When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
I So I've mostly finished my 94 turbo build and figured it was time to document some of my successes and failures since threads like this helped me tremendously while putting everything together. I'll try to show more pictures rather than ramble on and misspelling every other word along the way.
Some things Ive done people may like and some things they may hate but all in all I'm happy with how it's turning out.
I started with a stock 1994 Miata 165k
Not to kill the suspense but this is how it looks today. In full disclosure my wife likes the before better than the after. Personally I think she's crazy.
The entire process has been a huge educational experience for me since this was my first attempt at a turbo build. I literally spent and still spend hours on this site reading and researching and at times laughing at threads started by people who don't realize that with the proper search criteria than can find the answers to all the questions they could have.
I listened to the advice of all the smart people on this site that have forgotten more about Miata's than I will most likely ever know.
I started with a Brain built MS3X (spend the extra and have him build yours) and a MTXL wide band.
At that time just getting the wideband and MS installed and hooked up AND working made me feel like a badass. It's a testament to having someone build your ECU for you that knows what they are doing. The car fired up first try, idled well and made me think this whole process was going to be easier than I thought. That would change however and I'll go into more detail later.
Wideband install
I spent a lot of time playing around with VEAL and trying to get my AFR's as close to perfect as possible before even thinking about injectors and turbo stuff. Some important things I learned along the way
(This is just my experience in no preticular order yours may differ!!)
*Follow the calibration instructions to the letter and calibrate all nesecary parts.
*Make sure WB and tunerstudio agree. Mine did not and were off by .5 to 1. Fixed by playing around with my voltages in Custom Linear WB in tunerstudio. Now my gauge and tunerstudio are almost dead on.
*Always lock out the cells you idle in as VEAL will screw with the idle. I don't know why, I just know it did and does.
*Set EGO control to 0 before starting VEAL
*Set Min fuel load in advanced setting in VEAL to as close as possible to the KPA cell you idle in. Seemed to help with overrun.
So after many days of tuning and nights researching what I did wrong I felt like I got to a place where I felt comfortable enough and just dangerous enough to take the next step closer to going turbo. I took the advice of Lars who again is a great resource for this community and pulled the trigger on a set of Flowforce EV14 640cc injectors.
These installed without any problems. I just greased up the o-rings and popped them in. It was a little challenging maneuvering the fuel rail around to get it in just the right position so everything lined up. After getting them installed and everything all tightened down I went back into tunerstudio and changed the required fuel for the bigger injectors. This required me to go back to many days of making tuning runs to the grocery store or wherever all my wife needed to go. Everything needed tweaking but lots of that could have been needed since I'm not used to the tuning game. Eventually I had everything sorted well enough that I was pretty much ready to add the turbo. At this point I had already ordered my MKturbo Kit and was anxiously waiting for it to show up.
Not long after my MKturbo kit showed up!!!
Figured I do the cat pic as well, seems to be a thing around here.
Once I received everything from Lars I figured it would be easier to just pull the motor and trans since I had to tap the oil pan and fix a bunch of leaks. With the help of my neighbors kid we got it out without any problems.
I also figured while I was in there I should get rid of my AC stuff and depower my rack. I followed the FM directions and it was pretty straight forward and only took about an hour.
My next step was to tap the pan, replace rear main seal and anything else that was obviously leaking.
Next on the list was checking the fitment of the new rims. TRMotorsports CM3 15x9 +36 with Hancook RS4 225/45/15. I picked the rims up off Craigslist, the seller gave me a good deal since they had brake dust cooked on and said it couldn't be removed. I hit them with degreaser and the pressure washer and they looked brand new.
I think it turned out looking pretty good. Obviously this is before the flares but to be honest I kinda like how clean it looked like this.
Not a very exciting thing but I installed my Momo 330mm steering wheel with a quick release and wow what a difference in feel compared to the stock wheel. Makes the car feel so much sportier than before and sure feels a lot better on the hands.
At this point I was ready to put the engine and transmission back in the car. I installed my FM stage 1 clutch and cleaned up the engine as best I could. I wasn't to worried about making it look to nice since I was skeptical about how long the engine would last since it had 165k on it already and I planned on not being nice to it once back on the road.
Engine went back in without any problems. I removed the manifold and turbo before dropping the engine back in, I could have left it on but decided it was easier without it not to mention I didn't want to mess anything up.
Without AC/PS you can cut the drain line a bit shorter to have a straighter shot. I have it long like that to fit around the AC/PS.
Lars it seems to be fine. I remember talking to you about that a while back. I have it clocked a little different than the picture shows and it lines up just fine with no low spots.
Next on the agenda was fitting the downpipe and remaining Exhaust. This again was very easy. Everything lined up well and didn't hit on anything. If there was anything close to hitting I wrapped that area with some left over IC coupling and metal zip ties to ensure no clanks would appear after I started driving it. Greasy rear diff is gross!!!!!
