I am so unbelievably excited to get the car on the road again in proper boosted fashion. A stock Miata is a joy to drive, almost orgasmic to experience... the driving experience of a properly boosted Maita is like one solid continuous orgasm.

 

Feedback says images may be borked. So, the images:

 

long ago, when i did my first engine pull, it was using the same method but with a come-along. then did some with a cherry picker, now raise the car off the body with a lift leaving the engine on a cradle on casters.

 

^ Yep, I mainly just pull the body off now. For some reason it seems simpler. May not be any faster, but at least it's less frustrating

 

Except you have to align the car afterwards, which is far more frustration and hassle than just pulling it out the top. Air-over-hydraulic engine hoist is where it's at.

 

Need to get the car back on the road and tuned. Holidays were busy, didn't make much progress.

But I did make progress in the tow vehicle department, we picked up a 2016 Yukon:






Very comfortable and quiet. Haven't towed anything with it yet. We took it on our trip over the week of New Years, though. The return trip, 200 miles with about an hour-hour fifteen in snow in 4wd as we crossed the Cascades on US 20, it got 23.1 MPG. Can't complain about that.

This one doesn't have the adaptive cruise but does have the blind spot sensors etc.

 

So when last I saw my car, we were in this state:




But there were some things I wasn't able to do. Like tig weld a proper intake temp sensor into the intercooler pipe into that little stub pipe you can see that's originally for a Rotrex bypass . And build a 3" exhaust. Get the car into any kind of running condition, because OEM 01 ecu died and then my Rev-built MS3 died, so no ECU. And build a proper heat shield for the turbo/downpipe. That part I did try, sacrificed an OEM header shield to the effort, but didn't come out with anything satisfactory. Those things have fiberglass inside, which I know now. Somebody will ask this, the intercooler solution is now from Track Dog Racing. Piping for their NB2 Rotrex kit is pretty much a proper fit for my EFR on the Trackspeed Manifold.

Here's one of my schwing Marrad seats: I thought my passengers should have the same false sense of security I have, so they get a better seat and harness too.







So then this happened:






Off to AR Motorsports we go, into the sweaty palms of @curly and @greddygalant. This was early Feb. I gave them relatively few restrictions, which may in hindsight have been a mistake ... The general build of work was

• link ECU. This has been custom-built into the OEM housing. Apparently has inputs and outputs for days. Curly likes.
• 3" stainless exhaust
• heat shield
• proper catch cans
• re-seal my 6 speed so it doesn't have to wear a diaper in the driveway. It's in all of our futures, but it's too early still for me to be dealing with diapers now that I'm far out of that stage of child rearing.
• alignment
• and since it's there, throw in Nigel's 990cc injectors I never around to installing
• Tune for non-piston-shattering glory

Target torque limits for the tune are still around 200 ft/lbs. Maybe 220. Did I mention that? I should mention that. Here, I'm mentioning that. @curly pay attention. Also I don't think I ever explicitly forbade Martin from twincharging my car. @greddygalant no twincharging.

Oh and this happened today. Record low for the day. First ever recorded snowfall in April at PDX above tiny trace amounts. About 5" at my house.



I have even more updates for today, but not yet, because packages have not yet arrived.

 

While the car's been away I've been working on my track hood, which I have been thinking I will paint myself to make it green to match. So much sanding












Someone will ask, so here's the answer. I tried to get it stripped/blasted. I tried a sandblasting place, an eco dry-ice place, and a soda blaster that advertises automotive work for hot rod builds / restorations etc. Dry ice was going to take forever and be an assload of labor. Both soda and sandblaster said they were not confident they could get it done, even lowering the pressure, without warping the hood. So it's manual sanding. I may just get it prepped and take it somewhere to get it painted, haven't decided.

 

So this has been my gauge setup for 13 years:

ITT We discuss high quality gauges - Page 2 - Miata Turbo Forum - Boost cars, acquire cats.





Coolant and AIT via OBD2 through the scangauge, dedicated gauges for oil temp/press, boost, AFR.

The Link does Can but not OBD2 outputs, so I was asking Curly how I was going to get coolant temps and should I get an A pillar gauge or an eyeball vent gauge or something. He says "Oh yeah, you should get this, and put it where your oil temp/pressure gauge is, because I pulled out the sensors and their wiring for that."

It's a completely configurable OLED display, reads can bus output from the Link, and will measure/show up to 4 parameters at once. Configurable alarms for each parameter. The Link itself can alarm on any parameter, and say light the check engine light if I want.




So there's my coolant/oil/intake temps and my oil pressure.

 

Stoked for the updates! Just a heads up though, most of your pics from today's posts are broken for me

 

Same, on all of the above. Images in the the first post this morning loaded on my phone, now they won't load on my laptop :/

BUT STOKED FOR UPDATES! I'm glad I may have had some small part in draging you from your slumber this morning

 

+1 broken pics. Nice to see updates regardless.

 

Same same

 

Ok, curious. Maybe copy/paste into the body of the post don't work good. Working on it.

 

Uploaded all images through attachment interface. Let me know if it's still borken.

 

Works for me!

 

Yup pics work now.

 

Yeah, copy paste only works for the computer/browser you do it with. If you did it in chrome it will look like it worked, but then if you do an incognito window and view the thread it will show you what is broken. That being said everything looks great now!

 

I mentioned the Link has inputs and outputs for days, right? Fitting off the end of the fuel rail feeds a fuel pressure sensor now.




This is either a shot of the 2.5" ducts to the brakes, or my attempt at artistically framing a SuperMiata adjustable end link. Your choice.

 

To clarify, it's not just that it has a lot of inputs and outputs, it's that the designer of the PNP board used every available pin at the ECU connector. So no more needing to run wires through the firewall. So I used the EGR boost pressure sensor for your fuel pressure, and your old narrowband O2 sensor input for oil pressure. He even wired in the inputs for fuel level and tank pressure, so I could potentially set a CEL to sense when you've left your gas cap off, or if your check valve has failed and the tank isn't venting. Cool ****.