Last summer, after getting fed-up with Ohio rot, I tracked-down a rust-free '94 Miata for my track-car project.
Over the winter, I found the car in northern Virginia, well away from the coast. Took a couple months to get the car up here due to the severe winter down there, but it did eventually arrive. For what I would have paid up here for a car with no rockers left, I got a really solid car... Plus ALOT of really cool stuff that I would no longer have to budget for.
Some of the goodies included were a Hard-Dog Hardcore double-diagonal, Racing-Beat Type-2 nose, Flyin' Miata frame-rails, and a "Twin-Cooler" aluminum radiator/oil-cooler that FM used to sell. Oh, and an older version of the FMII turbo system, as well as the complete FM 3" turbo exhaust.
The Bad? Well, the car is in crappy white rattle-can primer, with a black primered hood. The previous owner, for some reason, decided to hack the muffler off the FM exhaust and tacked on the biggest fart-can I've ever seen. Also, the car appears to have been assembled as some sort of 3rd-grade class project. After poking around a bit, I knew I needed to start over.
On the lift, ready to start...
What I started with...<img src=""
Some pieces were easily removed... <img src="" />
Others... Not so much...<img src="" />
After about 4 hours of trying to separate the engine from the trans, we gave up for the night. We were getting pissed, as well as drunk, and didn't want to do any more damage tha necessary.
The next afternoon, we moved the car to shop #2...<img src="" />
With clear minds, we started again. Two hours later, we were back to swearing and throwing tools. Finally, my buddy Gary suggested that instead of throwing perfectly good ratchets and breaker-bars across the floor, we should put them back in the toolbox, and just grab the cut-off wheel.
Basically, the pilot bearing had popped off, and became wedged on the end of the input shaft of the trans. By cutting the clutch release arm, we were able to sneak a wrench in to unbolt the flywheel, and the engne was finally free!!!<img src="" />
Once the engine was out, we had to break the pilot bearing into about 6 pieces just toget it off of the shaft, due to a serious build-up of crud on the nose of the shaft.
Fortunately, the only thing we managed to destroy in this process was the clutch, which I was going o replace anyway...
<img src="" />
Anywho, as of today, we're at a standstill. The bottom-end is done, we're just waiting for stuff to come back from the machine shop, as well as FM to get clutch kits back in stock.
More pix to come this weekend.