The Wrong Way

I’ve still got a few bits to pull off of the old Miata. The one I’ve really wanted to get to is the differential. The new chassis will be ready for it pretty soon, and I’d like to clean it up a bit before it goes in. The problem is that it’s really the last piece to come out of the Miata. Almost everything else needs to be removed before I can get to it.

It’s been awfully cold out in the tent lately, so I haven’t had much time to work on removing parts, so I’ve been worried a bit about getting to the differential in time. Today it got up to the mid 40’s. We’re probably not going to get many more days like this for the next month or two. So I rushed out to the tent and took a few shortcuts.

The result was this.

If I’d done it “properly” I would have disconnected the PPF and driveshaft before dropping the diff, but this way worked. And now it’s out and I can start getting it cleaned up in the workshop where it’s warmer.

Here’s a closeup of the part I’m after.