NC has always been, fundamentally, a better overall car. Just not always as much fun/dollar ratio. With NB prices climbing and NC prices levelling off, that calculus has changed. NC has gone from being expensive enough to be only considered as a primary car to being a side project separate from the race/track auto-x build. Also les compromise in street manners to make a fun HPDE NC build. A truly fast HPDE NC still gets unruly but the threshold of civility is much higher than it is for equally fast NB.

My daily is an ND2, mostly stock. track toy is an NC2 that no longer a comfy street car. Still dreaming about a restomod NA that looks near stock but has a few modern tweaks.

GLWS

 

So the car is sold since a few months now.
Had to take apart everything to make that happen, no takers for someone else's project I assume.
Ironically I wasn't able to find a buyer locally for the turbo kit so off to eBay and back to its US roots the FM kit went.

12 years, seven of them boosted. So much fun and heartbreaks at the same time.
I have an NC2 for a year which has given me nothing but pain on what is exclusively a daily commute.
I had the top's glass fail two days after purchase, replaced the a/c condenser, only to find out it was not the source of the leak, guess what is? Yeah right, the core that is inside the dash.

OE diff failed at the 86k miles mark on a 100mph highway sweeper, go figure.

Worst OE audio system ever with weird impedance speakers, so replaced all that garbage with chinese head unit and a nice set of speakers and amp.

As far as mods currently my tune and some British shop made header.

Still on OE bilsteins, car is super comfortable for my daily commute but I lack confidence in the twisty stuff due to the nature of the OEM suspension.

Thinking GWR Koni clubsports or a street Meister set (dealer discount helps here)
XIDA is too far out my reach at this point.

 

Damn, everyone's getting on the NC train now. I'm in the same boat as you, grabbed an NC(1), started parting out my NA last month and quickly realized how much work that process results in.

Yours looks great from a visual standpoint. Sorry it's given you so many issues. Hopefully that doesn't continue.

 

Haven't updated in a year. How time flies.
I now own the car for two years and 15k miles, and reliability with this car has been disappointing to say the least.
Since updating I replaced an alternator, pulley tensioner and belts, two A/C compressors, one A/C evap core (dashboard out job).

New BRZ got me intrigued but due to nature of where I live and small numbers of sports cars, second hand value stays very high, so out of reach.
So I decided to mod the NC for now.
Put on the Goodwin Koni Clubsport. Car rides like on a cloud when full soft. Super comfortable. Would be too soft for the track but I can't afford the maintenance that comes with track driving, so I'm mainly going on canyon drives and don't feel like I miss out too much honestly. I'm on the same set of pads and rotors I bought the car with, which I don't even know what brand but they stop ok I guess lol. Never got so much usage of the brakes out of the NB.
Did replace the headlight plastic lenses and painted the innards black to look like the NC3 club ones. Turned out really nice







Next mod is a fab9 elite manifold and an NC3 bumper swap

 

Bummed to hear about the fixes you've had to make on that thing man. Evap cores are no fun at all to replace. That being said, the car looks good and I'm glad to hear you're enjoying it otherwise! Interested to hear your thoughts on the Fab9 manifold once you get it installed. Seems like some folks are saying it makes a decent bump in power while others are reporting no notable increase. I don't know who to believe but I kinda want the manifold just because it makes for easier access to EVERYTHING on the intake side of the engine bay.

What intake did you go with there, Xero Limit?

 

I will certainly get as much data out of it as I can (versatune dealer), so I have a full access and lots of setups to compare to. Partly doing it as marketing for my audience. Will be the first one here to do it.
This will see the dyno as well, and I have a plot to compare against.
Intake is AliExpress special with a Xero Limit air filter.
I will monitor intake temps. Worst case I'll wrap it or ceramic coat it.

 

I am almost done with the plumbing for the manifold.
Waiting on some timing chain related bolts (the OE ones are one-time use so once out, new one needed).
Sold my cams to a customer so ordered again for myself (BC stage 2)
This is such a waste of money, but we aren't rational people, are we?

Bryan screwed up on the pcv port (not faulting, can happen), so I ordered a fitting from China (the blue one) along with a silicone hose for the pcv.

 

BC stage 2 cams installed.
Been playing with the tune, no logging yet. But feeling much smoother every time. Most of my time goes towards perfecting the below 3k rpm jerkiness associated with aggressive cams, and I'm getting very good drivability so far.

