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Ashley's 94 VVT Track Build

31K views 160 replies 63 participants last post by  ashmagash 
#1 · (Edited)
So lets start at the beginning folks, my name is Ashley and and my amazing Miata's name is Rico. I originally bought this car as a cheap way to have fun at the track after I crashed my 65 Cobra four years ago. I started autocrossing about six years ago fell in love with my Cobra. Unfortunately on my way through a canyon road the brakes went out completely and we went spinning into a tree, trunk first. Fortunately there was no engine damage done and we are rebuilding that car but that's a whole other build blog :)
Last summer I wasn't happy with how long it was taking to rebuild the Cobra, so I sucked up my pride and bought a '94 M edition Miata: Complete with blue rope lighting, gold rims, a 12 in subwoofer, and some styin' shades i found in the trunk, haha. I only payed $3000 for this car and wasn't planning on spending much more than that in total. Damn was I wrong...
A few months after I bought the car I noticed everything cutting out as I made sharp turns. With help from some friends and a compression test it was officially announced that my car had a cracked piston: a huge chunk of it was missing. Well, the decision was made that a new engine was going to be the solution. And if spending the money to get a new engine and doing an engine swap wasn't headache enough, I wanted to switch my '94 engine with NB2. And so the hunt for an engine started. After a couple months I came across a 2002 engine and transmission, with only 50,000 miles on it for $1000. Sold.
And so my wonderful misadventures continue. I have started documenting my progress of the engine swap and many other fun projects and problems that I have run across along the way. Please note that I am in college and on a college budget, so this might take a while :p So sit back and enjoy my progress :)

Let me make some introductions: This is Rico, he is awesome

This is the cobra, pre tree:
 
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#2 · (Edited)
Re: For the Love of Rico

So to start, draining the fluids, taking off belts, intake... blah blah.

Took my whole exhaust system out before taking the engine out which was good because I found some lovely little holes in the pipes and a cracked header :) Joy.

And so time to take the engine out. Didn't realize you had to lift the passenger side of the motor out first... So many fun times I can barely count them all *cough cough*





Will post more tomorrow, but its late and I'm tired :p
 
#4 · (Edited)
Re: For the Love of Rico

^^ Why thank you :)
So a little update...
Everything is out of the engine bay for the most part, except me :p

So I decided to move on to my new engine. I changed out the timing belt and tensioners


And since everything is in a pile in my garage, what better time than to paint my valve cover...
Before:

During:

Finished:

And my "workshop" that my dad has so generously donated for the time being :)

So after a bulk of the engine work was finished and a majority of everything has been taken out of the engine bay I decided to start on the interior with removing the airbags first:

Which leaves you with this fantastic hole to put... the 2002 ECU :)
 
#5 · (Edited)
Re: For the Love of Rico

Finished taking out my drivers and passenger side seat to start taking out all the wiring.



I ended up taking out my boss frog double hoop roll bar to get a single hoop roll bar. This one was already in the car when I bought it but wasn't really my style. But with all the carpet and dash out I made some pretty interesting findings...


Like this awesome clusterf*ck of wiring next to my steering column :/



Which leads to the rear wiring and my old 94 ecu


 
#14 · (Edited)
Re: For the Love of Rico

Thanks for all the kind words everyone :) RJ- I honestly have no clue what the wheels are that came on the car. I've been trying to figure it out for a while but to no avail. They are 15x7 though.
So I pulled apart my dash completely apart thinking I wanted to get an un-cracked black dash, but thinking about it, I might just end up painting the dash black and attempting to come up with a solution for that top black panel that is cracked on EVERYONES car :p We'll see how that goes when I get some time haha


I also ended up taking out my whole POS exhaust system from underneath the car and looked into my cat converter to find....

Haha, don't think it was working too well :p

But this huge rice-y exhaust/cat was a total piece of junk so I had a huge smile on my face as I threw it in the recycling bin :D

And since that whole exhaust was toast, I decided to buy:


a Fujitsubo RM01A exhaust, hurray!
 
#15 · (Edited)
Re: For the Love of Rico

I also decided to take the ABS out of my car


Should be fun times ahead haha. Also Sunday was my birthday (yay!) so I got a bunch of rad new schtuff for my car:
GV front lip and R package rear lip? haha whatever it is called :p

And my fantastic parents got me new rain rails for my car as well

And as a gift to myself I bought a Project G "G Wing", and a front bumper and trunk lid :D


In a couple weeks I'm going to get my car completely painted, engine bay and all the Lexis IS300 Graphite Gray Pearl. My new front and rear lip, and G wing are also getting painted gray too. I'm so excited since my car has SO many dents I can barely count them all!
 
#16 · (Edited)
Re: For the Love of Rico

So the wiring harness for the NB engine is much shorter than the one for the NA so I had to cut out a new hole through the firewall for my new harness. This is about the location for the NB harness:


Check out my fancy schmancy template and the new hole for the engine wiring harness:

And so the finished product:

So this (other than getting my fenders rolled :D) is the last thing I needed to do before my car gets painted. Hopefully I'll be able to get it prepped and painted within the next couple weeks and then the reconstruction can begin, yay!
 
#17 ·
Re: For the Love of Rico

lookin goooooooooood!

Engineering majors do have their moments, excellent build thread :D
 
#20 · (Edited)
Re: For the Love of Rico

Aww thanks dk :)
Ben- luckily my dad helps me out a lot with the cobra financially since it used to be his.
thanks for all the kind words PLC, it started out as only needing a new engine and blew up into this huge project :) it was a nice change from working on the cobra because surprisingly the miata is a little bigger than the cobra!
 
#23 ·
Re: For the Love of Rico

Aww thanks dk :)
Ben- luckily my dad helps me out a lot with the cobra financially since it used to be his. And luckily I'm an engineering student with a job on a college budget haha.
thanks for all the kind words PLC, it started out as only needing a new engine and blew up into this huge project :) it was a nice change from working on the cobra because surprisingly the miata is a little bigger than the cobra!
Does your school have an FSAE team? You should join! Nice progress on the Miata!
 
#21 ·
Re: For the Love of Rico

so out of curiosity, is that a kit cobra based on an Alfa vert? It doesn't seem to have as snub a nose as a regular cobra. Seems slightly different.
 
#22 ·
Re: For the Love of Rico

If you want to get technical... it is an 82 Aurora. Aurora is a company based out of Canada and they made these cars based on the small block cobra. To my knowledge this is one of the only cars built as a small block replica, as most replicas are big blocks. I think only around 300 were made but they were made in a factory, not sold as a kit. Google Aurora cobra and it should come up.
 
#25 ·
Re: For the Love of Rico

Our school does have an fsae team, and I'm on it :) its my senior project for next year, I'm designing the suspension. Our team is actually in Nebraska now competing but I have work :/
What school? I'm lead suspension designer for Kettering University! I was hoping our school would go to Lincoln, but we decided to go to Formula North instead, since the entry fees were so much lower.
 
#28 ·
Re: For the Love of Rico

So I'm pretty sure I'm going to take out my ABS in my car since it is so heavy, which means I will need to change out most of the brake lines... Anybody have any advice/opinions on whether or not it would be beneficial to leave in the ABS for tracking? This car will mostly be used for tracking and occasionally driven on the street...
 
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