Recent content by 20ESGUY

To finish up the thread, the car is finished! Got everything back from the machine shop friday evening and finished putting it together sunday morning. Head was warped .009", which is strange since I've had the car from new and have never overheated it; it's been run hard just never...

I'm using a Felpro perma-torque, just as good as the cometic in my opinion. Plus I get a discount on the Felpro which made it a shade under 60 bucks.

Actually it wouldn't. Believe it or not the thing would not smoke at all execpt for a slight little puff under heavy load at full throttle. I even had someone follow to check for that. The one thing I can say at this point, Mazda is abusurd on there parts prices. I decided to replace to the...

Well, heads off and like I figured, head gasket was leaking like a sive. Number three cylinder had a puddle of oil on top of the piston and there were some other misc leaks. It looks like its been sucking oil into the intake for a while too. Since the link I put in the first post doesn't seem to...

Well looks like I finally found the problem of the oil consumption. Head gasket is blown pretty good. Started tearing it down last night and after sitting over night it was leaking into the timing cover and down the side of the block with the timing cover off of it. Also looks like I may have...

Yeah, unfortunately I just heard about the VICS screws falling off. I'm figuring that is probably what happened. I'm just hoping theres not too much damage when I pull the head/intake off.

I'd like to pick the brains of some more experinced members. For the past year I've been fighting a poor idling and oil consumption problem. I think I've nailed down the idling problem to the mapp sensor vacuum switch sticking in the vent position. However the oil problem is giving me a fit...

Deffinitely go with the aftermarket rods. I remember that the factory rods actually begin to flex right at the factory redline of 6800 rpm (was in an anciet thread a couple of years ago). I do agree with getting some port work done as the intake seems to flow better than the exhaust side...

I knew about eibach valve springs. I just wanted to be sure I didn't need to shim the cams. I don't have the tool for checking the lash on shim under bucket style engines and I've found my protege to be rather finicky about tolerances being just right. Thanks for the info too!

One question on install new cams. If I use cams with the j-spec grind 240 degrees, .003 lift, with a 7 degree overlap will I need to reshim the valves. I finally found the specs on the factory DE cams which have the same valve lift as the ZE cams, just a shorter duration and narrower overlap...

Kind of an old thread, but if you haven't fixed the problem it may actually be the belt itself. Especially if you got the gatorback belt. We got a bad batch of them about the same time as your problem started for some reason the belts stretch a lot and won't remain tight. I've been having the...

Well after breaking down and buying a newer scan tool with live data options, found out that the front o2 was registering well over .8V all the time. Decided to move it down to the other bung at the 1-2 down pipe collector. Made all the difference, cars is much smoother, the hesitation under...

Seems that after installing an AWR header and finishing up the exhaust, finally, im still running quite a bit richer than what i would like (enough to generate a good bit of carbon). For those that have played around with oxygen sensors and headers do you think that there would be much to gain...

Im using a 10w-30 mobil 1 full synthetic, i was using 5w-30 till i cracked the 70K mark. The oil gets changed at 3-4K reguarly, so i don't think thats really an issue. I have a suspicion based on the readings i was getting from the tester and the fact that its running rich that either the cyl...

Cylinder pressure as in a compression test, sorry to be a little obscure. I'm having some oil consumption and overly rich issues, the causes of which seem to contradict one another so i'm looking at all the possiblities. As of now I'm getting 210, 200, 200, and 200 psi across the board for 1-4...