That throttle body coupler is so clean it looks photo shopped.

Imma gonna move this to the build thread section.

She runs! Drove it about 25 miles last night and everything seems ok so far. Got a bunch of tuning to do. I will post more info and pics later

nice. good job.

I think eventually you'll have to do something about the manifold being millimeters away from the mixing manifold - something tells me you'll melt the hose

Props on the quick progress.

You've done in a month what's taking me almost a year, and I'm still not done.

I haz shame

Few finished pics of the car after a much needed wash after it sat for 3 months! It's running strong and I'm not even in boost yet. Should be pretty gnarly once I add boost and get it tuned on the dyno.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1411348819

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1411348819

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1411348819

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1411348819

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1411348819

oh and I'll be putting an air filter on it too lol

Looks really nice. My red car also had pinstripes when I bought it.

Looking good. Air filter asap. In for results.

Great job getting this done so quickly, and cleanly to boot. Is that your 2Gb in the garage? You'll be way happier with the Miata :)

Thanks! It was alot of work but I'm just glad I get to drive it again.

Yes thats my 97 talon in the garage. Had it for about 6 years now, running on and off over those years. Built motor, turboed 420a. It's pretty quick but I started doing a bunch of work on it last July and never got it finished up and then bought my miata in December and haven't touched it since lol. I need to get her back up and running and painted.

Well I spent the weekend driving it around and then chasing a misfire on cylinder number 3. Turned out to be a loose injector clip :-/

After I got that figured out she was running like a champ the rest of the weekend until I got to the muffler shop Monday morning to mate the downpipe with the rest of the exhaust. As I'm pulling it on to the lift it starts running rough like it was on 3 cylinders again and sounded different. Anyways I let them finish and then pull it outside and pop the hood to find the number 3 spark plug and wire had popped right out! Threads in the head were shot. Shame on me for not checking those threads when I first received it from the guy on ebay.

That led to this and a spark plug repair kit. This is only temporary until I find a good deal on a 99+ head. Did all this yesterday.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1411492008

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1411492008

Got the threads fixed and put it all back together and couldn't get it running right for the life of me. I worked on it all night and finally gave up and then came back this morning with a clear mind. I must have redone and checked the timing 6 or 7 times and It was perfect everytime. Still ran on 3 cylinders. Took a break from that and changed the oil and oil filter and then went to think about it again.
When the spark plug came out the first time the spark plug wire had fallen on the exhaust manifold while they were doing my exhaust and melted some of the rubber insulation. Thought about it for a minute and thought, hey I bet its arcing to the cylinder head instead of the spark plug since electricity takes the path of least resistance so I grabbed an older "good" spark plug wire and put it on and fired it up. Ran like a dream......

Moral of the story, if your frustrated and can't get your car running right after working on it all day, take a break and grab a beer and then come back and look at it again. Lol

Everything seems to be running great again. Lets hope it stays this way so I can get on with tuning it.

Jeez you work fast...

I have a super awesome VVT head for sale btw ;)

I don't think my DIYPNP can control VVT, even if it could I'm pretty much out of outputs. I'm hoping I can find a 99 or 00 head here locally since it flows better but doesn't have VVT.

Where is "locally"?

Edited profile

Got about 100 miles on it now and have hooked up the wastegate finally. Still being easy on it with conservative timing and not going above 6k rpm. Logs showing around 6-7psi with only about 60% throttle and letting off around 5.5k. This is on a 8psi actuator. I think I need to adjust it a little more to add some more pre-load since I think it should be spooling quicker given the 11:1 compression and 1.8 engine. She pulls pretty good though, still running a bit rich but I am having a buddy of mine help me tune it tomorrow so hopefully we can get it dialed in and add in some timing. Oh and all this extra torque is amazing :jerkit:

Not sure if I like this hks ssqv. Its one of the cheap ebay ones that I grabbed off my other car since I had to redo the intercooler piping. It flutters with anything under about 5psi, above that and it seems to work ok. I think I will be going back to my type RS bov that I had on it before. It worked like a dream and sounded good to boot.

in for the durability of the CXRacing mani (been secretly looking at it, but didn't want to be a Guinea Pig).

its been fine so far for the first 100 miles or so but time will tell. So far so good though.

