How RASKAR Ruined a Perfectly Good 94' M
 

Hey guys, I have lurked around here long enough and I am about to embark on my first engine rebuild for this car so I felt its as good a time as any to start a build thread!

So full but short back story is, I used to be a BMW guy and in college I met one of my now good friends who had a mint '90 NA at the time and he took me for a ride down some back roads at night, top down and I was hooked. I ended up buying a '95 that already had basic bolt-ons but slight rust and started doing track days.
Here is my '95 and my buddy's '90:
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...75382c1d38.jpg

So long story short, I sold this car and bought the car this build thread is about; my (what was a) mint and bone stock '94 M-Edition:

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...7aba7e839a.jpg
As nice as it was to drive a perfect stock miata, I already had the track day bug so mods started pretty quick. My first setup was Kosei K1s, Yonaka coilovers, Harddog Hardcore, and some Recaro Profi SPGs.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...5b9ef98ed4.jpg
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...aa705fc8dc.jpg
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...ae64092d30.jpg
Poor fitment of honda offset K1s withstanding, I think sometimes this is how I should have left the car. Stock ECU, reliable, yet still fun on track. Oh well, the power bug bites eventually, but in this case the induction noise bug bit first (thanks to my friend with a AE86 and their glorious noises), and I by chance acquired a set of these bad boys and proceeded to make stock power as unreliable as possible haha
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...b12ef3dedb.jpg
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...e3007d0ebb.jpg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...d20b36db0e.jpg
120whp never sounded more awesome. But 120whp was getting real frustrating running advanced HPDE and the street driveability with the ITBs wasn't great for the zero HP gain haha. But before I could start to accumulate boostie parts I made the fatal mistake of parking my car in one of my friends driveways and this happened:

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...91245ee746.jpg
Said friends mom backed out of garage and straight into my rear quarter. And so started the cutting up of what was a perfectly good '94 M. Replacing the whole quarter was much more that I wanted to spend on cosmetics so why not "fix" the problem but also make it a performance improvement? F L A R E S

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...7d69b9c87d.jpg
Flares with stock wheels for the meme:

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1ba15e40e2.jpg
I also found a hardtop and ended up deleting the softtop because RASKAR. I got a great deal on the top because it had flown off a car on the highway and was in terrible shape. I fixed it up best I could and it has been mostly fine since.
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...52e022bd82.jpg
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...5e26864701.jpg
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...88a7f838f5.jpg
Okay back to F L A R E S, we can't be running big wide boi flares with 15x7s so 15x10s it is:

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...f7ece6c9f0.jpg
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...0675aadcc7.jpg
The car looked sick but 15x10s with 245s on bolt-on HP wasn't great. So time for the boost. Acquired one of the first Kraken kits back in 2018 and went to work.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...6951925b97.jpg
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...08f3ccb203.jpg

Man was it sweet to go from 120whp to 210whp. The first time I hit 10psi to redline I was just giggling my ass off haha. I threw in a Supermiata reroute, upgraded from the Yonaka coils to Powertrix, and added this sick ebay engine damper since my 3" DP kept vibrating against my steering column on right hand turns.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...f450abe646.jpg
I entered into my first Gridlife Track Battle with it in this state and quickly realized that, A. My 210whp miata is still slow compared to the rest of street mod, and B. stock size brakes are no longer an option. This was the result of one full day of track battle on brand new pads and rotors:

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...8e1a871b8a.jpg
Although on a "good" note, I also managed to make my car sound like an F1 car:
Not sure how to actually embed a YouTube vid but there ya go, I some how grenaded a torsen with only 210whp. I ended up swapping to a full Mazdaspeed setup which is what is in the car right now. I also got a set of Wilwood dynalites and two piece rotors which fixed my massive brake overheating issue. I also just recently got the Wilwood 1" master and am going to do brake ducts this year.

I have been doing small upgrades and the car has been reasonably reliable the last few years but the blow-by had been slowly getting worse until my last trackday last fall I got black flagged first lap, first session for how much my car was smoking haha. I asked them if they cared and they said no, so I sent it and the car ran great all day, it just looked like a steam train.

