The Mite
Part: 33

Electromotive Crank Trigger and Valve Cover, oil pan and throttle body mods

 

The Back wheels on the sprite The back wheels are on the car and the car is resting on them. After I get the engine/tranny in the car and some weight on the back, I can measure the pinion angle and weld up the spring perches.
The Back wheels on the sprite It looks pretty good, but the care sure sits high. I hope with a bit of weight and some time the springs will settle down a bit. Otherwise I'll have to put on some older ones.
The wilwood calipers throught the wire wheels Here's the wilwood Dynalite single and mechanical spot caliper as seen through the wire wheel.
Turning off the outer pulley So, now I've got to begin prepping the engine for installation. The first thing is to get the magnetic pickup for the crank trigger figured out. As far as I can tell, nobody makes a bolt-on assembly for the trigger wheel on the 1.6 liter engines, so I have to fab one up myself. Here I'm turning the outer serpentine pulley off of the crank pulley-damper assembly. Once the outer pulley is removed, I'll have a spot to mount the trigger wheel.
Spinning the center of the trigger wheel The 60-minus-two tooth trigger wheel needs a bigger hole to fit on the pulley
The Three parts to the trigger assembly Here's the machined trigger wheel, a 1/4" aluminum spacer and the pulley. (if I was smarter, I'd have made the hole in the trigger wheel smaller and machined a step onto the pulley instead of having to make a spacer)
Trigger placment The trigger wheel assembly on the engine, with finger indicating where the magnetic pickup will go...
The megnetic pickup bracket beginnings Here's the beginning of the bracket for the pickup
The mag pickup bracket half done And with a little cutting and welding, the pickup bracket is complete
The magnetic trigger pickup bracket finished I drilled and tapped 3 holes in the pulley to correspond with 3 holes in the trigger wheel and spacer. They line up the trigger wheel in just the correct spot on the Magnetic pickup at TDC.
Cut and welded valve cover Now on to the valve cover. I did not want to have "MAZDA" staring at me everytime I opened the hood, so I TIG welded the letters full of aluminum and sanded them down. I also cut the pulley guard off because exposed cam gears and timing belts are cool.
Bob's Sandrail Engine

See, exposed cam gears and timing belts are cool. Even on a 2.3 Ford.

(238 RWHP on 12 lbs boost in a 1600 lb car...FUNN!)
Valve cover done except for paint The Valve cover sitting on the engine.
Intake before and after The intake manifold needed some work, too. It had a bunch of emissions crap on it that needed to be removed. Here the one of the idle-air thingies was removed and a block off plate is in its place
throttle bodies I will be using a GM style Idle air motor, so the Mazda one has to go. Top pic is the idle-air assembly on the throttle body, middle pic the assembly is removed, and the bottom pic is a semi-finished aluminum block-off plate
Intake drilled and tapped I wanted to get rid of all the goofy ports and hoses on the intake, so I grabbed them in the vice-grips, turned and pulled until they came out. Then I drilled and tapped all the holes with pipe threads so I can put in plugs
Intake drilled and tapped Here's some more of the ports removed.
Boa Wrench I had to remove the pulley on the water pump to get the timing belt and cover off the engine. But...how to keep the pulley from spinning while I tried to loosen the bolts? Well, one of those stupid "as seen on TV" boa strap wrenches.
Painted cam sprockets I shot the cam gears with a bit of black paint while they were off the engine
Oilpan welded AND, I had to weld an A/N fitting to the oil pan for the turbo oil return. It was windy.
   

 

Next
Back to Main
Previous