Posted on

The disassembly begins….

After many months of collecting parts I believe I am finally in a position to start pulling the car apart in preparation for the engine swap.  For those who haven’t seen or heard- I will be removing the Miata Engine and replacing it with a 2.0 GM Ecotec engine (with Turbocharger and direct injection..)

 

Here is a short video on the overview : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IajZ-zl0AzY

 

I will admit- I had a large amount of anxiety (and still do..) about pulling apart a car that was driving and running quite well. Especially not knowing if this new engine would fit or how many modifications are needed.

Starting with the seats, then the transmission tunnel, Radiator, scuttle and some sheet metal I started to pull off the covers and find things to remove- There certainly is no shortage.

The radiator was long overdue for a flushing, the seats had crap under them from 2010 and the questions continue. I also made the decision to remove the installed Halon Fire system and replace it with a single hand held unit in future. There are a few pounds I feel we can save!

Looking at all the wiring and I certainly think there is a good 40 or 50lbs of wiring that will be coming out of the already trimmed down harness

Mitch from Swap Time recently did a video about the harness. It is set to arrive on Wednesday of this week. Following that I will probably try find an hour or 2 to pull the engine this weekend and see if the new one fits!

Here was a video of the harness he made- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jGzw7sIMFI

I suspect I will need to wire in headlights, tail lights and turn signals as well. The goal there is to keep them all as minimal as possible

Subscribe if you wish to follow along. The YouTube video channel as well as this webpage should both see a few updates in the coming weeks!

Posted on

The “Ecu” wheels appear to be coming offf…

I placed an order in early May for a pcm wiring harness and flashed pcm. The company was Swap Specialties and Performance. ( http://swapspecialties.com ) Initially they told me 4 weeks turn around. As of this day it’s been roughly 13 weeks  and they don’t answer their phone consistently (4 times in probably 40 calls) and when they have they told me “it’s being buttoned up and will go out Thursday”- but nothing has ever appeared. Then the story changed to “that person doesn’t work here anymore” but the line about it shipping on Thursday continues.

I finally filed a paypal case against them and not surprisingly they did not even reply to that. Thankfully Paypal was able to recover my money. ($730+). Their conduct was very poor and the multiple lies were not appreciated!

If nothing else I hope my frustration saves someone else the hassle. I will admit I don’t know what I will do next- this is a big setback.

Posted on

Ecotec Update!

After a large amount of research I was frustrated by the poor development of the LTG motor by General Motors. The initial launch was so strong but the follow through of the crate engine was very poor.

My hope is that I can add some content for anyone with an Ecotec build that isn’t willing to pay $8k for a crate motor, $4k for a manual trans, $2k for an ECU and a good few other packages to get things going.

I managed to talk to Andy at Swap Specialties and he gave me a good amount of faith in the process and their development.The order at the end of the day was for an almost fully loaded harness. –  http://swapspecialties.com/product/gm-echo-tec-standalone-harness/

One aspect that Andy mentioned was their ECU and harness doesn’t require the fancy PWM fuel pump controller and a dead head pump. This is ideal because I have a fuel cell and would not want to modify the filler mechanism.

Lead time is 4 weeks but there is plenty to do and buy before I need the harness!