The clutch saga continues. Slowly. My total wait time for the rear seal for the transmission was 8 days.

Quick recap. Order parts at O'Reilly Autoparts, Some parts show up, but not all. Make another trip to pick up the missing stuff. Get home with it. Not the right stuff. Call back. "We can't get that stuff, go to the Dealer."

Go to dealer. Order parts. Go to pick up parts two days later. Some parts show up, but not all parts. This was especially painful this time because it was a Friday and I had hoped to reassemble the car over the weekend. (Mazda Parts guy called O'Reilly to see if they had the part. Ha! They sent me to the Mazda dealership.) Back to the parts store on Monday and get the missing seal.

At this point I am fairly busy with my mundane life and don't get a chance to really work on the Miata again until this evening. That is not entirely true. Late in the afternoon, I spent about an hour with the car hoping that I would somehow be able to lift the transmission back up myself. Even with a pair of jacks, this was more than one person could really do.

At this point I got on the bat horn and called in the calvary. With the assistance of David M. under the car and non-boring Brian controlling the jack, we managed to get the transmission lifted and bolted to the engine block.

I will not call the entire operation a success (prematurely). I still have to hook up the hydraulic clutch cable, re-install the entire exhaust system, fill the transmission, and re-install the drive-shaft(Famous Australian rock band) and a few other miscellaneous details before I am really done. Regardless, all the work requiring more than two hands has been completed.

While the car is on the jack stands and one of the tires is off anyway, I will go head with an oil change and rotating the tires.

The car should be rolling before the weekend is over. A mere 15 or 16 days later.

What did I learn? Order all the parts and have them in hand before getting started.

Regrets: None really. At least not so far.