harrybeachdog

Hey everyone, my name is Harrison and I've been a lurker here for a while. When I was looking at Savington's multiple posts about VVT swaps into NA's, I realized how great and useful this place is. So I donated a few bucks to get some picture on my profile and feel all good about myself. Well, more for the stickers than anything. Speaking of, how does one receive those?

So back in January 2010 I got a 181k mile 96 Montego Blue POS off eBay for $500, sight unseen. The next morning I told my parents that I had bought a car on eBay, suggested a trip from Georgia(where I live) to North Carolina(where the car was). After my parents laughed a while, then realized I was serious. We called a few family friends, booked a hotel, grabbed our trailer and hopped in the car. The photos and description said that the car was perfectly drivable, just a slight crack in the windshield and a barely leaking top, but I knew better. I got there, took the car for a test drive and immediately put it on the trailer. There was something wrong with the suspension but I was on a tight schedule with the parents, so I looked underneath, didn't see any rust and decided to check it out later.

Get home, start pulling it apart and find out what the damage was. Broken windshield, rusted A-frame, bad top, bad paint, bad wheel bearings, blown suspension and a pair of bad front LCA's. But it had a Torsen, wasn't an autotragic and it had a good engine, so I kept it. I bought this car specifically to use on track and Autox, so I repaired everything with better than stock parts. As soon as the car was titled/tagged I signed up for the very next Autox and took it down. Turned out to be a national event at SGMP, talk about being thrown into the deep end.

Well, one mod slowly led to another over the college years, and this is how the car sits now.
Megasquirt 2, Exhintake swap, FM Vmaxx Classics, Racing Beat bars, 949 Links(Thanks Emilio!), Rspeed stage1 clutch, Brainstorm rollbar, Evo seats, 15x9 Rota K7, Water/Meth injection and then finally the black sheep of all things on this site - The Eaton M45

But really, I love my car with boost. Albeit hot, parasitic, limited, small boost. But it brought me into the FI world. I'll be throwing it up on the FS section in a while, but please don't think that's why I joined. I've seen the light when tracking a friend's 2560R FM2 setup, then had the pleasure of riding in my friend's built motor BeGi S4 setup. Gawdamn

Part of the reason I'm switching from S/C to turbo is that I just killed a wrist pin in my stock 212k mile engine. I mentioned Savington's VVT swap posts earlier, here's where that plays in. A good friend of mine had a 100k mile VVT engine for a great price, so I of course picked it up. I'm in the process of putting that in right now, taking it as an excuse to remove the m45 and make room for a turbo. It'll be sad that just the VVT engine, properly tuned with MS and VVTuner will make the same power the m45 made when I first bought it.

I'll be searching throughout the forums a bunch as I start to piece together my turbo setup. Trust me, I've lurked long enough to know I should search 17 times before posting any question. I'm looking to stay with stock internals, so thinking right around 220whp. If money was no object I'd just pick up the FM2 No Electronics kit, but I think it'll be more fun piecing it together.

harrybeachdog

I know you guys have a hardon for cats, but I don't have any. So here's a generic cat picture and my dog, Tesla.

Monk

iTrader: (3)

Damn fine intro post. I take it you didn't drive the miata much in the snow.

OGRacing

iTrader: (1)

welcome man. i think i've seen your car around. i'm out of braselton

harrybeachdog

Monk - Thanks man! I drove it some in the snow. Put the all seasons on, raised it about an inch all around and enjoyed the nice cold iat's!
I'm up in your neck of the woods as often as money permits. Must be nice being close to RA? I'm down inside 285, on the northwest side.

OGRacing

iTrader: (1)

It is sometimes i head to road atlanta with a coffee and watch cars go round and round. money permits i join them.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

Welcome, harrybeachdog. Check out the Miata Gallery and post up some pics!

harrybeachdog

Well, I picked up a few items. Since I live in an emissions county(thank god it's GA and not cali CARB), and I'm obd2, I have to switch back to the stock ecu once a year. I'm trying to avoid hacking the harness as much as possible, both for ease of "back to stock" and knowing anything I do will almost definitely be worse than the factory connections. I picked the lazy way to do ignition for the vvt engine in the 96 harness: I ordered a set of the FAB9 pencil COPS. I was told they would ship out by last Friday, but understand that doesn't always happen over there. That's the only thing I'm really waiting on to get this VVT engine firing. I will say, they include some plugs with the cops and I selected the "not n/a, but less than 16psi plugs" which are denso IK22's. Will these be too cold to run the car n/a for a bit, while I piece together all the turbo stuffs?
I did also pick up a VICS manifold off a friend. I was planning on taking out the butterfly flaps from the VTCS, but this is better from what I've searched. I'll just have to use the MS to trigger it ~5400rpm.
Now, my non-work hours are spent trying to figure out vvtuner and cringing at the amount of time it'll add to the dyno. If anyone has a their own good vvt table for a turbo setup, I'd be extremely appreciative of some sharing. But I have this odd feeling that some more searching will turn up something decent. Anyways, back off to work and web dev. I'll check back here throughout the day and try to trawl through all the info I can.

Edit
Thanks Brain, will do!

harrybeachdog

Finally got to look at the new engine. Was only a little scared to find this, until I was told it was a factory casting fix. 104k, looks good to me. Thoughts?

harrybeachdog