Me and a buddy having some fun at Mid-O (Pre-Wilwood master, so brakes still iffy):
Well this is where we are at, the end result of my smokey last track day, and years of making double the factory HP on an unopened BP05:

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...5f15814477.jpg

I will post more about the progress of sourcing my spare engine and where that build is at soon, but this has already been a real long post so I shall leave you for now with some pictures of how the car sits currently, when it was running last year at least haha:

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...cd6db1d84e.png
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...2b85a5d63e.jpg
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...125ebc57a3.jpg

sub'd for more ruining

So the plan is for the engine thats in the car to get rebuilt with forged internals for future proofing. But for now I am going to just do a refresh on this BP05 shortblock that I picked up from a buddy, as that will hopefully get the car ready to rip sooner and certainly for less money (planning a wedding currently, so hard to justify too much extra money on my toys haha). Plus in the end I will have a good spare engine should something unfortunate happen again in the future. The block came out of a running car so hopefully I can just throw some rings and bearings in it and be ready to go. My buddy was in the process of refreshing it as a spare for his car so it has new crank seals and a new VVT oil pump already too, so that should save me some money which is nice. He also threw in a BP4W head for the low low price of F R E E, but I'm sure you can see why... not sure if its fixable or not.
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...3b834b6ebf.jpg
Doesn't look too shabby.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...9cffa23640.jpg
A little dirty and such, but not too bad right?

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...b6f5fe118c.jpg
Well this doesn't look quite right....

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...8cc5d604db.jpg
So yeah. Not great, but hey, it was free.

Not planning to use this head on this block so I'm in no rush with it. I am going to go pick up a nice looking BP05 head to pair with this spare block for now, and if I can get the BP4W head fixed it will go on the forged bottom end when that happens. For now the next plan is to get this block on the stand and go drive a few hours and pick up that head.

The valves look like someone cut them off, free is free tho! Keep up the good work

Thanks! And I agree that someone seems to have cut them, I'm mostly worried about the damage to the bowl. It looks like at least one of the valves got smacked into the head and there are indents in the bowl in a few spots and one of the seats is smashed and cracked. I have never repaired a head like this before so just wasn't sure if this was fixable or trashed.

I had a head with far worse damage repaired. Sold before I had a chance to use it, AFAIK it is still going - at least the buyer never reported any problems (he knew of the repair job). YMMV of course.

Much nicer head aquired. Honestly shouldn't require much work at all as it looks in great shape. With how nice the sealing surface looks do you guys think I should still have it skimmed or not? Going to atleast throw new valve seals in it.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...740354ae9.jpeg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...2cfa25739.jpeg
Also got the block up on a stand so I can start pulling it apart. And I got sidetracked as I do and made this table so I will have a decent place to do the rebuild.
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...7e241bcbbb.jpg
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...e670d339d2.jpg
I also got tired of working with no room in the garage so the 1.6 had been relegated to the backyard for now. Makes it a bit harder when I want to drive it, but having 2 cars, 2 motorcycles, 2 bicycles, and all my tools in a 2 car garage has been a huge pain for actually getting work done.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...10a35a2b4c.jpg

Made some more progress and got the bumper off so I can start cutting up the front of the car to fit the lovely new front bar from@matrussell122. Hopefully this will be another piece to the puzzle of keeping a turbo miata cool on track. I'm also thinking I'm going to relocate the oil cooler to the passenger side wheel well like how the track dog kit is as right now I have it mounted behind the radiator. https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...9c285f13da.jpg
Also has anyone else made the upper part of the core support removable? Since I'm already cutting the main part (yellow), if I also had the upper piece removable (red cuts) that would make pulling the engine super easy. Just not sure if making it bolt in/out would make the front too weak.
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...e93c69d651.jpg
Also finally drained the oil which I realized I forgot to do when I went to pull the oil cooler off, and I think I found where my rings went lmao

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...803aaf0ed3.jpg
Certainly makes me wish I had been running a magnetic plug this whole time as I only put this one in mid-last year. Next up is to get the core support actually cut and start tearing into the spare short block on my engine stand so I can get what parts I need for it ordered.

