I know you must cut down / off that center rib & the tabs that hold the old cover to fit under the NB Miata hood (and some of the hood ribs on the NB for it to fit.). The NA needs an actual hole in the hood I believe. My guess is that’s what you need to remove to make it fit. Unsure how it attaches from there. I’d be worried about double sided tape if you don’t have a hood on your Exocet. Air might get under and lift it off.

Yeah, I'm worried it will fly off with no hood. Just asked ThePass what he did to secure it since his sticks out of the hood.

Looks great on the car and an image of after the cuts for anyone doing this in the future.

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Holy hell, so for the last month I have been trying to tune the car to idle without surging. It was acting like it had a vacuum leak, but I smoke tested everything and no leaks anywhere. Went through a couple different tuners trying to figure this out and had a ton of help from Griff on here.

On a whim I decided to replace the valve cover that I had modified (I had removed the pcv valve and replaced it with a 3/8" barb). Bought a new oem valve cover with an oem pcv and swapped it back on. Car idles like a damn sewing machine now using griff's NA tune.

Few things to note...
For the 80mm overkill throttle body the car will need to be tuned correctly, but right off the bat you simply plug in "4224" for the new larger throttle body under the hp tuners throttle area limits. Factory is 3591 I think. The equation to get that number is on the hp tuners forum if you want to dig for it.

Second, don't touch the factory pcv!!! It isn't actually a pcv, but a metal vent on the rear of the passenger valve cover. Modifying it will lead to a cascade of issues the engine does not like and will make it impossible to tune. Don't touch it, ever. Don't even look at it funny.

Lastly, beg and plead with Griff to get his tune if you are running NA. He spent a ridiculous amount of time on it and saved me months of work. I'm sure he would be willing to accept payment for it and in my opinion it is worth it. Be nice and throw some money at him. I'm still waiting for an email back from Will at Overkill and it has been over a month. One day I'll get that tune and look it over, and see if he is doing something better, but for now the Griff tune is the best I have seen.

Trying to get the car on track at Harris Hill within the next 30 days. So diving into MAF and speed density tuning asap to get it running perfectly and then I'm going to beat the hell out of it and see if she has any weak spots.


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What a journey. Can’t wait to see this wrung out on track. I’m so torn on my build now. Thanks

This car began with an nb FMII turbo setup and it was awesome. I always found myself wanting more though in power and reliability. I was right at 250whp, and any more than that with the miata motors is where things get expensive and can be unreliable. The LFX is just such a gem in every way and without any weight penalty, gobs of torque from idle, 325+whp on E85 and a whole engine cost of $1,200, it was a no brainer. I'm a bit ocd and this swap took me about 9 months. That was putting in anywhere from 15 min to a few hours nearly every day. I did A LOT of other upgrades to the car in the process and nearly every bolt has been replaced from the original build (not kidding). Oh, and the power to weight with an LFX in an exocet puts you right around an 800hp corvette. I need to weigh it, but my guess is I'm around 1550 lbs.

I also managed to find a good home for my complete engine, turbo and trans. The sale of the drive train basically cut my build cost in half.

Working on an exocet is such a joy compared to traditional cars. Everything being so open and easy to access makes this swap quite enjoyable and simple to do.

Haha, I feel like part of my job here is to help people make poor financial decisions based around horsepower. :yippee:

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LFX all the way man! I can 100% guarantee that you will not be disappointed and we have most of the issues solved to make it "easy" these days. Plenty of us around to help you out, so there is almost ZERO risk of failure. V8R has several options you can buy now to make things even easier.

Maiden voyage went off without a hitch. Car sounds like a wild animal and it is a whole different beast than the previous turbo miata setup, especially with 3.91 gears.

I'm at the point in MAF tuning that I need to start driving. Went about a mile in total just to be safe and keep it light for the first drive. Filled the gas tank for the first time in 8 months which felt good. Will be doing some more light driving tomorrow and try to get the MAF tune closer, it was pretty far off today. I'll try to get some in car video tomorrow. The exhaust sounds amazing, reminds me a lot of an LS oddly.

Have a few "permanent" DTC's that are being stubborn and not going away. Started digging around and found the process to clear them.

http://www.obdii.com/drivecycle.html

To perform an OBDII Driving cycle do the following:

1. Cold Start. In order to be classified as a cold start the engine coolant temperature must be below 50°C (122°F) and within 6°C (11°F) of the ambient air temperature at startup. Do not leave the key on prior to the cold start or the heated oxygen sensor diagnostic may not run.
2. Idle. The engine must be run for two and a half minutes with the air conditioner on and rear defroster on. The more electrical load you can apply the better. This will test the O2 heater, Passive Air, Purge "No Flow", Misfire and if closed loop is achieved, Fuel Trim.
3. Accelerate. Turn off the air conditioner and all the other loads and apply half throttle until 88km/hr (55mph) is reached. During this time the Misfire, Fuel Trim, and Purge Flow diagnostics will be performed.
4. Hold Steady Speed. Hold a steady speed of 88km/hr (55mph) for 3 minutes. During this time the O2 response, air Intrusive, EGR, Purge, Misfire, and Fuel Trim diagnostics will be performed.
5. Decelerate. Let off the accelerator pedal. Do not shift, touch the brake or clutch. It is important to let the vehicle coast along gradually slowing down to 32km/hr (20 mph). During this time the EGR, Purge and Fuel Trim diagnostics will be performed.
6. Accelerate. Accelerate at 3/4 throttle until 88-96 km/hr (55-60mph). This will perform the same diagnostics as in step 3.
7. Hold Steady Speed. Hold a steady speed of 88km/hr (55mph) for five minutes. During this time, in addition to the diagnostics performed in step 4, the catalyst monitor diagnostics will be performed. If the catalyst is marginal or the battery has been disconnected, it may take 5 complete driving cycles to determine the state of the catalyst.
8. Decelerate. This will perform the same diagnostics as in step 5. Again, don't press the clutch or brakes or shift gears.

