Jeff's build on the cheap aka. take 2
 

So I know what some of you are thinking : "Get your ass back in the shop and build me det-cans bitch!" I work on those every night after getting home from my 'real' job and they're getting done...Trust me ;). I do this during my very occasional 'me' time.

I've been working on this every other Saturday for the past couple of months. I realized a while ago that I wanted more from my car. Having that little extra push at 10 psi was nice, but I don't just want a fun car, I want a SCARY car. Like "HOLY FUCK I JUST SHIT OUT MY INTESTINES" type fast. I've driven JayL's car and that is the kind of rush I'm interested in. My car will likely never see the track, and most of my commute is on the highway, so I'm perfectly alright having a highway queen with a ludicrous powerband. Plus needing to putt it around on closer city streets would probably keep me out of trouble anyway :P.

Problem: I don't bleed cash, and contrary to what some might think, I don't make a whole lot from the det-cans after you factor in materials and shipping, so I need to make this work on a budget.

Solution: Build the car a little bit...against the grain and do my homework to make sure I get the most for my money. I'm shooting for 300whp by the end of the summer and I still need to DD the car so reliability is an absolute must. Oh, and I will be avoiding meth injection as I just don't like the idea of an additional consumable on a street car. I should also point out that I will be doing this with a 1.6. Save the lectures, I'm not a retard. I know how much easier this would be with a 1.8 but I enjoy a challenge and the novelty of 175+hp/liter makes me hard :D.

Taking all of this into account, I came up with a few conclusions:

1. My little pea shooter t3 would need to be replaced -> see below
2. The stock 5spd will be replaced by a 6 speed
3. Forged rods are a must
4. Lower compression pistons would be needed to avoid using meth.
5. The 6" rear end (which held up very well thus far) would be going bye bye.
6. I'm going to need a better exhaust/DP/manifold

#5 was an easy one. I put out a WTB on a local miata board and got a 4.10 open diff for super cheap. With a little help from JayL and 90GTK450 that got swapped out on the quick. My speedo is now much more accurate :). I plan on looking for a clutchpack LSD in the near future to help with my awesome 1 wheeling in the rain. I'm avoiding the standard torsen as I fear for its life at 300whp. I have considered an OBX torsen, but since I decided to shoot for more power I don't feel like rolling the dice on that one. If the clutchpack will hold up to Jason's abuse, I'm sure it will take mine just fine.

#1 came about much faster than I had originally planned for. I was hoping to get a motor build and into the car, and then replace all of my hot parts at the same time. Well as luck would have it, the fasteners on the turbine side of my current turbo failed and caused a massive exhaust leak when they heated up leading to really shitty spool. Now, I could have paid 17 bucks for new hardware and clasps (the turbine wheel wasn't damaged) but to be honest, the thought of pulling my turbo completely off and apart only to put the same small turbo right back on just isn't that appealing to me. With that in mind, I decided to just go ahead with the upgrade and deal for the time being with my BEGi manifold/dp. I settled on a 50 trim t3/t04e chinacharger as being pretty good for my power goals. It is a little on the large/laggy side, but overall I'm very pleased with its performance.

My setup before the swap:
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_tMYIeupe-9Q/S5...0/P3070019.JPG

And After:
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_tMYIeupe-9Q/S6...P3280005-1.JPG

Much cleaner as I was able to ditch my water lines and the BEGi "octopus" and go to a very simple oil feed/drain. I plan on making an inlet tube but for now the filter will suffice.

Oh, and I had to "clearance" a little bit for the compressor with a 20lb sledgehammer :/ (thanks to TurboRoach for all of the help with that install)

"clearance" I plan on going at this with a sander and some paint to avoid rust in the future. I'm a bigger fan of this than cutting it out and welding it though.
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_tMYIeupe-9Q/S6...P3280006-1.JPG


Like I said, so far, I've been very pleased with the turbo. It has good street manners and I'm seeing 10psi at roughly 4200. I'm starting to get the itch to turn up the boost though, so to fix #3 & #4, I started shopping for engine internals.

Background:
I come from the world of DSMs originally. For those of you who aren't familiar with 4g63s, the strongest of the dsm engines (so called '6 bolt') came equipped with 7.8:1 cr pistons and connecting rods that have been known to handle in excess of 400AWHP in street driven vehicles (500+ has been recorded but I cant vouch for longevity). The super low CR means that you could run obnoxious amounts of boost on pump gas safely without meth which is extremely appealing to me.

