You can put a little anti-seize on the inside of the V-band clamp to help seat the flanges, should have a bit on the threads too. I'm in Mexico currently, Puerto Vallarta. Similar cobble stone streets. Had to take one uber while sitting in the trunk cause we forgot to order an XL for our group of 6. My tailbone hurts.

 

Before heading out to Winnemucca last weekend I did a couple quick things around the car. I threw some velcro under the passenger carpet to help hold it in place and found some clips that would work to hold the passenger side skirt on. It's been loosely attached for a while now which is always annoying when trying to get a puck onto the pinch welds when jacking it up.

The passenger carpet is also secured to the studs that poke up into the passenger footwell area, so the velcro is mostly there to keep it from flopping around too much when people get in and out of the car.

I've had this carpet zip tied on for a while now which worked, but wasn't pretty.

Not perfect, but it seems to be working so far.

Also not perfect but seem to be working so far.


A couple bolts on the turbo and manifold were loose when I did a bolt check. Not completely surprising, I really should get some locking hardware or safety wire at some point.

A quick shakedown in the mountains pushed more oil into the catch can than I expected, so I drained that out before the trip as well. Solo hard top install isn't as bad as I expected it would be. After the Porsche club event a couple weeks ago I also took this as an opportunity to do some knock sensor/spark map adjustment. I reshaped my spark map and have been pulling timing wherever it's noisy. Still getting noise here and there, but not nearly as crazy of spikes as I saw previously.



Winnemucca was fun as always. About 4 hours of highway each direction with 2 days of autocross and the car didn't skip a beat. I didn't get any good video, but we were getting into 3rd gear both days. @Ironhydroxide and I had a blast duking it out. Really close competition between the two of us and another NB that was there. Ultimately I took 3rd in XB for day 1, 2nd for day 2 and 3rd for the weekend. Iron and I swapped runs as well, I've got more power, while he's got more suspension. Really interesting to see two different recipes for the same car.

Bumped into a guy who apparently owned my car ~10 years ago. Unfortunately I didn't get much of the cars history from him. Apparently he sold it to the guy who gave it the iconic paint job.




This was the first road trip with the 6 speed and 3.6. Having 6th gear for the highway is excellent, especially when most of the cars in our caravan are modern and happily cruise at 80. I averaged 27.5 MPG on the way home, which is a bit less than I'd expect, but decent enough. Side note, the trans still sounds like a bag of rocks at high RPM. I don't have plans to change it out any time soon, but I imagine it'll be getting a rebuild or replacement next winter if not sooner.


Overall a great weekend. We've got another local event this weekend, so I'm going to keep looking at the logs and tuning out any suspected knock. I think I flew a little too close to the sun when I was trying to dial the map in with the det cans, but am feeling pretty good about things now that the link is processing the signal. My idle is also a little inconsistent, so I might fiddle with that again. The car never feels like it's going to die, but it does stumble around in certain conditions. Still not sure if that's being caused by the injectors or the tune, but either way it's a pretty small gripe.

 

Yo, congrats on the weekend result (and the car running smoothly for the whole trip) dude! Tight competition is rad, definitely worth more than an easy podium haha.

I also completely missed the part where you procured a hardtop. Have you had that thing sitting around?

I can't imagine driving my old NA without a hardtop. The chassis felt like a wet noodle without it installed, even with frame rail braces haha.

 

Yup, the hard top was on the car when I bought it. Crazy because in todays market the top is worth over 50% of what I paid for the car.

It usually only goes on during winter and for road trips. I just enjoy being able to throw the top down too much to keep it on.

 

When I got the car the PO had removed the horn and the wires behind the wheel were cut. It hasn't been a huge issue, but there have been times where I've wished I had a horn to blast at the trucks that want to merge into me. Aside from that, one of the few rules for XB is that the car must have a horn.

Earlier this week I grabbed the "ooga" horn from harbor freight, but decided pretty quickly that the novelty wouldn't be worth the effort of figuring out how/where to mount it. It was quite a bit bigger and heavier than expected, so I opted to take the easy route and returned it in favor of some knockoff Hella horns.


The PO had also removed the washer bottle and pump, which left a convenient pigtail to tap into. In hindsight, I should probably get the original horn wiring working and run it that way, but this was a 10 minute job. Bolted the horn to a factory hole in the firewall, space connectors to plug into the washer pump pigtail, and now I've got a wiper-stalk operated horn. I might hook up the second one, but didn't want to push the circuit too much. I believe the washer circuit runs on a 20 amp fuse, and the horns recommend a 15 amp fuse. I'm not sure how much either really draws, but with a single horn and the wipers on full blast it seems to hold up fine. If nothing else, I have a spare one now in case this one fails.

