Your build is looking good... real good!

I might suggest building an air box for your air filter.

I have to say I really like the look of the stock heat shield over the manifold/turbo. Definitely doesn't look too out of the ordinary.

Yeah building an air box is on my list of things to do once I figure out a design for it.

FM's design works fantastically. Might be able to copy their design. Just line the outside with gold reflective tape or a similar product and insulate the edges properly with silicone or rubber.
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Was thinking of either doing that or a cowl intake. I'd guess that the cowl filter would be more effective although I'm not sure if I'd want to cut a big hole in my firewall.

That, and I imagine you may end up with some difficulty doing a cowl intake off of your turbo. If you can come up with something creative I'd love to see it. I actually use a NACA duct headlight and the FM airbox, and my engine is constantly fed cooler air. It is a quite effective set up if you are looking for cold air.

Are those garden snips sitting on your intake manifold? Been trimming the roses?

I have a friend with a turbo and a cowl. Other than sounding awesome it doesn't do much for intake temps.

Still must be better than sucking hot air from behind the radiator surely. Although my temps aren't much higher than ambient at the moment anyway.

Finally got round to wiring up the flex fuel sensor. Reads 0.6% on straight 98 petrol. Will fill up a tank of e85 soon and see how it goes. Fuel temperature also seems to work too.

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Also added this neat little $7 bluetooth module onto my ms3x board. Unlike the rs232 external one I had before this one lets me either use the USB cable or bluetooth to connect to the ECU.

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and got round to wiring up a SLC wideband I got a while ago to replace the LC-2. Stuck the TinyIOx inside the case as well and they communicate over I2C so I still get a digital wide-band input.

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Swapped round to the NB cam and crank sensors with a FM 36-2 trigger wheel. Been meaning to do this ever since I swapped the BP-4W in almost a year ago. Ordered brand new oem plugs to wire it up instead of using pigtails and terminated it with a Deutsch plug so that I can still return the the NA CAS if I have a failure with the new sensors which hopefully won't happen.

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Was having some issues with large voltage drops when adding electrical load like turning on the lights ect so swapped to an NB alternator controlled by the ECU. The regulation is amazing, voltage never deviates from the target. Much nicer than before.

Also got some more track time. Made an 11 second improvement from 1:58 to 1:47 at Winton. Turbo helped a lot haha. Need to improve my cooling system though as temps start to climb a bit after a few laps. Turning the heater on full blast kept temps down but not a great solution. Will have to sort out some better radiator ducting.

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Got started on the flex tune. Emptied the tank of petrol as much as possible and then filled up with 20L of e85. Ended up with around 66% ethanol according to the sensor. Once I get the content up higher I can finalise the e85 tune and set up the flex blending.

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Those coil packs look so at home in the pits of Winton.... very cool :)

Been quite a while since I last updated this. Dropped another 4 seconds off my lap time at Winton even though I was having strange alternator issues that would not let me rev above 5k in 3rd gear and above. Alternator voltage would spike to 18V+ at around 5000rpm in 3rd and 4th gear causing it to misfire. I swapped the alternator for a good one which didn't fix it. The issue turned out to be firmware related, and re-loading 1.4.1 beta 2 solved the problem. I'm not sure why the standard 1.4.1 release has that issue but hopefully it will be resolved in future versions. I also picked up a vented bonnet for track use which helped keep my coolant temps in check.

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I've also installed a NB instrument cluster so that I can remove the mechanical driven speedo to get an accurate VSS input to the ECU. Instead of using the dummy oil pressure gauge I've sent a 12V pwm signal to it from the ECU so it can be used as either a real oil pressure gauge or an oil temperature gauge using readings from my sandwich plate sensors.

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I also had a good mate of mine skillfully cut my rear bumper. Really happy with how it turned out, although the tow hook points need a bit of black paint now.

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Looks great! Love the build.

Has it seen a dyno yet? I know you said the earlier one wasn't accurate.

It's been on a dyno once for 3 power runs at a dyno day. This was back when I was only running 5psi and petrol though. For comparison a stock ecu na6 made 55rwkw on the same day.

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So this was with 5 psi and a 1.8 swap?

Yeah, 5psi, and nb8a (bp-4w) engine.

With the help of Beavis we (he) made a neat heatshield for the manifold using 2 ply dimpled material. I also made a "box" for the intake. Seems to work well but I still need to add some thick foam for the top to seal it against the bonnet. Intake temps no longer get a lot higher when the CLT temp has come up to operating temp and the temperatures drop down when moving after sitting at idle for a bit.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...d7473b9d02.jpg
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Latest development has been another engine swap, this time to a NB8B VVT engine.
Unfortunately since this engine came out of a crashed car, the front of the valve cover was smashed as was the front water neck. The water neck didn't matter since I changed to an earlier head gasket and did a coolant re-route before I even stuck the engine in the car but I couldn't source another cam cover so I ended up just cutting it. It did make doing the timing belt a bit easier though haha. While the engine was out I had a chance to clean up / re-do some wiring and add new wires for the VVT solenoid as well as the knock sensor. I don't think there's a single section of the original engine harness left from where the wires come out of the firewall. Now the engine can be pulled out of the car just by disconnecting 3 Deutsch plugs on the back of the intake manifold which is neat. The VICS manifold was swapped over as well since the engine came from an automatic NB which had the VTCS manifold instead of a flat top.

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