My 1989 Red Regular Cab Truck

OK, here goes an attempt at transferring a thread from MT to here on MBS......I figure if MT goes down again, at least it won't be lost. Plus, it has lots of pictures.....and I know how ya'll like them pictures!
It is just a regular old truck I bought without an engine, and I built one for it and now it's my little grocery getter!

Well, here it is!
I picked it up yesterday (Sat) and got her home, and she loves it here!:D
Of course, true to form, after getting your new project to the house, you just want to tinker with it right? NOT! I had to load up the BBQ grill and go to my daughters school and cook hamburgers & hotdogs (they were good though!) for 4-5 hrs to appease my wife. Heck, after telling here about my buying another truck (:wallbash:) earlier in the week, I went out that afternoon and bought new mulch for her flower beds (without being told to!) and raked half the yard, hauled the leaves and spread them in the driveway, and much more. I worked my butt off for 5 hrs, in the dark! I asked her when she came outside to check on me at 9:30 pm (she said it looked good!) if I had paid off my penance for buying the new Mazda.......she started laughing, "Oh, is that what this is about?" :D After nearly 30 yrs. of marriage, I have learned a thing or two!

On to the pictures!









She looks pretty good, don't she!
Now you know why I had to get her!





There has NEVER been a trailer ball put on the rear bumper! No scratches what-so-ever where it would be!































A/C is new!


No motor, but I got a distributor!






I vacuumed it out real quick right before I had to go cooking.
My youngest son (18yo) stayed up til 1:30pm last night and worked on it with me, he's already saying "my truck" as he is asking different questions!
She's a keeper!
Now if I can get R90Barons old engine that had the broken piston skirt.......I'll have her going in no time!
Trans is going back into it today!

A LOT more to come.......!

you better not let cusser see that cassette player lol
looks like a great find earl, how much did you pay for that if you dont mind my asking.

and i have never seen that type of cluster before, where did that come from?

hey breaker ..
Does there seem to be alot of mazda b's down there in fl? i'm suposed to come down there in june the first week .. i NEED parts ! i'LL BE going to brooksville fl .. know of any u pull it yards there? i MAY take a day or so and check out some yards if i can borrow tools to go "shopping" LOL .. Let me know .

Thanks guys! I paid $500.00 for it......tried to get him to 400 and even 450 but no go! I bought this a while ago, and I am actually driving it now-a-days as a second/third/fourth (I've lost count! ) vehicle, and a play toy. I probably have around $1000.00 in the new engine I built, but it runs great and I enjoy wheeling around in it!

The dash cluster is the regular one without the tach, but I've already put a tach dash in her!

I need to load the rest of my posts of it on here, from the MT forum, but give me time and I'll get it done!

Brooksville is about 2 hrs south of me I think, funny.....One of my friends is down there helping his brother in construction right now! I don't know the town down there, but I'll ask him if he knows of any.

ya i used search tempest and found a whole lot of mazda's but seems they all want in the 1000 plus range . Altho i found 1 with a blown head gasket / overheated engine forsale think he was askin 800$ for that . And a wrecked one for 500$


the plans for me are that i'm gona be driving south with a 14ft moving truck and my mothers car in tow to brooksville , I think i'll be heading there probably the 6th or 7th at latest... Then i'd be flying North like a day or so after i drive down ... if i have the oppertunity i'd like to check some yards as finding parts are getting difficult .. Hmm wonder how much doors weigh ... if i found a good set i'd consider finding out how much to ship via Greyhound bus.

I have my motor!!:D
Talked to R90Baron today.....we did some horse trading, and now I have his old motor, which is recently rebuilt...about 35,000 miles he said......and he has another toy........god help us! :rollinglaugh:

The engine needs a #4 piston with rings, the cylinder is fine and I'll have his 32/36 Weber and Pacesetter header on it as well.

First thing I did today (my son worked late so I didn't do the trans, I'll let him help with it!) was to pull the hood and cowl and clean all the leaves out of there and then put some screen over the holes so it won't fill up again. BTW, I've done this so many times to my trucks before that I can do this without looking now!



I've gotta get a extra plastic vent cover to cover the open hole.....I screwed some screen down on it just to keep it from getting leaves in it until I got the vent from the JY.





Here's the one tail light that my son changed to the chrome trim last night, I'll let him do the other one tomorrow while I'm at work.



Interior looks very good! I need to clean the carpet and the seat fabric.



The ODO. I hooked up the battery and checked out lights, radio, etc.......I have 3/4 tank of gas in there!



