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It seems like most threads I've read start out with a bit of background, so here it goes!
Before I start, I'd like to thank ryansmoneypit, brain, shuiend, thirdgen 18psi, aidan, sean, borka, rev, and too many other people to list for being as patient as MT allows and answering questions that I had after reading old threads and posts. Y'all are great.
I started medical school in 2015 and spent some time in Asia the summer before I started. I caught the motorcycle bug in Vietnam, along with a pretty awesome case of cellulitis, but that's a story from another time. I had some money set aside for a car and ended up getting a cheaper DD to buy a motorcycle and ended up with an SV650. I had a blast with it, but I caught the mod bug. I hadn't really worked on anything before so I read lots of forums, talked to a bunch of helpful folks on facebook and ended up going from this when I got it:
(Don't mind that guy. He's just some random Indian kid I found on the street. Not too hard to do in med school.)
(Okay, so maybe it's me.)
to this, broken down on the side of the road during my first road trip on the damn thing. Battery worked itself loose and I had no tools. Got lucky that a guy in a crazy dune buggy was driving by and helped me out.
Some street bike surgery ensued.
With an end result of this after a front and rear end swap, rear shock swap, bar swap, and a few other things.
The bike was an absolute blast to ride, but I didn't have much occasion to ride it anywhere. I'd ride it to my GF's place an hour away a few times, but highway rides were boring. To be honest, the exhaust was too loud for me and didn't really help the experience all that much. I ended up selling the bike at the end of summer while entertaining the idea of learning to drive manual and getting a car that would give a fun open air experience with my gf that refused to get on the back of the damn bike.
Last edited by sixshooter; 06-14-2018 at 12:50 PM.
Reason: fun
Enter this NB1 base I found locally. Seller was asking a reasonable amount for a car that had been cared for, had no rust, and had 105k miles on it. Seemed pretty workable!
I had a shop check it out, got the seal of approval, and went for it. The seller was a middle aged woman selling it because her second son was going to college and she wanted to free up some cash. I could probably have talked her down a bit, but she came and delivered the car and I didn't want to make a futz about it. My gf was over at the time and freaked out and all of us hung out and had a glass of wine after the deal.
Last edited by ridethecliche; 12-06-2016 at 11:43 PM.
Yeah, I'm honestly not a fan of the wheels. They're pretty ugly, though similar to how the new 4C wheels look. Unfortunately, they're also pretty friggin heavy as well as being 16's... On the bright side I believe they're 6.5 wide, so they have a decent width for a street car. I've been talking to a forum member that's thinking of selling his 15x8 wheels. I'm a bit over budget right now in terms of things, but I think that it's something I should probably do.
Welp, I was out of class over this past summer (RIP final summer) and started hanging out with some subaru mechanics and misfits and started learning to wrench a bit. I daily an 02 TS, otherwise I wouldn't have been attempting this build.
The plan was to go NA first and then take the time to assemble go fast parts and do a build at some point. Well, 2nd year of med school sucks. I take a test in April next year that pretty much determines a lot of ish. Last winter, working on the bike was an awesome way to get my mind off things and since one of the subie guys has a miata and knows them pretty well we decided that we could push up the timeline. I'm pretty grateful for his basically being a solid friend and offering to help with pretty much everything in exchange for beer and wings. No mouth hugs though, he's a bit young for me.
So since I had a base nb1, one of the first things I wanted to do when I was still in 'NA' mode, was to get a header. I bought an NB2 RB 4-1 header with the matching egr tube and got that in. The process took a week because I have **** tools and I ended up having to dremel off one of the bolts connecting the front pipe to the header.
Here's the car enjoying some air time:
My folks live in the philly/trenton area, so on a trip home I decided to check craigslist on a whim and ended up going and buying a TDR heat shield, used (claimed 5-10k miles) FM clutch with a 13lb flywheel, and a 4.3 torsen to replace my open diff. Sadly, I don't think I have any pictures of us doing the torsen swap, but it was a fun affair. Was luck to have 2 friends helping and Chris had his impact so it went pretty well all things considered.
2 days after the swap I noticed diff fluid on my garage floor. A freakout ensued. Turns out we never bothered to double check the fill plug tightness... Whoops. I drained and refilled the fluid and called it a day. Luckily it wasn't running low, but that could have been ugly! Crisis averted!
Unfortunately, I had a minor fender bender in the fall, when I tapped someone cutting into my lane in one of the worst intersections ever designed. I pulled the bonehead move of not really getting his contact info and he balked when my insurance contacted him.
Damage was minimal, but the already bad clear on the front was made worse and the side of the bumper needs to be looked at.
I also bought the stuff I needed to go all 'Chris Fix' on the headlights. I think it would help a lot.
Here's where things start now. After Chris offered to help with the turbo build, I figured it would be a good long drawn out project for the winter that I could toy with a bit while studying.
We checked compression and it ran 170, 170, 165, 180 from 1 through 4. So the next step was to start collecting parts.
I already have a torsen and a clutch waiting to be put in. I'm hoping to be able to adapt the TDR heat shield blanket for the turbo.
Goals: I'm running stock internals. I don't know how to rebuild the engine yet, so I want to keep things safe. Hopefully I'll be able to do the rods and maybe even pistons in the next year or two. I've read that the engine and the 5 speed trans start getting unhappy past 250 rwhp/220rwtq. Is that about accurate? I'd like to stay below that, so maybe 220-230 rwhp and 200 rwtq? Should be doable on this setup, right?
So now for the turbo and other parts:
-ECU: MS3X from the man himself, Scott.
