After collecting parts for a while and coming back home after working in the Arctic for the summer I've finally started to do some work on my car and thought I'd make a build thread on here as I make progress.

Bought the car 3 years ago and always wanted to turbo it but school raped me so I would never have been able to do it right. Now that I'm in my last year I can finally start doing some of the work I've wanted to do for a while.

Before flying out in April I started with a 1.8 swap.





Back together for a couple weeks before I left for the summer, also installed a harddog rollbar while it was down for the swap.


Parked it and left for the summer, except for the one weekend I visited home and did this
and this

Came back home Sept 8 and started working on it right away. Pulled the motor out Monday night to swap oil pans to the one with a bung welded on it



Rolled the car out so I'd have room for the cherry picker to start putting **** on the motor and so i could power wash the engine bay. Also got a real camera around this time.



cute colours on the engine


Will be running a FMII with a gt2560rs for the fall.


Bung welded on pan with a couple fittings for the oil drain


Putting my new garage to good use already


Picked up my oil feed, oil pan gasket, and exhaust manifold gasket so I started bolting some **** up.



Turbo bolted on


Dog


Then after some cutting and other stupid **** the engine finally dropped in place


Since I did a coolant reroute the upper rad hose didn't fit so I used the write up by revlimiter to make that work but did an extra cut in the 90* bent hose for some more room by the throttle body. This was after taking the pictures below.

The lower rad hose from FM wasn't included in my kit from the previous owner so I found a random hose at partsource that looked like it might work, cut it up a bit and installed it.

All these pics were before installing the clamps while test fitting everything.

Before:


New hoses, the one I used for my lower rad hose was $11 rather than the $50 FlyinMiata wanted for a lower rad hose.


After, this hose was cut some more after this pic to get a better fit:


Lower rad hose


Had a friend that is familiar with MS come over and start doing MS things, car fired up first try

 

At this point everything is installed and ready to go, just figuring out some final things with the megasquirt and will hopefully start driving around tomorrow.

Just need to wire up the wideband and hook up my boost gauge. Also need to decide where I'll be mounting my gauges. Originally was going to do it in the center vents but I think I may do a radio delete using an amp and have them in a blanking plate there.

We were getting a lot of fluctuation in the readings from the VTPS to the MS after calibrating it so we'll have to see what's going on with that. The battery was pretty dead at this point so not sure if that has something to do with it or not.

Current list of mods:

1.8 motor from a '94
Begi Coolant Reroute
FM Level 1 clutch
550cc rx7 injectors
FMII kit w/ GT2560RS & intercooler
MS2 enhanced built by Reverant

We will also be building a 3" exhaust from the downpipe back with plans to make more power down the road.

Over the winter I have a 6 speed w/ a 3.9 torsen to install as well as a Garrett GT2860RS.

Still on the hunt for new wheels and tires. Looking for a more practical setup so I can really enjoy the car.

Will just be running wastegate pressure for now to make sure everything is working properly and then up the boost once we're sure everything else is good.

 

Finally a good thread.

 

Awesome start to your build. Very glad to see you are doing this thing up right.

Sell me your 2860 or 2560!

 

Looks good. Thumbs up!

Calling all smurfs!! Where's Curly?

 

Woot woot! Smurfs rule.



I doubt your VTPS issue is battery related, it only needs 5v, should work with the car off even with the crappiest of batteries.

Make sure your wiring is good, mine looked find standing still, but driving around it would jump a poorly wired BMW TPS and cause dramatic acceleration enrichments.

If you can't figure it out, mapdot works great, and doesn't need the TPS.

 

Woot woot! Smurfs rule.



I doubt your VTPS issue is battery related, it only needs 5v, should work with the car off even with the crappiest of batteries.

Make sure your wiring is good, mine looked find standing still, but driving around it would jump a poorly wired BMW TPS and cause dramatic acceleration enrichments.

If you can't figure it out, mapdot works great, and doesn't need the TPS.

 

Whoohoo, another smurf.

I just got done swapping and boosting one.

 

Thanks guys! It's my first time doing a proper build on a car so thankfully i have some friends helping me out to smack me around if I do something retarded. Haven't wanted to post much since I'm still trying to learn things and there's enough information readily available that have pretty much taken away the need to ask many questions.

The fluctuating signal is happening even with the car off. The wires were soldered and heat shrinked together connected like so:

@Erat, I'm hoping to have the car running well enough to bring over to Woodward at least once before the season is completely dead. Would be cool to meet up with a couple other boosted miatas.

 

Reppin

I wish we could all meet up and rub our smurfs together.

 

someday...someday i'll be part of the positive pressure smurf club

 

Thanks for all the smurf love guys!

The TPS I had was only giving a range of 4.5V-4.8V on a full sweep. Checked the wiring, had the constant 5v, and a ground, and then the signal. When calibrating the TPS it only gave a range of 909 closed to 996 wide open. Figured it could be a bad TPS so I picked up a new TPS from autozone.

The new TPS gave readings of 453 and 927 and was much more solid but still sent fluctuating signals. It fluctuates around 1-3% but seems much more steady. Also, after I calibrate the TPS it'll sit at 0%, but after I go to 100% and back it stays around 1-2% throttle rather than 0.

Not sure what else to check at this point. Have been searching but can't seem to find much, and the threads I find with a similar problem don't end in a solution.

Any thoughts? If I can't figure it out by Friday we'll just go ahead and use MAPdot although I would prefer to use the TPS.

 

Here's mine , cheers from Kamloops BC

 

Try splicing in a new ground. I had similar problems and that solved it. My coolant temp sensor was also giving wonky readings.

 

Also check if your throttle cable tension.

 

Tried doing this the way I understood it from Onyxyth PM and am still getting some funny readings (seems pretty steady but then I do a full sweep and when it comes back to closed I get some negative values until it smooths back out to 0. While doing the full sweep it is jumping around a little bit too).



Cut the ground wire coming off the TPS, soldered in a new wire that'll go to ground. So right now it has that blue ground wire (ran out of black) running to that bracket below the throttle body and the original ground running back to the ecu. Does this make sense?

Checked the tension, it has a tiny bit of slack. Seems to be a normal amount of tension though.

 

Sounds like it's settling on little spring loaded thingy before going to zero, as it should. Not sure why it's seeing negative values though. AFAIK, MS doesn't care about small negative values for throttle position, if it's intuitive and "failsafe" as the rest of the features like fuel and spark table over runs, I'd guess it would treat anything negative as 0%.

 

That makes sense to me about why it could be seeing negative values. Something I didn't understand was when I calibrated the TPS with the car off it was steady at 0, turned the car on and pulled it out of the garage and it was sitting at 6%. So I recalibrated it again and after I went around the block it was sitting at I think 2%.

 

Ah, yeah I've never had luck setting the 0/100% positions with the car off, it always moves a bit when you start it.

But remember what you need it for: the change in rate, or how quickly or slowly you're mashing the pedal. Your jumping around is what you need to fix, not the 0/100 positions. For now.

 

This is starting to get a little frustrating. Not sure what else I could check.

Tried wiring a ground from the TPS to the Megasquirt pigtail wire for analog grounds and it didn't really affect much


This is going from closed throttle to full and back to closed.