With regard to cutting the red area with the expectation it will make pulling the motor easier, don't forget that your radiator will be there. So unless you ALSO want to pull the radiator, it won't save you much by removing the area between the red cuts.

I've never seen someone pull a BP with the radiator in the car, is it even possible?

I've not pulled the radiator to pull mine out, I was unaware this was a thing folks considered necessary in order to get the motor out.

I also have never pulled a BP with the rad in the car, so once it comes to actually getting the engine out, nothing is bolted to that upper core support anyways. Props to you though for squeezing it out without ramming the front of your engine into the rad haha. But I have to drain the cooling system anyways to pull the engine and taking the rad out after that is just two bolts so no big deal to me for the extra room.

Interesting. My mindset is that it's not really that much additional labor to clear a fragile piece of equipment from harms way.

Yea, your logic is solid for sure, I just have a tendency of being a bit reckless with things I should be a bit more careful with. And sometimes my internal laziness actually ends up yielding more work. Fairly certain the only reason I was able to get it out without puling the rad was because I jacked the rear of the car way up with the front on the ground.

The lesson here is do the opposite of whatever I do, I never do things the easy way.

:rofl: It's not stupid if it works.

Well started digging into that short-block I picked up, and have ran into a few concerns. For context, this engine build was/is intended to just be a stop gap to get the car back up and running this season and then hopefully last me a year (at least :x:). Once that happens I intend to build the engine that comes out of the car with all the gucci parts I can't afford to just buy all at once right now for this build. So my intentions for this engine were to just do a stock refresh, new rings, bearings, and reseal everything. This short-block already came with a new VVT oil pump on it so thats a plus. But I would like your guidance, O wise users of MT.net, on if you think I should reuse these pistons or not. This bottom end supposedly came out of a good running car, but this wear does seem a little excessive to me, but what do I know haha.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...be6af20fc4.jpg
The bores seem fine to me, I can still see the crosshatching clearly.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...fad4bc5e40.jpg
And then on to other woes; whoever took this front crank seal off last just went to town and really gouged the shit out of the sealing surface for the front seal on the crank. Do you think if I sanded it down smooth it would keep it from leaking?

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...c861944a9a.jpg
And as you can also probably somewhat see from that picture, they keyway is a bit fucked up too which was a surprise find to me on a 1.8 crank, but here we are.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1acf619b3e.jpg
So I now need to decide if these pistons are worth reusing, and same with the crank. Any advice from those of you with more miata engine building experience than I have is greatly appreciated :likecat:

Got another set of stock pistons that look a lot better to me that the ones I pulled out of this short block. Next step is to find a local machine shop to hot tank and deck the block and head. If anyone has any recommendations of machine shops they have used in the Cleveland area let me know https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...3d87896e4a.jpg

Well I have done what all responsible miata owners do and spent money from my engine build budget and bought a 3rd miata haha. This started because I helped my buddy pick up an ITA na6 with my truck and trailer, and one thing leads to another and I bought this super clean shell he has had lying around. I don't plan to do anything to it for now as I really do want to get this car done, but it was a good deal that I didn't want to pass up on. Here is the ITA car that my buddy got a screamin' deal on:

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...5615b23346.jpg

And here is said shell that I took off his hands:
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...499a18780e.jpg
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...b6e874e019.jpg

But, I didn't completely neglect the '94 in this transaction as I made a package deal with him for the shell and his 9Lives Street W A N G that he had on another one of his cars. So now at least the racecar can look sweet while it sits there broken :drool:

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...5c2ec7d6fe.jpg

I'm guessing the buddy who acquired the ITA Miata is Jacob - just met him last night, picked up a few parts to fix my car after an off-track excursion at Nelson.

That's one good looking shell you've got there - do you know its story? Also, aside from GridLife, which organizations do you run with? I moved out here last year and have mainly played with GridLife and AutoInterests.

Correct haha, he is a great dude. And I only know what I was told from Jacob about someone using it for body panels to fix another car that they were attached to and wanted to fix instead of just using this chassis, but thats really all I know. And same as you, I have only ran Gridlife and AutoInterest. I need to update this thread as I have the car back running again but have just been super busy with my wedding this year, which is why I didn't manage to make any track days this year at all unfortunately. But now with the car running again and winter approaching to get the car back up to snuff, I should be back out there again next year and maybe we will bump into each other at an event.

