one day you'll touch one, and your balls will drop, and you will be a man

:giggle:

Well I tore the head off Ed's built msm motor, closest I got :)

I have been running a similar 3/8" blockoff plate threaded for 1/4" NPT fitting and threaded tee. In the 5 years that I have been running the 1.8 like this in my 91 I have never had a leak. My hoses that connect to the tee are well supported and there really is not a lott of mass to vibrate and rotate the fittings to make them loosen up and leak.

I was worried about leaks at first, but so far it has been nice and dry.

Early 1.8's (97 & earlier I think) had the handy water and oil ports on the block, just like the 1.6's. After that, Mazda - in their infinite wisdom - closed them off. The water port could be drilled and tapped, but I'm not that adventurous - I've got a 97 block in my car, so I have the luxury of the water port to feed the turbo.

Pretty sure the change happened mid-95. The block in my red car has them. :D

Yeah, the changeover for the oil/water ports on the 1.8 block was mid 95. I tried to find a 94/95 block to use as a base for my build but it didn't happen.

I fall in the late year 95 block shafted category. 95 block and I searched hard thinking I missed it and then discovered it was really early 95 blocks that only got them.

G you can make the coolant off the front look really clean like I did by running a hose to a push lock 3/8 barb off the front like mine is.

Attachment 237925

Also when I ran the Mocal sandwich plate I deleted the front T which runs the coolant line to the OEM sandwich plate to the rear of the head. Really helps clean it up.

You should look into a low pressure sender for the cooling system, and a warning light.

This is my thought process as well. I actually have a fitting so I can source coolant from the back of the head, but that's literally the hottest place I can think of to get coolant from. The front water neck location just seems better all around.
I saw your setup and I'm thinking thats where I'll end up, except I probably won't have the barb fittings in the middle. I need to see if I can fit my M14x1.5 adapter plus an -6AN 90° in there with the wastegate mounting bracket. For teh return I'll probably rip the factory nipple out of the mixing manifold and tap it for 1/8"NPT and do the same at the water neck, then run -6 to the turbo. Where your setup goes from the blue LOL hose to AN scares me a bit, it seems like its a lot of unsupported weight hanging out there in space. If it works it works though, no need to latch on to my paranoia ;)

Yeap, I'm doing that on my build. If anyone needs a link to a good sensor, I can post one I found for around 25 bucks that has 3 wires (GND, +5VREF, Out) so it's easy to hook up and it has a linear output for Volts to PSI.

That sounds complicated.

A 2 pole 7psi switch and giant blinking warning light and/or buzzer somewhere on the dash is more than enough. Unless you are logging coolant pressure, but I'm not sure thats going to be amazingly useful for much.

Yes I'm logging coolant pressure, thus why I have a pressure sensor.

I really hate to see German engineering going into a fine Japanese car.

If you want reliability . . . KISS.

Haha, I'm hoping my coolant pressure sensor doesn't kill the reliability, that would suck. So far it hasn't hurt anything.

/sarcasm.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1429849316
Look at my ports

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1429849316
My ports are amazing!

Also visible are the back cuts on the ss intake valves and the correct length valve guides. No giant bronze valve guides hanging out in my ports blocking the flows. The divider between the cylinders has a pretty solid knife edge to it as well.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1429849316
Here you can see when the chamber is deshrouded around the intake valves. Contours are perfect, as expected. Very tasty!

Having working on a project like this some years ago it confirmed a lot of things I had come to suspect about OEM production processes. For example, things like core shift in the castings. I'm not completely surprising to see stuff like this:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1429849316

At a cursory glance one would think "Well, that's certainly fucked up. They didn't finish machining the combustion chamber!" The point is not to hog out the chambers, the point is to deshroud the valves, take out the high spots and remove only enough material to make all the chambers consistent with each other. If anything, this shows exactly how inconsistent the factory castings are to begin with! In this shot you can also see how much meat there is in the edge of the silver colored inconel exhaust valves. Good thing too because they are probably going to see some abuse.

The deck is also seriously perfect. Everything in the chambers are as consistent as they need to be and the edges on the quench pads are all perfectly uniform. No high spots, no ridges, no nothing. Glorious.

Unexpected bonus:
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1429849316

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1429849316

Lifter bores and head are very clearanced for higher lift cams. That's probably a temptation I don't need :loser:

A small note: When the head showed up weeks ago I unpacked it to give it a once over and noticed some damaged on the head gasket surface that made the head pretty much unusable. I documented it, contacted the vendor and got an immediate response. We worked through some options and it was decided I would send it back to have it worked over and corrected. I was sent a prepaid return shipping label and got the head back in the mail the next day. The problem was corrected in a timely and professional manner and then the head was shipped back, once again, free of charge. (Are you paying attention Kraftwerks?!) THAT is how you do customer service. Bravo once again to the boys and girls at 949 for going out of their way and making it right. :p

I'm seriously jonesing to get this thing bolted to my shortblock :party:

I suppose we should actually deal with your oil pan now :p

I'm honestly in no giant rush and I know you have stuff planned. I've got a bunch of projects that need to get done before I can even dream of swapping the motor. If I was worried about it I would have gotten off my ass and mailed you the weld bung already ;)

hngggggggggggggg dat head

:eek5: Gooood lord that looks nice.

This makes me want to post pics of my head tooooooo!

Love how this is all coming together. Do you have an ETA for it? By MMRLS perhaps?