cabowabo

If you're into dumbshit redneck engineering, this is the build for you.

Brief history, this car started as a bone stock 97 Touring with 22k miles back in 2013. Paint was oxidized, but other than that pretty much immaculate other than a really dirty engine bay I still haven't cleaned to this day. Shortly after purchase it received my wrecked 95s koni sport/GC setup, roll bar and TRM 15x7.5" wheels and that's how it stayed for many years, except for a switch to 6UL at some point. The occasional autox, but mostly just boppin' around town as a clean low mileage Miata.

FF to 2016 and I was finally able to get it on track at Harris Hill with a Groupon they had for 3 month membership. January 2017 first NASA TX Time Trial. Couple years later the car was about as NASA TT competitive as you can get a daily driver. Still had full interior, power mirrors, radio, etc. But added Xidas (1000/400 stock sways in TTE* trim), MS3 Basic (street tuned 136whp 93 / 142whp e85),DW 450cc injectors, 4.78 f/d, I'm sure some other stuff I'm forgetting. That run mostly ended with 2018 Champs getting 3rd in TTE at COTA. Did a couple more events like NASA Thunderhill after moving to Sacramento from Austin, but then the cars reg expired and I couldn't get it to events. So, finally bought a van, towed it out to GRIDLIFE at PPIR in 2020, got home and scheduled cage with TCDesign, moved back to Bamalama, and then got to work on GLTC prep. Since getting into TT I always had a vague goal of getting the car into W2W, but nothing really excited me. Spec Miata is great, but with NASA that mostly still means dealing with multi-class in sprint format which I'm not into. ST6 is typically too low of car counts and the same multiclass sprint racing issue. SuperMiata is obviously rad and would have been a good fit, but I knew I wasn't planning on staying in California. Then GLTC came along, hooray!

That brings us to the dumbshit. The first and main problem with making a NA Miata competitive in GLTC is it needs a healthy bump in power. The obvious answer these days is KSwap, but that takes up front money I don't have and it's so common now my hipster-ish brain doesn't even want to do it anymore. Cool a few years ago, literally everything is now KSwapped (ie it's reliable and good ya big dummy). That leaves turbo because what kind of peasant runs a supercharger, but after many years frequenting this forum I knew that had issues of its own.

Enter remote mount. I was tagged up with a fellow GLTCer that had already run his Miata in GLTC with a couple of iterations of remote mount with decent success. After a quick chat and many, many hours of browsing the interwebs still unsure about this whole remote mount thing I finally decided it would work and started pulling the trigger on components.

$175 China charger T3 50 trim .48 a/r turbine .42 compressor (fully intending to upgrade later)
TurboWerx Spartan scavenge pump
TiAL 38mm EWG
Turbosmart Vee-Port Pro
2x10ft 4an pre-assembled SS lines
FM BPST/NPT adapter and Tee'd off oil sender
1/8" NPT to 4an for oil return (Pump to pan, tapped passenger side just in front of trans basically caddy corner to typical location)
HPS 5/8" return hose (Turbo to pump)
Existing exhaust (RacingBeat header back) v-banded and test pipe/midpipe welded together.
A lot of 2" aluminum pipe and couplers (intake)
Square tube for the jankiest turbo moutning you ever seen
Some really bad grinding for center exit exhaust (literal first cuts and I'm gonna make a finish panel to cover it...but judge me anyways)
again, probably some stuff I'm forgetting, but that's the important bits.

On top of all that is the usual racecar prep; battery isolation, fire suppression, etc. I also saw that OEM hardtops were selling well, so offloaded mine and went with a CCP fastback because who with a miata hasn't spent many a day lusting after a fastback? Hardtops are unrestricted in GLTC so I decided to go for it and if it gets banned later for any reason, welp, at least it'll be fun while it lasts. I also re-located my FM oil cooler to in front of the radiator and finally got a SuperMiata coolant re-route. Needless to say I made a whole crapload of changes all at once and I finished all this work up at 9pm on a Thursday night. I then loaded the car on the trailer, packed the van, threw the dogs in, and with a fresh cup of coffee started the trek to Road America. Earlier that week I had wrapped up the turbo stuff enough to get it driving and do some pulls, but being un-registered at the time I didn't want to drive around. The "tune" as it was was about 3-4 pulls with some guess work fueling / timing based off my N/A tune extrapolated out. You'll notice there's an intercooler not listed anywhere in this build...yeah. Even just doing a few pulls I could see IAT's were gonna soar, so I just looked at data and let it run rich as hell and also pull the **** out of timing in the MAT table. Probably not the best idea, but all in all the car ran flawlessly all weekend and didn't blow up (yet!). First thing I did after getting home from RA was order an intercooler, so more to come on that.

