Fred's Engine Swap Diary

[Fred]

[Fred]

Nothing on the engine or truck today. Instead working on in various ways. Broke my soldering iron in the process and ordered 3 more from aliexpress to replace it hoping at least one is good. Will be doing some coding soon as well. A bit sulky/sad/pissed off today, so zero desire to go out in the cold and do tedious work. Shit happens. Progress in other areas instead.

[Fred]

Wednesday: Revived Spain soldering station, finished circuit build, picked up new small turbo that probably won't end up on the ute. Dropped off a wideband to a friend for dev purposes.
Thursday: Pulled apart above turbo setup a bit.
Friday: Finished pulling apart above turbo setup.
Saturday: Wrote software for FreeEMS use.
Sunday: Attended a car meet, had lunch out, a few other chores.
Today: ~2 hours total, yay! Two things:

1) Cleaned remaining pistons on new block: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 7942119424
2) Had new tyre valve fitted to one of the ute rears which had been cut off.

Next up? Block deck surfacing, piston radiusing/decompressing, block cleaning, search for special nut, remove clutch slave/master setup and get that fixed/refreshed/renewed, remove sump, remove oil filter tube, deburr/high flow block deck holes as desired, other stuff?

Apologies for being slack with the block work. I was getting other things done, though.

[Fred]

Yesterday? Nothing.
Today? Block deck surfaced: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 6240392192

Didn't take long at all, maybe half an hour max.

[Fred]

Yesterday, software stuff, but brought ute sump and pickup and tools in, then discovered the hole I wanted to drill and tap was already there on this block. Good.

Today: 3.5 hours!

Epic winged top-plated ultimate wet sump and oil pickup tube and spacers removed, along with some brackets and covers and so forth. https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 9687531520

Ripped the oil pump off of the front of the block, too. And the cross member out from underneath. And found the sway bar end link bushes crumbling like the rear end: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 0653206529

Then I pulled the clutch master cylinder out, not pretty. https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 6830947328

Tomorrow = clean up what I pulled off todayand form a repair plan. Maybe look for my second filter nut to remove the tube from the old block (last thing bar starter and block/crank itself).

Also need to cut a hedge, work on my daily driver, work on my software more, and other chores.

Fred.

[Fred]

Badly failing to work on the ute since last time. Lots of chores and software stuff and work on the daily driver.

Today:

Cleaned all three sumps that were lying around. Checked a Nissan clutch master cylinder for fitment.

Nothing else Mazda wise, sadly.

Fred.

[Fred]

Yesterday, some paperwork, some code. Nothing Mazda.

Today, I went through all of my boxes of FE3 parts and eventually found the nut that I needed to undo the oil cooler tube. So then I went ahead and did just that! Call it 30 mins.

EDIT: Also cleaned out the oil cooler / heat exchanger which took half an hour or so.

Literally just the block and starter left to pull, now.

I have some more paperwork to do, but then it's time to finish the engine mods and reassembly.

Fred.

[Fred]

[Fred]

And today I cleaned up the sump, bashed some bent bits, cut some mangled bits, marked some cracked/piereced bits, and came up with this as an end results: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 8742544385

Need to acquire gas for my welder and a gasket kit for the top end of this new engine build. Pretty much stalled until then. Not currently planning to mod the block or pistons, though I might do it in the mean time if I feel the urge.

Fred.

[Fred]

A month later, and I only have two things to report:

1) Head gasket is ordered and I'll have it early this coming week.
2) Gas bottle for welder is ordered and waiting for pickup, same time-frame.

Once those arrive I should be able to make more progress in the evenings. Weekends will be burned skiing for another few weeks until all of the snow melts

Fred.