Breakers and wire showed up, So now it's time to get on the wiring in earnest.
Got 2 30A breakers, as the volt has 30A fuses for the fans, figured that was the "right" move.
Screwed them to the firewall area with their supplied screws. I'm not too happy with their screws, will probably replace with Rivnuts in the future but for now, they hold.



Then got the IC mounted back up, the bumper back on, and the undertray and fenderwells in.
Gotta say, this turned out a lot cleaner than I had feared when the Volt fan idea hit me.



Back on the ground and ready for a heat cycle


One thing I installed in the garage soon after buying the house, was an exhaust "extractor"
I usually say, whatever, it's just some CO2, CO and NOx's, but it's also poison and I'd like to enjoy my car longer.
A simple drier vent, dryer hose, and a pipe.






ran a couple heat cycles, setup the Maxx Correctly for PWM vs temp vs Speed vs AC (4D tables for the win), and it's working quite nicely.

I'll get some street driving done, and test the fans at speed.
With the factory fans I could see the DP increasing when the fans were on any speed above 30mph.
I expect that speed will now be MUCH faster due to the volume these pull at full tilt.

 

I like this fan setup a lot. Pretty awesome! Sorry if I missed it, but do you need a solid state relay to PWM these? I haven't been able to find information and when one of those is needed.

The exhaust setup is nifty haha. Might have to do that someday.

What strut bar is that?

 

Depending on your ECU you may or may not need a SSR to run these. Most Standalone's can do PWM (sinking) fairly easily, and that's what these need.
A quick ESP32 or Arduino with SSR could be fabricobbled up to run these off a normal low/high input as well.


RGR Ultra billet and carbon bar. #1 of 25.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/995306065482440

 

Got it, the SSR are only for ECUs unable to do PWM. Thank you.

Beautiful piece. Thanks.

 

Wow, I've kinda dropped the ball on this with updates.

Ran the car the rest of the AutoX season with varying results.
Local with a 2.5 swapped NC and I were going back and forth for the wins. By the end of the year he edged me out of first in XB by 3 points. But I had him in raw by 6.3%.

As a summary of the season:
I was regularly in the top 5-8 raw I was always ~15 pax.
I feel the 3.6 gear, though fun, just didn't solve the shifting problems that the car had previously with the 4.1's.
I found myself constantly shifting anyways between 2nd and 3rd, only very rarely having a course where it didnt' make sense to shift to 3rd and just rode the limiter and more often trying to keep it in 3rd and dropping out of boost.
Power just can't be there with this car, unless I upgrade many things: injectors, rods, turbo, header, intake, intercooler. I'm near or at the limit on all of this.
Even if I had more power, I don't have more space for rubber without pulling the fenders or cutting. both of which I refuse to do with this car.

Confronting these limits and with XB pax getting worse for the coming season, I have decided that it'd make more sense to go back to AST, and use that as my excuse for not further bastardizing the car.

Things I need to change to get back to AST:
Rear gear (pull 3.6, reinstall 4.1)
Driveshaft (pull aluminum, reinstall steel)
Fans (pull Volt Fans, remodify mounts for OE fans)
Seats (seats need to be balasted up wo 25lbs again)
Tuning (tweak tuning to use the narrowband as safety, remove wideband, revert to OE MAP/MAF hybrid base load calculations)

The biggest hangup with going back to AST is again, the power.
I'm at max injector at higher RPM where the turbo can make boost. So the only thing I can do is try and build boost sooner, and maybe rev it out longer.

I Finally have what I consider the "final" design for a Header.
And since I have the scanner and a spare turbo elbow, designed a replacement for that as well.

Fully equal length runners, smoothly morphing from the oval at the head to the circle at the turbo.
Has EGR Capability (needed for AST, as well as might be able to do some trickery with the intake flapper valves and Fresh Air antilag)
Doesn't interfere with the Headlight Washer bottle. Is really tight to the coolant lines, but should fit.
Does interfere with the OEM turbo outlet, but my setup doesn't route that way anyways.
It's going to be a huge pain to install (already printed up a couple mockups to test) but at least it CAN be installed.






Elbow is a divorced setup to hopefully improve flow through the wastegate (a big sticking point for people who in the past have gone to a "bellmouth" style elbow)


I have found a company to print them for me and am super excited to get them installed and see what all improvements they may or may not provide.

Another change is, for Christmas my SO and I gifted each other a Tillett seat.



They showed up (sans pads) and I'm super excited to get them installed. And during which I can do the necessary ballasting.
I will be upgrading the driver harness to 6pt and moving the current harness to the passenger side (previously only had the OEM belt)
If anyone wants a set of super sweet QRT Carbon seats with mounts. These are up for sale.

 

Good job with the results in XB!

The manifold looks very cool. Very interested in seeing the results.

And **** yeah on the Tilletts!

 

Can't wait to see how that manifold turns out. I've been debating trying to print an elbow for my turbo outlet since the silicon piece that Kraken provides collapses a bit. Which company did you end up going with to get it printed?

 

What? you're pulling enough vacuum to collapse a coupler after the turbo? that would indicate to me the turbo is doing worse than nothing, which from your vids is definitely not the case.


As for the metal printing. Company called HyperForge 3d in PA. They were very responsive and helped with a bit of the DFM needed to finalize the design.
I'm just hoping the part quality is as good as their support.

 

Poor explanation on my part. The elbow just comes off at a weird angle and the IC piping pulls on it, which causes it to fold over a bit. It's on the compressor outlet, so no worries of it collapsing from vacuum, but it doesn't seem like a great design.

