That RV hookup is brilliant! I love it when cheap commodity parts find niche racecar uses. Simple and elegant!

Can't wait to see your post on the Mk60E5. I've still done nothing more than raid the junkyards for parts.

I find it strange that the Stoptech calipers didn't have bleeders on the outside half. The casting boss is there, did they just thread in a plug?

 

Thanks for the cat. I don't have an RV, just dumb lucked into finding them when I was searching for the flanges that everyone uses on Amazon. I wasn't sure they would work, figured someone else would have tried them out before me. But figured worth a try. I love that they were cheaper then the aluminum flanges and for my purpose, they work better.

I was really happy that the RV hookup worked as well as it does too. Still a pain getting my arm/hand in between the bumper and the airdam etc. but easy enough to twist on once you get the duct in your hand.

I have one more post that I have half written already, then onto the MK60E5 (which is working great...very happy with it.) My goal is to get that written up in the next couple of weeks, but life likes to get in the way.

I don't know why the Stoptech don't have bleeders on both sides, (maybe because they were smallish?) but I never had an issue bleeding them. I REALLY liked the Stoptech calipers, they worked great / great pedal feel with the 1" master. I just wanted a bigger thermal factor then they were able to give.

 

I had a great time at Barber, but besides the brakes, the car had some growing pains. The car wasn’t “new” (probably 10th track day for the car at this time), but I’ve noticed a pattern with ground up car builds. You find a lot of teething issues in the first 150ish miles, and then the car is great, but you also get a second set of teething issues that seem to show up after a couple thousand miles. That second set of issues showed up for me at / after Barber.

Wheel Bearings / Grease
One item I found pretty quickly was wheel bearing grease. When I removed the brake rotor, it was all over the place.



I’m running the BroFab front hubs, and something I learned while at Barber is that you need a small weeping hole drilled in the spacer to allow for pressure changes. (Something I did not know / have.) Otherwise your wheel bearings will have a fit and sling grease all over the place. Yuck! I drilled the small hole in the spacer, and went to repack the bearings.



I’ve never pulled / repacked bearings from a hub like this before, but I used the penny method that another member shows in a sticky. (Thank you!) I pulled them both apart and cleaned them up and repacked them. Of course, still not sure how, (and I still haven’t found it) but I realized I lost a ball bearing when I went to put the second one back together. So I had to go buy a new hub and modify it. You have to cut off the flange to work with the Brofab kit. This was really easy / much cleaner with the band saw vs using a grinder. (little piece of red tape was to keep the shavings out of the bearings while cutting it.)



The second part was getting the red-loctite extended studs out of the old hub to put in the new hub. What a pain. I really hate these screw in studs that you have to use with BMWs. They are a pain to reinstall too. Over the winter I bought brand new higher quality hubs/studs and installed them. Keeping the other two as spares.

Drive Shaft / Grease
Since we are on the topic of grease. I also noticed that the driveshaft had flung grease all over the place.



In a scary realization, all of the bolts had started to back out of the spacer. YIKES! And allowed enough room for grease to escape & sling all over the place.



These are torqued VERY LOW (It’s somewhere in this blog, but maybe 12 foot lbs?) cause the spacer is just aluminum. I used some blue Loctite on them, re-torqued, and marked them so I could easily see if they start to backout again. I do need to pull the driveshaft out and re-grease it. That’s on the list of things to do. I may install some hemicoils into the aluminum spacer so things can be torqued at a reasonable amount. A project for another rainy day that will probably never happen unless the Loctite with spring washers no longer works.




Limp Mode / Gas Pedal
I was pulling out of the paddock to line up at the grid to go out and the car went into limp mode and would basically only idle / drive at 15 mph. That was the very first time the car had ever gone in limp mode. I checked the gauges and restarted the car. Everything seemed to be working fine, so I decided to be an ostrich, stick my head in the sand and forget about it. That seemed to work for a bit, but it happened one more time. At this point I thought it only happened when I first started the car, but I later came to find out it would happen while driving the car. I pulled the codes and it said either the throttle body, wiring, or gas pedal was bad. A lot of people have brought up that the wiring with the gas pedal is really sensitive. I check and pulled on the wires at the gas pedal and at the throttle body, all looked good there. I saw other people have had issues with the gas pedal, and this one was used so I bought a new one / swapped it out and all seemed to be good for a while.

New gas pedal and you can also see the wiring harness where I yanked on the wires/all was good.


