well, my 13b tii has arrived, along with street port and rebuild.
I spent the day removing the 12A and tranny and then doing the tranny mod
ie switched the tail piece, shortened the selector stick, and bolted the tranny
back together and mated it to the motor. hooked it up and proceeded to install
into first gen. here is where i hit my first problems

first i used my std 12A front mount, bolted it up. then when I checked where the tranny hole was for the stick it was too far back and from underneath i couldn't fit the 12A tranny mount.

so i slotted the front mount slightly...by about half an inch (1cm) so that i could move the engine/tranny forward a little. I think i got it forward at the max because the motor now is as close as dammit to the motor mount on the plugs side of the motor. I used the mazdatrix sump so it cleared the steering mount and the front cross member nicely although it could go a little more forward from that point of view but like i said its inhibited by that pesky engine mount.

back to the tranny

looking a little better...from inside the car the hole lines up nicely...even if right at the rear of the hole but still ok. shifter should go in ok.

underneath is where the damn problem is....i first put in the std 12A tranny mount then tried to fabricate a 13B tranny mount with a piece of rubber and two metal pieces. didn't quite fit so had to slot the 12A tranny cross member like mad and then put in another metal plate for support.

finally the question :

i see mazdatrix have a front mount bracket available for putting 13b into first gen...whats special about their bracket ?

for those of you who have done this conversion, you obviously encountered the problems i am facing....how did you overcome ?

 

they have a few write ups in the archives but i believe theyre w/ se shells. maybe check if u havent already.

 

here i did a lil lookin around for ya in the FAQ's and heres what i got!

https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...hreadid=255020
https://www.rx7club.com/1st-gen-archive-71/drivetrain-i-just-put-t2-trans-my-fb-heres-how-i-did-75879/

that should be everything that you need!!! enjoy!!!

 

thanks for those links

first one is real interesting....some good tips there on fabricating the tranny mount. i kinda did something similar myself. One query tho is that he is coming from something that had the 13b in and he went to 13b turbo...so it appears he used same engine mount bracket (cos he didn't even mention this) and his tranny ended up exactly in the same place because (1) his cross member fitted perfectly and (2) his rebuilt driveshaft was exactly the same length as old one

my problem here was that when i used the same front mount bracket my tranny moved back so that (1) the cross member didnt fit and (2) the shifter hole didn't line up inside the car. this means my whole engine/tranny had to move forward

i just now went and bought the mazdatrix front mount....hopefully this will move my 13b forward so that my tranny will be in exactly the same place

the second link for some odd reason doesn't load the pics...but it only covers the tranny anways

 

When swapping a 13B in place of a 12A it needs to be moved forward 20mm. You do this by slotting the bracket 10mm and the crossmember 10mm or by hammering the bracket flat. Or... the easiest way is to buy the special bracket.

 

i take it the special bracket is made so that it gives the same result as a 10mm slot to the std bracket ?

bottom line is that what i've figured from everyone here is

1) its longer by 20mm
2) i get 10mm in the front by slotting my bracket or getting the special bracket from mazdatrix
3) the tranny cross member needs to be slotted by 10mm
4) can either then fabricate a new tranny mount or use existing tranny mount and fabricate 2 x spacer for tranny cross member

 

i dont think they are that much much at mazdatrix.com for the bracket check here at the bottom of the page

http://www.mazdatrix.com/mounts.htm

that is what you want!