Nowak1981

Got a little more done tonight. Finished tearing the rear axle assembly apart for cleaning and reprinting. Also got the fuel tank and the engine harness out. Pulled the rear bumper and tailings. I also did some more labeling of wires. All in all not bad bad couple of hours.





For the life of me I couldn't figure out how to get the power antenna out, gonna have to do a little more reading for that.

Nowak1981

Got a few more suspension and rear brake parts cleaned this week. Also found some upper ball joints for the front. That's right, they do exist.





My work station. It's gets kinda boring...I wish I knew how to use that welder. I tried to play with it, but I couldn't even get it to spark, I didn't want to mess with it too much. It's not mine afterall.



As I go through cleaning everything, I'm taking all the bolts and getting them wired up and labeled as I go. Once I get the whole car wired up, I'll send it off to the plater, they offered to do all of them for $50 if I got them ready. They said I didn't have to clean them, just remove the paint, they would do the rest....I guess I'm just OCD for clean stuff.



These are the parts I have left to clean.



And finally. Upper ball joints for the front. I found them on rock auto for dirt cheap. I didn't want to spend the money on new arms right now. These will work fine until I get to that point. They do look awfully nice. I still need to find a socket big enough to press on the boots.







I think this weekend I might try and at least start to build a rotisserie.

This is what I'm aiming for.



But I will make a better base becuase I want to put wheels on it so I can move it out of the garage. I'm kinda worried about the car sitting on there too long. The car body seems to be pretty stiff, but since there is no structure on the top, I'm wondering if I should brace it at the doors. Or maybe I can just get away with leaving the doors in and letting them do the job for me. We shall see.

Now that I think of it, I really need to go to the salvage yard and find another thunderbird diff...they got rid of the car I found, I should have pounced on it when I saw it, it was a nice looking diff...oh well...snooze you lose.

tbone heller

I like the fact that you are OCD. The little details make all the difference. I think that I used a piece of PVC pipe or a PVC fitting from Home Depot to install my ball joint boots.

charchri4

Damn you guys make me feel guilty. I didn't even wipe the 180,000 miles worth of grime off the steering rack when I changed the tie rods! But I did clean up the tail lights since that is all anyone sees of the car.

Nowak1981

It gives me something to do while I'm at work, it can get pretty boring. And i think it makes the car go back together a lot easier when you aren't fighting the old grease oil and grime.

Jack Sprat

I'm feeling pretty bad too. It has been so much work (and time) so far that I'm not cleaning any grime off the front subframe unless I feel it could catch on fire when I'm welding.

Nowak1981

Not a whole lot to report this week. I'm pretty much finished blasting and painting the chassis parts. I ordered some new spindles and wheel bearings but I haven't put anything together yet.

This morning was a complete bummer thou, for the most part I finished my rotisserie, I think I spend more time trying to figure out how to secure the front of the car then anything. I busted out my cherry picker and hooked it up to the hole where the gear shifter goes.


I got it up about a foot, and the car was off balance front to rear. Not a by a lot, I could lift up the rear enough to get the car even, so I kept lifting. I needed to get it high enough to clear the stirrups I made.

Then all of a sudden the left to right weight shifted and the car was nearly on its left side. There was too much imbalance for me to lift it up. I thought I was fucked. Or at least soon to be screwed over if I didn't get this car back on the ground soon.

Problem was the car got so out of balance that I couldn't get the jack stands back under the car, I couldn't lower the car cause it was on its side.

Four hours later and a lot of swearing I managed to get it back on the stands....

Luckly I didn't do any damage to the car. But it was def an ordeal.

I'm having serious doubts about how I was going to build the rotisserie. I wanted to be able to roll the car out of the garage so I could attack the undercoating outside in the nice weather and so I could clean up the garage floor with a pressure washer.


I think what I'm gonna have to do it build some type of cart to set the car on so I can roll it out, and the build a rotisserie without wheels and leave it in the garage. Or I'll just leave it on the stands and curse at it while I'm working upside down....

Either way, I'm tired it's been a long day. I'm going to bed.

Nowak1981

So I settled on building a cart for the car. I spent all morning getting that done.

I managed to pull the car out of the garage with about as much ease as I could muster on very poor excuse for a drive way.


But it's out, I took the pressure washer inside and cleaned the floor and then did a first rinse over on the car. I feel this car will been a few more baths before I can start getting it back together.

I really wish I could have made the rotisserie work, it would have made this soo much easier...but it's done...and now I can google at it until the donor car comes in.

Nowak1981

Haven't gotten around to doing squat these past few weeks. I've pretty done all I can until I buy a donor car. Been looking for a part time job to help facilitate that goal a little quicker.

I did manage to hang the wiring harness.



Although again, I can't do much til I have a donor. I have been trying to find good wiring diagrams, and I've found a few. But I'm not finding the connector Pinouts that should go with it.

I feel that I will prolly need to actually buy the factory service manuals to get these. And unlike my ford escort manuals which were 40$ for the set. The miata books a considerably more expensive.