Turns out the b6t was equipped with just such a CR, so I snagged a set from a member on this board for a very reasonable price :D. Now I know that I'm going to have a gutless wonder when out of boost, but I simply don't care. They fit my goals and I'm going to run with it for better or worse. :
http://hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net/hs379....4_610360_n.jpg
Strange thing though, These aren't regular b6t connecting rods. From what the seller told me, they came out of a mercury capri, so perhaps there was some difference there?

That just left connecting rods. After doing some homework I settled on some Cat Power rods. I'm not going to go into reasoning as I don't want to step on toes but if you do some googling, you might be surprised.

Rods looking sweet:
http://hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net/hs426...._7446835_n.jpg

Wrist pin fitment is good:
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-...2_649720_n.jpg

Lucky for me (but not so much for my friend) a buddy of mine just blew his headgasket and has decided to build his motor. The engine has around 80k on it and should provide an excellent starting platform if the block is in good shape. This means I get to build my motor on the side to avoid downtime. All I have to do is give him my block when I'm done so he can use it for a core (he doesn't really care that much about down time, the car isn't his DD anyway)


And that's where I currently stand. I'll be installing a 190HP + new filter this week so I can turn the boost up a little bit at the Dyno day I'm going to this weekend (The DCs on my 450s are in the high 80s and that just doesn't seem right @10psi, I think my pump is dying). I'm hoping to make 230+ and I don't think that I'll have a problem doing that, even on Pina's heartbreaker of a dynodynamics. I'll be sure to update with more pictures/info as the build progresses :D.

Oh, and originally I had entitled my build thread on my local board "Go faster | break even" and I was going to try to accomplish all of this for under $1500 dollars after factoring in selling off my extra parts. I have since come to the realization that there is being cost effective, and then there is being cheap. I'm not cheap and I don't like wasting money on my car only to replace broken parts 2 months later.

what are your lacking for your build?


looks good so far!

Awesome! I've considered going against the grain and getting some forged stuff for my 1.6 but i'm just not sure yet. I like torque and displacement is the best way to get it.

What is this "local board" you speak of?

Mazdasnw.com

Cool folks, but not very technically oriented. They are like a much less DOOORRIIFTO CR.net. Lots of tint/paint/lowering, not enough performance related stuff.

good shit. so a t3/t04e chinacharger is essentially a bit smaller than a 30r? I'm looking for a 30r or a 30r alternative, how are you liking this turbo?

Location and price for rods?

Prepare to shit yourself when he PMs you.

Thanks :) .Aside from a better manifold/downpipe/exhaust (DP/Exhaust are in the works) just the mundane shit like injectors/FPR and consumables like bearings/rings. I think my 6 puck will probably hold.

I like it a lot. Build quality is excellent and spool is acceptable (yours would be better due to the extra displacement). I'm finding that larger journal bearing turbos exhibit an interesting spool up characteristic. They seem to 'stall' at certain RPMs. For example, if I'm in 4th @2k and I punch it, I start seeing about 2psi at 2800, it will hang there till about 3300 and then shoot to 5psi. It will then hang out untill like 3800 and will then rapidly climb to 10psi @4200(JayL described something similar to me and perhaps he can chime in here). It sounds like it would suck but once the "big hit" happens the power is very smooth. Punching it at 4k avoids all of the climbing and just delivers a very nice rush.

This is going to be awesome.

More power to you Jeff for doing what you want, and doing it your own way.

Nice. Yeah, as long as my future turbo is spooled before 5k I'll be happy.
How is the topend on that thing??

Also you mention you need a manifold/dp. Whats wrong with the begi log you have now? Holding back lots of power or breaking? What about it don't you like?

Top end is nice, it holds really well with no signs of dropping off, it just pulls and pulls. Its quite a bit quieter than my old turbo as well. I expected it to sound like a fucking jet taking off but it is just a "whoosh".

I'm sure I'll be able to make decent power with the Begi log, but the big problem is downpipe fitment. I want to squeeze every little bit out of this thing that I can, and I think the best way to do that is a full 3" strait pipe from the outlet of the turbo back. You can see in the picture below that even after grinding out a fairly sizable chunk from the shelf, I'm still cutting it pretty close. With a 3" vband the downpipe is touching my feet :).

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_tMYIeupe-9Q/S6...P3280007-1.JPG

I want to shit myself as well. Do tell. PM if you must, but do tell.

Dude you really need a bottom mount manifold. That downpipe routing is never going to leave you room for 3".

No joke. I really want to buy Neo's manifold/wastegate but the cash just isn't there right now. I'm just hoping I can get the cash to pick it up before someone else snags it :).

That setup would be perfect for your goals.

