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Well I have a pretty tight time line to get my swap done. I'm taking a Friday/Monday off and I need to have it done in 4 days. I've done many engine swaps over the years but never this one so I'm just trying to make sure I have all my bases covered. I'm hoping to do it the weekend after next.

And this is only phase I. Phase II is the suspension rebuild. I have almost everything I need for that and once the bushing GB is complete the entire brakes and suspension will be new or as new. Then phase III. My JDM bumper is paid for and waiting for me in Vancouver, Wa. I have Projectors on the way and in the spring the car is going for new paint. If things work out I may get a set of 17's as well.

So I was walking through the Pick n' Pull this morning. I went to grab an RS brake booster and I was just looking around and I see this 94' MX-6. I decide...what the hell...so I tore the tranny out. There's no telling the condition obviously, but it was $90 + $30 core so really...you can't go wrong. 3 hours at -14ºC rolling in the snow with nothing but a Craftsman 110pc ratchet set.

I did also get the RS booster. I'm going to figure out a way to put the GS master on it.

I have pondered the problem all night and I have come to the conclusion that the GS master cannot be made to work with the RS booster. I thought I had it figured out but I realized that I was wrong. The GS master cylinder primary piston cannot be shortened. Period. The RS booster push rod can be shortened about 30mm at most, but that would still leave 25mm between the flange of the master and the face of the booster. It just cannot work.

The MX-6 booster works because it does not seal on the push rod like the MX-3 boosters do. This allows the GS primary piston to protrude as far into the booster as necessary to mate the flange to the face of the booster. The push rod does have to be shortened like Projectzemx3 did, but I have figured out how to do it without welding or opening the booster...so that's something. You could theoretically do this without even disconnecting the brake lines from the master cylinder. I'm going to do the modifications this week after hours. I'll post up picks when its done.

hey man sounds everything is going great. i saw that you said the car was going in the shop for new paint...are you going to keep it the same color?!?!?

yes, definitely. There aren't enough Raspberry Metallic cars in the world.

lol good man good man . i was hoping you would say that

THREE MORE SLEEPS!!! I'm only waiting for one more package and it cleared customs today.



I freakin' love new parts!!!

hey those switchs under the hand brake. are those for your heated seats?

Yeah. Mine don't work very well. It's on my list of things to do for 2009 along with the stock CD player.

Parts in the living room ftw..

Your wife must be really happy

Well she certainly loves me. Not sure why...but I'm not going to ask.

The bad news is, unless the motor mounts and battery relocation wire arrive tomorrow, I'm in a bit of a pickle. I can change the motor mounts later in a pinch, though I'd love to avoid it if I can, but the battery has to be moved and I have to do the swap this weekend. I don't want to purchase the power and ground wires locally because it will cost a fortune and then I'll have a bunch more arriving in the mail.

Nothing ever just works out does it.

Nothing ever just works out does it?...Funny how that was the last thing I typed.

So this past weekend was the ZE swap blitzkrieg. The plan was...Friday, old engine out, new engine prepped. Saturday new engine in and everything hooked up. Sunday, first start and troubleshoot. Monday, off to the exhaust shop and then home. What could possibly go wrong?

Well. There were 3 major unforseen issues. 1st, broken bolt in the block from the tranny bellhousing. It was one of the top two...the left one. I sprayed it with 3inone oil and let is sit for several hours while I removed the K8. About 6 hours later I tried to remove it with a pretty good quality set of extractors. The extractor was so much harder than the bolt that it just tore through it. So I get a bigger bit to go for a larger extractor and as I'm drilling further into the bolt...my drill goes right through...into who knows what. The moment of sheer panic that I experienced can only be described as pure terror. So I look at it and think it looks like it just goes into the area under the valley pan...where the knock sensor is. But I have to make sure. So I have already spent an hour or so trying to remove the bolt, now I'm spending another 2 or 3 to remove the intake manifold and coolant neck and check under the valley pan. Of course I was right and it's fine...but what a waste of time. So the old engine is out but the new engine is not prepped by midnight Friday.

Saturday comes and 9 am I'm back in the shop. Pretty good day all around. Got the engine prepped, installed the clutch etc. without any issues. I went to prep the MX6 tranny I got at pick n' pull and swapped all the sensors over and put the tranny mounts on and so on and THEN it occurs to me to run it through the gears just to be sure. I put a screwdriver in the bracket and there is no resistance at all when I turn it side to side. I pull on it and it comes out of the tranny in my hand. I probably should have checked that when I got it. I get several stupid points for that one. I also lost a couple more precious hours. So I swapped everything back to the K8 tranny and bolted it up (minus a bolt lol) and had the engine into the car by about 11:40pm. But nothing is hooked up but the mounts. So I'm about half a day behind.

Sunday morning 9am back in the garage. I'm hooking stuff up, trying to figure out what my labels say. I realize that in my haste to remove the IM when I thought I had destroyed my engine on Friday, I didn't really pay attention the hosing on the IM. So I have to spend a bit of time figuring out what's what. I also realize that the ZE TB linkage hits the brake reservoir badly. It takes me a god couple of hours to figure out what to do and then modify the K8 linkage to work on the ZE TB. Then, I've been invited to Sunday dinner and I can't say no. So at 6pm I stop, shower and go to dinner. I get home and back to the shop by 10 and I'm out there till 4am. This is because of the last major setback. The EBAY exhaust header I bought doesn't bolt up. The headers seemed to fit perfectly, but the Y-pipe will not line up with the flange on the rear header. By this time I'm delirious and in my mind all I can think is "It's supposed to fit!!!" so I spend 2 hours trying to make it fit. Yeah that didn't work. So finally at 3:30 I decide I'll pack it in and in the morning I'll pull the headers off and put the stock K8 manifolds back on.

I got to bed and toss and turn for a while and get up at what I think is 9am but it's 7:45! 3 1/2 whole hours later! Back to the shop I go. A couple hours later I have the stock exhaust back on and I hook the battery up and the lights all come on inside...this is it!!!!

Turn the key....click. In my physically and mentally exhausted state I imagine that something in the wire harness fried when I turned that key. I snapped like a twig. I quit. I pack up my tools, pick up all the old parts in one box and the good parts in another box and call my wife. Get me home. I'm done. (I'm actually doing the swap at my parents place in another city because that's where the engine is from and my hoist and stuff are there.)

After I shower and cool off for a bit I realize that the battery was probably dead so I go to boost it off my dad's truck. It didn't fire and it sounded like the timing was wrong or something. But the really weird thing is that it was really working hard to turn over and after about 30 seconds of cranking the booster cables started to melt.

Anyway. I didn't take a single picture because I was so busy and frantically working it never even occurred to me. I'll be revisiting the situation this weekend and I'll make sure I get some. My hands have never been so sore in my life. 40 hours in 3 days. I feel like I got hit by a ZE....oh wait...I did.

Sounds like the engine is not grounded properly. I had that happen in the Muscletang once. I sanded and cleaned and reattached the ground wire and then vroom, vroom. The melting jumper cables are the smoking gun. When my cables started smoking, I thought cheap %^&*in' jumper cables, so I got a fresh set from my daily driver and they did the same thing. My ground wire was new, the bolt was shiny, the metal it was bolted to looked shiny and clean yet somehow it was a bad ground!

Well I bought a new battery today. A nice Optima Red Top. I also have a supply of 4GA power wire. I'm going to redo all the grounds and relocate the battery to the rear of the car.

Hopefully that will help.

bet mod ya can do is shift weight to the back as last time i weighed the car 70% of the weight is on the front axles so moving anything back is a good idea!