For now, here's the build as she sits, some race pics, and a single green to white flag lap in some very slick conditions.

cabowabo

Here's a snip of a data log from race 1 (I think). Gives an idea of boost response also LOL at 3-4psi.

cabowabo

Goals between now at GLTC with SLB at COTA in Feb are

Intercooler (plan is inline with current intake run in passenger area, box it in and feed it with naca ducts in door. My coolant temps were perfect 195f all weekend so trying to avoid a whole bunch of extra intake run and also putting intercooler in front of rad. We'll see...)
EBC (Flat tune? At least a proper tune)
Firewall between me and trunk
Trim the ducktail off of fastback trunklid so that I can run my JGTC style ****
Finish new air dam that fits correctly
Smol straight through muffler
...I'll probably think of more later.

EDIT: Stuff I forgot I installed

Supermiata sport clutch (organic)
4.3 torsen
Supermiata competition motor mounts
BroFab front hubs

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

pig rich and retarded; just like I like my men.

cabowabo

flier129

iTrader: (7)

Fastback is bestback

jpreston

iTrader: (4)

This thing is so cool. Pictures don't do it justice.

Midtenn

iTrader: (15)

Nothing like seeing out of the box thinking. We've gone back and forth on a similar setup for a Champ Car. Hopefully we'll run against each other and we can compare traditional to untraditional turbo setup.

emilio700

iTrader: (3)

Hero status: Unlocked

Arca_ex

iTrader: (2)

Cool to see an outside the box build.

I wish I could do a fastback but switching back and forth between hard tops for different series is definitely out of the budget lol.

cabowabo

Yeah, if I was building this for multiple classes I wouldn't have even considered it. I think FB is insta-bump to ST3 for NASA, plus I think cutting up my trunk and some other things could be problematic, too. Definitely taking the GLTC "build a cool car" thing and running with it. If GLTC folds then this car will be basically useless for anything else other than having a good time haha. Once I actually get the car fully built for class drive it worth a damn the fastback might also get levied with an additional modifier or banned, so who knows. Standard HT is a safe bet and gets the job done.

cabowabo

There's going to be a few turbo miatas in the field for 2022 it's looking like, come out and party!

Midtenn

iTrader: (15)

Its 75% there. Just need to put together my short block, finish a switch panel, get it tuned, and send a bunch of money to Dan.

cabowabo

So despite having months before COTA to do all sorts of cool fun projects and tune the car, I did none of that. I instead started prepping in the week before the event, got the intercooler installed (but no where near ducted enough to work), got EBC installed and working, and mounted up some fresh 225 RT660's to my 15x9's. So really not a whole lot to report, but I annoyed myself enough at COTA with my crappy tune (when I should easily be making class power), no rear ****, and running out of brakes that I'm gonna be ramping things up. AMP is coming up quick and I'm going to be out of town for a big chunk of it, so just doing "damage control" before that one. But after AMP I won't be on track again until August so will really be looking to fully sort the car before MidO and LRP. Only real goals before AMP are getting the intercooler intake side boxed in and well fed to see if I can actually get it working, build a firewall for the trunk, and get the Supermiata BX11 kit installed (if it shows up in time).

Here's some progress pics, race pics, and racin' footy.

cabowabo

soot

**** this thing is so cool. Great pics too man. I briefly had a fastback on my white NA, but I got it used and the PO did an awful job installing everything and I ditched it for road comfort/fit eventually. You're making me wanna go back and just get a new one and do it up right. I'd have to change my wing too though so that's a big deterrent.

At 80mph I saw a literal 10-15% throttle opening difference in mega squirt at cruise compared to a factory hardtop (though it was quite a windy stretch of highway)

.

cabowabo

Ha, thanks! It's definitely a fun project, even if a bit silly.

Yeah, I feel like getting proper street fit and seal on this top would be a lot of work. As racecar, eh, whatever. I spent minimal time getting mine installed, just made sure the front edge was good to go (windshield frame area) then bolted it up. It's hard to argue with the looks though, looks like we had twin cars.

Chilicharger665

iTrader: (2)

Oh, wow, I just saw this thing at COTA and I had no idea about all the work into it. I was really confused on why the fastback miata on track didn't have a wing, though, lol

cabowabo

Yeah, gotta hack off the ducktail spoiler before I can run the wing 😑 I'll nut up and get it done at some point, then JGTC **** can go on.

cabowabo

Combing over the car today on the quest to actually hit and hold my boost target. Turns out when I hooked up the EBC I forgot to plug the 2nd top port on the EWG, it was kinda hiding and pointing down, but was easy to spot taking it apart today. Doing a couple runs to set intial boost duty table and seems to be working great now. Just need to properly tune it at this point and get to work on boxing in intercooler so IAT's don't skyrocket, then get to dyno for some fine tuning and maybe adding a little extra boost in the mid-range. Fwiw from WOT to full boost was about 9 tenths of a second here, which ain't quick, but this things boosts a lot better when the exhaust is hot and it's only operating at high rpm #remotemountthings