I would consider it ND2 levels of fast now, considering the weight difference between the platforms.

Engine reacting dramatically to changes to the vvt table, it wants lower than stock values below 3k, and just a 3 degree advance over stock values at full load makes for a noticable difference.
I will polish it once on the dyno, due after the fab9 manifold which is booked for installation next month.

In other news, NC3 bumper swap is done

 

Yup. Adding cams usually means significantly less cam advance in VVT tables. If your tuning software allows, play with the actual setpoints. Old Megasquirt would have a coarse 8x8 table. Up high, timing advance doesn't change much so I'd spread those out. Down low, I' bunch up the set points and experiment to find just where the cams start working to put a few setpoint in on either side. On bigger 16 or 32x tables, that's less an issue.

 

The car looks fantastic with the NC3 bumper and refinished headlights. Nice work. Really interested to see dyno results of the 2.0l with cams. Was it a night and day difference? You mention feeling close to nd2 in power, which would be super impressive if so.

 

I get a very good resolution with VERSATUNE. It shows the Mazda tables as they are. I believe it's a 16x16.
Will dive deeper when I get more time.

@Fireindc still on 91 octane equivalent, I want to have low and high octane options. So there's still some power to be gained.
I wouldn't call it a night and day, it definitely pulls harder once past 3500 rpm. You're kinda get that thrown in the seat sensation more like you get with an ND, which is nice.
BBR in the UK have a kit which they call BBR200, which is header, tune, cams.
So from butt dyno I believe it's 200 right now.
I wouldn't say it's worth it though with cams alone, but the Elite manifold should benefit from it so I went for it.

 

So this is what I've come up with.
For now this is just against absolute loads, further resolution on the dyno. I'm probably asking for too much advance, but that's me trying to tackle loss in load.
I was kissing 1.0-1.01 loads, which is great for a stock intake, stock airbox, and 95 EU fuel.
Fuel is very much the limiting factor in this setup. Next up some 98 EU fuel tuning and I can call this setup complete, until the Elite manifold.

 

98 map was pretty straight forward. Advanced the ignition a few degrees the entire maps of open and closed loop.

Closed loop is where the magic happens with higher octance, i.e part throttle. Much more responsive to throttle input.

Not a very noticeable difference in WOT though (this is consistent with no matter what mod you throw on this car, naturally aspirated of course).

But the engine does run smoother. Lower end roughness almost completely gone with the advance I threw on it.

 

Dyno tuning went great, apart from the fact that its calibrated wrong and reads too high.
Since my regular, long time dynapack place is out of business, and most of my tuning and other Miatas references are out of the question, I went to another dyno.

Since there's no baseline NC result on this dyno, I got a friend with a completely stock NC1 to run before me.

His runs resulted in 204 crank HP... go figure.
Logs show results are bang on with stock car measurements of maf and load.
Anyway up I went, started with 236 first run, 241 next run right after (typical NC ecu behavior). And that concluded the 95 octane runs.
Burned the first 98 run, and added octane booster just to be sure.
Further ignition and vvt tuning made for almost 262hp for the final runs, which means 58hp over stock, and 30nm.

Which you can say means 218 for my car, 160 for stock car

Take that as you wish, but if feels like that much of an increase.

The car pulls VERY healthy after 5500 rpm. Further indications needed vs other cars

I can attach the final vvt and ignition tables if that's of any interest to someone.

 

So after taking a big hit on fuel mileage with the 3 inch intake and turbulences associated with it, and the intake bends also affecting reading, together with me not wanting to spend time dialing in maf scaling, I decided to purchase the AEM intake.
From talking to Bryan at Fab9, he wasn't satisfied with the 3 inch intakes too, and this is someone who has a lot more resources and time than me.
After all said and done I might even make a bit more power, and regain some midrange torque, which the aem is known for.

 

The intake really caused an MPG drop? How much so?

I feel you regarding the MAF turbulence. My 3” DIY intake ran into the same issue. Turbulence at WOT would cause AFR to go ~0.3 points leaner around 5k rpm than everywhere else. Couldn’t tune it out with any amount of MAF scaling or load compensation tweaks.

My current setup actually does the same thing too (3” MAF tube after the intercooler). I’m adding an air straightener secured with hi temp JB weld and a couple screws to try and smooth out readings.

Again, that AEM intake sounds like magic.

 

Yup, went from 23 MPG to about 17.5.