I've done a few tops at AR. Such a PITA. Find a hard top.

 

I'll probably just drop the hardtop from my other car on it for now since I usually don't use it. But that's obviously a very temporary solution.

 

I know of two nice NB seats, that are in fine shiape but with new katzkins re-covers to go on them, if you're interested.

 

If he doesn't want them (and they are NB2 seats) I might be interested.

 

Those the ones out of your car, Richard? I may be interested, I'll FB msg you.

 

Correct, the ones out of my car.

 

This thread needs an update.


All moved in at Hurricane, Utah. Ended up selling that '96 M and buying an MSM with a bad engine. You can read about that here:

https://www.miataturbo.net/build-thr...-thread-92031/

My Miata has been sitting in storage for the last two months. I started it up the other day and found this:



So I pulled it and it seems OK:

But the turbine housing bolts are still safety wired and tight. So they're probably stretched:

@Savington do you have a recommended fix for this?

 

I do

 

Joking aside, you might be able to find an Inconel fastener off-the-shelf and have a machine shop EDM-drill them for wire. Trey did that years ago to good effect, I believe.

 

After seeing that the clamp plates were still tight, and so were the bolts, I retract my stretched bolt theory. I think something else is wrong.

 

A little part of me was sorta hoping the turbo was bad... but even so, I absolutely don't have the budget for a TSE kit. Someday...

But blast. I hoped you'd have some pre-drilled super high grade bolts or something haha. Time for some research.

We don't know how tight the clamp plates are. After getting it off the car, it's very difficult to rotate the housing. I still think it's stretched bolts. The assembly isn't complicated here.

 

With stretched bolts you should be able to tighten them down and have it not rotate, unless they are bottoming out in the housings.

You can also just grab some fresh hardware store bolts, and clamp it down, to see if it rotates.

 

If you yielded the turbine housing, my joke reply becomes much less of a joke

 

Lol, its a good option. But isn't it like 10x the price.

TiAL Sport 004097: GT28 Lightweight Stainless Steel Turbine Housing .52 Turbine A/R | JEGS

 

Would you mind expounding on this? What do you mean 'yielded?'

 

stretched

 

That's fancy engineering talk for "bent"

 

Well, yes, I understand that. But I'm trying to understand where the housing would be yielded. The threads where the bolts go? Maybe yielded where it meets the center section of the turbo?

 

Pulled the turbo apart, everything looks fine.

I tried tightening the bolts and some were slightly loose. After tightening, I could no longer rotate the housing but it did have a tiny bit of rotational slop... Like, barely perceptible.

Not quite sure how to fix this.

 

On my ebay turbos, the 3 little pieces that the bolts touch, those are crooked a bit when you set them on the turbo, so when you tighten the bolts, those 3 brackets put pressure on the CHRA with the inner lip, and the turbine housing with the outer lip. The friction holds it all together.

From your video and description it sounds like those 3 pieces on your setup, when installed, are not touching the CHRA so tightening the bolts just smashes that piece harder against the turbine housing, and doesn't increase the clamping force between it and the CHRA. Thus yours rotates with tight bolts.

If that's the case, those 3 pieces need to be different so they can put pressure on the CHRA when you tighten the bolts. On mine I tighten those bolts to 10-15 ft lbs and it holds great.