Dirtysouth's Project Thread

[dirtysouth_msp]

Pic 1:
Something is missing....lol.

Pic 2 & 3:
Cams and Turbo Setup come off so we can remove the head. No worries evertything is being done by the book (shop manual).

Pic 4:
JJ cleans the lower mounting surfaces of the head and preps for reinstallation on the real bottom end, lol.

Pic 5:
Jacob & I spent a good 45 min or so cleaning up the threads in the shortblock for the ARP head studs. This is a pretty important step that should not be skipped, because I don't think that there is any way that the ARP studs could be torqued correctly with the amount of s*** that came out of those holes. (Jacob pictured, I'm MIA so far in the pics cuz I'm on the other side of the camera...phone). This was pretty much the end of working on it for Saturday.

 

[dirtysouth_msp]

Pic 1:
Top Dead Center and making sure the Cometic Head Gasket lines up correctly.

Pics 2 & 3:
Head is on the new shortblock and torqued to ARP specs. Surfaces are getting cleaned and prepped for reinstallation of cams, stock turbo setup and Protege Garage Intake Manifold.

Pics 4 & 5:
Stoc turbo setup, oil filter housing, oil lines, oil pressure sender, knock sensor, etc. all reinstalled. Cams in place but not finished quite yet.

 

[dirtysouth_msp]

Pics 1 & 2:
Turbo setup, all oil lines, intake mani, cams and cam gears are all installed and torqued to spec

Pics 3 & 4:
Tranny, clutch, flywheel and upper oil pan are removed.

Note: You must remove the tranny clutch and flywheel BEFORE you try to remove the upper oil pan! There ane 2 bolts that can only be seen and accessed with these parts off the motor! Luckily these is the sequence we went at it in the first place, otherwise it could have caused some headaches.

More pics are to come. After prepping the upper oil pan we ran into a couple of minor hold ups from lack of parts. I have to get new seals from Mazda tomorrow for the oil pump, front of crankshaft, oil return line and 2 for the oil pickup due to the extension used for the AWR Oil Pan. It really needs one on each side of it to ensure proper oil pickup. That is it for Sunday.

 

[khaosman]

Looking nice man! I can't wait to see more updates.

 

[daedalus]

Sounds like a nastly little build you got going there. Can't wait to see the results!

 

[dirtysouth_msp]

Thanks guys! There will be more to come soon. Not trying to rush anything or cut any corners, so it is going to take a few days.

 

[dirtysouth_msp]

What's up everyone? Made a little more progress today, but now I just have to wait for a few parts from Mazda. They are having them overnighted so hopefully I will have them tomorrow.

Pic 1:
Oil pump, timing tensioner & idler are installed and torqued to spec.

Pic 2:
Timing belt is installed and good to go. Don't worry the plastic & cover came off for the timing belt install. Note the white timing marks. We also got the upper oil pan installed, but are stuck waiting for the oil pickup and oil return line seals to go any further.

Pic 3:
AWR inserts installed on the driver's side motor mount. Fitment is tight and the inserts have to be greased a little to get them to slide into the bracket for the mount. But they fit beautifully on this side!

Pic 4:
AWR inserts installed on the passenger side motor mount. The thinner bushing is kind of hard to stretch over the bracket, but after greasing the bracket a little, the insert slid right over with a little muscle and fit nicely. The thicker insert on the other side did not fit that great. The hole in the center does not line up and I had to do some trimming on the inside of the bushing and to the center hole to get it to line up correctly, no big deal. In the picture the zip-ties that came with the bushings are holding the inserts in, this is temporary. I am going to use some long thin bolts with large diameter washers and lock nuts to hold them in, just need to pick some up.

 

[dirtysouth_msp]

Today, I went to install the oil pressure sending unit for my Autometer Oil Pressure Guage and ran into a slight hold up.

Pic 1:
In the center of the picture you can see the oil feed line adapter. This little adapter (T) threads into the block where the stock oil pressure sending unit (shown in Pic 2) does on a non-turbo fsde. The oil feed line for the turbo threads into the side of it and the stock oil pressure sending unit threads into the top.

Pic 2:
Stock oil pressure sending unit.

Pic 3:
Autometer oil pressure sending unit.

Pic 4:
Brass T fitting and nipple. One would think that these could be used to install the autometer sending unit. However, the threads in the block and on the stock oil pressure sending unit are not the same as the threads on the brass fittings. Funny thing is, the threads on the side of the oil line adapter are the same as those on the brass fitting. So I try to use the brass T fitting and nipple on the side of the adapter, but that won't work either because it causes the nut on the oil feed line to hit protruding areas of the block and prevents it from being able to line up right. I tried adjusting all different directions, but did not have any luck.

