It's finally done. My rebuild that I initially started in January 2010 is finally done. I started the car for the first time last Thursday, got it running enough to go fail emissions by Monday, and hope to make try #2 on Saturday with fresh plugs and the stock ECU back in.

This was my first total tear down and rebuild. There haven't been as many times in my life I'd been as nervous as that first time sitting down, key in hand, to crank it over. Thankfully, it started on the first try, and all I'd missed was tightening down the oil feed line where it comes out of the front housing and over to the turbos. half hour of pulling the PS pump back off to get to the fitting, and 2nd start didn't have a flood of oil from the left side of the engine.

My attempt at blogging the process (infrequent updates and all) is at http://rotorsandall.blogspot.com/ if anyone's interested.

Sivart_R1

 

congrats! good luck with the missions testing. What are your mods?

 

Shaneracing 3" SS DP
Apexi Dual N1 cat back
Apexi Power FC
slightly modded stock airbox
A/C removed
ACT XD clutch
Mazdaspeed PPF

Nothing extreme so far. The car was mostly daily driver and weekend autocross toy until the water seals gave out. Now it's likely to be the "weather's too bad to take the bike today" commuter and autox / track toy, so I should be able to start doing a bit more with it.

I've found a local shop that can tune the PFC, and I'll probably taking it down once I get emissions out of the way and tabs back on. Current tabs have an 8/07 expiration.

 

Thats a long time but i'm glad everything worked out alright.

 

Congratts!!

It's a great feeling to do it all yourself.

 

make sure you put 8k-1000 miles on the car before you go back to smog it. People usually have to break in their rebuilds before passing.

 

+1 With my new rebuild I couldn't pass emissions until I got some decent mileage on the motor. Mine failed twice so I brought it to a rotary mechanic. He told me the motor just needed some miles. 500 or so later passed as one of the cleanest FDs he'd ever seen.

(Manny meant 800-1000 miles not 8k )