Unfortunately the issue showed back up, both on the track, and in the rain during rush hour on I-285 in the left most lane. (10-12 lane highway...not the place to have your car go in limp mode) It was really hit or miss and I couldn’t figure it out. Then early spring this year, I was wiring up stuff and for some reason I decided to try pulling on the wires at the ecu. Out popped two of the wires, one of them being “A” which was one of the throttle pedal wires. After repining this wire, and zip tying this all up better so it wouldn’t pull and strain on the wires, I haven’t had an issue.




Bushing Donuts
I’m definitely still working on becoming a faster driver and I think this was the 2nd time I had ever been to Barber. (I had a delaminating tire the first time) I’m also still “learning” this car, since I keep making pretty substantial changes to it every couple of events, so everything keeps changing. Anyway, I was having a real hard time finding grip/speed, and the car just felt uncomfortable to me. Wingman went for a ride and even asked why I was doing this weird thing with the steering when I crest over the hill at turn 4. I just said it felt really sketchy. (Turn 4 apex is a blind hill crest, where the car gets very light) I figured out once home why everything felt sketchy to me. I had guillotined my FLCA bushings allowing for a very dynamic alignment on the track.




I was running Sad Fab bearings along with the Supermiata “Big Grip Kit” poly bushings. Since Supermiata had solved this same issue with their kit, I was able to order up their higher durometer poly bushings to fix the issue. FYI…I’ve returned to Barber since getting this fixed, and Turn 4 is still blind & the car gets light, but no longer sketchy and doesn’t require steering input like before. Big Win!

New bushings in place.



Other Changes / Not Barber related.

New Top
I found this CCP fiberglass top for sale locally. Weight savings over the OEM top. I'm not crazy about Purple in general, but in bright light, this color pops. So I'm rocking it for the time being.


I had to make some brackets for the sides to hold it in place. (You can’t use the stock brackets on the side of the CCP top) I just made these out of some aluminum bar I had lying around.

I do have one gripe about this top (and its not that it doesn’t seal properly) its that they used SAE fasteners. Ugg! I don’t understand why vendors that build Miata specific parts (heck, any modern car parts, all the “US” OEMs are using metric now too.) aren’t using metric fasteners. I’ll step down from the soap box now.

Coilovers
I bought covers for the coilovers. I was told they were feeling a bit exposed and wanted to be more modest.


Hiding under those covers are some upgraded spring rates. I went from 900/500 to 1200/600. I’m really surprised, even at 1200 lb. springs in the front, I still bottom out at Atlanta Motorsports Park turn 11 (AKA…The Ball Joint Killer).



Alignment Bolts
So after getting the bushings fixed and another alignment done, I came home from another track day realizing that my alignment was moving around on me again. (Really didn’t expect suspension to be the troublemaker in this build.) Supermiata must have my number, because they announced their new alignment bolts pretty much at the exact same time. They are identical to OEM, except they are a 10.9 bolt and nut, so you can actually tighten them like we need too. These bolts have held great, even with an off roading trip that I felt for certain would have knocked something out of alignment. No action shots of the new alignment bolts.

AIM Smarty cam
Bought a used AIM Smarty Cam and installed it in the car.



I hurriedly made a little mount out of a piece of scrap plastic for the base part of the camera.


It slides under the package tray and is held with the one bolt. This is working great, it’s out of the way, but I can still reach it easily enough to get the SIM card out when needs be.


These cameras don’t have the best pictures (a gopro has a much nicer picture), but it’s great how they integrate with the AIM data logger so you have all of that telemetry metrics immediately and it just “works”. Only time it hasn’t worked for me, was when the SIM card filled all up and it stopped recording. So, I’d blame that on the user, since I probably had 6 track days on the card still.

Alright, besides discussing the MK60E5 this gets me up to early spring 2024 with the car.

 

I'm also running the AiM SmartyCam GP, and you're right, the video quality is not good considering the price point. You'd think that when you can get decent 4k at 60fps out of a $100 camera from Amazon, AiM could do better. On the other hand, it actually works, unlike most every other camera I've tried. And the data integration and ability to configure how it displays is really nice.

 

You explained that / wrote that up so much better than I did. I can't agree more with everything you wrote. I'm pretty deep into the AIM ecosystem at this point, so you have to take the good with the bad.

 

I'm jealous of your wire labels, they came out way better than mine! What did you use to make them?

Those bushings would certainly make things sketchy! What do you think caused the failure, just too much load?

