This is the thing. You don't know what has happened in the almost 15+ years of prior ownership. It would only take a momentary overheating event to cause cracking or fatigue around the area that failed. Your experience driving in England does not necessarily marry up with the climate this car was driven in in Japan. Some regions in Japan can experience very hot summers, particularly in the south and in Okinawa. All the late model FD owners in Australia know well that they still suffer engine failures due to overheating in our climate.

Version 6 cars still use the same plastic AST that has a habit of cracking and dumping coolant and the cooling fan system is still configured to allow coolant temperatures to hover in the high 90s / low 100s where engine damage is definitely a real possibility. I have had a 12A die after hitting 100'C once and have since designed all my cooling systems so that temperatures hit at 80-85 and never exceed 95. I am not an FD owner (right now), but one of the first things I would do is ensure fans are running at full duty at much lower temperatures.

Finally, you can have localised overheating even where the system coolant temperature appears normal. This can occur where there is air trapped in the cooling system (noting that some people find it difficult or neglect to properly bleed an FD cooling system) or if the pressure cap fails.

In any event, I don't think this really matters from your perspective - you're getting the engine rebuilt and looking at improving the cooling system further so all good!

 

Some folks delete the AST altogether. In such case how real is the risk of air bubbles forming in the engine because of such delete.

The water level sensor should buzz pretty quickly if there was a water leak failure, no?

 

Progress has been pretty slow as I've got a lot of house renovation on at the moment. But I recently found a little more time for the FD.

Front iron laser welded and filed flat, needs a little more fettling but it's good to reuse.




Turbo heat shields coated and wastegate ported to 179% of the original surface area so should flow considerably better.






New bearings pressed into rotors and stationary gears.



Got a Stack lambda gauge to go with my other Stack gauges, going to temporarily mount them in the place of the radio until I can source a 3 gauge Flyrx7 pod. The stack gauges are quite deep and not compatible with a lot of pods. I'm tempted to remove the speakers too and just ditch all the audio stuff, pretty sure my Bluetooth speaker is better than the sound system in my FD if I decided I wanted audio for a longer trip..





Short shifter and new boots fitted to give that new shifter feel!

 

Billet wheels made for the N3G1 twins. Also sourced some uprated 360 deg bearings and an improved design of thrust plate.





I've also decided to retrofit cruise control.... But as a side project at a later date when this car is back on the road. I've sourced all the parts but they need a good refurb before fitting as we won't be having any corrosion on this car .

 

So now is for probably my favourite bit. The re-assembly of all the auxiliaries. All steel coolant fittings have been removed in favour of brass and anodised aluminium fittings to reduce corrosion in the cooling system. All steel has been plated, all gaskets replaced with new OEM etc. It's quite satisfying making it all look good again!







Throttle body built, adjusted and ready to fit:







UIM. I do have the lift eye plated also, just forgot to fit it for this pic!

 

WP assembly:






LIM:






Engine heat shield, solenoid box, coil bracket, coils and fuel hard lines:

 

Never seen anyone do that before. Where did the idea come from?

I may have some cruise control units that are in better shape than the ones you have sourced (from the bottom of a bay, it looks). Is there a difference between RHD and LHD? Cables perhaps?

 

Which bit are you referring to? If you mean the plating.. I do this to all my cars, makes a big difference in my opinion! the whole underside of the car was done in the same manner a few years back so most of the bolts on this car have been refinished in zinc with gold passivate or chrome.

Thanks for the offer but these should clean up fine and be better than new when plated . The brackets and cables are RHD specific, the cruise module is the same. I sourced all of the interior cruise buttons new from Mazda Japan (Was surprised they still had stock!). You've got an S8 like me so we also need some throttle body changes as the S8 throttle body is simplified and doesn't support cruise without mods. I've sourced all the bits I need and I'll do the retrofit as a side project later. I've started the plating process for most of it but my main priority is getting her back on the road now so cruise can wait until the summer as it involves faffing around to get the buttons mounted nice in the steering wheel etc.

 

So you do the plating yourself? A sort of Practical Classics DIY in five gallon pails, sort of thing?

I have a lot of spare bolts and brackets and stuff, seems like a fun hobby.

 

Damn, those are some sexy looking parts

 

Do you do the plating yourself? Looks great.

 

Some of it yeah. I have a decent electroplating place in the village I live in, so for bulk items like a tub of bolts I'll give it to them as they have tumblers that'll clean those up much faster and more efficiently than me doing it by hand with a wire brush etc!

Thanks! Hopefully will get a chance to reassemble a few more bits tonight so will post up some pics .

 

First off, plated parts make me drool .

Where did you get that billet compressor wheel? Any specs on it as far as performance?

Dale

 

Wow! Amazing job. Well done sir, keep up the good work.

 

[QUOTE=Ceylon;12456019]Some of it yeah. I have a decent electroplating place in the village I live in, so for bulk items like a tub of bolts I'll give it to them as they have tumblers that'll clean those up much faster and more efficiently than me doing it by hand with a wire brush etc!



Electroplating here I come!