Bonus photos from Winnemucca

 

Nice updates! I had some of those knockoff horns on my subaru, they were the sickspeed ones. yeah, I know, typically subaru ****. Anyways one night at about 3AM I was awoken to them both blaring right outside my bedroom. Scrambled outside to them just blaring full blast non-stop, had to pop the hood barely awake and rip the wiring out. The relay they came with had stuck.

Anyways, the horns themselves are loud AF and lived on in another car for many years.

 

Took the car to autocross last weekend. Nothing super crazy there, but we did have one course which had me going to 3rd gear. I only missed one shift, going 2->5, which made me think the car was broken for a second. I also got to chat with, and give rides to, some new Miata owners who were thinking about turbo'ing their car. I always love getting to take people for their first ride along, especially if they've got a Miata. I remember the first time I rode in a turbo car after getting mine and it felt like we were teleporting to each cone.

This was a different passenger, a friend of a friend who I keep bumping into at events.

The trans still sounds like death, so that's cool. I might try another PPF adjustment, but at this point I don't think the rattling/grinding is going anywhere. Probably a winter project if it doesn't require attention before.

It was by far the hottest day of the year so far. I believe the high was around 32 C (~88 F). I wasn't running when it was quite that hot, but it was still plenty warm. I was spraying the intercooler mostly, but the radiator as well.

At the end of the day this was the worst case I saw. After turning the car off it dropped to 75 C coolant temps and I saw 96 C after a run. Keep in mind I forgot to have my fan switch on (forcing both rad fans on), so they weren't kicking on until around 88C and 92 C.


After the weekend I decided I'd drop some coolant and add some water to dilute the system. I realized after I checked the freezing point that the system was already around 70:30 water to coolant. I had a half bottle of water wetter in the garage, so I threw that in instead. We'll see if it makes a noticeable difference.

Also on the heat aspect, it's supposed to be around 38 C (100 F) here this weekend, so yesterday when I was driving around I turned on the AC to see what would happen. Unsurprisingly, as I had not tuned the settings aside from some shots in the dark, the car wasn't too happy. It was really struggling to return to idle. It didn't help that I'd been messing with closed loop lambda settings as well.

I was sitting in the driveway trying to dial it in and, just as I was getting frustrated, I thought, "This engine just doesn't have enough torque to run the compressor...". After that I thought, "well lets make more torque" and turned up the AC Idle Offset value. I ended up having to offset it by 15 steps, which was way more than I initially expected (I think I had it at 4 steps to start). Rev's don't drop nearly as aggressively now when returning to idle, previously it felt like the car was doing some regenerative braking.

The jury is still out on if the AC will be usable this summer. I might try it out this weekend to see how the car reacts and if the AC can actually keep up with the heat. I still hesitate to pull it, but if nothing else it might encourage me to try a different radiator.

At this point I don't have a ton planned for the car. I've got some parts listed for sale, so if those go then I might justify spending that on something else. I've got all the parts (I think) to finish my CAN gauge project, so I'll probably pull the ECU sometime and add the CAN header to the ECU as well as getting things routed for the eventual flex fuel sensor. I also found the MeatPi recently that seems like it would take the CAN from the Link and allow me to bluetooth to it and use RealDash. That's a $42 part, so I would've saved money going that route over DIY, but in theory I like mine better. We'll see if it ever materializes.

 

Nice run, dude! Looks like you and the car are jiving really well together. Loved the long, smooth countersteer/correction at 0:23. I miss giving ride alongs in my turbo car and hearing passengers' suprised at the power. "What the heck, these cars can do that!?"

Did you already source a flexfuel sensor for your project? I still have the GM sensor and connector from my NA sitting around if you want one for cheap.

 

Thanks man, that was a fun slide. The Nankangs seem to spin a bit, but they'll hook up eventually. Not sure if I'll end up with another set of these or try the 660+, but these aren't bad for 3 year old tires.

I don't have a sensor yet. I was thinking about heading to the junkyard to try to pull one, but if you've got one lying around that might work perfectly. I'll PM you.

 

Cool clip, the car looks to be ripping and you are piloting it well!

I'd say keep AC if possible. I think I could make it work in my car with the recent revamp in cooling stack and ducting. But oh well, not likely to add it back anytime soon (or ever). Cool suit works well in its absence at least.

 

Thanks Fire. If the AC was broken I'd probably rip it out, but since it's working I have a hard time removing it.

Maybe the Mishimoto radiators just aren't up to the task. I don't think very highly of them, but I figured they'd be sufficient with ducting. It is a pretty thick cooling stack though.

I'm thinking if the current setup won't hold temps then I'll probably go to the SuperMiata crossflow or similar. If someone has suggestions I'm all for them, but I feel like I've got all the low hanging cooling mods done at this point.

 

There is a large hole behind the drivers side headlight that goes into the fender well. I've been theorizing about using that to get fresh air to the intake and/or routing the intake through that hole to get the filter out of the engine bay.



