Day Thirteen - As I expected. Problem confirmed

Getting to the bottom of this. No pun intended. Bullshit, pun intended.

Prologue: So I'm realizing that I'm a crappy blogger. This blog fell off the wayside while I was working on the car. (I'm more of a doer than a reporter, I guess.) Anyways, as of today, the rebuild is done. (I'll keep you all in suspense on whether it was a success or failure.) I'm coming back to this because I do want to chronicle the process. I learned a lot! It'll just have to be in retrospect rather than as it happened. I have a large repository of photos that I did take along the way, so hopefully that will jog my memory. Okay, so where was I...

Mounting on the engine stand

Removing the A/C bracket

Coolant pipes off

I had trouble finding bolts that would fit the holes on the transmission side of the engine. Hardware stores do *not* have metric bolts with M12 x 1.5mm thread size. They had 1.25mm & 1.75mm, but *not* 1.5mm! Frustrating!  Had to special order them.

Later I found that it was possible to mount on the side and got some clarity from this thread http://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread.php?p=2155238#post2154806 that I googled.
I had to get different bolts for this method so back to the hardware store again! But this time, they had the right thread pitch, just not the right length. Too long! Awesome. However, with a little on the spot ingenuity in the hardware store, I fixed that little problem by buying some bushings and washers. It took a little finagling with the mounting arms, but managed to get three of them secured. I was a little uncertain just using three mounting arms, but figured the engine is relatively light, so I should be okay. With the engine mounted, I could rotate it and get to the oil pan.

Removing the oil pan

This ended up being a little harder than I thought. I couldn't just pull it off. It was snagging on something on the inside and I couldn't see what it was. It ended up being the baffle, but not knowing a whole lot of what to expect it just seemed stubborn. There was sealant stuck on the cover, so I tried to just pry it up. I bent one part of the baffle a little bit. Hopefully, it wasn't too bad. It wasn't pretty, but I got it off finally.

The first thing I did was look for metal shards. I found a few, I think, and was hoping it wasn't too drastic.

Inspecting the spun bearing

I inspected the rod caps and felt tightness of the rods and it was obvious which one was the problem.

The #4 rod was rattling loose. All of the other ones were tight.

I removed the #4 rod cap and wondered where the bearing was. I was pretty sure there are supposed to be two of these things. To my untrained eye, the single damaged bearing looked ugly, but *how* damaged it was, wasn't apparent to me until I took off one of the normal bearings.

The #4 bearings had actually stacked onto each other and apparently fused together and got deformed from the friction heat. The pictures pretty much tell the story.

Both damaged bearings fused together.

Bearings split apart. 

Journal looks like hell.