5.0 T5 97 miata build
 

Hey guys,


I guess my build officially started on 5/10/15 when I pulled the Miata engine and sold it. I have the 5.0 and t5 already and currently have the engine torn apart for inspection/refresh. I have been in contact with Martin and am waiting for an invoice for the axles/hubs so I can get them ordered. I am having some issues sourcing a differential but plan on going to the junkyard this weekend. This week I took the rack apart to depower it properly. The car will have full interior and a/c and will be a autox/rallyx/track day car as well as a daily driver.


I will get some pictures up tonight when I get home from work! this site has been great and I look forward to sharing my build with yall. I am located in San Antonio, Tx btw.

Congrats and welcome to the club!

awesome! cant wait to follow another build

Hoping to get some pics up tonight. I am terribly lazy when it comes to getting pictures from my phone to the computer and uploaded.


Updates:


I finished depowering the rack (took out internal seals and welded pinion)


Yesterday I went to the junkyard and got a 8.8 3.27 lsd out of a cougar that only had 114k miles. So hopefully it will be good. It was a little more expensive than I expected at $145 +$17 core. But I now have a complete driveline and am still haven't spent any actual money on this swap since I sold my Miata engine and diff.


this week:


I am hoping to get the engine bay wiring cleaned up and the oil pan complete this week. I will also start mocking up the diff in the rear subframe. There is an scca rallycross event this weekend that I will be racing in so I am trying to get everything done at night after work.


BTW: I was in contact with Martin trying to order axles but haven't heard back from him in about 10 days now despite resending emails to make sure he received them. Anyone know if he is on vacation or something?

On a side note, this is the buggy my dad built when I was in high school. Recently we started modifying it for autocross and rally cross. It is a blast!

Sweet buggy! Sounds like you have a great start on the build too I'm looking forward to photos and following it. Welcome to the forum!

PS could you update your signature to show what your car and build is so we know what you are referring to when you post? Edit your signature here (click)

Signature updated! Here are a few random photos that I've taken so far. I will get better organized with my photos as the build progresses.


Some racing from this past weekend. My friend let me codrive his car. It is a Nissan 240 with a 5.0 t5 swap. It was a blast to drive. Def motivation to finish my Miata.

well I have the entire rear back in the car and the front subframe modified. Next will be engine and trans mounts as soon as I put the engine back together. I am looking ahead and trying to find a wiring harness. I got the engine and tranny from a 95 gt mustang but did not get a harness. Ebay searches have been weak. Im going to go to the junkyard and hope that I can find something. If anything I need all the plugs from the harness because I plan to put MS2 ecu. Anyone have leads on a harness?

Worst case you can get a new harness. Finding a good used 5.0 harness is getting harder to find these days. May try McCully Racing and see if he's got a harness. He posts on the board.

If they don't have one here: MPS Auto Salvage - your best resource for Ford Mustang Parts New and Used Ford Mustang parts, good luck finding one.

Great! thanks for the info

Well I ended up finding a harness locally from a guy that happened to build a v8 Miata also. unfortunately it was raining when I picked it up so I didn't get to go for a ride along.


I have the engine mounted in the engine bay and am currently working on the transmission mount. I was hoping some of you could tell your methods for insuring the transmission output and the differential were parallel. For lateral measurements I projected a couple of from frame points on the ground with a plumb bob. I then dropped the plumb on the crank pulley and the transmission output to get a projection of the transmission. I used similar methods for the differential to make sure they were parallel laterally. I haven't thought of a solid way for vertical. Any ideas?


I also got my MS2 recently and just built the stimulator last night. Next week I will build the ms2. I will post some pictures tonight.

here are the assortment of pictures.

and some more

For vertical, use an angle finder on the crank pulley, then the diff flange. Should be the same, should be a slight angle, does not have to be 2 degrees. Car does not have to be level. There's a neat app for that, for android its "Clinometer".

I'm currently running MS2Extra, does a great job, could have knocked me over with a feather when it started on the first crank and settled down at 400 rpm!!! I put a 2004 dash in my 91 and used the pass airbag area for the MS and the 4R70 trans controller.

Mike

Ahh that sounds simple enough. Haha I hope I am lucky enough to have it fire first try. I am new to MS world and new to the tuning world so I am looking forward to the experience.