At this point I was pretty close to firing it up and see if I overlooked anything.
After the initial start I did a lot of checking things for leaks and making sure I didn't forget to tighten anything down. The only bonehead moment I had was when I went to set the initial timing again and I couldn't figure out why it was idling so high 2k. I checked for vac leaks and double checked everything I could think of. I was about to lose my mind until I noticed my timing light power cord stuck right under the stop on the throttle linkage!!! Once removed it idled pretty good aside from the 200 rpm oscillation. I spent time tuning idle VE and learning what small changes in the VE map can make in AFR's and the way it interacts with the idle.
Once I was happy with the idle I decided to take it out for a quick spin around the neighborhood. I had a smile from ear to ear when I heard my BOV make those sounds I waited so long to hear. It was a short ride since I was nervous something would go wrong so I pulled it back into the garage, jumped out and triumphantly jumped around looking for someone to high five but since nobody was home I settled for a few loud
F%^* Ya's!!! than started looking for leaks.
After a thourogh search for anything out out of place I decided it was time wire the wastegate open and see if I had done a good enough job on porting the wastegate. I found when going WOT I was seeing 3-4 psi on my boost gauge. I knew this was to much so I pulled back in the garage, pulled the turbo off and ported and smoothed a little more. After I put everything back together and took it back out I barely noticed 1psi on the gauge and called it good.
I pretty much much spent the next few weeks taking it out everyday and tuning using VEAL. I started out on Easy and let the software make big changes and eventually proceeded to Normal but when I switched it over to Hard I didn't notice much if any changes in any cells. I guess that's how it's supposed to be so oh well. At this point I was only on wastegate pressure and at most saw 7-8psi. It would always go too rich in boost (10.5ish) even after many tuning runs so I ended up manually adjusting the cells in boost and eventually got it where I wanted 12.5ish at WOT.
The car car idles well and run great!! except the dreaded hot start issues I can't seem to figure out yet. I've read more threads about this issue and tried everything to combat it but no luck yet. IAT sensor on cold side, map correction at 100% across the board adjusted fuel for CLT etc. etc. I'm learning and will get there eventually. All in all it's a blast to drive. I love feeling the boost kick in and all the sounds it makes. I've had a lot of attention at Cars and Coffee and tons of people want to ride along with me when I take it to Autocross. Once I get my EBC I'll turn the boost up a little more and see what this thing can do but for now I'll just keep tuning and learning and hopefully not damage anything.
Love the car man! Awesome job it looks like so far. In the process of boosting my 96 right now. Kit should be here in a week or two from Lars. Glad it was so easy to install! Went with the FF 640cc injectors as well and they have been great. Would you mind posting your tune so I can see about what your spark table looks like? I know I shouldn't copy it but I'm interested in how it looks compared to mine since we are running almost the exact same setup. Only difference is I just switched to e85. Not terribly far from each other either I believe, went a picked up my rollbar in topeka. Thanks!
Last edited by thebigtuna; 11-02-2017 at 11:01 PM.
Only difference is I just switched to e85. Not terribly far from each other either I believe, went a picked up my rollbar in topeka. Thanks!
Glad you like it. It's been a fun project and I've learned a lot. I'm still learning but running e85 might change things up quite a bit from me running 91 but I don't know. I haven't touched my spark map from the base tune. It's a long story and I'll eventually document it but I had to reload my base map from Brains trubokitty.com not long ago but it fired right up and since I was already comfortable with basic tuning I got things back in line fairly quick.
I just followed what I found on a couple posts here. New injectors and switched when I was empty after tuning the new injectors a bit on 91. Filled up and upped the req fuel by about 30%. Retuned and now everything is good. I added 3 degrees all over but I know some people say that can be a bad idea. I think I'll need to pick up a new fuel pump before long just so I don't have to worry about the fuel needed for the turbo. Might just see what brain's map looks like then and see how different mine is. I want to get it dyno'd and tuned but not till everything is finished with the turbo, seems pointless before that as the closest one is 2 hours away. Anything in mind for what's next? Or just going to enjoy it for a while?
I just followed what I found on a couple posts here. New injectors and switched when I was empty after tuning the new injectors a bit on 91. Filled up and upped the req fuel by about 30%. Retuned and now everything is good. I added 3 degrees all over but I know some people say that can be a bad idea. I think I'll need to pick up a new fuel pump before long just so I don't have to worry about the fuel needed for the turbo. Might just see what brain's map looks like then and see how different mine is. I want to get it dyno'd and tuned but not till everything is finished with the turbo, seems pointless before that as the closest one is 2 hours away. Anything in mind for what's next? Or just going to enjoy it for a while?