 

Funny, I wasn't that impressed with them. Supposedly they make a heat shrink you can have the label maker just write on top of / it's the easiest way. I just used a generic label maker. Printed in smallest font using normal white label, and would then cut the label down because it wouldn't wrap around most of the wires otherwise. (was covering itself too much, cause most of the wires are 20 gauge) From there I used some clear heat shrink (the version with the glue inside). Actually, I found it best to bend the label a little bit into almost a "V" and (using some very small needle nose pliers) push the label into the heat shrink, and then slide it all over the wire. (Or some sort of combo of this, you need to be patient.) When you melt the heat shrink, the image gets a lot clearer, before you melt it, you will be wondering if its gonna be readable.


I guess it's been a common failure when you are using bronze bearings in the 85A bushings. Something about everything moving easier with the bearings also makes the probability of a doughnut-cut happen much higher. My guess is that most of the people installing these, no longer have a "stock" car, and if your going to do all of this work, you are the type that will be loading up your suspension. So I think that is also a fair reason for them failing. For what it's worth, the newer higher 95A bushings look good so far, so hopefully this is now "fixed".

 

MK60E5 ABS

First, thanks to both Wingman & Bronson for their help. I really appreciate both of them taking time to help me out. I’m spending a bit more time writing all of this up, because besides Wingman’s write up, which was bleeding edge being the very first Miata, there really isn’t a single great resource for the MK60E5. When I installed mine, it was still a newer install. I’m sure there are still discoveries to be had with this system / better ways of doing things to be found. (I have noted any that I have seen since installing.)


General Info:

The MK60E5 that comes out of the E9X BMWs. Besides being one of the best ABS systems (that isn't fully motorsports) you can get, they can also be set up as a standalone system. Making them an ideal ABS upgrade for grassroots motorsports. You can find them in all of the 6 cylinder (and 8 cylinder) 3 series models (2006 – 2013) that do not have all wheel drive. The 4 cylinder, and the all-wheel drive use different ABS systems. You don’t necessarily need the M3 version of the ABS system. It’s believed that the M3 version should have a little better version of software on it (I don’t know if anyone has actually tested this), but the base model E9X BMWs work extremely well, AND you can flash the M3 software onto any of the MK60E5 if you wish, so this becomes a moot point.

Why MK60E5 vs the MK60?

People have been putting the MK60 ABS in cars for a while now. It’s a bit older compared to the MK60E5, but it’s still a great standalone system. Biggest issue is that the MK60 is starting to get expensive since everyone has been upgrading to it for years and you need to use the 03-06 M3 version of the control modules, they are starting to become harder to find and expensive. The MK60E5 is cheap. I installed mine for under $500 and that’s for EVERYTHING, (even including stuff I had lying around in your garage, like paint or scrap metal.) I also bought a lot of new parts and ran all new wiring. I would say you could pretty easily install for $250 if you were budget conscious about it. Or in Track Day speak…This pays for itself after the very first flat spotted tire.

Extra Reading info:

• Wingman has a write up with really good info in it on his build thread
• Facebook has an MK60 / MK60E5 page. It semi sucks looking for information, but there is a wealth of information there.
• I also did other google searches and found some other write ups

Getting the ABS up and running isn’t hard, but it is very time consuming. I’m going to break this down into a few different sections.

• Wheel Speed Sensors & Tone Rings
• The ABS Pump & Yaw Sensor
• Plumbing
• Wiring
• Software & Bleeding

Wheel Speed Sensors & Tone Rings

Tone Rings:

This is the hardest part of using the MK60E5 / what makes people not want to use the MK60E5. You can’t use the stock Miata tone rings. Reason being is that the MK60E5 uses Magneto-Resistance (MR) tone rings, and to date, nobody has found an MR Tone ring that fits out of the box. You can actually get by with using the stock Miata tone rings in the rear with some coding (I did not do this), but the front need to be MR rings.

NOTE: There is now a guy who makes and sells a “black box” for $350 that will allow you to use your old skool tone rings, vs the MR ones. (Happy Cactus Garage) I didn’t go this route (it wasn’t available at the time I started.) Along with allowing you to use your stock tone rings, it also simplifies a few items with the install. (ABS signal light, Brake light switch wiring simplification, etc.). If you are updating the stock Miata ABS (or some other vehicle with an older ABS), I’d definitely look into this, since you save the cost in tone rings & sensors, making that $350 cheaper, and definitely will save you some time.

