1989 B2200 Cab Plus - Red and Blue [Smoke] - Stock

This is my Mazda, there are many Mazdas like my Mazda, but this one is mine.

I picked it up from a friend for $900 a little over a year ago, and it had 203k on the clock. It burned oil. It turns out to burn a lot of oil. Quart every half-tank of fuel, or so. Makes lots of smoke.

So I weigh lots of ideas and options, and how little money I actually have to spend on such silly things, I decided to slowly assemble parts to rebuild the engine. I've got a full rebuild kit I ordered from some seller on Amazon, I've bought a pile of hoses from RockAuto, I've got a new clutch kit, a new flywheel, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some other parts.

My original basic plan: Rebuild, at least partially, the old 2.2, toss on a weber (haven't bought that bit, yet), motor away.

I'm not the best mechanic, I work full time, and it is just plain hard to stay motivated. I've also never torn car/truck engine this far apart. I've done a couple tear downs on small motorcycle engines with a friend, but that's it.

So I pulled my B's engine:


PROGRESS! Right?! Let's pull the head!


Hooray! Let's pull the oil pan, that tray thing, which I didn't take a photo of because I was covered in black gold. Turns out plenty of oil just hangs out on things even after you drain the pan.

And then I pulled the first piston and saw this lovely bearing.


I didn't photograph the crank journal, it wasn't missing any chunks, just had some of those faint lines going around (is that scoring? I'm feeling stupid today) and looked fairly like any other picture of a disassembled engine I've seen. But, this is definitely in the area of "Don't really know what I'm doing" and the bearing on that rod don't look great.

I haven't pulled any of the other pistons, I was already not in the mood to wrench, so I just set the oil pan back on and put everything down before I got irritated.

I'm wondering, is this likely an indication that the crank will need some work, and that I shouldn't simply slap new bearings in and wait for my engine to explode in week? I originally didn't want to really foul with the mains, I just wanted to stick on the new rod bearings, hone the cylinders and drop in my new pistons and rings.

The other thing I noticed as I took things apart, the Haynes manual mentions checking the connecting rod end play, and I checked it as described and shown in the photo and mine's way bigger than the 0.012 service limit listed. The biggest feeler I had on hand was 0.025. The manual says that means you need new connecting rods, but I don't really understand what's _wrong_ with them, so that's more of a curiosity. Is that really bad, and how?

I wish I could just get this engine back together, and back into the truck. But I work full-time, and have almost no budget for this project right now. I'm starting to approach a point of do I want to keep trying to inexpertly rebuild this thing, and how many more parts do I need to buy. Do I want to stop spending on new parts, keep what I have as new spares in a box somewhere and go buy a reman (expensive option, but comes with a warranty, but it means truck sits longer until I save up). Or, do I want to take the sad option and say 'eff it' and throw the damn things craigslist as a rolling pile of parts.

If anyone's got some tips on things I should be looking for to know what I need to replace before I try to put this back together, that'd be great to hear. The motivation is weak with this one.

So, yeah. That's the story so far on my B2200!

For the curious, the other options I considered before I pulled the engine to tear it down were FE3 swap (kinda still want to... ha), or something even more obscene like a 302 swap (for plenty of reasons, I talked myself out of that one).

I was tossing back an forth non-stock engine swap or rebuild for a long time. But just went with the rebuild. Some of my Bearings had the same pitting. I replaced all the bearings, new rings, new water pump, new oil pump, new timing belt/ tensioner. I had a machine shop rebuild my head, clean and hone my block and the ordered a reground crankshaft. I did the disassemble and re-assemble and spent around $800 or so. Mine smoked before but not after the rebuild. I did end up replacing the carb, EGR and a bunch of vacuum lines. Then I passed the smog test!

There are a handful of guys on this forum that have rebuilt there engines a few have some write ups. I wouldn't give up, keep at it!

Went out to the garage again today, decided to pull the rest of the pistons, just to see what THOSE bearings look like.


And the answer is, more of the same.


Yep, that's a crankshaft.


Other than cleaning up in the garage to get my piles of mazda parts out of my roommate's way (it's his house, so maybe I shouldn't eat all of the garage floor space... ), I didn't do much with the engine today.

And in non-engine rebuild related history:

Shortly after buying this truck (May '13), the part of the old brittle plastic on the original steering wheel broke, and I needed a new tail light lens, and my indicators didn't self-cancel... So off to the junk yard!

Intact taillight assemblies. Mine were originally chrome, but I think I like the black-trimmed ones better with the red truck.


Newer wheel, indicator and wiper assembly, I think both came out of a 93. There were some minor differences between the switches and bits compared to my '93, but all the plastics were pretty much the same, so I just swapped bits around until I had what my truck needed.

And yes, my cruise control worked! If I ever get a good engine back in it, I wonder how/if I can get it to work with the weber.

And then I found this guy for a few bucks at my local computer recyclers, bye-bye tape deck!


I guess I should take some more recent pictures. After washing it. Trees are gross. And I sold the canopy.

Look at my engine rebuild thread, in the signature part at the end of this post, has photos. My B2200 had 183K on it then, and my bearings and crankshaft journals were absolutely pristine. So I just added new standard size connecting rod bearings to go with new pistons and new rings, and had the head re-done. That is just shy of 3 years ago, now 201K on it.