 

I saw EVO School was doing A day1 and Challenge event local to me, and decided to sign up, giving me a deadline to get the car on the ground and race ready. (as well as the tow pig serviced and runnable)
I swapped the diff back to OE 4.10. and reinstalled the steel Driveshaft.
while the exhaust was out I modified the Supermiata adapter pipe with a 2.5" flange in preparation for the 3d printed turbo elbow.


Got the harnesses mounted, using the rear seat base mounts for the anti-submarine 6pt and adding weldnuts to the tunnel on each side.


mounted the seats using some 2" barstock turned down by a friend of mine to ballast up to the 25lb requirement.



I was unable to find a good solution to mount the OEM buckle clips to the inside.
(I'm considering mounting them to unused holes in the seat mounts, but that just doesn't feel like enough strength if the worst happens.
I'd love suggestions here, what have you done? )
I decided to wait on swapping the fans back till after the school, no classing at the school and I ran out of time.


The tow pig got a lot of maintenance:
Full transmission service including pulling the valve body and installing a shift kit to hopefully fix the TC shudder.
Oil change
Serpentine belts, idlers, tensioners, fan pulley/bearing.
Shocks all around
floor insulation, 3/4" OSB floor, and coincell(not glued down yet) in the "cargo" area.



This past weekend was the school.
Really if you do autox, and have never done an EVO school, I'd suggest it.
I've been autoxing for ~15yrs now, I should know the ropes. BUT, the school showed just how much of the basics I was never able to teach myself.
First day the only issue with the car was loading up with too much fuel on launch, would stumble and bog unless I launched just right.
did some tweaking in the tune that evening and was excited for the second day.

Evo Challenge school is just that. A challenge.
A National champion drives your car, sets a time, and pushes you to beat it.
I had Eric Stoltz as my Instructor, and honestly felt pretty good with my luck on the draw of instructors, as i've raced with him at a couple events (never same class).
he knows miatas and is very quick.
He set a time in the car after 3 runs (in my car, he had MANY runs on the course already) and then it was on me to beat it.
First run, 2s slower. I'd been too aggressive with the brakes in one area, and completely blew the slalom section.
2nd run, 0.5s slower. fixed the braking issues and was able to find patience in the slalom, but was too hesitant on the end keyhole.
3rd run, 0.3s faster. Patient in the slow sections, aggressive where it was needed. Felt VERY good.
4th run, 0.6s faster, but coned in slalom and keyhole, wasn't patient enough and I paid for it.

After the event I asked Eric if he held back at all during his runs.
He said that he was trying to get everything he could out of the car.
In My experience a passenger in the car is worth ~1s over a ~45 second run.
So, technically/logically I didn't quite beat Eric in the car. but the clock says otherwise, and I feel good with how I was driving.

Another member of our region came out to spectate and grabbed some pics of the car while I was working.





All in all, the school was a great way to brush off the rust from the offseason, and give the car a good shakedown.
I'm excited for the season.

Now to get the fans out for @SimBa to use, and sit (im)patiently waiting for the header and turbo elbow to arrive.

 

Those seats One of those photos also reminded me how precise that shifter felt.

You're still using the Maxxecu as a piggyback right? Did you ever convert that over to full standalone?

 

Oh yeah, the seats are amazing. and will be moreso once the pads arrive.

Yes, still using MaxxECU as piggyback. I really like leaving the EVAP and Alternator control to the OEM Ecu. Saves me from fueling problems, charging problems, as well as not wasting outputs from the piggyback for mundane systems.

 

Small update.
Got the fans out for SimBa and modified the OE fans to fit the double pass Supermiata rad. Rerelocated the thread bungs to mount the fan, and reinstalled.
Clearance is same as it was with the OE Rad, and essentially the same as the Volt Fans were.
Note, I didn't pull the Volt fans for any problem with them. They are awesome, pull a TON of air, and load up smoothly without affecting idle. BUT, they aren't AST legal, so they had to come out.





And I found something for the towpig last weekend I couldn't pass up.



3000lb rated and extends a full 10'.
This makes loading up the van a ton easier (when the trailer is empty). and I'll take the reduction in interior room for the sheer utility this offers.
After all, I use the van about as much to haul stuff around for the house, as I do pulling the car to races.

And I'm still impatiently waiting on the header/elbow to arrive.... Supposed to ship out sometime this week, same as the Tillett pads.

 

The last 3 days have been very nice to me by way of parts arrivals.

Firstly, Sunday the pads for the Tilletts showed up.
I was out helping a friend with his AC system at the time, but immediately when I got home I drug them out to the garage to see how they looked.




I'm super happy with the pads, but the long delivery time makes me almost wish I paid extra for the Headrest pad to match.... we'll see if in the future it annoys me enough to pull the headrests and have recovered.

then today I got a delivery notice from the 3d printer. Rushed home from work (before a dentist appointment. bleh) and quickly unwrapped.
HOLY CRAP IT"S REAL (i've been designing a header for this car for YEARS now... and it's physical in my hands... surreal)









Got back from the dentists and got to welding.
3d Printed 316 stainless welds just like any 316 stainless. I was kinda worried that it'd be super dirty and have porosity problems, but nope, brush it, clean it, and welds very nice.








now that it's welded, it's time to rig it up in the mill and face each flange, (and the flanges for the turbo elbow).

 

3D printed stainless steel turbo manifold is the ****