This & That.

Been stuck in bed with the cold most of this week, so spent my time doing a few small jobs for the Mazda.

First off I sanded my APR carbon fibre mirrors so that they could be sprayed with a clear coat, the original finish was ageing pretty bad. I used a combination of 400, 600 and 800 grit sand paper

Gave the transmission a quick clean and replaced the front seal and gasket on that front cover.

Couple weeks ago I bought myself a dial gauge and mount, decided I'll degree the camshafts myself this time around. And I have a degree wheel I purchased a few years back. Since I wasn't able to do much work today, I decided to have a play around with the tools 🙂

Mounted the degree wheel and dial gauge set up with the magnetic mount.

A quick exercise was to find true Top-Dead-Centre. I'll do it using the piston-stop-method but with a dial gauge instead of a piston stop tool. Basically.... on the upstroke to TDC, roughly 10mm before it reachs TDC, take note of the dial gauge measurement and the reading on your degree wheel in reference to a single point. Than take it past TDC and on the downstrok stop as soon as you reach the same measurement on your dial gauge, now take note of the degree on your degree wheel.

Mine happen to be 180deg and 108deg. To calculate the true TDC, simply take the average of those two readings. This happens to be 144deg on my degree wheel. From that you can loosen the degree wheel and zero it with your marker line.

Do this a few time to double and triple check your work, and just a quick visual inspection to confirm.