Jeff's Build
 

Well, my stuff from BEGi came in today TOTALLY unexpectedly. I thought Corky still had some stuff to do to my turbo before it was ready. All I can say is, all the folks at Bell must be drinking their powerthirst, because as far as I'm concerned, they win at everything forever!
This has totally lit a fire under my ass to get my megasquirt / LC-1 installed, . The MS is complete with a harness just sitting on my worktable, but I dont think it'll be there much longer :). I plan to start the install on thursday.. Stay tuned

Pics for car porn addicts

My seriously awesome downpipe. They even included a free wideband bung in there -> awesome
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_tMYIeupe-9Q/Sb...0/P3160403.JPG


My wee little baby T3. I figure for now, this'll do. Plus these particular turbos are SUPER cheap. I think I paid 160 shipped for this, so it wouldn't be a big deal to pick up another and ship it off to gpopshop for a little "upgrade".
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_tMYIeupe-9Q/Sb...0/P3160404.JPG

Final pic of the day, the kit laid out. Seriously, it was so well packaged and complete that it blew my mind, stuff I thought about picking up separately like the air filter and heat wrap were just hangin out in the box. HOLY FREAKING CRAP IM SO EXCITED:yippee:
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_tMYIeupe-9Q/Sb...0/P3160405.JPG

as far as getting started with MS and LC-1...just jump in!

It's really the only way you'll end up getting done.

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_tMYIeupe-9Q/Sb...0/P3160404.JPG

awww, that's a cute little guy.

MS is good to go out of the box. You can probably drive it with one of the DIY maps just fine. Its great to start tuning NA because you basically must try to blow it up, rather than with the turbo where things can get ugly, quick.

The LC-1 gets the the same advice every time...solder every ground together on one ring connector including the computer, and use a power source that stays hot during cranking. Some have issues with either, some don't...but do it right from the start and you will not waste any time.

Pimpness!

Good luck home dawg, just take the plunge and start a.s.a.p.

On the LC-1 I used my power in for the ECU. You are doing all of your soldering there anyhow, and it makes life easy.

I was thinking about doing that, just soldering in a power source via spade connector off of my standalone harness, is that what you mean? I

Good luck with the install. I can't wait to start mine.

I start spring break (UW) this weekend if you need a hand.

Yeah, same deal.

I just skinned my power wire on the harness Braineack built and soldered on the LC-1 power wire.

A local friend who's built and fixed a few MSs told me that was the way to go, so I listened.

I'll save pulling stuff from the fuse box for stereo installs. It is also hard to test these to see if they are hot while cranking by yourself. Meanwhile, you know the ECU stays hot during cranking.

Good Luck, i hope everything fits.

Figured I'd give a status report. The megasquirt / LC-1 is installed and running. My gauges and the megasquirt agree on everything and I got my damned resets fixed. Whenever I can drag my lazy ass out of bed tomorrow, I figure I'll go tackle some road tuning. Hopefully if I can get a half ass drivable tune on it, I'll take a few vacation days in the next couple of weeks and install my stuff from BEGi and my clutch and take the car down to Pina Motorsports and get it dyno tuned.

Andre will take great care of you, he's very good at what he does.

I heard great things about Pina back when I still had my DSM. When I first moved here I was going to rebuild my motor again and I needed a core. I called them up and Andre was super cool about trying to help me source a core. I'm assuming thats who tuned your setup?

He's the only person I trust with my car period. Besides tuning, he also a great fabricator. On the 11th of April there's a Miata dyno day if you are interested, check his website for details.

Update time. Car is officially driving and I must say, I'm INCREDIBLY impressed with mlv and VE analysis. After around 15 minutes of cruising around, it drives pretty well for putting around residential areas, it does have pretty bad idle drop issues though. Tomorrow I'm going to take it on a short trip from my garage to my apartment and get some cruise/wot tuning done on the highway.

Also, I talked to Andre from Pina motorsports today about getting some stuff welded up. Basic idea is to cut the throttle body flange off of a 1.6 manifold and weld on a flange for a 1g dsm throttle body. Throttle body that is made for turbo applications + full range TPS = win.(plus i have a pile of them at a friends garage back home)

Pics:

My LC-1 Wiring. This sits right under my center console. It is fed and grounded to my megasquirt harness. I picked the terminal block up at home depot for like 5 bucks.
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_tMYIeupe-9Q/Sd...0/PIC-0057.jpg

My tuning cables: I plan on smoothing out that hole and putting some trim over the edges to decrease the ghetto-ness
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_tMYIeupe-9Q/Sd...0/PIC-0062.jpg

And finally, my gauges installed into the eyeball vents. The DB-Blue gauge is such a tight fit that you dont even need to mount it with anything, just press it in.
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_tMYIeupe-9Q/Sd...0/PIC-0063.jpg

Holy crap, I just realized that I never updated this. The car is mostly finished up now. I still need to clean up some wiring around my injectors where I added resistors, But it runs and drives great! I'm running around ~5psi right now until I get my clutch installed, at which point I think I'll turn it up to around 8-10. Enough chatter, picture time!
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_tMYIeupe-9Q/Sj.../Photo0013.jpg

Sweet, sweet FMIC goodness.
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_tMYIeupe-9Q/Sj...014-blur-1.jpg

And I know, before anyone says anything... yes I DO need to clean my car :P.