Finally I just called the Dealer and sourced another oil feed line adapter. It should be here tomorrow. I'll just install that one on top of the other adapter and install the stock sending unit on top of it with the Autometer sending unit coming off of the side of the new adapter. There is plenty of room to do it that way with the 626 mani installed. I spent way too much time beating myself up before I called the dealer (stooges) . They were actually pretty good at finding the parts I needed that were Mazdaspeed Protege specific. They must have gotten updated info, because not too long ago they couldn't ever find part #'s for anything specific to the speeds.

 

[khaosman]

Don't break that thing in your block like me

 

[dirtysouth_msp]

Don't break that thing in your block like me

Oops! How'd you manage that?

 

[dirtysouth_msp]

Unfortunately, not much got accomplished today. We were pretty busy at work and I did not get those gaskets and the tee from Mazda at about 3:45 pm today. We got the oil pickup the oil pressure senders squared away, but then ran into another small problem dealing with the AWR Oil Pan which meant another delay until morning.

Pic 1:
This is a pic of the coolant bypass mod. Just switch the position of the ends of hose that have the stars by them and it's done! Coolant travels through the hose with a red stripe, while the hose with the green stripe turns into nothing more than a loop with each end attached through the throttle body. Coolant will no longer flow through the throttle body.

Pic 2 & 3:
This shows how I had to setup the oil pressure senders. That little tee was like $30 from mazda due to the specific threads. What the hell.

 

[Jaysanooch]

About the coolant bypass, I just want to make sure I understood...so I put arrows on which ends go where. Can you comfirm I'm getting it right?

And thank you for this play by play thread...I'm learning so much, great job man!

 

[khaosman]

Oops! How'd you manage that?

s*** luck I guess. It just snapped, now I'm having fun getting out

What other problems did you encounter with AWR pan?

 

[daedalus]

Truly a great thread. I am going to do the coolant bypass mod as well. Thanks for posting up the pics in laymans terms!

 

[djarkitek]

never mind, now i'm jsut wodnering what those lines are running to the oil filter, oil cooler?

 

[dirtysouth_msp]

What's up guys?

Jaysanooch,
The pic I posted is a view of what it should look like when the coolant bypass "mod" is complete. In stock form, the end with the red star & the end with the green star would be switched. Meaning the end red star will be on the lower right hand corner of the throttle body and end with green star will be on that metal coolant line.

khoasman,
Is the motor still in the car? If so, is there any way you can get some type of drill in there & drill a hole in the center of it. If so, you could just tap a slightly larger extractor in with a hammer and turn that bad boy right out. Maybe the best/easiest way would be to remove the intake manifold. Just make sure to drill as close to the center as possible to avoid screwing up the threads. Well, it seemed the stock oil pan bolts were not long enough, but we were trying to use a gasket. Ditched the gasket and everything was cool. But I ended up using just slightly longer bolts any way because I had already bought them and I figured they would catch the threads better. Finding a match to that bolt type was pretty hard though. Had to get them from this specialty hardware store and it was just dumb luck that they had the length I needed. But, anyway the oil pan fits nicely now.

daedalus,
No problem. This forum and its members have helped me out so much, it's about time to give a little back, lol.

djarkitek,
Which lines are you talking about?

We have the motor and tranny all together and it's ready to drop in. More pics and details coming soon, no time right now.

 

[dirtysouth_msp]

Reserved for installation pics...

 

[dirtysouth_msp]

Reserved for more installation pics...

 

[dirtysouth_msp]

It's alive! We got it up & running yesterday after a frustrating setback with the intake manifold. I can not stress this point enough. Use only an OEM gasket for the intake manifold! The one I got from Ken with the manifold was ripped when I received it, but since I had a Cometic gasket set, I figured I'd just use the on they gave me.
Everything was torqued to spec and should have been happy, but for some reason that Cometic intake gasket would not seal for s***. The car would barely start and ran like ass. We put the smoke machine on the car and smoke poured out from the intake gasket like it was not even there. Many of the other Cometic gaskets, such as the exhaust manifold gasket, seem to be superior in design to the OEM ones, but definitely not for the intake.
I called Mazda to see if they had a gasket and scored on for a 2001 626 which I thought would be perfect since that's the manifold I have. They had it in stock so I ran and scouped on up. An hour later we started the car up and everything was cool. Of course the ECU still has to do some relearning, etc. but other than that it's all good. Now I'm going to limp-mode around for about 500 miles, change/inspect the oil and double check everything.
I will be posting some more pics and info soon, but as for now, we are slammed at work. Also, I'm exhausted from this extravaganza and working all week at the same time.

(2thumbs) (rockon) (rockon)

 

[daedalus]

Sounds good!