Day 4: Retirement

Well, day four was exciting, sad and happy all in one. I got a buyer for some essential engine parts so I cranked the girl up and took her for one last ride to say goodbye for now. A good hour or so was spent zooming around on our local streets here taking some of my family members for one last ride in the old family car before I put her out of commission for an unknown amount of time. Now, there is something worth stating here. With the removal of the intake, (Excluding the MAF I had to temporarily put it back on to start the car.) exhaust and all that weight the MPV already acts like a sports sedan, and pulled 0-60 in a little under seven seconds with the overdrive on of course. It was a lot of fun to put the car through her paces one last time.
But then I had to move on and remove the distributor rendering the car undriveable for obvious reasons. Pretty straight forward and easy, but this marks a turning point, I'm actually doing this, I don't have the money yet, but hopefully something with come through and I can get started in earnest. Whether I sell enough parts to fund this or I get a part-time job I don't know but I certainly hope for either, but with the removal of a key part of the engine this signifies no going back to the old JEV6 now. The family car has been laid to rest and a workhorse for our family shall never be the same again...
Now the real adventure starts, turning a minivan/SUV crossover into a SCCA worthy race car.


Drove down the road to a gravel parking lot to get some final pictures of her before I retire the old JEV6.

The stickers shall be coming off when I repaint her.

Drove back home and popped the hood to get to work.
The distributor all hooked up like it's supposed to be.

After you pull the spark plug wires and remove the connectors from the distributor this is the only bolt holding it down. This is mostly a reference picture so we can get a good idea of where to set the distributor to get started with ignition timing. (Hopefully I won't be doing this again on this engine, but you never know.)

Removed. Noooo! There's a hole in my engine now! Plugged it with a red mechanics rag.

Also pulled the fan, fan shroud, and fan clutch off. Whee. Makes the engine compartment start to look really empty.

 Here's the fan clutch. This is not an original clutch, the original is in a box somewhere on one of my workbenches needing to be fixed.

Distributor after it was pulled off. Nothing special really, it's the original and it's in really good condition, my buyer is getting a steal of a price for it because I'm so desperate for the money. Anyway I'll get the gunk cleaned off of it and packed away in a box for shipping later.

And that's it for day four. Didn't do much aside from those joyrides. Heh, Imma miss being able to drive this girl up and down the driveway occasionally.

Day 3: Trimming the Fat

So, after a couple of weeks of tinkering with the Bradley and the other vehicles we have here on our land I finally got another day to make some real progress on the MPV. 

Mostly I've been working on pulling stuff out of the interior that either needs to come out to prepare for the swap or shall be replaced due to weight issues. I've also been doing a lot of research on the vehicle and what is and isn't compatible with it.

Anyway on day three I got the roof rack off, pulled a lot of the interior out and continued to dismantle a few bits of the engine to sell later. Also pulled the middle seats out to reduce weight, I'm looking into some lightweight racing seats for her later. Anyway, enough boring text right? On to the photos!

Removed the roof rack from the girl, I like the smooth lines it creates without the rack on. Plus, with something as blocky as this van I'll take all the aero I can get! Definitely going to sand down the holes and fill them since I have no use for a roof rack in the MPV's future.

The roofrack removed. I currently have a lizard residing in it.

Removed the rest of the plastic intake system, including the MAF and filter.

I also pulled the hood catch off for ease-of-access to the engine since I decided to put the hood back on. (My shop sprang a leak right on the engine bay. Unacceptable.)

Pulled the carpet and siding out of the back. Not hard to do, just a little tedious in my opinion. Also, you can note the rear heater unit here (White round plastic thing.) that'll come out as it weighs a good bit and I'm not going to need it as I don't use the heat, let alone the rear heater.

The other side with the tank for the rear-window cleaner.

I also took the side panels for the doors off, since I want to replace them as well as fix the door handles which are broken.

The rear door in it's un-assembled state. I'm thinking LED's to replace all the lighting in the vehicle. Those are lighter than the typical incandescent bulbs anyway right? I think so, but I need to research it later.

Anway, all in all I think I probably pulled about eighty pounds at least from the girl in siding and carpet.

The MPV has been sitting down in the shop for maybe a month now, and already it has collected it's own unique blend of... tenants. At least these guys are amusing and aren't poisonous.

I'm thinking... Well no I'm going to repaint the MPV sometime I'm not sure of the color yet, but there are a few very tiny rust spots that aggravate me right now, so I'm gonna do something to get right of them for now.

More rusties.

Now this is cool. I took the seats out because they weighed so much and I wanted to get to the fuel tank without dropping it. To begin with I couldn't figure out how you were supposed to get to the bolts for the seats. Hidden near invisibly are little seams in the carpet where you can lift little access flaps to get to them. Nifty!