Havn't even been home for a hour yet and already I have an update :D. Went digging through various timing threads and decided that I was being a pussy. SOOOOO I plugged some known good maps into a spreadsheet and made a bit of a hybrid between the map I'm currently running and a map Brain posted a while ago (with minor alterations). It made a night and day difference in power delivery.

I'm pretty stoked to get the new motor put together though because I'm planning on using hustler's map as a starting point and adding on from there :P.
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_tMYIeupe-9Q/S7...dynotiming.png

I got my new fuel pump installed tonight and I'm pretty happy so far. I ended up letting autotune pull a shitload of fuel out everywhere and I'm still way to rich, but even at 10.5:1 I'm at 74% DC at redline now, so once I get things in line at 11.5:1, I should have plenty of headroom for the 12-14psi I want to run at the dyno Saturday.

Looking good! Best of luck on the build, looking forward to seeing the end result.

Seems like our turbos build power about the same way. I've got a ebay 57 trim .63 a/r. How does it compare to yours?

Exactly the same except for the fact that mine is a 50 trim instead of a 57. Do you happen to have a datalog I could peek at?

No sir I don't sorry. The motor went before I could get any numbers.

Made 235whp on a dyno dynamics and decided to call it good at that. I dont feel like pushing a stock motor when I have a built one going in soon. It would be a shame to wreck a perfectly good core just for the hell of it.





-dyno sheet moved here My Dyno Sheet

fixed

sorry for the confusion jeff, but your currently on stock 1.6 bottom end with a forged bottom end waiting for install?

The dyno was done on a stock 1.6L bottom end and he's putting together built one.

I haven't made much progress over the past couple of weeks. I did start having some smoking issues after my dyno run. Lesson learned : Use an oil restrictor with ebay turbos! I found a 1/8" pop rivet (which has been described on here numerous times) to work wonders and there hasn't been any more smoking as far as I can tell.

Happily, this arrived at my office this morning:
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._8138717_n.jpg

and with any kind of luck, I'll be talking to my fabricator (Stan: This means you!) about getting a 3" downpipe/exhaust welded up here in the near future. I'm probably going to pick up a 10psi wg spring as well in order to keep my fuel system alive as 12psi with my current asthmatic setup pretty much maxes it out. I'm looking forward to a broader power curve like you wouldn't believe :D.

Sorry about the plaque. Nothing a SS toothbrush can't take care of though. I was wondering if you had gotten it yet.

Very cool!

Not a problem, I plan on giving it a wire wheel treatment + paint before I put it on. What is that yellow shit though? Pollen?

Aids....

YA, tree pollen like a mofo. You should have seen all the cars on the street after the trees had their way with them. A straight up yellow bukake. My white car looked honda pheonix yellow off the itr.

Things are finally rolling again. I have some 3" vbands and a 5 bolt flange on their way in right now that will hopefully be in by them middle of next week (I shipped them to the wrong address :facepalm:). The manifold is currently at SKmetalworks's shop awaiting the rest of the goodies so he can start fabricating my downpipe/exhaust. Now all that is left is to get over to my friend's house on Saturday morning and earn my spare block (by swapping a BP into his car) and ordering rings/bearings/gaskets.

Speaking of exhaust, I changed my mind right in the middle of buying parts. I bought a 3" canister at first, with the initial thought of copying JayL's exhaust. After driving his car around on the highway for a while and experiencing the drone, and realizing that I don't necessarily want all the extra attention, I decided to give this a shot:

http://o.imm.io/wRU.jpg

I've not seen one of these on a miata yet, but the theory behind it's operation seems solid and there are dyno charts to back it up so I figure the worst case scenario is that it is loud as fuck, but I would have gotten that with a canister anyway :).

http://www.motorsportcafe.com/AeroTurbine_Diagram.jpg

I know my car wont sound nearly this good, but here is a little audiogasm to justify my purchase :). (skip to 3:55 for the good stuff)

A friend has the one WITH the integral resonator and it is still pretty loud on a turbo car. You will probably want to add another little muffler in line with that one. Even the guys in the video thought it was too loud and raspy without something else. Don't get me wrong, I like the muffler, it just isn't enough by itself for me.

I'm planning on putting a 3" vibrant resonator in there as well to help kill drone and rasp. While I like the sound of the magnaflow I have right now, I want something with a little more....bark.

I really wish you had a chance to listen to my exhaust. The highway drone is very minimal and easy to live with. I have a huge resonator and a pretty small magnaflow 6" round muffler, 3"in and out. I can roll a tennis ball from my downpipe out the tailpipe. It has a great bark when the wastegate cracks open. I get lots of compliments at autox and club events. I have just as much fun watching and hearing someone else drive my car through an autox course as I do driving it myself.

I'm excited to hear yours though when its done.