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Time for another bi-monthly post. The VVT motor's about ready to go in the car! Waiting on a Radium fuel rail, electrical connectors for the vvt, cam and crank position sensors, and turbo oil supply tee and line. I'm going to be out of town next weekend but all the parts should be here by then. I'm hoping to have the motor in and start ironing out whatever kinks arise by the third weekend of July.
In other recent news, I've been working with ProCarInnovations on making a new wing for the car. They're a local company in Tustin that make a lot of wings for Civics and Integras. I won one of their wings in a raffle a couple months back so they're using this car as a test bed to make Miata-specific mounts. The plan is to make a set of curved mounts that contour the outer edges of the trunk and make a specific set of uprights for use with their currently produced wings. My plan is to run a 65" wing for NASA TT4 and 60" wing for GTA Street class, or just run the 60" wing everywhere if it produces better results.
The measuring session lasted over an hour and lots and lots of numbers were put on paper.
Not wanting to just sit and wait for more engine parts to show up, I also got busy making all the usual modifications to/installing my Junk2 intake manifold and TB. I figured I might be able to cut down on a little tuning time following the VVT swap if I dialed everything in on the current motor. In the end, I probably saved myself the most time with the troubleshooting I had to get out of the way. I didn't realize the manifold sat notably lower and further away from the engine. I wound up having to modify my charge piping, radiator hose routing, vacuum lines, replace my coolant neck to tb coolant line, and probably a couple other things I'm forgetting. While I was at it, though, I finally cleaned up my fuel injector wiring and got rid of the janky-looking injector adapters I've had since August.
I also thought it'd be cool to shine up the intake manifold with a pneumatic polishing wheel. Got pretty far before realizing how long it was going to take to polish the sides of the runners by hand. Gave it a quick once over by hand after taking this picture and decided to run it as is. Maybe when I pull the motor out, I'll get some more hand polish and finish it.
I've heard the horror stories. Loctite was liberally applied everywhere.
And of course, the throttle still stuck partially open even though I drilled another hole to add spring tension. I added another one maybe 6mm past the OEM one and it seems to be fine now.
Quick rip up to the mountains following the IM install and wing measurements last week. I was already halfway up there and would have been literally losing money if I didn't capitalize on the opportunity.
You might remove the powder coating under the bolt heads / use loctite on them. We never had an issue on the street cars, but did see some bolts back out on the race cars with powder coated parts. The coating will soften a bit when hot and the bolts can work loose.
A little recap. Started pulling the motor last Thursday afternoon and spent every extra hour I wasn't busy before and after work getting the project done Was still waiting on the Radium fuel rail and oil supply line for the turbo but I figured I'd make some headway on it. It ended up being slow at work Thursday and by Friday morning the transmission out and the motor was just about ready to follow suit. Got the motor pulled Friday afternoon and dropped the flywheel off at the machine shop Friday evening to get resurfaced. Spent most of Saturday transferring the manifolds to the new motor and dropping it back in. Saturday afternoon, an acquaintance texts me that he finally yanked the 6 speed out of his NB. I drove up to his area and picked the transmission up from him. 900 bucks, 120k miles and he allegedly had it rebuilt recently. The fresh silicon in between sections of the trans case seem to back that claim up. Monday night I pick up the flywheel then spend Tuesday at my buddy's pool daydreaming about getting to drive the car again. Wednesday morning the trans went in and I finally got the car started in the evening! I followed Flyin Miata's break in procedure: got the motor warm, set timing and did 5-6 2-5k pulls at zero vacuum/boost to seat the rings. First oil change wasn't full of metal so I'm taking that as a victory.
More pics to come later. I'm gonna be out of town this weekend but hopefully will be able to drive it a little more next week.
Good progress, it's the best feeling to drive it for the first time after an engine swap. I'll have that feeling again in a few weeks, but another platform =)
This is always the most exciting point in a build, good luck and keep us posted! This things gonna rip I'm sure of it!
Man it seriously is! Hell, I was just stoked the thing fired up at all, let alone first try haha. The suspense of the break in period is gonna kill me but even still, its nice to drive the car again after having it sitting off the ground for a week haha.
Originally Posted by der_vierte
Good progress, it's the best feeling to drive it for the first time after an engine swap. I'll have that feeling again in a few weeks, but another platform =)
Dude no joke! Honestly, its still wild to me that this motor was just a pile of parts in the shop a while back and now it's a running piece of machinery. What're you dropping a new motor in right now?
Dealt with a couple sync issues yesterday. Car started stumbling and running like crap intermittently once it had been up to operating temp for a little bit. CKP sensor wasn't lined up with the trigger wheel perfectly, just a little close to the block. I added a small shim behind it and set the distance from sensor to wheel with a credit card. Drove it around a bit and ran into the same issue. Moved the sensor just a hair closer to the trigger wheel and made sure there was no contact. Issue seems to be fixed now Gonna drive it a little more on my lunch break today and see if we're good to go.
