Miata Turbo Forum - Boost cars, acquire cats. - Blown Engine prompts full build

I suppose I'm not as well known as some of the track guys but I've been raping porsches, bmws and track pak 427 roush mudstains at various mid-western tracks (and VIR) with my turbo '95 for the last couple of years. Last August I melted cylinder #4 while going over "madness" at Mid-Ohio.

The meltdown can probably be attributed to the 150k+ mile motor with 7k+ turbo miles, just over 1000 of which were on the track. It could also be attributed to running on band-aids (more like band-aid, BEGi rrfpr and static timing turned back) and running 93 octane with no coolant re-route on a hot ass August day. All previous track days I mixed 93 w/ 110 race fuel to protect against my terrible tune. Well on that fateful day I was being especially lazy and didn't mix with the good stuff.

So the blown motor has prompted me to do a full tear down, like down to the white-body a la the Targa Miata. The build has been going extremely slow due to my laziness, my lack of funds and the fact I have nine other race cars to use on any given weekend so I don't really need a turbo miata.

Anyways here are some pictures of the poor state of affairs in my garage. I've pulled the motor and the front subframe. Some of the suspension bolts were frozen so I just pulled the subframe as a whole unit so I can attack it with some power tools.

Anyways less words, more photos.

The culprit. Lots of peppering on the top of the piston, I think there was lots of detonation before the poor thing finally went.
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It's interesting how the top compression ring stayed intact even though the piston was melted around it and the other two rings were obliterated...

http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/5...ton04large.jpg

Here's the block, cylinders one through three look pretty good. You can see the damage in cylinder four.

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Here's a picture of some of the bearing wear.

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Here's the mess that is my garage and my car.

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Here's how the subframe came out. I'm surprised I was able to get it out without much trouble. I did use a bit of a cheater bar...

http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/4...f3699large.jpg

The bike is indifferent to the car's suffering. Indifferent like Amber Lamps.

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The car has been wavering somewhere between a crappy track car and a crappy street car so the time has come to go full race car. I've begun tearing apart the interior, windows are gone, headlights are gone. I will be cutting everything I can for weight save. I plan on tearing the car down to the bare bones, fixing the rust, and giving it a fabulous race-car quality paint job. The suspension needs to be upgraded and the suspension arms need to be blasted and repainted. I have a megasquirt as well as some fresh 550s to go in the car. The turbo set-up (custom t3 setup) needs some updating and upgrading, and I need to do a re-route. I have a spare short block I got for $20 that I'm going to throw in the car while I build the other motor (if it's build-able, looks like it can be bored...).

The build is going to be long and drawn out. I will be racing in SCCA this year (ITA Integra) and that will take priority and funds. I will be racing the IT*Fest at Mid-Ohio as well as the ARRC at Road Atlanta in the Integra. First up is a couple HPDE's (VIR and Mid-O) before my competition license school in May.

There won't be any updates for a while, Japan next week, then to VIR, then to Cancun :eek:. But check back, I will get some more pics up as I continue the tear down.

Cheers.