THIS IS FOR YOU CUSSER!!


The tape player doesn't work, but you know what? I'm going to pull this thing and see if I can fix it, and then sell it to you Cusser!!



It came with the manual too!





Here's the inside of the cowl AFTER the leaf removal.






I'm trying to come up with a new power plant for this little truck......you reckon this might work?

Well, I took the broken piston/rod over to the machine shop a week or so ago, and the machinist said as soon as he saw it that the piston to cyl. wall clearance is too large. I told him that I would pull another piston out of the block and mic it and the bore. I wasn't able to do that until today and found out that he was right!
Not only is the clearance too much, the rest of the pistons are about to loose their skirts too! I haven't pulled the #1 piston yet, but the #3 and #2 that I did pull have several cracks in the skirts.

The #3 cyl. wall clearance is around .005" to .007" and that is way too much.....the pistons are getting canted when they're being pushed up (or down) the cylinder and causing stress on the skirts.

The bearings don't look like they're wearing normal either.

Wanna see some pics of them?

#3 piston.....
















#2 piston.....













This is R90's motor that we pulled and installed a new one......it was knocking when we pulled it and found that the piston skirt had broken off of piston #4.........I'd say he's lucky we pulled it when we did!

One of the members at MT asked:

Originally Posted by p_syko:
"so would you have to get over sized pistons to fix that problem?"


Not only would you have to get the oversized pistons but you would have to bore the block as well. Right now it is at .50mm over......supposedly! The next size up is .75mm over pistons.
I have another 2.2 engine that came out of a 88 truck I scrapped and I will be re-ringing that motor and dropping it in there. This way I am limiting the $'s I'm dropping in it. I will also put new std bearings in it because I have them already. A cheap rebuild, but I bet it will run way longer than this one I just tore down would!
I have several rebuilt heads sitting on the shelf right now so she'll be in good shape when she drops in the engine compartment. I'm probably going to keep this one for a while as well.......she's in too good of shape body wise!

I'm going to go with R90's Weber (32/36) and header that he left for me and maybe hook up a thermostatically controlled electric fan as well so I can experiment with fuel mileage on this truck. I'll get some jets for the Weber and dive into it and then record my settings so I can use this for future information here as well!
It ain't gonna happen overnight, but I'll keep moving forward on this project for sure.

R90Baron wants to see what his Elephant Gun will do to this block......I talked him out of it once, but now I have changed my mind. It's time to see how tough this little green 2.2 is!!

OK, I am going to be using a 2.2 engine I have that came out of a "Farm Truck" that I bought a while back and stripped it then took the carcass to the crusher. Some of you might remember the video I have of it running on the driveway.

I pulled it down today and it really is in good condition considering it had almost 200,000 miles. It had .006" end play on the crank and that's great for that mileage! The rod bearing that I pulled right before I got engrossed in "The Borne Identity" looks great as well, it has worn very evenly and the journal is prime as well.
This engine ran well (after I cleaned the carb out!) but had just a tad bit of smoke when you would rev it up, so I think I am going to just do a "rings & bearings" quickie re-build on it.......that is if I don't find anything too bad when I get all the pistons & crank out of it.

Here are some pics so far:









Cylinders look good for doing this.





This engine has never been apart either......still the way the factory put it together. I took some pics of different bolts and I am going to record their length so I know exactly what bolt goes where on a 2.2 Mazda motor!
Those 14mm head sized bolts come in about 6 or so different lengths so I'm going to make sure how the factory put these in.......one interesting one is a bracket on the pass. side that the alt. pivots on.....it has 4 bolts that attach it to the block, 3 of them are the same length and they screw into the cast iron block. The last one is about a 1/4" longer but it bolts into the side of the aluminum oil pump and therefore Mazda felt it needed more threads because the metal is softer I guess. Every one of these engine's I have worked on that were never rebuilt yet, have all had that longer bolt there. The ones that were rebuilt already, always get these 14mm headed bolts put all over the place......they couldn't remember which bolt went where.
I'm on a mission to document which bolt is supposed to go where!

Even the factory would get a little too much RTV squeezed out on the inside of the oil pan and baffle.





No RTV at the pick up tube to oil pump connection, just a paper gasket.



It is still stuck to the tube.



The bolts for the pick up tube to oil pump connection.



2 small bolts for the baffle to block connection.



The same small bolt for the brace on the pick up tube to baffle.





Down to the good stuff!





The #1 rod journal.



And it's rod cap bearing half.





Front and rear of crank.







Tomorrow the rest of the rods come out, and the crank as well.