HOLY CRAP. What a long freakin' weekend. And I still have laundry to finish. New job starts at 6:30am tomorrow morning. SO:
Rebuild motor. Check.
Install rebuilt motor. Check.
Start rebuilt motor. Check.
Inspect for any poor symptoms. Uh oh, no oil pressure.
Do a little research, CRAP, missed installation of one little o-ring that Mazda put there to baffle do it yourselfers like me :P Spent the next 3+ hours tearing it down and prying the front cover off, then repairing as best I could the torn oil pan and front cover gaskets. An inch of the oil pan gasket tore out from underneath the front iron, so I loosened a bolt, pried on the pan (hard) and slipped the piece back in, using hylomar for the o-ring and front cover gasket frag. Voila. But I would just recommend installing that little o-ring before installing the motor. Just a suggestion
Reinstall, reassemble, and she's running again. But, she's running very loud, and very poorly, and at 3am and the property managers threatened to tow/call police. I found this out this afternoon, anyway, back to right after I got it running
with oil pressure:
It runs like crap. Almost zero throttle response, I have to bounce the gas to get it above 1500RPM which it does VERY grudgingly, I get to McDonald's 'cause I'm starving and I notice my boost gauge has zeroed out. Hrm, probably a problem with the line. I peer inside my hoodless engine bay to find A) a melted nylon vac line and B) a BRIGHT ORANGE TURBOCHARGER, YAY! I'm not big on orange, but apparently she was.So, despite setting my timing on the marks, it was uber retarded. Uberetarded. Something like that. So uberetarded that I must have been burning almost all the mixture in the frickin' turbo, which explains a lot, including the apparent boost on very light acceleration (as noted by the BOV as well as the boost gauge when the line wasn't destroyed).
I do some more research and find that perhaps the pulley plus the hub I used equals timing marks that are incorrect. Wonderful, now I think I'll have to pull the front hub AGAIN to install the original hub so my timing marks will be right, but for now I was able with the help of a friend to get it running MUCH cooler, much closer to correct timing, and my turbo will only show a dull glow in the dark. We took it to the in-laws' tonight and it did great. Phew, at least now I'm confident I can get to work in 7 hours.
I apologize again for not having pics, I would have had to recruit help just for photography if I wanted a shot at getting this done this weekend, I have worked SO HARD on this. I look forward to the rest of break-in, as it seems to run quite well even at just ~40 miles, and starting it isn't much of a hassle, at least compared to the old motor.
