build diary

August 14, 2004: Phew, a long day.
I popped the radiator in this morning, drove to Flyin' Miata to put the car on the lift for the transmission swap and immeditely had to remove the radiator again to get the engine out. I should have used velcro to attach this thing! No leaks on the way over, though. Two hours later the engine and transmission were on the floor and a surprising amount of the car was disassembled. The fact that I had to reach into the rear wheel wells to undo the seats was quite entertaining for the others in the shop! The new transmission was cleaned up and everything was reinstalled eventually with a few extra jobs thrown in along the way. Bill Cardell spotted the problem with my high idle - a misadjusted throttle stop - and hopefully that's fixed. But the radiator sprung a pinhole leak and so it was time to remove it again. The epoxy was obviously not the right choice and since welding was discouraged we decided to try a technique similar to brazing. This proved almost impossible to seal up so I'm using a combination of epoxy and the braze now. I'll let it dry for couple of days before installing it. If this doesn't work, it's off to the professionals to be welded and I'll just take my chances with the epoxy in the rad. The frustrating thing is that I obtained a set of dealer plates to drive and tune the car this weekend and it's spending the entire thing on the lift. Oh well, at least the new transmission should make it easier to drive. Now if only I could figure out the instruments...

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