A couple issues I ran into with it. 1 the number 1 runner is so close to the water pump inlet that it was tough to get the hose on it. First start up it started melting the hose a little bit :facepalm: I have wrapped it in that DEI heat tape stuff as a temporary fix and its been fine so far but I'm going to have to take that water pump inlet off and cut it about an inch shorter and have it rewelded to get that lower hose away from the manifold.

Second issue was with their downpipe. It fits ok but I had to remove the little ear off of the transmission to get it to clear. It also very slightly hits the firewall at certain rpms. I haven't messed with that yet but I'm hoping I can turn it just a little bit since its a v-band downpipe so it will stop rubbing the firewall.

What spring(s) do you have in it? I got sick of trying to adjust the flutter out of mine and yanked it. Went back to a 1g DSM valve.

Solid advice. Glad you're getting it all dialed in.

I don't know, whichever spring came in it. It's adjustable so I just adjusted until I got it dialed in.

It would only flutter slightly if I shifted when it was at like 0.5-1psi

Hmm, ok thanks.

Finally got some decent tuning in with the help of my buddy ianferrell. We spent about 2 hours last night getting the idle dialed in and most of the fuel table dialed in better. It still needs a little bit of tuning in the upper rpm range but it feels pretty good.

Working on an issue with spool time. It's way slow. I'm thinking that the wastegate pre-load isn't high enough causing it to open slightly as soon as it starts building boost. This is my first time messing with internal wastegates. Anyone have any ideas on that?

I'll try and get a video up sometime this weekend.

pretty easy to tighten it. you want it just tight enough to hold the flapper shut....with maybe about 1-2mm worth of "pulling" required to connect the arm to the flapper.

also you need to hook up an mbc/ebc to properly gauge spool. with/without makes a HUGE difference on an IWG setup

I'll see if I can tighten it more.

Anyone know the proper way to hook this POS up?

Universal Adjustable Racing Turbo 30PSI Manual Boost Bypass Controller Kit Black | eBay

It's all I had laying around and so far it has made no difference lol
I think I'll end up making my own.

the proper way to install that is to chuck it in the track and then either buy or make a proper ball and spring mbc

Haha done and done. Just checking to see if anyone might have got it to work somehow.

I did extensive modification and got it to work. One click was waste gate pressure, the next was over boost.

Throw it away and get a standard ball and spring.

Ok I ended up making my own today. Haven't had a chance to test it yet, will do that here in the next couple hours.

I feel like an idoit! After trying everything to get the spool time to be quicker I finally figured it out today and man it's a whole other animal now.

Basically I used the old 5 bolt flange steel gasket between the turbo and the v-band adapter. It had a hole cut out where the wastegate hole in the turbine housing is when I had that weird external wastegate setup on the old engine. It is like this gasket.

T04E T3 T4 Turbo turbocharger Outlet Pipe Steel Flange Gasket Kit 5 Bolts MSRA4 | eBay

It had bent slightly at the small area between the small hole and the big hole allowing the exhaust gasses to escape behind the gasket since the internal wastegate actuator wasn't strong enough to flatten the gasket out. Took that gasket out and boom! Spools like it's suppose to and I also found out that my DIY boost controller works.

From now on I am going to check all the simple stupid stuff first if something isn't right. In this case it was a simple as removing a damn gasket. Oh well, I'm happy now.

you live and you learned. glad it was so easy

Car is still running good, except for when the clutch master cylinder decided to take a shit on the way home the other day. Brand new unit with only about 2000 miles on it. Got a free warranty replacement and installed it and all is good now. Guess thats what happens with a heavier pressure plate. Are there any good aftermarket master and slaves that can better put up with the increased pressure of an aftermarket clutch?

My diy mbc is enjoying spiking to 14 then settling back down to 8 then back up again so I ordered the ebc kit from diyautotune. It'll be at the house later when I get home and I hope to have it installed and get it dialed in over the weekend. Also have the sequential injection board to install, might as well do that at the same time. I'm out of outputs now though. I'm already running sequential ignition and could tell a pretty good difference going to that so I'm hoping this will do the same.

Almost forgot, no cat pics yet. My cat

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1412276869

I don't think anyone had to upgrade their clutch cyl here, and there are people running some serious pressure plates. I think you just got a bad one

Ok guys I need a little help.

Drove the car around last night doing some tuning and it was running fine. Went home parked it in the garage and then this morning when I started it and started driving it started making a clicking/rattling type noise ONLY when accelerating and ONLY when I got around 3000rpms. It sounds almost like HLA clatter.

