW and Tulsa areas.

[Flyin96M]

Why are you looking to swap? I am getting ready to put a 99 on mine and I will have a spare 96 with no HLA noise. If you are intereste let me know and it should be off sometime this week.