Most liked posts in thread: Cams, headwork and track build

No idea on the weight. My car weighted 2612 without me in it before I had the roll bar. I unfortunately did not weight it immediately before starting this project. I removed the AC as well as the sunroof and most of the body panels. I plan on converting the roll bar over to a full cage so that will add about 50-60 pounds back in.

If I dropped 100 pounds after the cage is converted I would be very happy.

 

Here are some pictures of the oil pan, oil pump and the windage tray. Rally, there is really no room to lower the oil pan, it is all pretty tight in there.

Here is an exterior shot of the oil pan:



Here is the oil pump, notice it is chain driven, you can see the plastic protective cover on the side:



Here is the windage tray:



Here is a close up of the windage tray:



Here is the depth of the oil pump, from the top of the pan:



Here is a shot of the depth of the oil pan, the angle isn't the best, but it is just a hair deeper than 4 1/2":



I will be dropping the engine off to Endyn to have the oil pan work done. They will also be milling the alignment hole in the OS Giken flywheel.

 

Delays...

I spoke with Larry at Endyn last week and he indicated that because of his existing back log of work, it would be at least 2 months before my head is finished. He was quite defensive when I asked what the ETA on the work was.

I am not super happy that it will take this long to complete the work. Due to this serious delay, I pulled the trigger on buying a 1999 Miata to build as a Spec Miata. It was always my plan to build a Spec Miata to race, this delay just changed my timing of that.

 

I did know there was going to be a little bit of a delay. My initial expectation was that it would be around 3 weeks before he could look at it, and probably another 3 before he would be completed. That was almost 6 weeks ago. I certainly was not expecting a timeframe of around 4 months. If I knew that was the case, I would certainly have done something else.

Anyway, the Miata will allow me to start racing, which will probably be more fun than tracking the MINI anyway.

 

I will definitely continue with this project! I have always planned on building a Spec Miata. The only thing that has changed are the priorities of these two projects.

I should also clarify that the timeline above of 3 weeks, was for a head that does not need any development work done, i.e. a head that has been ported by Endyn before. I WAS expecting my work to take longer as Endyn has not done any port work on an R56 before.

My main point on this was really to not expect any updates for a couple months.

 

They would be starting from zero, the two engines have basically nothing in common. I think Dr. O's mention of the Tritec engine was that you could expect a faster turn around on a product that was already developed. Part of why it takes Endyn so long on a new engine is because they develop a CNC program. This undoubtedly takes longer on the first one. Then repetition is much easier.