I checked the oil and it looks ok, level was good too, oil pressure is good. I watched a couple videos of other miata's with rod knock and a spun bearing and it doesn't sound anything like that. This is a higher pitched knocking tapping sound. It didn't do it at all last night. Pulled the valve cover and I don't see anything that looks out of the ordinary. I'm going to change the oil/filter later and see if that helps.

If I drive normally and shift around 3k it drives fine, no noises.

Sounds like detonation/pinging/knocking. Have you done anything different? Fill up with different gas last night? Anything else?

I swapped CAS sensors because of a weird high rpm hesitation I was having. I put the sensor on and did the timing. It drove fine last night after I did that, it wasn't until this morning it started doing that. I did fill up with a couple gallons of e85 yesterday afternoon. Again it was fine all last night.

I will double check the timing again when I get home and also perform a compression check.

old cas coulda been all janky and now you might be running a ton more timing or something.

hard to say really. get videos or audio clips

This is a thing?

I have no idea.

I don't waste my time with terrible trigger setups :giggle:

Well I do plan on going with a crank trigger setup shortly. Oil pump is already tapped for it.

Ok the tapping noise seems to go away now after it has warmed up. I guess it's just hla clatter.

Still battling another issue with what feels like a hesitation once I get into boost between about 4500-5500 rpms. It just feels like it's bogging down a little but if I keep in it it will clear up eventually and start pulling really hard like it's suppose to. I'm kind of at a loss at this point.

I guess I should mention that I did a compression test.
Cylinder 1 - 255
Cylinder 2 - 255
Cylinder 3 - 215
Cylinder 4 - 255

Now number 3 is the same cylinder I had to repair the spark plug threads on. When I was doing the compression I could see and feel the air escaping around the spark plug hole which would account for the lower reading on that cylinder. I put a tablespoon of oil in it and did it again but the reading only went up 10 points and I also got the tester as tight as I could so I don't think it's a ring issue. Could this be causing the slight hesitation I am getting? I am already looking around for another head to throw on there.

Here is a screen shot of 2-3 pull. Note that the afr reading in the datalog is about .4 leaner than what the wideband shows and I have compensated for that so it's running .4 richer than what it shows in the graph.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1412875298

You could always JB weld it. Just a little on the threads of a spark plug and it should seal the gaps. It'll break loose once you try to loosen it.

I think it's more of an issue with it not sealing between the head and the heli coil. I would take it out and jb weld it but I'm pretty sure its stuck in there. I will try jb welding the threads on the spark plug just for shits and giggles though.

And, yes, low compression will cause a miss/hesitation -- especially at low RPM.

Those are really high numbers BTW. Do you have high compression pistons or are the units something other than psi?

It drives fine at lower rpm. No hesitation. Only really does it under boost.

Yes high compression pistons. Supertech 11:1

Ok it seems to have that hesitation/misfire around 4000rpm even when not in boost. At this point I have checked almost everything I can think of and I'm leaning towards the leaky heli-coil insert on number 3. Maybe I'm missing something stupid, any suggestions on what to check now?

I drove it last night for a little bit and when I was done the number 3 spark plug wire had popped out about 1 1/2 inches so I know it's leaking pressure.

Head swap. You don't have a lot of options here.

Already working on it. Found a head locally that I picked up yesterday. Got the head off the car last night and I don't see anything else that could be bad. Bottom end looks good from what I can tell. I'm about to start on swapping intake over and injectors, etc. Should have it all back together here in a few hours and I sure hope this fixes it. I will post a few pics of the internals in a minute so you guys can see if something doesn't look right.

Ok got it running with the new head and it's still doing the same thing. I'm thinking either an injector issue or coil issue. I guess it could still be a bottom end issue and I just don't want to accept it but I find it hard to believe that if it was a bottom end issue (ring, etc.) that it would drive with a slight hesitation/misfire all the time not just above 4000rpm like it does now.

I need help guys. This is driving me nuts

Did you do another compression test? You might be able to at least rule out a melted ring.

Did another compression check with the new head on there and now all 4 cylinders are showing 255. So it's not a ring issue. It's gotta be in the tune. Spark plugs are white which would mean it's running lean although it's at 12:1 in boost. This is e85 on a "pump gas" calibrated mtx-l wideband. Will try adding more fuel tomorrow to see if it gets better.