Back with more updates and questions.


I noticed tonight that the threads on my axle are not long enough to go all the way through the axle nut. They are about .200" short of making it through the nut when the spacer is installed. I bought the axles
(CVs used) from advance auto so they aren't the typical ones that everyone uses but I can't imagine why the length of the splines and threads would be different if they are for the same car.


Does anyone have axles out of their car they can measure?


My splines measure 2.25" and the threaded portion measures 1.5".
With the spacer from Martin installed, the face to face measurement from the spacer to the outside of the hub is 3.25". Picture attached for reference.

Look in the drivetrain section of the forum, there is a thread titled ford axle nuts. This is a problem that is starting to appear. I have it on my build as well.

Wow thanks! I check this forum everyday and haven't come across that thread. I think I'm just going to run it. I really don't want to buy different axles.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I have roughly a 1/2" of thread in the nut and I torqued it to 250. Spoke with Martin, not really worried about problems as the nut is not loaded.

Yes it is. It sets the preload on the rear hub bearings.

It does set the preload but it wouldn't be catastrophic if the bolt were to come loose. I'll try it and see what happens.

Correct, I meant that cornering/acceleration loads are not on the nut. I did get mine torqued to spec. May just throw some thread locker on it as insurance. Not sure yet.

Been a long time without updates. I have all the drivetrain complete and back in the car. my next steps are brake lines(car had abs from factory so have to make new lines to delete abs), cooling hoses, fuel line interface, build harness for ms2.


Does anyone have simple suggestions to integrate stock hard fuel lines to the ford fuel rail? I would like to keep it as simple and replaceable as possible.

well I had my first start two weeks ago and first drive last night! videos to be uploaded this afternoon

Woot Woot, Congratulations! I remember my first drive 5 years ago. As Jackie Gleason said, "How Sweet it is".

Only now after 5 years and 10k plus miles can I go out without the Need of either going sideways or making at least one full throttle run thru at least 3 gears. Course I'm in a very rural part of the world and 65. Point being You're going to have fun.

Enjoy!

HAHA thanks! I can't wait to get sideways!

Still have about 30 hours of work before the car is ready to hit the road in a legal fashion but it is together enough for a cruise around the block!

Oil is smelling like gas, engine has new bearings, rings, and oil pump. Any ideas? Leaky injector?

What do the plugs look like?

Keep a close eye on the oil level. Making oil is definately a tell of injector issues.

Rings not seated? There is a specific ring seating procedure that Perfect Circle has been recommending since the 50's that involves a high gear wide open throttle (wot) run from 30 to 40, coast back to 30, do then 30 to 50 wot, coast to 30, then 30 to 60 wot,then to 30. I usually do this 2 or 3 times. WOT loads the rings against the cylinder walls promoting seating/sealing and the coast down cools things down with a nice oil bath.

The above assumes timing and cooling is sorted out with no major short comings anywhere else.

Good Luck!

I will check for injector issues tomorrow, haven't looked at plugs yet. Hopefully that's all it is. My guess is these are factory injectors with 180K+ miles on them. Im sure the rings aren't seated yet as the engine only has around 10 mins of run time. Thanks for the responses!

First autocross happened today! It was a lot of fun but the car def needs more spring

Been working on trying to keep this thing cool. The radiator I chose is too small for any of the common oem fan set ups so I made a fiber glass shroud. One fan just isn't cutting it so I'm going to make another shroud this weekend and wire in a second fan At that point I should be good to go. Still need to get the hood on. I have around 600 miles on the car now and all is going well

Looks and sounds great!!!

What are you running for suspension?

Is that a single pass radiator then? I like your DIY shroud, and am planning on learning me some fiberglass work here in the near future!

That shroud looks really nice! I hope to learn composites to make similar stuff in the future.

I would add some flaps to that shroud. You're likely only going to be pulling air from half the radiator, and you are killing flow by having a shroud that covers the whole radiator, but a fan that only covers half. Fan shroud flaps will seal when the pressure inbetween the shroud and radiator is low (fan is on, pulling air from this area), but will open when there's high pressure between the shroud and radiator (air is being forced through from in front of the radiator).