-Turbo setup: It's essential a journal bearing garrett 2560 with an EWG and Tial BOV. The manifold and DP are FM. Bought from Thirdgen. (EDIT: It's a 38 mm Tial water cooled EWG, 'SON')
-Exhaust setup: 2.5 FM setup with a resonator and cat. Bought from Borka. I've read all the 3 inch threads, but the price was right.
-Koyo radiator: Bought from Matt Miner (Wicked Matt)
-Injectors: I bought mustang take offs from a V8 on ebay and bought the force flow adapters. I figured that a running car would be a safe bet. Claimed take off was at sub 10k miles, so should be solid. My friend Chris can use the remaining 4 for his build.
-Coolant reroute: Bought from bandit
-Fuel pump: Wahlbro 255LPH-HP bought from Thumpetto007
-Intercooler: NOS FAB9 stage 1 bought from Chillicharger
-Wideband and gauge: AEM UEGO bought from Yankee.
I'll post pictures of the turbo setup I got!
Few questions:
I should probably buy a boost gauge and a coolant/oil temp gauge right?
Does anyone have recs for IC piping? I've read the ebay IC thread, but I don't have that exact IC. Does anyone with the vibrant stage 1 IC want to chime in and let me know what they did? Or just refer me to your build thread. I'm hoping to keep AC and PS.
I also bought a set of the front sport brakes and am planning to buy rear adapters since I've read that the stock 1.8 rears have better pad availability than the sport brakes. Ryansmoneypit provided some solid feedback.
I'm also thinking of swapping away from the stock suspension, though I don't hate it so this could wait. I've read the budget bilstein thread and I was wondering there's a go to shock for that? Is there any benefit over the stock yellows vs the msm vs the hard s? I have access to the MSM and hard S for about 200 a full set. Trying to see if it's worth building up a set of coilovers if I have to buy the shocks. Seems like most people going this route already have the stock bilsteins.
Plan for now is to get some maintenance out of the way: TB/WP and accessory belts/gaskets, install reroute and new radiator, do the clutch job, then install the megasquirt once things are running well and put a couple of hundred miles on it with the stock setup and get it idling and potentially driving a bit with the mustang injectors. After that, the car is likely going to get parked for a while as the turbo and intercooler and everything is installed. I'm hoping to keep rust away and we've started getting salt on the roads. I know going out in stuff once or twice won't destroy things, but I don't want to take too many risks!
That's it for me for tonight. Thanks for contributing advice and all the awesome help and resources on here.
Last edited by ridethecliche; 12-11-2016 at 11:21 PM.
Good choice on getting the car running on the MS first. Learning from my mistakes?
Definitely good a boost gauge. I have been running without a coolant/oil temp gauge, however I do have an open spot for one. Definitely get a wideband. Matt will pretty much require one for tuning, as its one of the most important gauges to have!
2005 called they want their wheels back...
In all seriousness I'm on the south shore if you need anything, always looking to meet more MT.net people
Thanks man!
How's your car running right now? I remember reading through your build thread a while ago and reading that you were having a bunch of issues!
Originally Posted by Leach0789
Good choice on getting the car running on the MS first. Learning from my mistakes?
Definitely good a boost gauge. I have been running without a coolant/oil temp gauge, however I do have an open spot for one. Definitely get a wideband. Matt will pretty much require one for tuning, as its one of the most important gauges to have!
Haha, yeah trying to learn anyway! I've read so many build threads it's all starting to meld together. I've even started saving posts in a word doc when I think someone does something I want to refer to later. So much information!
I have an AEM UEGO waiting to go in with the MS. I'm probably going to add the boost gauge and the coolant/oil gauge in time, but trying to figure out an order of operations so to speak. I had an issue with the CAS going bad when I was driving on the GWB with my GF. Had all sorts of weird misfire/overheating issues going on then. Trying to avoid that by being able to keep track of things. The dash coolant temp is okay to see if things are within normal limits, but I think oil temp will be a good idea.
With an EWG and a BOV, I feel like overboost or boost creep should be pretty limited since anything over the springs capacity should just vent out, right?
Next order of business is figure out what to do about suspension. I want to do a DIY coilover setup on bilsteins... except they're not stock on my car. Trying to figure out if it makes sense to buy billies to do that to or just buy another setup like used tokico illuminas and FM springs or something else used. Vmaxx's are about 650, but if the billies and required parts end up costing 500+ then I'm not sure where the benefit is.
I'll do my homework on price over the next day or so and figure out what parts would run. My stock nb1 base shocks are probably blown at 105k miles. The MSM shocks I can get for 200 have 70k miles on them. Should be a pretty big improvement from stock even if I end up not doing the coilovers yet, eh?
I should probably get a shifter turret rebuild kit too at this mileage, huh? Doubt it's ever been done before.
If you want to really cheap out, look into takenoff billies from Spec Miatas. My friend has picked up six of them for a grand total of $190.
They are the NA HD ones though, so not quite as good damping as the MSM.
The advantage of going MSM is that I can run the setup as is and still have an improvement from stock if I run out of money and run them as is. Apparently folks also like buying the MSM springs, so could sell them to add a bit more to the funds for the coilover setup.
If you can find used Tokico/FM springs for an NB I would take those over all the other ones you listed in a heart beat. Well as long as this is a street car.
If you can find used Tokico/FM springs for an NB I would take those over all the other ones you listed in a heart beat. Well as long as this is a street car.
It'll see some autocross duty, but it's never going to be a track car. It'll cost too much to do all the prep and actually run the car.
Originally Posted by thirdgen
Should've bought those V Maxx's...
Oh hey! It's the patron saint of this build! I was wondering when you'd find this thread!
12-06-2016, 09:06 PM
project ride the cheekbone
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