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Well, as I have posted here before, I bought a 1995 Millenia S for $500 bucks because it had a blown head gasket and a chunked piston. I fixed both issues and am putting it back together. Since a Pat Diesel had a spare k8 tranny from when he put his LSD in we attempted to bolt it up to the 2.3L. Well, It fits...but these pictures are worth Thousands and Thousands of words.

These are some pictures of how it bolts up. There is one bolt hole that doesn't have a mate, but there is no gap between the block and the Bell Housing.







Here is the link to all the Pictures that Perry took last night:
http://www.atlantamx3.com/moca/chris/kjmotor051806

Oh, oh. If you get this working, I'll have to pee my pants.

Those are some funky looking pistons though. What's the deal with those? Is that as high as the piston comes in the combustion chamber? Maybe you could experiement with some KLDE pistons to get more compression?

Then, do KL cams fit in the heads, or are you stuck with the Miller Cycle cams? Are the heads solid lifter?

And is there a way to use the stock supercharger, but add a front mount intercooler? Or maybe a water-to-air intercooler and swap out the intercooler in the intake manifold?

What hood are you going to use?

We were thinking of regrinding the intake cams or even replacing them all together. There are 2 intercoolers for the KJ. These are all ideas that were popping up last night. Nothing is official but I think anything is possible at this point.

What are the SAE open/close events and lift for the KJ cams? I wonder how they compare to the Seli Supercharger cams?

OMG imagine a KJ swap OMG o.0

I doubt 2.5L cams fit. Just from a visual look they seem different. Also the Millinea uses a cam position sensor on the pass side of the cam and I don't know how you would mount it to a KL cam.

We don't have the specs on the cams yet, but this is still very young. All we know 100% is that the biggest problem is out of the way. The rest will be sorted if Chris decided to buy a GS and put this motor in it.

You could use a aftermarket intercooler, but the piping might be a bit funky and cause even more issues with the hood. (if there are any issues)
We are steadily putting to rest some myths that the 2.3L is not a possible swap so lets just see what else comes around.

As far as acutally tuning it we don't have plans/ideas that extend beyond getting it in. (if that even happens)
It all depends on Chris at this point. He has access to a decent KJ motor and a MX-3 (albiet RS) so the cost is minimal at this point, but if he chooses not to try it then the rest will have to be figured out by another brave soul.

Excellent! Glad you see someone playing around and testing this. I'd love to see more results.

What is so new about this??? Some of the guys at several JDM warehouses have bolted the flywheel clutch and MTX to a KJ-S block as early as 2001 that I know of, maybe even earlier.

The cams will look different because the engine is a Miller cycle and not the more conventional otto cycle combustion principle. The intake valves in a M/C engine stay open during part of the compression stroke were in a O/C engine the intake valve close soon after BDC. You should find that the LDA of the M/C and O/C cam are totally non-compatible with each other. Talking to some of the factory techs from Mazda to run the KJ-S with a MTX will probably mean converting the ECU to make the engine run O/C as it seems that the M/C ECU use the ATX functions as part of the M/C architecture.

Great to see someone try & pull this swap off

Isn't the miller cycle too tall to clear the hood in our car ?

How would you get around this ? Modify the hood ?

me and pat discussed this and we figured teh best solution would be to just get a universal cowl, and just shave and cut it down some to work with the mx3's curve in the hood, it wouldnt have to be to tall. plus fg cowls for like 5.0 mustangs seem to be pretty cheap.

Anymore info Vaughn on what the hell the tranny has to do with motor function. I am not the smartest cookie, but I have been thinking on this for a few hours now and cannot come up with one thing that the tranny could tell the ECU that the ECU could use to change the A/F or timing...

dont you have to do some stuff to the fire wall on the mx-3 to put this motor in ....... i though this swap was pretty much impossible

impossible means = no ones ever tried it before

nah, impossible means no ones ever suceeded before.

Hey, while your mythbusting, throw a FD hatch on her