Smaller washer might line it up even better. We'll see if I need to play with it further.
Dude no joke! Honestly, its still wild to me that this motor was just a pile of parts in the shop a while back and now it's a running piece of machinery. What're you dropping a new motor in right now?
Dealt with a couple sync issues yesterday. Car started stumbling and running like crap intermittently once it had been up to operating temp for a little bit. CKP sensor wasn't lined up with the trigger wheel perfectly, just a little close to the block. I added a small shim behind it and set the distance from sensor to wheel with a credit card. Drove it around a bit and ran into the same issue. Moved the sensor just a hair closer to the trigger wheel and made sure there was no contact. Issue seems to be fixed now Gonna drive it a little more on my lunch break today and see if we're good to go.
Smaller washer might line it up even better. We'll see if I need to play with it further.
They have to be very close, but also tend to crap the bed sometimes.
I'm putting a built 2.9 BMW M50/M52 iron block in my E36 turbo coupe. Shooting for 7-800whp on a GTX3584RS! I'm a bit nervous about this, that's the most expensive engine I've built so far, hopefully everything goes well
They have to be very close, but also tend to crap the bed sometimes.
I'm putting a built 2.9 BMW M50/M52 iron block in my E36 turbo coupe. Shooting for 7-800whp on a GTX3584RS! I'm a bit nervous about this, that's the most expensive engine I've built so far, hopefully everything goes well
So, how'd it go!? 7-800whp in that chassis sounds scary haha. Fingers crossed it's all been good news so far!
Figured I'd make another post now that the engine hasn't blown up after 580 miles. Everything's been going well so far. Changed the oil at 20 miles, then 110, then yesterday at 550. Didn't find any debris or bad news in the oil on any of the changed. I've read about three hours worth of threads now regarding engine break in. It's all about what I expected. 20 different folks will give you 20 different answers. I drove my engine pretty easy for the first 300 miles. Kept it under 4.5k rpm and have slowly been introducing higher rpm as time goes on. I pulled 1.5 degrees of timing from all the boosted cells in TS and started getting it into 2-3psi of boost after 400 miles. Felt good so far. I increased increasing redline up to the 5.5k mark as the motor approached 500 miles and just did my first full throttle pull to about 6.5k at 580 miles on my way to work this morning. Even with the same boost pressure (9psi on wastegate) and less timing, the car's way faster already! I'm gonna put another few hundred miles on it and then take it to the tuner. Still gotta wire up VVT and install EBC as well.
Progress on the ProCarInnovations wing has continued. Pictured here with no endplates and a generic set of uprights. The mounts fitted up perfect and were sent to be powdercoated. Next up is a new set of uprights that'll result in a 3" total setback to get the wing nearly flush with the rear bumper cover. Mounted up, the wing easily supports my 180lb body. The inner bolts mate up to a plate that mounts up against the framing on the inside of the trunk, stiffening things up nicely.
Looks naked with no wing haha.
Made a trip up to Brian Head, Utah two weekends ago to go mountain biking which was nice...
Until two hours into riding when I cruised into a trench and smashed my left big toe in between a rock and my pedal, fracturing it in multiple places. Took me out of work for a week and couldn't drive the car for a handful of days due to the swelling in my left foot. Fun!
More progress and pics to come next week. Hopefully we'll have the wing mounted soon. I still gotta wire up my VVT and get/install EBC as well. Just took the car out for her first set of full throttle pulls on my lunch break and it's already much spicier! Can't wait to have this thing track-ready.
Wing's mounted! Took some photos with the 62" standard mount on my car first then put the 60" swan-mount on my car and decided I wanted to run that one instead. I'll be able to run the 60" and be within the ruleset for TT4 then if I move up a class or need more rear downforce, I can pick up a wider wing element from ProCarInnovations anywhere up to 67".
Mounts
Next up is to plumb up EBC and get this sucker tuned in the next couple weeks!
Until two hours into riding when I cruised into a trench and smashed my left big toe in between a rock and my pedal
Been there; done that. Except I was using clipless pedals and after breaking my toe I went OTB. Was barely able to get down the mountain after that, so I feel you. I hobbled around for a good month after that.
Digging the updates, the car is really cool. Never seen that wing, the car pulls it off!
Well, she survived dyno day! Took the car into AdvancedEngineDynamix in Corona Saturday morning to get the boost turned up and tune dialed in and the results didn't disappoint. 223whp on wastegate pressure at ~10psi and 271whp at 17psi on pump gas! The car's an absolute blast now, can't wait to take this thing to the track and hang with the big dogs in the straights now.
