Just a little bit of progress. I'm now stuck not just waiting for parts, but waiting for that happy day when the machinist calls me to tell me to come pick up my block and crank. On the plus side, my little box of goodies from Flyin' Miata SHOULD be here tomorrow... *crosses fingers*
Here's the block sitting in the back of my wife's Altima. I was worried about it fitting....silly me.
The thermal wrapping on the intake manifold. I'm quite glad this sits on the back of the engine, because boy oh boy is it gaudy lookin'. I hope it does something for the intake temps, because it was not easy wrapping the damn thing.
Here's the exhaust manifold after it's surgery. I took down the casting lines to try and remove any stress risers, and then cut the little bridge section out since it was already cracked there. I found the tiniest little crack coming from the bottom of the O2 bung which sucks, but not much I'm willing to try to do and rectify that. I tried to wrap this thing with the exhaust wrap, but it's not happening. Bummer.
That's all I can do with the manifolds until my gaskets and seals show up, so onto the next project. Attempting to salvage what I can from the OEM exhaust, which is in horrifyingly bad shape.
This is what is left of the downpipe. The flange with the spring bolts literally tore off of it when I was trying to unbolt it, so that's fantastic. I'm cutting off the heat shields, there is some sort of foam insulation under them that is trapping moisture and falling apart, so that's got to go. I'm going to clean this up on the wire wheel and see if there's any holes in it. I sure hope not, because the triangle-shaped flange that bolts to the turbo seems like something that will be a major pain to try and find. As long as I can get this piece to work, I'll be a happy camper. I can always V-band it to the next section of exhaust, or get a new flange and weld it on, or whatever. I'll have options. It's likely I'll use that exhaust wrap on the downpipe, provided it is in a useable shape under the 30-odd years of rust and decay.
Am I missing something, or is there not a flex joint on the factory exhaust? If there isn't, that would go a long ways towards explaining why all of our exhaust manifolds have cracks in them.....