Tone Rings These come from a 2005-2018 Chrysler 300. Personally, I don’t think you are going to be very successful removing these from a junk yard car and reusing them. (I’m sure someone will prove me wrong.) This is a part I would just buy new. They are about $20 each and I saw a set of 4 on Amazon for $45

• Part # BSA71650 (I don't think this is the OEM part number, but this is what I purchased.)

BMW Sensors (These are the sensors from the E9X BMW. I used the “Front” sensors in the rear of the Miata, and the “Rear” sensors in the front of the Miata, this is because the Front sensors point straight down at the ring, and the Rear sensors read from their side. (pictures further in the write up will explain this so much better.)

• BMW Front 34526870075
• BMW Rear 34526870077

Rear Speed Sensors & Tone Rings Install

Unfortunately, I don’t have stock Miata half shafts on my car, so what I did won’t be an exact match / fit. That said, it should be basically identical to what I did. Because the Chrysler tone ring is just a little bit larger than the Miata half shafts & front hubs, you will need a spacer to make them fit. I followed what others did and used the stock tone rings as the spacer. (Actually, I used the e30 BMW stock tone rings, because I’m using the BroFab e30 hubs on my car.)

E30 Tone Ring on Left, Chrysler 300 on the Right



Bronson generously shaved these down for me using a lathe, but if you took your time / got creative you could probably figure out how to chuck one into a drill and grind it down yourself. (or possibly even just free hand it, I believe that is what Wingman did with his.) The E30 tone ring was too small internally for my half shafts, I also had to shave down the inside of the ring too. My measurements weren’t exact and even after having them shaved down with the lathe, I had to pull out the Dremel and grind them down a little more on the inside. (I originally broke one struggling to get it on, so I welded it back together and pulled out the Dremel to get the inside to fit too.)

NOTE: I saw someone make and 3d Print spacers and use them. Personally, I wouldn't go this route, I think there is too much heat in this area to use a plastic, but you could do this for a test fit and possibly send out to some place like send cut send to have them made for you.

Shaved down one (that I broke) next to a stock one.



Once I got the “spacer” on, it was time to install the tone ring on it. What a PITA getting these all on, both the e30 ring / spacer and then the Chrysler ring. I actually ground down the starting edge of the “spacer” so it would be a little easier to get the Chrysler ring on. I spent more time then I care to admit getting all of these rings installed.

(Looks funny, like the Chrysler ring isn't on all the way, but it is.)




Once I got the ring installed and the half shaft reinstalled too, it was time to work on getting the sensor installed. I used the front sensor for the rear, because it reads from the tip aiming down at the sensor. (Someone said that the BMW rear sensor would read from the tip and the side, so I originally just went with 4 rear BMW sensors, but it would not read from the tip, only the side.) I did some rough measurements here, and the plan was to back into the length I needed, since I couldn’t easily measure everything . I took some square stock bar I had lying around and cut off a piece that was just a little longer than I needed. Then I welded a M6 flange nut inside it. This needed two little slices on the opposite sides so it would fit inside the square stock bar. (I then spot welded those sides to hold the nut in pace) I measured the height after doing this by just holding it in place with the half shaft and tone ring in place and recut the bottom to the exact length it needed to be. All that was left was to weld it in place. I was a bit worried about welding to the cast iron upright, but it welded fine. (It’s a cold weld due to its size / thickness, but it’s holding fine and since it's only a tiny sensor. I'm not too concerned. If you don’t have a welder, you probably could use JBWeld on these to hold them in place, although I'm unsure if the hot temps would be an issue or not for JBWeld.

This is how I did it originally using the wrong sensor (this is the BMW rear sensor and it only reads from it's side, not from the tip.)


This is the BMW Front sensor, that I ended up using on the rear because it reads from the tip. It's a tad shorter / stubby so I had to cut off and shorten that piece of square tube you see above.



Lastly I ran the connectors up into the car. BMW uses little plastic boxes that these are normally behind the fender liner for the connectors. I didn't pull those little plastic boxes from the junk yard, and instead, got them out of the way and protected inside the car. (again the wrong sensor in this picture)


This is inside the trunk. This was a "Stock" hole in the sheet metal. I'm not sure what originally it was used for, but it's on both sides and needed to be plugged up, so this worked great. (I did put a little rubber gasket around them too…this was a pain to fit over the connector, but it keeps things a little more water tight and no rubbing.