The seats removed. It's quite spacious without them taking up all the room back there... Maybe I should install a hot-tub in the freed up space...

Anyway, mostly weight reductions performed today, and I can't wait to keep moving forward with this project.

Until next time,
Edward K. A.

Day 2: The Sound of Potential

Day two has come and gone. I didn't get much done today, put some trim back on the car after giving it a good scrub down. Pulled the exhaust out from under it and drove it around in it's un-muffled state for about ten minutes with an ear-to-ear grin on my face. Oh yeah, also threw some new fuses in and checked all the electronics, they all seem to work fine.

This JEV6 is a noisy booger! I mean, I thought the two massive mufflers were overkill, but now I know why they added them onto the van. It was so much fun to rumble around on our property with the floors shaking to the bass rumble of the engine, honestly though, a straight pipe system may be too loud for the finished product. I'd still like to be able to hear the radio while I'm drivin' around yah know?

The roof. It was sooooo dirty to begin with. Much cleaner now.

The hood where it now sits in my shop. I should have take a before and after photo of the underside. It was like black to begin with. Now the underside has the best paint on the car.

The second catalytic converter, and first muffler out from under the MPV. The first cat is still up in there just to keep the exhaust gases under the vehicle in case I have to move it around some.

Second muffler.

That's about it. I recorded a video showing just how loud this van is without a muffler. It doesn't do it justice, trust me, my ears hurt afterwards. Anyway, more to come soon!

Day 1: Starting the Teardown

Alright, right off the bat Imma say this. I'm not labeling this as literal days, these are just the days I work on the vehicles. Also, if you see any parts coming off the car you want; please contact me, we can probably work something out.

Okay first day! Today I just did a bunch of simple stuff, pulled the hood and some trim off. Got most of the exhaust unbolted and dropped down. Pulled part of the intake off... and that's about it, gonna wait for some fuses before I do much of anything else so I can check to make sure she still runs. (I shorted the battery out a few days ago in a freak accident, blew the main fuses. Hopefully didn't damage the electronics though.)


With the hood and grill removed. Pulled the hood off for ease of access, same for the grill.

You can see the exhaust laying on the floor here, I had to cut the bolts holding with a Dremel tool because they were rusted solid. No damage to the exhaust system itself though. Getting it out from under the car should be fun without any form of lift. I'm really beginning to wish I had a lift and it's only the first day.

You can see where I pulled the intake scoop off the filter here.

Not terrible much done today, but hey! It's progress, you gotta start somewhere.

The MPV, a VG30DETT swap car.

Alright, today marks the first day of my massive undertaking of turning my old '97 Mazda MPV into a race-ready machine. How many of you remember the days of your childhood being shuttled around in your parents minivan? For me it was a comforting thing, we've had this van for almost as long as I can remember and I love it to death. This is also the first driver I've ever owned, (I don't say my first car because I've had a truck since I was fourteen and I still haven't driven it on the road.) so there's a lot of bonding I've done with this car. The old JE engine has given me a lot of pleasure on the road and she's gotten me out of sticky situations more than once. (Think semi-truck sandwich.) But unfortunately, sometime in the past few years we took it to an express lube somewhere and they overfilled the girl. Most of the seals and gaskets on the engine are now gone. She runs, but it got to the point where I was adding more oil than gas every week, so it was time for something to go. Now me, being an avid car enthusiast and mechanic-in-training, I enjoy going fast and I enjoy working on vehicles, so I've decided to do something crazy and off-the-wall. I'm going to put a VG30DETT into the MPV. I've only ever seen this done once before, and it was in fact done right by a  certain D. Swensonhimer.

Now, this won't be the same as what Swensonhimer has done, (Obviously I don't want to copy him, that's just wrong.) namely because my MPV is a little newer. (More electronics to deal with. Whoopee.) But I'm going a little farther than he went. This car isn't going to be a sleeper, eventually I plan to compete in the SCCA Solo racing events with this vehicle, so a new suspension system is a must, as well as a rollcage. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This will not be completed in just a few months, this project may take me years, mainly because of funding. I'm parting out the engine and transmission in hopes to get enough money to buy a used 300ZX Fairlady Z32, and then going from there, hopefully parting out what's left of the 300ZX for more funding. But we'll see.Whatever the case, it may take me years, but this car will be finished someday.

This is where she's sat for the past few months. I needed to get her moved somewhere out of the elements, I do plan to repaint as soon as the engine is out, as there are some rust spots and such that bother me.

The original JE V6 by Mazda. A wonderful little engine, this one has 280,000 miles on it and still ran strong until that jiffy lube killed her.

After moving her down into my workshop. It's a tight fit at the moment, but hopefully we'll get some stuff moved out of there soon. She looks so much happier out of the weather.