Alright, so a lot has happened in the last ~5 months so this will be a long one to try to fully bring this up to date. So not strictly car news, but the reason getting this car together took so long was a good bit of time and money was going to our wedding! I am now officially a married man and I had a great time at the wedding, but it is also nice to be able to now "go back to normal" and focus on the car again haha

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...4cd105655a.png
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...d3c8d40398.png
Having the car and horses there was her idea and created a bit of a crunch getting the car back together as I was getting down to the wire, but I made it happen and everything went great. We got to show off both of our dumb expensive hobbies for everyone haha but everyone thought it was really cool. BUT, enough of all that as you are here to see past me scramble to put my car back together in time for all of this. So when I last left you all the car still had the 'sploded engine in the chassis and I had 50% of an engine I wasnt sure I was going to use on a stand. As I was debating what to do, I found another engine for sale up in Michigan but this was a full, unopened longblock out of a running car. It was a pretty good deal and would be the fastest path to getting this car running again and you can't have too many BPs laying around so I went and picked that up and gave it a quick cleaning and paint. I also replaced all the gaskets, seals, timing belt, wather pump, etc as you do while its out of the car.
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1e42b58b5f.jpg
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...c83ba40802.jpg
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...a75789f33a.jpg
I also grabbed this nice SuperDamper from @Twibs415 which will hopefully help keep this engine happy. I got the other engine out of the car and this gave me a great opportunity to clean the hell out of the engine bay as it hasn't been cleaned in years and had gotten very grimy from years of track abuse. Some degreaser and power washing later and it was cleaner than I had seen it in years.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...cc4338e55c.jpg
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...7776d8618e.jpg
Yum

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...6b32b68f46.jpg
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...8653530a48.jpg
I forgot how blue it was under there haha

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...7e6ad8a49c.jpg
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Also I forgot I got the front cut out for the airflow bar which should hopefully help a lot with cooling on track. I don't seem to have any pictures of actually putting the engine into the car, but I'm sure you all can imagine. Here I bought a small auto trans cooler that I made into a power steering cooler. The stock big looped line had no where to be mounted to now that I cut the front core support, this will hopefully not only keep the fluid cool (not that I was having any issues with it) but it also got the lines out of the front of the car. I will duct air over to the cooler from the mouth and it will just vent into the wheel well.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...892570da1f.jpg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...78f8b82a6a.jpg
After this it was just throwing everything back onto the car to get to the first start. My work has a car show during their yearly summerfest and I wanted to take my racecar as it gave me a good goal of a solid date to have the car running by. I got everything buttoned up without any major hiccups. I did some other non-engine work like rebuilding the rear axles, some exhaust work, and fluid changes. I will made a separate post for the axles which can hopefully provide some good info to other owners of mazdaspeed axles who want to rebuild them as I had a very hard time getting any info on what boots do or dont fit. I got the engine charged with oil and coolant and then had a successful and uneventful first start. I got to this point the night before the car show and since I A. had plates multiple years out of date, B. not driven the car at all yet, and C. could not get my laptop to connect to the MS so I was just rocking the exact tune I had on the last engine with no changes, I decided to just trailer the car like the racecar it is. We do this parade around the center before parking for the car show and it drove alright for having zero new tuning for this "new" engine (even though its just another stock internal BP05) so I was happy enough with that for its first drive.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...f7fa7a9b7f.jpg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...723f87a830.jpg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...8bc7927a87.jpg
The miata was definitely a little out of place against all the other classic muscle cars and vintage crowd, but there was at least one other roadster friend.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...239924b9a0.jpg
And that brings us mostly up to date. I figured out my MS connection issues, it was just a matter of finding the right drivers as I updates to a windows 11 laptop which started my troubles. The car now runs great, still on ~10psi to try to keep the stock internals happy while I hopefully have time/money to do a forged build on one of the bottom ends I have. Hopefully we can get some decent weather for a bit longer up here so I can put a few more miles on it before the snow comes, then focus on getting the car fully ready to go back to the track next year. ALSO.... since I didn't have enough to do I ended up selling my mariner 1.6 and buying an '03 Shinsen as my new "daily" miata. Maybe I will make a build thread for that car too, but it will just become a basic bolt-on street car that *may* see a track day, who knows....