 

Thanks Dale,

These are custom so no real world figures of what affect they'll actually have until I get this car back together and on the dyno, all I can tell you at the moment is it will be better... By how much we'll have to wait and see . They are MFS billet wheels made on the 5 axis CNC at work then sent off to a local turbo place for balancing. It is OEM sized so it'll fit in the OEM N3G1 compressor housing without any modifications, just with thinner blades and hub as the billet is stronger so you can remove more material to get a lighter, better flowing compressor wheel. It'll be interesting to see how much difference it makes, it was more done out of interest rather than chasing any goals.

Thanks!

 

man that is awesome. looking forward to seeing more pics.

 

Cheers! Plenty more pics to come haha.

PWR intercooler arrived from Aus today.

 

Giving the cooling system a refresh. Went with a 48mm Koyo from @Banzai-Racing . Also picked up some new oem hoses to reduce any chance of leaks.

Gone with a Gates thermostat again as they seem to be more reliable and flow better than OEM when open.

 

This page is turning into a parts dump.. I will actually start fitting things soon I promise .

Picked up a few more parts to improve the rigidity of the body.

Autoexe under side braces:





Feed inner arch braces:




Did the first quick clean of the bay yesterday. Still needs a fair but more work but I think I can get away without respraying the bay and just touch up some areas. Refitted a few of the newly plated brackets. The PS pump and AC compressor have since been removed for a clean up.

 

Where did you get the inner arch braces?
Thanks.

 

Those ones were from RHDjapan .

 

This has been a great read so far! Great job on everything. You'll definitely have to let us know how those feed inner arch braces do.

 

Thanks! I'll let you know if I notice the difference.

I've been refurbishing some on my lower engine bay brackets for the AC condensor, ps cooler, rad mounts etc. I decided not to plate these as they see road grime and live in a harsher environment so plating wouldn't last well.

To give them the best chance of lasting they are being fully de-rusted, primered and getting a good few coats of epoxy that'll be left to fully cure before fitting.

Pre dripping they were pretty grimy with spots of rust, but post dipping they came out pretty nice and 100% rust free:




Picked up a set of PN correct crystal Raybrigs to move over to the FD brackets. These were pretty rare on FD's but they were fitted from factory to some cars and imo look a lot better than the stripy Stanleys most FD's including my own ended up with. They will be getting split down, blasted, painted and plated before fitting to make them last.





Also picked up a new throttle cable, cruise actuator cover and cubby. Not sure if I'll use the cubby but I wanted to get one before they go NLA so I've got options in the future. There were loads of other engine bits but I'll post those up when I build the motor soon.











Few bits from Banzai, ACT streetlite flywheel & auto counterweight. Keep finding more bits to order from Banzai haha.





Few bits from IRP, filler neck, street poly engine mounts and their stainless streel sump brace with stainless hardware. These items were in literally bomb proof packaging, there was no way these were getting damaged on their way to the UK.





Out with the seats......










And in with the bins.







The rear speaker covers are out in the pics for paint and the parcel shelf is out as I'm plating the mounting screws. Need to refit the oem luggage strap and give the boot trim a good clean. I keep finding more parts to plate haha.

 

New engine harness is pretty much finished, The original one wasn't too bad but had started to go crispy in places. As we're trying to make things as future proof and reliable as possible now was the time to swap it out. The OEM harness also had lots of poorly located and sealed joints with cables looped in the loom to get the desired length, there is none of this going on in the new harness. I also found corrosion wicking up to 30cm into the harness at various connectors, especially with spade connectors and the main power and ground circuits.

The grounds for the ecu and sensors are now a fraction of the resistance they used to be! This will make the sensors more accurate and everything basically just work better. I've reassessed the gauge requirement for the cables and gone a little over the required spec.

All the lug connectors for the main ground connectors are crimped under 16 ton of pressure, so the wires become a solid piece of copper with the copper terminal to form a perfect connection with the lowest achievable resistance while also preventing corrosion, These are then sealed further with SCL. All connector pins have been crimped with the correct terminal specific tool and sealed. The loom protection consists of DR-25 with SCL to seal all the joints and ends of the harness, then the larger sections are also sheathed in HFT with tesa tape on the joints for extra abrasion resistance. Likely unnecessary but being a bit over specified never hurt as I'm not chasing grams. It's still lighter than the OE harness in fact!

I made a few other plug changes to remove any spade connectors where possible e.g. with the coolant level sensor. These now use econoseal connectors to stop any corrosion or moisture wicking its way into the harness. Where I could not eliminate spade connectors (e.g. the many solenoids as I'm running twins) I've sealed the individual wires on the terminals with heat resistant black epoxy to do a similar job at blocking any corrosion entering the wires.

Most of the connector housings are new, but a couple that were in good condition and not baked were reused.









It's a bit of a busy harness as I'm running twins but I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I'm currently making a new engine harness (Or power/alternator/starter harness as most prefer to call it) to ensure my starter, coils and higher output alternator are working to their full potential. I will do all the looms on the car eventually, but for this current build it'll just be these two as I want the car on the road in the next month or so.

Mazdaspeed carbon spoiler insert arrived so I can now fit my matching lip. That's pretty much it for exterior mods bar some lighting changes.