I haven't gotten to the point of messing around with my spark map, haven't really need to but know it will have to be done in order to get full potential out of my set up. I only know of one tuner near me and he isn't familiar with megasquirt so I'm learning as I go. Not to jump to far ahead but my car is a bit different now since I've had some changes in my engine. Not sure if you'll need to upgrade your fuel pump unless you just want to but I'm running 15-18psi as of now and haven't had any trouble with fueling. I had to close the gap on my plugs is all.
Sooooo everything was going fine and I was having tons of fun with my Miata. I installed a DIYAutoTune EBC and started playing around with boost settings. It worked ok but every time I had it setup half way decent the next time I would go out it would act different. There just wasn't any consistency with it. I'm sure it was operator error but I gave up and made my own manual boost controller and it worked great. I would hit 12psi by 3500 rpm and hold pretty solid with my AFR's steady at 12ish under WOT.
The only thing I noticed that was different from when I wasnt boosted was the occasional blue smoke upon decel and occasionally during cold starts and once in awhile when hitting boost etc etc but I figured with 165k my valve seals were prob shot and kinda expected that.
I was so happy with the way it was running that I felt it was time to head to the DRAG STRIP!!!!!
This was such a blast!! It had been years since I took a car down the track. My first pass was terrible. No launch control or flat foot shifting (Only because I haven't figured that out yet) just good old fashioned rev hold and dump. Needless to say this didn't work very well. I ended up spinning hard and wheel hopping through first and quick shifted into second. I banged through the gears best I could, didn't miss a shift and crossed the finish line just as I shifted into fifth. I took a look in the rear view mirror to see a little smoke but nothing I hadn't seen before. Other than the Blown S10 that was in the right lane that beat me by a measly 20 car lengths I felt like I tore up that 1/4 mile pretty good for my first time. On the drive back to the ticket shack I was happy that nothing broke, fell off or otherwise made me look like a douche in front of all the other people out there. Once at the shack I grabbed my slip from dude and WTF!... 14.9 at 96mph?.... I was pissed but figured my launch sucked and if I leave better next it would make all the difference and a mid 13 sec run would be a reality!!... lol!!
Second run........ tree'd the GTO next to me than proceeded to watch him make an unbelievable run as he left me like my car died and started going backwards!!... haha!! Crossed the finish line looked in my rear view and this time the smoke was still lingering from half track. Grabbed ticket from dude again 15.2 @92mph. I was going the wrong way. When I shut the car off if stumbled and sounded strange. I knew at this point something was up but I wasn't willing to give up yet. If I was going down I was gonna take this thing down in a blaze of glory.
After letting it cool down for about 30 min I decided I wanted to try one more time and see what happens. When I went to start it up it started than died. It took three tries to get it started. Once I got it started I pulled back up to the line and figured either I was gonna make another dismal run or shut the track down and turn this test and tune night into a car show as pieces parts and oil from my motor was being cleaned up.
Third run......... Actually launched pretty well!!... slipped the clutch a little got pretty good grip and left the line strong. Immediately the smoke screen was engaged behind me and I could feel the car loosing power. I stayed in it foot to the floor all the way down the track crossing the finish line happy that it stayed together but pissed about the loss of power and the amount of smoke in the air this time All the way down the track. Grabbed slip 15.6 @89mph.
I was done for the day. I packed my stuff up, put my tail between my legs and drove home.
Honestly Im not that upset. I took an old motor threw a turbo on it, tuned the basics and proceeded to beat the crap out of it. It drove fine on the way home but did smoke more than normal. Once I got it back in the garage I decided it was time to change my valve seals since I knew they were shot. I would order OEM seals even though they were $8 bucks each. From what I read supertechs and other low buck seals are a waste of money since it's not if they leak it's when they leak. I also decided to do a compression check and leak down test since I should have done this before adding the turbo.
Bad news. Compression readings were 100,115, 125, 100. Wet was a little improvement. Leak down test showed 20-40% leakage (Used a cheap Harbor Freieght Leak down tester) and I could hear air coming out of my dipstick tube. Soooooo...... long story short I said F#%K IT!!... built motor time. Out with the old and in with the forged goodness!!
Got the engine out a quickly and started tearing it down since I wanted to get this rebuild done as fast as possible since I didn't want to be Miata-less for to long. Here's a bunch of typical tear down pic.
Lots of oily soot in my intake runners and you gotta love that drippy Indian head gasket sealer. (Applied by PO not me)
This next pic is interesting. The obvious problem jumps out at you. I wonder if some of my tuning issues had to do with the timing being off from the start or maybe this happened as a result of beating on it at the track?
10-31-2017, 08:17 PM
My 94 MKturbo build. PIC HEAVY!!
1
