A sense of urgency:engine swaps on the daily

For some reason I like the fact that I daily an old, modded, beat to shit car that I get to have a good time in every now and then. Lets face it, its a terrible daily. Its loud, its purple, I can't fit shit in it and old people hate it, but I continue to refuse to grow up and get a "real" car. And because its old and beat on, shit breaks...on the regular. At the apex event on June, 1st the car seemed to start running worse and worse as the day went on. I finished the event and continued to drive the car. I finally did a compression test a week or so later and found zero compression on cylinder 2...none. I'm assuming it regained some compression after about 2000 rpm because it would drive fine after that. I found a bpze at a local Japanese engine importer for a good deal and it came with a Maxim Works header for an extra $100, so I pulled the trigger and had it delivered. On to the swap!

Unfortunately I was pulling a bp4w out and replacing it with a bpze but another 4w wasn't in the budget.

Let it begin

The start of the ripping it apart.

Getting the old china header out was actually the hardest part.

The old engine was out and on the ground in about 2 hours. The awesomeness of a simple Miata.

A little much needed cleaning. A real heat shield is in the works currently. 

The differences in quality in the headers is pretty apparent. The Maxim Works on the left and the china header on the right.

Going in with the new stuff.

The Maxim Works header went in really easy, thankfully. I was lazy during the install and didn't get any finished pictures. The install went pretty well with only a couple small hick ups. One of which was the Maxim Works header and Techno Toy Tuning test pipe not getting along. 

The test pipe had to have a couple inches of length removed and the rear flange clocked to match up with the rest of the exhaust. All in all it was a pretty easy going day and in the end I made the 60 mile drive home from the shop with no issues. I will say that dailying your project car gives a sense of urgency. There's no room for severe error and there's no ability to call it a day and come back to it later. I don't see myself as someone who unfortunately has to drive an older modded car and deal with issues like this. I see myself fortunate that I'm someone who is  able to drive this old car and do things like this on my day off.