Ehh.. that OBDII drive cycle is more based on setting engine readiness for emissions. Permanent DTC's more or less need to be disabled via HP Tuners. Some of them (like the earlier eeprom checksum) cannot be reset, but you can at least prevent them from tripping the check engine light (MIL).

Yeah, this gets interesting. It appears it is the government getting involved in preventing people from clearing certain emissions related codes.

https://www.autoserviceworld.com/car...ermanent-dtcs/

From what I read, the permanent dtc codes are emissions related, hence why they can't be deleted or reset with hp tuners. So to clear them, the issue has to be fixed and then the universal trip drive pattern must be done. Edit: it mentions a specific cycle to clear some of the codes as well. I don't see this in the service manual for the Camaro though.

Yeah, it's the fun of more sophisticated ECU's and tuning software and the kerfuffle with EPA going after motorsports for emission compliance stuff a few years back - it's not a technical limitation of the tuning software, but a legal one. Ultimately it's a PITA. IIRC, there is a difference between a DTC that's set (that triggers a MIL) and stored (permanent).

You can turn off the MIL by being clearing with a scanner, but it remains until drive cycles reset it. Case in point - I split the air filter boot on my LS3, which led the MAF to read low, which caused the engine to lean out. I disconnected the MAF - that triggered a code - but the LS3 also has a MAP sensor to failover. I could clear the MAF code with Torque - but until I fixed the boot and replugged the MAF and drove it for a little bit - only took a day or so to clear that code.

Got some good driving in this weekend, and now it's time to start sorting out the small issues that arose. I had three leaks pop up. One from the passenger side lower drain plug on the supermiata radiator. I think it just wasn't tightened all the way and under pressure had a small drip. Next was a light leak from the banjo bolt on the clutch fitting. Again, I am pretty sure it just wasn't tightened all the way. Cranked down on it a bit and we'll see what happens. Lastly, and the one that concerned me the most, a light leak from the rear of the oil pan where it meets the trans. I slightly re-torqued the rear oil pan bolts and then the lower trans mount bolts. I'll keep an eye on it and see what happens.

And for the grand finale, my exhaust vbands are leaking too much to continue ignoring. I'm pretty sure it is effecting my wideband on the driver side and messing with my tuning process. So the exhaust is now off and I'm going to cut the vband fittings off the rear half, use the clamps to connect them to the front half, remount the rear and tack in whatever pie cuts are needed to make this damn thing fit perfectly. Trying to get all this done during the week so I can be back on the road tuning next weekend. I need to hurry the hell up and get this thing track ready so I can meet up with Griff at Harris Hill before winter takes over.

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The person that designs a simple EFFECTIVE alternative to V-bands is going to make a fortune! Hard to tell from the pic if that is motor or gear oil. Which one did it smell like? MVs are notorious for input and output seal leaking.

I couldn't tell if it was motor or gear oil. I'll smell it next time I'm under the car. If the input or output seal is leaking will it effect anything other than just being an annoying slow leak?

Edit: I'm using royal purple gear oil and it definitely wasn't that color. So motor oil. I tightened up the rear oil pan bolts, so we'll see if that fixes it.

I have a slow leak on my rear output shaft and I just clean it up and verify oil level each time I'm under the car.

Used permatex high-temp copper rtv gasket on the vbands and they are perfectly sealed now.

Finally got the car idling correctly on the maf tune setup in hp tuners. Warmed it up and everything was perfect, then the fan kicks on and the car starts surging and idling like shit. Weird. Turn it off, start it up and it does it again. Fan comes on, idle goes south. Fan turns off, idle goes back to perfect.

Talking with Griff and there is something weird the ecu is doing to compensate for the amperage draw when the fan is on. It draws about 21 amps continuous. Trying to figure this out and came across a thread on the hptuners forums that is VERY interesting. Going to test some of these settings out and report back. I'm only drawing 35 amps total continuous with the fan on, so I'm definitely not maxing anything out.

https://forum.hptuners.com/showthrea...der-system-tab

That thread is just a dump of the GM diagnostics info for the charging system. It does not have any new or additional information on making it work without a BCM.

That said - I'd be looking at your wiring if the fans are dragging down your voltage.

My fan is connected to standalone derale controller. I get the initial idle surge to 14.7v, but it goes to 13.3 after that regardless of the needs. Tried unplugging the alternator and that didn't seem to do much either. In hptuners there are settings to compensate for oem fan kick on. Just seems like they won't do much in this case.