Project "Frankenstein"

What's up guys, I'm fairly new here I used to blog over on mazdatruckin until it disappeared. I'm doing a full rebuild on my 1986 Mazda B2000. I first purchased the truck in October of 2010. It had low compression on two cylinders, a blown head gasket not to mention it was smoking like a wildfire. After seafoaming it trying to salvage the worn motor I decided to set sail on this rebuild voyage. So far I've basically completed the rebuild. All new bearings and gaskets, bored .40 over, rebuilt the head with brand new stem seals and valves. I replaced the stock fuel pump with a Napa auto electric fuel pump which is regulated by a return style Holley Fuel Pressure Regulator. I've replaced all ignition components which includes NGK spark plugs and a Duralast Gold Ignition Coil. I replaced the clutch and clutch components and had the flywheel resurfaced. I also removed the stock carb as well as all the smog control items and replaced it with the Weber 32/36 carb. My trucks name is Frank short for Frankenstein. I've been working on this truck for a little over a year and so I feel it's my little frankenstein project. Here are some pictures of my adventure thus far.


































































I have the truck completely re-assembled, it's running fine but the only problem I'm having now is the truck is still smoking! I just welded on a brand new exhaust reusing the previous cat. I cant seem to find out why it's smoking! I've pulled the plugs and they aren't oily at all. The smoke is very light colored and extremely thick. It smells almost like its burning extremely rich. Any ideas on what the culprit may be?

Is the smoke white, blue or black? White would be likely coolant (head gasket or cracked block), blue would be oil (cracked block, head gasket, another seal/gasket or valve guide seals), black would be running rich. Does it only do it on cold startup, or only under load (acceleration)?

he's already rebuilding the motor .. looking good thus far .. your motor looked like it threw up oil like it was going out of style bro . mine was caked in oil too.. but when you clean em up they look like what foose calls jewel in the box ..

did you have the head fully rebuild? new valve seals and guides?

also did you use proper torque specs when assembling the engine?

Thanks for all the feedback guys, this site is great! When reassembling the build I did follow my Chilton's guide to torque specs. I also just reset the valve lash which was off a little bit on a couple of the rockers. The smoke is white colored like steam coming out of the tail pipe. If the block is cracked does that mean one of my cylinders is cracked allowing coolant into the combustion chamber? And the head was rebuild but the existing valve guides were re-aligned and reused. The cam springs and keepers were also reused but I did put in brand new valves.

The truck has a hard time starting up but once it's running it runs great. Snappy throttle response, just really smokey. I used a brand new Felpro head gasket and torqued the head down to spec. It doesn't smoke to bad until I put it under load. That's when it really dumps out thick white clouds of smoke. I've checked the spark plugs, oil and coolant several times and none of them have gone down. I've had a couple of my neighbors (who are experienced mechanics) take a look and they're also scratching their heads. There's steam coming out of the tail pipe. After it runs for a while it starts dripping water out of the tail pipe. I'm thinking there's a crack somewhere but it doesn't make sense that my coolant level hasn't dropped at all.

Glad to see you made the move to here. Its me waldonbuddy, aka M-train on this site.

Truck is looking good.

Heyy I was wondering if I would cross paths with any mazdatruckers on here haha thank you! I hope I can get this son of a B to stop smoking!

There's a few of us here.