Hey everyone. I’m preparing the FC for about a 6 hour drive to Deals Gap Rotary Ralley in Tennessee on April 25th.

My FC is a stock 1990 GTU with about 10k miles on a rebuilt 13B. (330k mile chassis)

I’ve had the car for about a year and I want to do a few reliability mods. I’ve got next Saturday and the following set aside to do the following.

• S4 fuel rail with banjo bolt mod, since I have no idea of knowing how long the S5 rail on the car has been used and they are NLA from Mazda. I don’t want any fuel leaks or engine fires and I’m okay with undampened fuel system for my stock N/A car. s4 rails supposedly fit on S5s so long as the S4 rail has the banjo bolt instead of the PD.

• Koyorad aluminum radiator to replace my greenish brown stock unit (my ownership of Miatas tells me the color change on the rad is a sign of potential failure soon

• 5th and 6th port cleaning and lubricating, as well as putting in the Atkins rotary inserts that gain ≈2hp

• Atkins thermal pellet replacement

I have coolant, oil, a filter, a radiator, new fuel injector grommets, radiator neck o-ring, theortle body o-ring, LIM gasket, UIM gasket, and like 20 feet of new vacuum line in like 3 common sizes.

MY QUESTION:
are there any parts or consumables I’m going to find I’m missing when I get the intake manifolds off to do the ports, and am I forgetting anything to facilitate the radiator and thermal pellet jobs? Are there things like connectors that commonly break during disassembly or anything I should have on hand? Is there anything I should clean or service while the short block is undressed a bit? Lastly, any other recommended reliability mods for driving an FC 6 hours away from home?

 

if the oil pressure sender is good, you can actually see the Thermal Pellet working (or not) on the gauge. oil pressure will be lower until oil temp hits the ~65c and it closes.
if its working, i'd leave it alone. i'd probably also leave the intake and fuel rail alone too, unless something is actually wrong.

i would move all the valves by hand though, and if you do pull the intake, don't touch the metering lines, like literally don't touch them, you shouldn't even look at them directly.

if you do change the thermostat, i like to toss all of the ones i own in boiling water and pick the one that opens the most, and or fastest. the spec in the FSM is the minimum the thermostat should open, and a new OE NTC one will open way further that (i wanna say its about double)