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IF you do end up down that road... You've gotta be specific to get them to disassemble the head and remove all the valves to inspect... I've run in to machine shops that will just vacuum test the valves... This can be a problem due to the carbon build up that happens... That carbon is softish...

Valve seats, and valve faces on the exhaust side are common to have issues with wear and carbon build up... It would have been a good idea to get the machine shop to go through and resurface the valves and seats... This would have required that they had all the tappets and cams.. they would have...

Lets get into the important details that can get heavily debated depending on who you're talking to... Pistons! 2.5L piston.. interesting dish shape to it... I didn't want to spend the time measuring compression chamber area's, so I don't have information on how this might changed or effect the...

There's one person who's asked about the crank shaft... Let's take a closer look.. 2.5L crankshaft on the left... 2.3L on the right.. It's pretty easy to see the counter weights are shaped and sized differently... there's a different level of machine work between the 2 cranks.. The 2.5L is what...

I don't have any other pictures... But maybe this is more clear... The tooth sinks into the chain in the space I've circled in blue... The drawn picture is my poor excuse to draw a side picture of the link... The poorly drawn blue hump would represent the gear tooth.. On the right, that's what...

Let's take a closer look at something that can apply to a stock 2.3L... Timing Chain upgrade... This comes from the updated style that 2.5Ls and newer generation motors in general run.. On the right you've got a stock 2.3L chain, oil pump drive chain. crank gears and oil pump drive gear... On...

Before we get into the important information regarding a 2.5L swap.. lets have a look at some differences in the blocks.. The oil squirter isn't a bolt on piece.. It's built into the block.. It's hard to show in pictures, but where it's located means there's differences in how the oil passages...

I don't buy into information that a 2.5L bottom end is good enough to gap the piston rings, slap the mazdaspeed head on it and call it a day.. The information surrounding the 2.5L motor and it's strength under boosted applications comes from the NC Miata world, where they run different turbo...

Now that I've got you excited to see a custom 2.5L build.. Lets make you wait a little bit... How about we rebuild the PTO(Transfer case).. PTO is short for Power Take Off unit... I found using this term made it easier for finding parts and information... Remember this leaky thing?? Lets...

The picture doesn't show it, but the cylinder wall on #2 has a pin hole in it.. So this block was trashed at this point.. When I called around to see about getting a good used motor, the prices I got were scary.. $4500 - 5,000 for a used motor I knew would need be refreshed... I took a step back...

Time to dive in and see what kind of damage was done.. Well that looks pretty bad... I'd say the block is junk at this point... No rebuilding this motor.. If you are going to blow something up.. Make sure you don't wimp out.. blow it up good! This piston will find it's self a nice home on...

Despite the motor issues, I didn't take it easy on the car... I was getting a remote tune done on the car, running the COBB OTS maps and starting to play with AccessTunner despite the motor being on it's way out.. I figured at this point if I fucked something up while I was doing my own tuning...

You would be correct... I discovered the motor issues in June of 2021... So there's still a fair bit to come as I get this written up..

Time line wise, there was a bunch of over lapping things that took place... At some point before I got serious with tuning the car I decided to do a health check on the motor.. You remember all of that oil in the intake from earlier??? Well this was the cause of it... Cylinder 1... Compression...

Pictures are a hidden away in a "safe keeping" folding somewhere on an external hard drive.. Hopefully I can find them so that I can fill these posts in a little better... With the COBB access port on the car, using the stage 1+ OTS tune the car felt pretty good.. The misfire/hesitation issue...

I'll have to go check the build date on the car... It is a 2006 model year...

I mentioned, this car was going to be a dive into a ECU tuning... So in the back ground I put an order in for a COBB access port.. My tuning experience at this time was with HPTuners, Megasquirt and Link ECU's... In the back ground, I was building this beauty for my boss.. The body work and...

With a car that was now fairly leak free and comfortable to drive I started putting some miles on it.. This is where my big troubles began..Part of me must be a descendant from Niki Lauda.. God blessed me with an ok mind, but a really great ass.. I feel things going on in vehicles most people...

This car has lived a ruff life... I got it for half of the market value.. I figured that gave me a decent budget to "restore" it to a good daily driver... I bought the car 190,000km's on it.. More story telling to come.. So far we have covered the first 3 months I owned the car...

You know you're getting old when.... actually wait... This next section is more about how I was tired of driving purpose built autocross cars as my daily drivers and wanted to have something with a few creature comforts.. Like a factory radio that worked properly, and the fancy key less entry...