I made a pair of engine mounting plate templates late this morning.
After a bit of lunch I fired up the bandsaw and cut them out of 3/16" mild steel plate, drilled the holes and cleaned up the profile on the linisher.
Next job will be to make the templates for the actual brackets. I'm using a pair of Landrover V8 mounting rubbers. They're cheap and know to work with this engine (not too much vibration).
The original inlet manifold is a huge heavy affair, so it has to go. One solution is to cut off the original flanges
and fabricate a plenum chamber with the single original throttle body on the end. Something like this;
The other solution is to use individual throttle bodies. These are off a Triumph Daytona motorcycle. They can be unbolted from each other and re-spaced to suit the Mazda inlet ports.
There are pros and cons to each approach. I'm leaving my options open at the moment. Using motorcycle fuel injection throttle bodies along with a Megasquirt ECU (from a kit or ready built) to upgrade an old engine (or a newer one) is within the reach of many DIYers and there's an active support forum.
I found a pair of 3" Aston filler caps on ebay for £40. They'll clean up quite nicely, but with a bit of patina, rather than too shiny new.