This will likely be my next purchase, followed by a rearend. If the salvage yard i frequent ever gets one in. Once I get the rearend, I should be able to reassemble the rear subframe to completion.

charchri4

Wow that is quite a photo! The chassis wiring is pretty simple and you won't need the Mazda factory manuals unless you just want them. I found having the factory manuals for the donor Camaro very helpful though.

Nowak1981

Havent really done squat since last post. I am 100% finished wiring up all the old nuts and bolts. I even sorted through my spare bolt drawer for anything that might be useful to the miata, the drawer was about 9 cars deep into ford escorts which use some of the same nuts and bolts.

Tomarrow I start a new Part-Time job at the local Napa warehouse. Hopefully this is just what i need to get this project kicked back into gear. First paycheck will prolly go towards zinc plating on the nuts and bolts. Then ill prolly get a donor car. I still need to buy a welder, and i might seriously look into a new air compressor. After that, i have no excuse why i cant make some real progress on the car.

I also purchased a service manual cd off Ebay. I was really surprised that it had the Actual mazda Service manual and electrical manual. Printed me off a copy at work, i always liked paper books over pc. 1300 pages later, im still looking for a binder. Still better then the 180$ + for the paper books.

Once i get the donor car, I will need to look into books for it. I wont buy one til i have the car. Im not dead set on a particular model yet. price and location are really the deciding factor. Ideally, id like to get my hands on a CTS-V, i hear the accessories are much tighter. Id be happy with a ls2 from a GTO. at the very least i will get the 2000+ ls1 from the Camaro or Firebird. We shall see.

Nowak1981

So it's been a couple weeks again. I haven't really done much, I haven't had time. I'm working two jobs now. I got a part time job at the local napa warehouse. It's kinda cool there. I will have access to their employee discount, which is 10% above cost, after 90 days. I know napa over prices most of their stuff, so hopefully the discount will actually be useful.

I've been going to the salvage yard looking for a rear end every couple weeks, no luck there. I'm still kicking myself for not picking up that one I found.

I sent the rear cross member off to paint, I should have it back next week or so.

I also got my bolts back from plating and they look nice and shiney, like a pile of gold. I did learn one thing from the process. I had labeled all the bolts that I wired up with metal plates that I engraved on, I figured they would survive the process.... Well I was half right. I used some scrap aluminum I found at work. Had everything labeled and ready to go and when I got them back, I found all my labels missing. I had figured the players took them off for some reason, they had actually completely dissolved in the acid bath.

Oh well live and learn.



The black plate is really really black, most of it turned out real nice.



Here is some of the old screws next to the new ones. You can really tell the difference.

charchri4

Hey that NAPA gig sounds like a good deal for doing the build. I've had really good luck with there stuff and there is a lot of NAPA parts in mine.

Just a note on those control arm eccentric bolts in the last shot there. Most guys replace those with new when they have them out. They do stretch tend to move around after they have been torqued a number of times. Not a big deal of you don't ever push the car hard in the corners but it is a Miata so...

Nowak1981

Been working too damn hard to get much done this week, but I will at least share where my mind had been at.

I've been racking my brain on how to build an inexpensive and safe rotisserie, I've pretty much boiled that down to actually having to buy a welder. After tons and tons of reading, i think I've settled on a millermatic 140.


Millermatic 140 Auto-Set - MIG Wire Welder - Miller Welding

I was seriously thinking about the 180, but it is 230v and my garage doesn't have it, the 211 is dual voltage but well out of my price range. I feel I can accomplish more then I could possibly ever need with the 140 anyway.

My problem now is that I'm working too much to make it worth buying one right now, I wouldn't have time to use it, so for now I'm holding off on that purchase. I'm still questioning wether I can confidently build a rotisserie.

As a result I've been debating other ways of getting the car up high enough to work under.

I've been considering these jack stands.



They support 2 tons each, one on each corner should be more then enough, and I can get the car from 40 inches to almost 90 inches off the ground.


Outside of that, I've been working on getting my newly minted nuts and bolts separated, I'm still bummed that all my labels are gone, that is definitely, gonna make things a little harder.



I bought some fishing lure boxes to help keep things organized. But for now, I'm gonna keep everything wired up just to use as a reference, to what I can remember.

I got a little more done with the wiring harness, mainly just stripping the crap off of it, I'm gonna go through and clean and label everything. Just to make things easier for reassembly. I may go the aviation route for rewiring.

I saw something like this on a lot of the aircraft that come through maintenance at work.



It's basically a label that gets printed on some shrink tubing. The other option is to have a direct print onto the the wire itself. I saw the machine they use for that at work for building new harnesses, but i think it only uses a certain type of wire.

I also got the rear sub frame back from paint. It looks like they actually powder coated for me instead. It looks good. Especially when compared to the new bolts. I'm gonna get it wrapped up in plastic wrap to keep the dust off of it, last thing I want is to take the car to the body shop for work, and have it get all dirty again.







I think if I take some of this over time next week I might bring my wheel bearings and hubs to work with me and get them pressed together in my spare time, we shall see.

That's all I got for this week. A little bit at a time. It will get done.

And btw Jim, thanks for telling me about the essentrics. I will definitely keep that in mind when I'm putting it back together.

tbone heller

Looks good! Too bad you are going to have to grind off the finish on the sub-frame to weld on your differential mount.