Theres a similar clip on the clutch.
I replaced both with bolt and nylock nuts
Theres a similar clip on the clutch.
I replaced both with bolt and nylock nuts
The one on the clutch is present and accounted for, but maybe I'll go back in and make sure it's secure. Either way, I'd much rather lose the clutch than the brakes!
Meanwhile, a couple of big heavy boxes came (and some smaller ones too)
I'm not going to do this right now, but I tried to get everything I need so I can just bang it out when I'm ready. Probably early September.
I had a hard time finding 3rd in the single track day I did, so I decided to try this too. This is going to go on in the next week or so. We'll see how much I hate it. I have Mazdacomp mounts now, so decided to go for just one side.
And finally, I unpacked the last straggler box of random crap from when we moved (3 years ago) and found this in there. Sweet, garage decor! I think I joined GRM to post this for sale.
I did a lot of sweating today to get in my temp gauge. Wiring is not my strong suit, but it works! You all get one lousy picture of my dirty console. 
I also discovered that my shift boot is worn out, so that sucks. This one is...4 years old? Wow almost 5 years I guess. Time flies when you're having fun.
I put in the motor mount last week. It very helpfully highlighted some areas where things could move around, namely the fan shroud and the coolant overflow tank. The shroud is a casualty of the crossflow radiator, since you have to remove a mount to install it, so that got some cardboard shoved in it to shut it up. The overflow tank will have to be dealt with since it's aluminum and I don't really want it shaking itself apart.
Got the coolant overflow tank sorted, thanks to the set of carbide burrs I bought for my dremel a while back. They have proven to be invaluable.
The car was buttoned up and packed, I had all my stuff together, I was feeling good about the performance driving school at Sonoma today......and it was cancelled due to all the smoke in the air. So far this year I'm 2 for 2 on track days getting cancelled.
Feeling pretty down on car stuff at the moment.
As I was sitting in the car with my helmet on the other day, wishing I were at a racetrack, I found myself thinking "gee, it sure would be nice if these seats were a little lower". So I took a look underneath, and there's still about an inch of clearance, despite having what is commonly thought of as the be all end all of low street friendly seats - Lotus Elise seats with brackets from Ryoku Rob.
So I pulled the passenger side out. The bracket is in two pieces that bolt together. Here you can see the upper half that connects to the seat. The bottom of the seat is roughly flush with the bottom of the bracket, but there is about 3/4" of air below that before you get to the floor of the car. I'm going to see if I can make up a new upper portion that will give me slightly more recline and a slightly lower position.
I started with a frozen pizza box. I have 2 kids and my wife and I are both working from home, so we eat a lot of frozen pizza these days. One unexpected upside - the cardboard they use for these is stiff enough to make a useful template. but thin enough that you can just kind of crease it around stuff. Very handy.
After some trimming,
Then marking new spots for bolt holes and more trimming,
We're going to try that. Next I need to get some steel - these are made of 1/8 sheet, so I'll probably stick with that. There is a flat piece that runs across the 2 brackets to pick up 2 bolts on the bottom of the front of the seat as well, so that will need to be dealt with, but this is a good starting point.
Got a good deal on a much nicer coolant overflow tank.
Before:
After:
Things that I like:
Things that I don't like:
I think I can live with that.
I have a few weeks before my rescheduled driving school at Sonoma. Let's get that clutch in!
Transmission is out! And very, very grimy. It looks like a lot of it is from CAS leaks over the years, but a lot of it is rear main seal too. I also discovered that it's been leaking from the turret quite a lot. Does anyone know if there are any gaskets up there that should be replaced while it's out? I ordered both rubber shift boots so those are already on the list.
The two rubber shift boots should do you. One for the turret, one for the floor.
It is a great time to rebuild the shifter if you haven't already (easy to do in the car, too).
In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) (Forum Supporter) :
I'd replace the 2 gaskets in the inside the bellhousing as well - the paper gasket the goes around the perimeter of the the plate that's held on by the 6 bolts in the picture and the input shaft gasket that's on the backside of the same plate. They're cheap and it's already out.
Yep, I have the bell housing gaskets and the rubber shift boots. It just looks like a lot of grime for a small leak from the lower turret boot, but who knows. I rebuilt the shifter a few years ago and used a brass bushing, so it should be good still.
Here's the engine side. Yep, that's leaking.
I had to break out the concentrated simple green to clean that up.
If, like me, you get to this point:
and realize that you took this off to clean it:
The answers that you are currently looking for are:
I packed up the tools for the night.
In reply to cmcgregor (Forum Supporter) :
A friend of mine and I left one of those off of my car after an engine rebuild. We discovered it after pulling in the driveway from the first drive around the neighborhood.
From my perspective, finding it after bolting in the clutch is lucky.
In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :
True enough, it could be worse. I'm almost always working by myself after my young kids are in bed, so this setback adds at least 2 days of work to get the car done. Won't make that mistake again.
looks like you have (or had) a CAS leak too.
stylngle2003 said:looks like you have (or had) a CAS leak too.
I suspect that there has been more than one CAS leak in this car's 235k mile history. I just replaced it about a month ago with an x profile ring from McMaster. Hopefully that lasts a while, because the reroute makes it impossible to remove without pulling the valve cover.