Ok.....after much dicking around and trying to fix the issue of falling on it's face around 4k rpm the problem is finally fixed. I tried just about everything I could think of to fix it along with several tests of the ignition and fuel system and they all checked out ok. Went to see my buddy Ian last night who has been helping me tune the car. Long story short, it ended up being to RETARDED of ignition timing! :noob:

I didn't want to really touch the timing until I got it running like it was suppose to since I was afraid of knock and all that with the high compression and boost and didn't want to blow up the new engine. However we started adding a couple degrees of timing here and there and it slowly started getting better. In the end we ended up adding about 10 degrees of timing from where it started. She pulls so much better now and does not break up at all. I'm a happy man. Now that I have a decent timing map it's time to start increasing boost and having fun. Also hit over a 1000 miles on the new engine yesterday and she's still nice and healthy.

very cool congrats man, glad you finally figured it out.

can't wait to see what this thing does at full tilt

Just be cautious, adding timing without knock detection or a dyno graph is bad joo-joo.

I have an electronic det can that I made that's currently on the car. Didn't hear anything yet. I will eventually get it to the dyno so I can get everything dialed in. I'll try and get up a video later of a 1-3 pull. It's fluctuating between 8-10psi right now but it's still pretty darn quick. Maybe I'll try a Virtual Dyno log just to get an idea of where its at.

Ok guys, it's been a while since I have done an update. Been busy with work and holidays but still been working on the car. As of today the car is still running strong! And my engine hasn't blown up yet so that's good. And I also installed a bigger Turbonetics turbo that I had laying around that I was going to use on my other car but never did.

I have had to pull the engine again due to stripping out 3rd gear in the transmission when merging onto the highway and rolling into the throttle. Right around peak boost it stuttered and made a bad noise, I thought the worse, threw another rod, spun a bearing. Pulled over immediately and the engine was still running fine but it had a very loud metallic clunk and it speed up with engine revs so I thought I had spun a bearing. But after a little more investigating I figured out it was the transmission as the noise would slow down and go away when I held the clutch in. I tried to limp it to a parking lot and it just got worse and the noises got louder eventually locking up the transmission completely. So I had it towed back to the shop were I spent the weekend pulling the engine and trans and cleaning the engine bay that had oil everywhere from a botched front main seal install that was leaking badly. Swapped in another 5spd for the time being since I already had it laying around. I got my eyes open for a 6spd which I know I'll need sooner rather than later.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1421175201

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1421175201

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1421175201


After that I drove her around some more trying to get the EBC to behave properly but still haven't great success. It hits target boost then immediately drops 5psi then comes back up and then fluctuates about 3-5psi then entire pull. Makes it nearly impossible to get it tuned. So I got fed up with messing with it and decided to make my engine bay look nicer so then this happened.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1421175201

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1421175201

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All Done

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1421175201

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1421175201

Also added old AeroDramatics needle caps and carbon fiber mirrors. Boy those mirrors are light!

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1421175201

http://i462.photobucket.com/albums/q...2267E2A393.jpg


Also got a GoPro from the girlfriend that I have been playing around with. I've got several videos I will upload later tonight so you guys can see the car in action. Its still only on 15psi but boy she's quick.

I had the same issue with tuning EBC. How are you going about tuning it? I followed the steps in this thread and there is a lot of good info there.

https://www.miataturbo.net/megasquir...s-80434/page2/

Damn, amazing what a wire tuck does. Nice work.

Thanks! It was a lot of work. About half way through I was second guessing myself lol. But over all it really wasn't to hard, just time consuming. I spent about 3 weeks doing that just working on it after I got home from work. Overall it probably took about 10 days to do the wire tuck but I'm glad I did. It looks so much cleaner and nicer now. Also got rid of the A/C evaporator and replaced it with the OEM plastic tube. Got rid of all the the airbag crash sensors. 3 in the front bumper and one under the dash, also got rid of the airbag computer and backup battery. I removed a total of about 40 pounds between all the little brackets, a/c evap, and airbag stuff. And the main fuse box is easily accessible since its right behind the glove box.

Now I need a new, nice steering wheel as I didn't put the airbag back in so right now its just the factory wheel with a big hole in it with all the bare metal exposed. Been wanting a new wheel anyways.