abenson100

HI
So i have been lurking on this site for over a year grabbing little bits of useful information as i needed it, but i figured it was time to introduce my self.

Im a recent Mechanical Engineering Technology grad for UMaine. i have had an obsession with cars since well as long as i can remember.
I started as any stupid high school kid with a civic. 2 head gaskets and an vetc swap later i wanted something more.
Intro the 00 Impreza RS. i loved this car, it was well suited for Rally-x and if it hadnt rusted away from all the woods road and snow drifting i would probly be going stage rally with it very soon.

Around the last year of the impreza my good friend approached me with a great offer. he would purchase a turbo miata that had come up on craigs list if i would do all the wrenching and show him around a turbo car. I would be able to auto-x the car and use it on some weekends. how could i pass this up.

The car had a FM turbo kit, with link ecu, gt2560r, the oddest charge piping ever (still need to fix) and a RX-7 clutch type rear end. the car was a steal due to the fact that the previous two owners were not "car people" it had some minor electrical issue that made it run "odd".
This first year was spent making it turn even better . installed full set of polly bushings, koni streets (not strong enough) removed both sway bars, put on massive springs, add a set of panasports with 13 x 9 side car tires and an alignment for bias play. this became one of the fastest AX cars in our club depending on venue

after the first year my friend wanted to sell the car to turbo his other AX car so i took it off his hands. now the worst summer ever. started out with the HG completely blowing out, then lost a rod bearing while at the first AX while taking it apart find that one of the rod bearings had been installed backwards last time it was rebuilt. put this all back together and get it started, no oil pressure. install new oil pump take for test drive and lose the bearing on the journal that had been damaged from putting the bearing in backwards.

This brings us to today.

the car is back in the garage with the motor out again. this time i have decided to put in an 02 VVT motor. i plan to keep runnign the lik ecu this year with VVTuner to control vvt and convert the pulses. all i want at this point is to get it back on the road as reliable as possible while keeping the turbo

sorry for the long intro rant but i figured i should explain how i got here.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

Welcome, abenson100!

Chiburbian

iTrader: (1)

Rather than spend money on VVTtuner, why not just go MS3x? Yeah you will have to learn some but you will end up with a better running car. MS can do electronic boost control, vvt, a bunch of other cool stuff like launch control, speed based boost limits, flex fuel (with e85 specific timing and boost maps). The list goes on and on.

Also, if the motor is already out, consider doing a "rods only" build on that motor. It won't cost you much and will mean you can handle more boost reliably if you have a good tune.

abenson100

^ all these things i want to do but are being held off till next winter. i am trying to buy a house this summer so i can move on to that 30 something with 2 kids description plus i spend that money blowing the car up last year (set of bearings head gasket and an oil pump)
i have experience with tuning from the impreza project (Frankenstein motor of parts i had in my garage running 18psi ).

Im sure that this place is going to help this car finish its journey to a prepped SSM / Summer driver.

PatrickM

Hey! I am a noob here, but I'm from Portland also! I'm happy to see another enthusiast in the area, though if it keeps snowing at this rate, I'll be selling the Miata in favor of something with tracks and skis

abenson100

yeah well my miata is going no were fast my "new" motor i picked up friday has bad valves and a broken water bump. now sitting as a short block in teh garage while head goes to machine shop in raymond.

hopefully when it warms up we can have a portland meet i have met a few other miata guys around portland.

abenson100

Well....I'm back
Quick update with more detail to be added in the MSPNP section. (link to follow)

I finally got fed up with the link.
It made it all last summer with theVVTuner attached and then in august decided that it didnt want to idle or run on 4 cylinders anymore after coming off the cold start enrichment.

parked the car for the winter and though about what to do next.... Heres what happened.

I have ripped out all parts pertaining to the Link and the VVTuner.
verified /corrected all ECU plugs are set for 94-95 miata
purchased MS PNP Pro
click....click.....add wires for VVT and crank cam sensors.........Load 01-05 base map
Turn key....Look the car runs better

Ok it was a bit more involved than that but that is pretty close to what happened. I found a few chafed or broken wires while fixing the harness and corrected all those as well as changed how the wiring for the VVT was structures since it no longer was going through a piggy back.

so this car is now a 96 with an 02 motor running an FM2 kit controlled by a 94-95 built MS PNP Pro.....can we say Frankenstein.