SPAL Cooling Flaps

Right now I have martins springs up front and the old front springs are on the rear uncut. I'm going to order the vmaxx track next week so hopefully that will fix it. The radiator is a griffin 26x15. Y'all def don't need to learn anything about composites to do it. It is a very simple process and turned out to be much easier than if I tried to make the shroud out of metal. I can post the material list if anyone is interested.

I've never seen those flaps before but that is a great idea! Thanks for sharing

Well here is rev2 of the shroud. I also found out that the thermostat was installed backwards and it was not seated properly from the previous owner of this engine. So far it looks like all of my cooking problems are solved. As a side not to any of y'all that are creating your own custom fan set up: don't buy expensive fans! The first fan I bought was a 10" fan from mishimoto for 70$+ 10$ for mounting kit. The second fan is an eBay special that I paid 20$ for with free shipping and it included a mounting kit. As far as I can tell the fans are 100% identical with the exception of the mishi fan having its name on it. I bet mishimoto fan is the exact same but the mark up the price so they can offer lifetime warranty. If I would have known this from the start I could have saved myself a lot of money. Total cost= radiator at 179, shroud 50$ in material and 3 hours of time, and potentially on 40$ for fans instead of what I actually spent.

FYI, the advice shouldn't be to not buy expensive fans, it should be to not buy Mishimoto fans. They actually flow less than OEM Miata fans. If going aftermarket, then it should be a Spal fan. Otherwise I like using OEM fans, I will be using an early 90's Ford Taurus fan.

Of course the flow less, They are much smaller. A Miata fan doesn't have a chance of fitting as a puller with my set up. Taurus fans are the go to for a great fan set up but the shroud is several inches too wide to fit my radiator. My point was there isn't a reason to buy a 70$ 10" fan when you can buy a 20$ one. I have a friend that races chumpcar and he recommended which eBay fan for me to buy. He has over a hundred hours on it without any issue so if I can atleast get that, I will gladly replace it with another cheap fan.

another fun weekend of driving/racing. The car is way too soft on monster Miata front springs and front springs relocated to rear. I am hoping to buy some coilovers in the next couple of months. Other than that, the only thing bothering me is the gearing. I either need to run 17's for autocross or need to build a new rear end with 3.08. The 3.27 are just too low for autocross.

had some fun at a family party after the autocross. I got to do this for 30 mins straight because everyone wanted a ride haha

I enjoyed the videos and am envious as I have yet to autocross my car even though it's been complete in some form or another for over 8 years. Also very jealous of autox courses in TX. Way better than the tiny courses I've done in the Northeast.

Just curious- what are you using for sway bars?

Dude you have to get it out for atleast one event! I am currently running stock rear bar and no front bar. I did this because with the Mm springs, the front end sits higher than stock and is basically at 0 camber. I need the suspension to compress to get me in the negatives while turning. Once I get back to correct ride height I will add front bar

Got the car out on track for the first time a couple weeks ago at COTA! First time on that track for me and first time on any track for the car. Im running 3 year old star specs currently in 205 series so I didn't have the grip I would have liked but over all the car did pretty well. I was pretty easy on it as it is isn't proven and I didn't want to cause any problems on track. It never got over 215 F so I was pretty happy because I was definitely expecting over heating issues on a sunny-August Texas day. I drove 2 hours to the track, had an hour of track time, and make it the two hours home without issue.


The night before the event I was under the car making sure everything was tight and I noticed that the rear mount of my differential had completely broken. I had been feeling some movement under acceleration but I was blaming a poor alignment since I had just done the alignment before I noticed it. Had to remake part of the bracket and got it back in the car without issue and it seems to be holding fine now.


Over the past few months and several thousand miles (don't have speedo so don't know actual miles) the car has been awesome and has been completely reliable.

"The night before the event I was under the car making sure everything was tight and I noticed that the rear mount of my differential had completely broken."



Can you comment any more on what exactly broke and why you had breakage?

Thanks, Mike

Poor design and material selection on my part. It sheared at the weld from a hard launch on a grippy but rough road. I only had 3/16" around when I made it and it probably needs to be at least a 1/4". I don't have a picture of the fix but basically I welded both sides where it sheared and then added another 3/16" across the top to double the thickness. If it fails again I will do a redesign.

In preparation for the event I bought a used roll bar for $200 but had to add a harness bar and a diagonal for it to be legal.