Front Speed Sensors & Tone Rings

The front tone rings went on a little easier than the rear. I knew for a fact the that inside diameter was the correct width since they came off the e30 hubs, but it was still a PITA to get them all on.



The speed sensors required a little more work than the rear. I wanted them to fit like the stock Miata ABS sensors would. I had previously cut off the big thick metal "tab" on the Spindle that Mazda had left there for the original ABS (although they never machined it unless you got ABS) when I was making my own brake ducts, before I decided to hit the easy button with the Supermiata set up. If the big thick piece of metal is still there, you could just drill two holes in it and thread the one for the sensor. (Although I think this route will be a little harder getting everything lined up properly and to drill those holes. I actually think what I did maybe easier to do / get it all aligned up properly.)

Bandsaw makes quick work of cutting off "tab" for the original ABS



I took a piece of 16 gauge metal and drilled a couple holes in it and welded it onto the spindle. (here it is before I welded it, using some magnets to hold in place)


Like the rear, I sort of made my piece of metal a little too tall and backed into my “measurement”. Great thing with the 16 gauge is that if I was off a little bit, you can always bend the metal to get the sensor gap exactly the way you want. I also welded a nut on the front so it was easy to attach the sensor.

This is test fitting everything before I welded it up




Here you can see the tip of the sensor going through the brake duct and "reading" the ring


I also ran the sensor wire connector up into the engine bay vs leaving in the wheel well so it’s more protected. Again, using a "stock" hole and putting a rubber gasket around it.



Inside the engine bay, I ran the wire up along the inner fender


Next is installing the Yaw sensor & the ABS Pump

 

Oh hell yeah. I've considered doing a proper guide now years later, updated with the tools we have now that I didn't back then(happycactus), but never was able to find the time to do so. Glad that someone is able to put together a more comprehensive guide then my initial writeup.

 

This is great, and your last post should be a dedicated thread somewhere. Thanks for sharing!

 

There's a dedicated MK60 thread here: https://www.miataturbo.net/suspensio...-guide-100731/

But I think that the MK60e5 probably deserves its own thread.

I'm thankful that SuperMiata built tone rings into their new "Chub" hubs - they work directly with my MK60 system.

It'd be nice to find an e5-compatible tone ring that could slide over the stock Miata rings, but I know from my tone-ring search years ago that it's next to impossible to learn the dimensions of any particular tone ring without having it in hand.

The pressure-sensor plumbing was unpleasant on the MK60, I'm jealous that (IIRC) the e5 gets rid of these two external sensors.

Did you go as far as including a steering angle sensor?

 

Pos-cat awarded. Please put this in a dedicated MK60e5 thread so I can bookmark it.

 

Hey! Only possible because you led the way! I figured a second write up/perspectives can only help others (I know I like to read a couple different installs to learn how people did something.) I'm also starting to forget things and want to keep it written down for a reference later! (cause I already spent half a day troubleshooting the ABS, and was having issues remembering what I did.) Hope the engine / car is coming along. I know it's been a long road recently.

I haven't finished writing up the other parts, but I could easily enough copy / paste what I have into a dedicated thread. Looks like others feel the same way.

I did some searching for a tone ring that would just work. If memory serves (this has been over a year now) there was a UK company that only made replacement rings and had the measurements of each ring on site. They had like 200 different rings, but nothing that would work for us. (That may have changed by now. Also looked like he was willing to make a new size tone ring if it fit a stock car size. Not sure if that was only traditional rings or not.)

Yes, the MK60e5 has the sensors built in, so you don't need them like you do with the MK60. Makes for a cleaner and cheaper install...if only those tone rings were not such a pain!

No, I didn't do the steering angle sensor, since it's not needed for the ABS functionality. I haven't spent much time on the Facebook page I reference, but I believe there is a guy who is trying so that he can get some added features (like traction control) and almost has it working. I thought about it as a sensor for my data logger and steering wheel angle, but to be honest, I doubt I ever do that. I have so many other more important items to work on first.

 

Thanks for the cat! Won't happen tonight, but I will create a dedicated MK60e5 thread in the next week. I'm hurting for time right now, but will do my best to get everything written up sooner than later.

 

Just popping in to say hi, it was nice seeing you again at AMP. I’ve got the red NB with the white hardtop.

 

Just dropping in to say that I rode in (and drove) the car at VIR and it's as good as everyone is saying it is. It feels like a Miata but just more... everything.