As I bought it a few months ago:

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...242e8a2b34.jpg
How it sits now (Konigs, Vmaxxs, Harddog Hardcore, RS Lip) :

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...0181fcc663.jpg

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...35a421be62.jpg
I'm NOT a big fan of this for multiple reasons:

1. The hose lines are routed where your RB Sway Bar Mount Reinforcing Blocks and Bolts should be - you SHOULD have these because the OEM bracket is prone to shearing off, starting at the leading edge just under the 2x OEM bolts.

2.It looks like your mounting Alu L-bracket is just bolted onto the chassis rail by those top 2x bolts on the right, the bracket has been cut to allow the bend and you've zip-tied the cooler to it.
There's a LOT of weight hanging after that Alu bracket bend point and it will be vibrating constantly, stressing the crap out of the bend point.
If it's a 3mm Alu L-bracket you MAY get away with it but less than that is a time bomb that you MUST check every time BEFORE you get on the track.
Remake the bracket from steel OR make sure that the L-bracket section that holds the cooler is also mounted securely to the chassis (you could use zip-ties for that section through the chassis rail, it just needs to help hold the weight of the cooler so that it's NOT all bourn by the ALU bracket at the bend point)

3. The location of the cooler is wrong too, it's parallel to any airflow, even at low speeds, so air will just flow around it front to back, NOT through it.
If you want to mount the cooler here, you need to create a duct for it that fully seals to the cooler and the other end is exposed to a good input-air source so that all of it is channelled through the duct
I mounted my oil cooler in the wheel well on the opposites side - consider doing something similar (see post #5 of post-pictures-your-oil-cooler-routing-65000)

FYI: in the first picture of post#5 in the link above, you can see my sway bar mount's reinforcing block and it's front-most bolt

Keep up the DIY fab-work and posts, it's always good to see what others think, especially if they spot problems or have improvements (that's what I do, I DON'T want my shit to break and I DON'T know everything - yet :P ).

I appreciate the feedback Lokiel,

1. I didn't know this was a huge concern. I have heard of the reinforcing blocks but I don't personally know anyone who has had this failure, and I have been tracking this car for ~7 years and also haven't had an issue. But maybe I have just been lucky. I will certainly look into it though as it seems like cheap insurance against a potential failure.

2. This I totally agree thinking about it more. The cooler itself is extremely light, but that is not considering the weight of the fluid in it as well, but my thought when I made it was that it would be fine considering the light weight of the cooler. I think the bar would be adequately stiff in the horizontal axis but it will probably bend/vibrate in the vertical axis quite a lot. I will attach the front of the bracket to the frame rail and then monitor it. If it seems fine after each session like that then cool. If not I will redesign the bracket entirely.

3. Very aware haha. If you look at the other picture of the cooler you can see where the air path will be. In the pictures I hadn't reassembled any of the front of the car so none of my ducting was in. I was going to run a small naca duct off the side of my radiator ducting and feed directly onto the inboard side of the cooler which will then just vent into the wheel well. I have the Track Dog oil cooler that is going in on the other side that is mounted just like yours is and will get ducted from the other side of the rad ducting. I didn't have any issue with boiling p/s fluid with the stock "cooler" line so I don't think I will have any issue with this setup, but worse case I can make a copy of the oil cooler setup you/I have.

I appreciate the well thought out input, and totally agree that I also don't want my shit to break either and definitely welcome the feedback! :likecat:

It is good form to give a cat to someone who provides helpful advice.

The sway bar bracket shearing is more prominent in NBs with larger sway bays so you might be OK in an NA - it is cheap insurance though.

You are 100% correct, my bad haha
Gotcha, but yeah I agree, for ~$50 it seems dumb to not do.

Great updates. Are you me? Turbo NA miata dual duty car with a street wang and NB daily driver? Sweet!

It's just a great combo. You can't just have one Miata... right?