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Most definitely. It's a FWD car with a transverse motor. During test laps, I heard a bit of squeaking during hard right turns. We foolishly thought it was the serpentine belt, because we knew the idler tensioner was also a little finicky. It now seems that the "squeak" was the sound of the oil sloshing to the back of the pan, the pickup going dry, and the bearings and crankshaft grinding themselves into powder.
Since I didn't get to race on Sunday, I spent a little time on the Miata instead. Installed the catch can, with both vent ports going through the can to atmosphere.
Installed a Hallman Pro RX manual boost controller. Decided to go MBC for now, as I'm running MS2 and haven't heard good things about its abilities with closed loop EBC.
Tightened it down just enough that the ball stopped rattling, and did a 3rd gear pull. Looks like spool is improved a bit compared to WG only. These two pulls weren't done in the same place; the orange plot (MBC) was done on a flat road, and the blue plot (WG only) was slightly down hill, so the result is probably better than it looks on the chart.
This looks great dude! Lars hooked me up as well, and I'm very happy I went with his product. My biggest problem was finding anyone in NW Florida who did nay kind of Miata type work, let alone turbo Miata. I finally bit the bullet and will be dropping Mia off at Track Minded Performance in Marietta Georgia for the whole install and tune. How has yours been running?
Lars does make a great product, and the car is running great. I’ve been tuning for several months, and it keeps getting better. I can also recommend e-tuning with Vlad (18psi) without hesitation, he’s really helped me get this thing dialed in well. That said, I live in Marietta and I’ve heard good things about TMP although they are very busy and often backed up with work.
This is just my opinion, but- if you want to own a turbo Miata, you should install it yourself and learn. Gone are the days of stock-like reliability, you will be back in there to tweak things frequently and it’s going to be a lot harder if someone else did the work.
Makes sense. They're mainly doing the install and tune to get that out of the way. My biggest problem is living in the barracks and not having proper tools or area for the whole install. Also the closest Megasquirt tuner is all the way in Orlando, and I don't dare mess with a stand-alone and risk blowing up my car.
I heard about that snowy LeMons race, incredible!
Our sister team had a similar LeMons experience when I raced back in 2014, except it was 100 degrees up north here instead of snow. They had a Nissan Maxima with a Cadillac Northstar V8 in the backseat making it rear-engine RWD. The Northstar threw a rod on Lap 2, so they left and found a new engine in a junkyard. They were able to swap it in, but then had transaxle problems IIRC. They were able to limp it back on track just before the midnight finish. I think they did 3-4 laps in the 14 hour race.
I was on the sister team in a BMW E30 and had a great time.
^ stories like this one make me feel better. We did a lot of work on the car, but nothing like that.
Late Saturday afternoon, we were sneaking beers and watching the race. From a starting field of 100, there were probably 30-40 cars left and they were FAST. I turned to my team, pointed at the track and said “anybody notice what’s not out there?” There was not one single domestic car on the track- 944’s, E30’s and E36’s, Miatae and Civics/CRX’s galore.
Point being: it’s a real race, with real race cars. People that want to race choose proven platforms and spend way more than $500, then make the car look as janky as possible to minimize penalty laps. People that want to spend the weekend pulling motors at the junkyard choose Buicks and Cadillacs.
The car has never been on the scales. It's a 1992 base model, no AC or power steering. Reported curb weights range from 2,070 to 2,150 lbs. and I think that's for the fully featured models. Since I've owned it I would guess it's lost another 20-30 lbs, most of which is sitting in a box in my basement. Nonetheless, for VD I estimate the car on the high side at 2,200 lbs. plus another 215 lbs of cheese, beer and bad ideas (me).
I was up in the Great White North for the holidays, then came back to Atlanta where it's just as cold. Didn't even take the cover off of Rocinante for a few weeks.
I've never been happy with the Greddy-like BOV that I got from silicone intakes. Nice and cheap, but it leaked boost through the tip of the adjustment screw, and I didn’t like the way it adjusted. I never found the sweet spot between too tight (compressor surge) and too loose (a two second long disappointed exhale like I get from my wife, rather than a crisp PSHHHH).
Decided to blow some christmas money and go baller/ricer. Got the GReddy Type FV dual spring/floating valve model, mostly because I didn't feel like changing out my piping for a Turbosmart flange. I don't know how well it works yet, but it looks pretty cool.
I'll log a pull tomorrow to see if it improves spool at all.
Last edited by Schroedinger; 01-05-2018 at 10:41 PM.
Only difference between these two runs was the BOV. Looks like the new non-leaky BOV got me between 0.5 and 1 PSI everywhere.
It is also pulling a little bit more vacuum at idle. Subjective driving impression is good, turbo stays spooled better after shifts. Overall, worthwhile upgrade.
New virtual dyno. My assumed weight for the car is 2100 lbs.; I had been using 2200 lbs previously.
12-11-2017, 11:31 AM
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