Stage 1: The Probe
My car started her life with me as a 1995 Ford Probe GT V6 5speed. It was my baby and cost me $2400 with 103k miles. It sadly ended its reign as a Probe in late Sept '06 when I slid around a corner of leaves and acorns and hit a telephone pole. The accident caused the motor to be pushed back 3" and the entire front end twisted and crunched. The motor would still start right up and would go in all gears, but because both airbags had gone off and the dash and windshield cracked I started looking for a shell.
I ended up buying a pick-up truck to drive for a few months, but sold that around Christmastime '06 in order to buy my new vehicle, a 1993 Mazda MX-6 LS V6 5speed with a blown headgasket that had been sitting for almost a year in Hartford. I found it on Craiglist, went and saw it, paid $300 and towed it home. Thus the engine swap began.
Stage 2: Engine Swap
My friend T pushed me to just do an engine swap in the Mazda, and while I had never done something so drastic I had lots of help. We started by pulling the motor and trans from the Probe and setting it aside. We then pulled the motor and trans from the Mazda and threw it to the side. The 24v quadcam V6 is an awesome motor, but there was no way I planned on using the motor again or replacing the headgasket, specially trying to time 4 cams. We pulled the trannys together because the Probe tranny was less miles, and this was the 3rd motor going into the Mazda in its lifetime.
In the meantime I bought parts for the Mazda that would be easy to install once the motors out, such as Pacesetter headers, cv shafts, fuel filter, yadayada and the list goes on. When we worked on the Probe motor we changed the belts and the power steering pump pulley, which had been damaged in the accident. Nothing else seemed to be out of place from the accident, yet.
After many sub-freezing temperatures of working on the car in the unheated garage the motor was finally dropped (wedged) in and the final bolts installed, now came time for wiring it. We had decided to use the '95 harness and keep it with the motor, to save ourselves from unplugging every sensor, but I ran into a few problems, the smaller blue connector on the ECU and headlight plugs weren't compatible, s***. I also couldn't get the reman CV shafts to go in. At 1 in the morning my mom and I swapped the wire harness from the '95 to the '93 with the motor in the car. Several days later we also had my brothers friend figure out that the CV c-clips were bent and he got the cv's in, so great, everythings done! Right? Of course not.
All the fluids were replaced and I was ready to start it up, so the big moment, turn the key, starts right up and SMOKE! A wire had started burning in the engine bay. We called up a Master Tech from Ford and he came up and checked the wiring. We pulled almost the entire harness apart to find that the wire that was burning was a fusible link, wasn't touching any other wires yet still had 12v going to it. After much searching I realized two things, the neg battery cable was sliced halfway through and I was missing the ground cable for the motor. Thankfully we caught the problems before I burnt up every ground in the car. After a lot of soldering the car finally started and ran with mostly no problems. I drove it around the block but then it started overheating! I figured out it was either the thermostat or there was air in the system, specially because I wasn't getting heat, so it took 10 minutes to replace the thermostat and about an hour to bleed the system and FINALLY, no overheating, no wire burning and no problems.
Stage 3: Fixing Small s***
I had the car registered and all ready to go, failed emissions and didn't care, and decided after work one night to have a photoshoot with the new ride. On the way there the motor started making an awefull noise like rod knock, so I pulled over and checked it out, and saw that the pass. motor mount had broken and the motor was resting on the water pump pulley. I crawled it home and had it towed the next day to my mom's tech school, and then drove back to MA for school. While up there the shop replaced the pulley and mount. 2/3 bolts had snapped in the block, most likely stressed from the accident, and they had finally gave out.
The day after it was fixed my brother and dad drove the Mazda to meet me near school and we exchanged vehicles. I was finally driving the Mazda as a daily driver. This wasn't the end of the problems, however. 2 days after I got it back the distributor went due to the poorly designed HEI coil. I bought a new one from Autozone and slapped it in as well as a crankshaft position sensor and she started right back up. I also had the exhaust completely redone after getting sick of having it patched. I went with a new cat from AZ and 2.5" catback, mandral-bent pipe to a Greddy muffler. This allows just enough backpressure and plenty of room to upgrade performance in the future. I also had the shop cut the headers to make them fit better and create a hole to connect the EGR system to. In between I went to CT and put on the 16" swirlie Probe wheels and failed emissions again, as well as buying new lights from Ebay and installing my PRM intake.
Around this time I decided to give my car a name: Macy. And no it doesn't stand for Macy Grey or for the store, I just liked it for my car. I also brought my car to Leo's and had him replace the tie rod ends and ball joints so I could lower the car and not worry about the suspension. When I came back to CT for the summer I replaced the passenger control arm since the bushing was shot, but I had to cut the endlink since Mazda was smart and designed them really well (/sarcasm). The front lowered suspension (Intrax springs and KYB struts) went on, as well as the stock 15" wheels since the Probe wheels had slick tires. I was going to do the rear suspension however one bolt was completely stuck in there and my friend and I stripped the head off of it. Couple weeks went by since I was working full time and I finally got a chance to bring my car up to a fellow club members house and drill out that bolt. So the next day I threw on the rear suspension and put the 17" TSW rims on.
Since then I've put in a narrowband air fuel guage, oil pressure gauge (though its not hooked up yet), make a custom mount for the gauges and 3 switches under the HVAC controls, install a CB radio and some strobes in the headlights. Thus ends the "Stages" of Macy's story and begins the regular journal as I fix or repair her daily.