Toby at AED is the man. Dude primarily tunes boosted Miatas and knows his stuff. I had the car running decent but he helped out bigtime with my accel enrichment, VVT, and boost controller settings. We spent about two hours on the dyno and the motor didn't skip a beat.
Finalized low-boost vs high-boost power numbers,
Another Miata they were working on at the shop. The motor on the engine stand on the far right is a BP4W that they claim is rocking 2207cc total displacement. I was too engrossed in my car to remember to ask about it later. Pics and vids of it running on AdvancedEngineDynamix's Instagram.
Discussed future plans with Toby after the dyno session. He laid out that 1000cc injectors and E85 will get the current setup a ~15% increase in power. That's probably what I'll do next even though the closest E85 station is 15 minutes out of the way from where I live/work. Would be nice to run E85 on track too and have the peace of mind from additional cooling. After that, maybe I'll drop in a GTX2860 and retune for low 300whp range just for fun on the street.
But I digress, I should really learn to drive the car at 10/10ths on track with this amount of power first haha.
Immediately after the tuning session I stopped by my parents' house to bum a sandwich and a glass of water (it was goddamn hot out) and then cruised into work to install my new Brofab E30 front hub conversion.
Splitter makes a nice toolbench. Maybe I'll make a bigger one solely to hold more crap on it.
Not much to note here. Install went smoothly. Really nice kit made by Bronson. My front hubs/bearings weren't entirely trashed but I wanted to put something shiny on the car and figured I could call this preventative maintenance.
While I was messing with the car though, I did a quick underhood inspection and found that my coolant was super brown. That's concerning... I flushed it out, drove the car home and began to notice that the coolant temps were spiking more than normal in boost/high rpm only. Nothing too major but I did a couple 2nd to 5th gear pulls and watched the coolant temp spike from 195ish to almost 205 on each. The car ran cool in other scenarios. I've got a 195* thermostat in it and it was running at 185-200 on the street in stop and go traffic all the way home. Got home and checked the coolant and it was brown again. Awesome. I figured it must be a head gasket issue. There was no smoke from the exhaust and no coolant in the oil but I assumed it must be lifting the head under high boost just enough to allow some combustion gases into a coolant passage.
Well I got a combustion leak tester on the radiator yesterday and much to my delight, the coolant tested negative for exhaust gases. I did three coolant flushes with our machine at work, each getting less and less dirty. I have come to the conclusion that my cooling system is probably just full of sediment and that's probably clogging up some of the smaller passages. I'll dig into it this week. Maybe the 28 year-old heater core is giving up and dumping rust into the system. Updates to come!
Did not realize that. Curious what else that brown could’ve been from then.
The heater works, blows hot air. And I’m currently running a 90/10 mix of water to coolant after the flushes. Was running closer to 50/50 before.
Did a handful of pulls in the car last night then flushed it one more time today just to check the color. The coolant that came out was much clearer than yesterday. The brown pigment is almost entirely gone so I imagine it was just some sort of sediment/buildup that was present in the coolant passages before I put the motor together.
Congrats on the successful dyno day, both curves are great! Your car is a lot like mine, I run the lower boost tune for track duty (~250whp) and the high boost tune (308whp) for the street. Plenty of power for the track!
Not sure about the brown coolant, how brown are we talking here? My car has always turned coolant brown-ish over time, I assumed it was rust from the iron block over time since it has happened on both my B6 and BPs.
That engine always had an anti-freeze mix in it. It came out of my car nice and green.
Ah, thanks for the reminder. I forgot a little bit of green coolant came out when I pulled the lower radiator hose off. Definitely didn’t mean to insinuate anything was wrong with the motor or that it wasn’t maintained well before I bought it haha.
Congrats on the successful dyno day, both curves are great! Your car is a lot like mine, I run the lower boost tune for track duty (~250whp) and the high boost tune (308whp) for the street. Plenty of power for the track!
Not sure about the brown coolant, how brown are we talking here? My car has always turned coolant brown-ish over time, I assumed it was rust from the iron block over time since it has happened on both my B6 and BPs.
Thanks man! Amped it didn’t blow up haha. I’m thinking I’ll do something similar to yours once the car’s on e85. 250+ whp is gonna be plenty for the track but I’d be amped to have 300whp for street use!
The coolant came out brown enough to be concerning. Not dark brown like oil but an opaque medium brown. Had a bunch of little off-white deposits in it as well. Now that it’s been replaced, I’ll keep an eye on it and see if/how long it takes to come back.
I did another flush today and filled with a 90/10 water/coolant mix and the motor is running much cooler overall now, in and out of boost. Will keep an eye on it in the coming days.
06-28-2023, 07:28 PM
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