Well, tonight I got the clutch and flywheel back off, got the dust cover on and....ordered the little seal that goes under the carrier for the rear main seal. It looks like some oil is seeping through there and I'm not about to put this thing back together while it still has an obvious oil leak. I've read that this one is a bit of a pain, so hopefully it goes smoothly. I'm super grateful for Mazda Motorsports Development - they have the best prices for OEM stuff, and they ship super quickly.
I also spent some time cleaning up the transmission and replaced the seals on that. I look like I took a bath in a toxic waste dump.
In reply to cmcgregor (Forum Supporter) :
I've been chasing fluid leaks on my 92 as well and replaced the rear main carrier gasket 2 weekends ago. It took awhile and a few different approaches but this is what worked for me:
Biggest issue I had was being patient and being willing to start over (took the first bolt out after 30 minutes to start over because the top 2 bolts didn't line up).
I haven't driven it yet (still on the quick lift) but I've run the engine for 20 minutes twice and it's not leaking so I'm comfortable that problem is solved. Now moving on to the last leak - transmission weeping fluid at the seams where the factory sealant has failed...
In reply to Scopecreep :
This was really helpful, thanks!
Of course, right after I claimed Mazdaspeed was the greatest, it took a week to get a seal from them. Not their fault, it seems like it spent most of that time sitting in a UPS truck, but frustrating nonetheless.
When I had the carrier for the rear main seal out, I discovered that past mechanics had a hard time with seal removal....
So I cleaned those up, got the oil pan seal in (kind of a pain, as advertised) and started bolting stuff back on. Once the clutch was on, I got the transmission onto my borrowed transmission jack and started trying to get things lined up.
It did not go well.
Eventually I got fed up with it, got my wife to come out and push the engine down for me, and bench pressed the trans up into place. It took me a couple tries to get the splines to go into the clutch, but it finally went - and I went to bed. I'll finish bolting it in today and start getting the rest of the car back together.
Exactly 2 weeks until my track day at Sonoma. Should be enough time to get the clutch broken in, but with not much to spare.
I bought the wrong transfer pump. It worked well enough to get the good stuff in there.
It has no obvious leaks, and the clutch seems like it works. It has an annoying exhaust leak, but I'm probably not going to deal with that right now. Calling it a win for now.
Well, I haven't had much to say here because the car has just been working.
I did a track day/performance driving school at Sonoma back in October
I learned a lot, despite having the slowest car there by a wide margin. It was pretty humbling to have an instructor in front of you in a Camry, driving one handed and talking into a handheld radio and just walking away. By the end of the day I was at least pushing them through the corners.
The motor mount stayed on for a while, but it made the hood shake at idle so bad that it sounded like it was going to rattle off. I didn't think it made a huge difference anyway, so I pulled it back out and reinstalled the Mazdacomp motor mount. I might be more willing to make that NVH tradeoff in the future, but for now, it's not exactly holding me back.
I've done a couple small backroads drives with groups, and have been driving it to drop off and pick up my 4 year old when I can.
I'm doing a track day at Thunderhill tomorrow. It's supposed to rain, and it's the 5 mile configuration, so that should be interesting! The seats may be the next thing to go - they work really well for street driving but unfortunately don't fit my hips very well, so I was pretty sore after Sonoma. I don't really want to go back to a full race seat but am thinking about ways to swap it in for track days. The added safety of harnesses would be a nice benefit too.
In reply to cmcgregor (Forum Supporter) :
You can ruin "faster" cars days at Sonoma after you build some confidence. Tip to get a run up the front straight, remember, the barrels are the track limits, not the lines on the track - apex the last of them to get a good run up the hill.
I drove it 2 hours to Thunderhill, ran 5 sessions, drove 2 hours home and it didn't use anything but gas. 5 miles is a long track - I think my favorite parts were the transitions between East and West, which had some fun elevation changes. It was cold (for California) and rained on and off all day, so the level of available grip was constantly changing. Lots of fun.
On the downside, whatever passes as a novice program at SpeedSF was fairly useless, so I don't think I'll be doing another of their events. We literally spent the first 2 sessions driving around the track at ~30mph, which was helpful for learning which way the turns go, but not much else. In the afternoon, my "instructor" disappeared, so we were just kind of left to our own devices. I was fine with that but some feedback would have been nice - basically the only interaction I had with the instructor was her telling us where to meet before the first session.
All in all, it was a good day. I'm looking forward to a second track day at any of these tracks, it would be nice to have some idea of what to expect before the first session of the day!
In reply to cmcgregor (Forum Supporter) :
Interesting - admittedly I've not done the novice program at SpeedSF, but I quite liked their events at Laguna. Much better run that some other event I attended where people wrecked a few hundred grands' worth of cars in a few hours. Not run there with SCCA or NASA, but the intermediate level stuff with SpeedSF always seemed solid.
Overall the event was pretty well run - sessions started and ended on time, there was plenty of email communication around schedule and expectations, registration was all online and check in was drive-through. I'm sure things are different for a non-pandemic track day, but yeah - not a good first impression.
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