I was out at Home Depot and grabbed some of this insulated bubble wrap type material. People pretty commonly use this material for tire blankets to keep heat in their tires in grid during the colder months. I've also seen some pretty creative uses in the engine bay for heat shielding.


A roll like this is about $12. I actually wanted to get it to make an insulated jacket for my tire/intercooler sprayer for the hotter months, but there's plenty of material in this roll to experiment with.

Its super easy to work with. A little Oragami, some tape and some trimming and I created a little blanked for the intake. Originally I was going to - and still might - add some coroplast to the underside to prevent the blanket from getting sucked onto the air filter and restricting flow. The material is pretty flimsy. Not sure if that's a concern or not.



I took off to the local mountain to stress the car out and do some testing. I started with the blanket off, put it on and then pulled it off again as I ascended.

I'm pretty confident I've got the data figured out. It's always a bit difficult to redrive based on a datalog. The first section of driving is without the blanket, the second is with, and the third is without again, although I was not pushing the car nearly as hard in the third section. Ultimate temperature isn't the most useful, as it was evening and the air temp dropped quite a bit as I got higher (climbed from ~2700ft to 6100 ft).



Unfortunately, I don't think the data is very conclusive. I might pick through it a bit more, but I'll probably need to do some more testing. Back to back runs at autocross will probably be the best comparison. It seems like some hose going from a fog light hole up to that gap behind the headlight/fender would help even more. I assume there's at least a bit of heat from the brakes radiating up through that hole as well, so a hose pulling fresh air in might alleviate some of that.

Keep in mind this data is coming from the IAT sensor in the IC piping behind the radiator, so it probably isn't the most accurate data. I was also pulling coolant temps around 100 C (212 F), so I'm sure that hot air blowing from the rad fans weren't helping.

The blanket also dramatically reduces the suck noise from the intake. It's still there, but it's not nearly as loud at lower RPM/load.

I also picked up a ton of hits on the knock sensor during the drive, but only on cylinders 2 and 3. Cylinders 1 & 4 had 4 knock events each while cylinders 2 &3 had over 100 each. Not surprising I suppose given that the sensor is centered around cylinders 2 and 3, but I figured the knock windowing would help compensate for that. Most of those were spiking around 3, so I'm not as worried about the spikes I was seeing with my old spark map which were up past 7 IIRC. I've already pulled a lot of timing since installing the knock sensor, but I guess I might pull more. Tangentially related, a flex fuel sensor just arrived at my door courtesy of @Z_WAAAAAZ , so I'll try to find some motivation to get that installed sometime soon and then see about getting a better fuel pump installed.




Fun stuff. I've been getting back into tennis and am a bit less motivated to work on the car. We don't have any events until July, but I'm hoping to make it out to the ProSolo in Packwood, so I probably need to get the car in the air and check some bolts. I've been hearing some noise from the drivers front which isn't insanely concerning, but I'd like to get on it in case it turns into a bigger job. I also need to do some wiring/ECU work and try to figure out the CAN display I started on so I can monitor temps without the laptop.

 

Also, thoughts on running an oil cooler to help with coolant temps? I know I've seen that recommended before and I was already planning to revise my oil feed setup with a sandwich plate. Not sure I really want to shell out for a thermostatic plate right now, but if it's what's needed then I guess I'll start looking into them.

I'm planning to add an oil temp sensor when I redo the oil feed setup regardless.

 

That's some good data gathering. From my own experiments, the insulation is more helpful in back to back scenarios, or letting the bay heatsoak for 10 or 15 minutes then driving. I said I would do this in my thread, but ended up getting lazy because the results weren't even close. Open filter heatsoaked immediately after a hot restart and never recovered under 55C, while the airbox went to 39C within a few minutes (~10C above ambient).

Does look like knock to me, so maybe use the individual cylinder trims to reduce 3 and 4 only? Could also be worthwhile trying the second resonant frequency if you're not doing that yet.

I've seen you mention wanting to check temps without laptop and forget to respond. The G4X has OBD capability. You can grab the CAN2 expansion and wire it to the OEM OBD2 port, then use an OBD2 dongle to bluetooth on your phone. The wiring instructions are in the manual too, it's super easy.

 

I'm still using the wideband knock filtering. I need to go read up on those settings more. I said I'd do that previously and never did.

That's a good point, going with the OBD2 emulation might be the easiest way forward. I ordered about 10, 4 pin JSTA connectors, so I could pretty easily add headers for both CAN1 and CAN2 next time I have the ECU open. One for OBD2 and one for future projects. I haven't seen those instructions, but I also haven't really looked for them. I did see the OBD2 emulation options in PCLink though and I think you mentioned it previously, so I knew it was possible.

I'm interested to keep playing with the intake blanket/box as well. I also figure it will help with sun exposure. My air filter is right below the hood vents, so if the sun is at the right angle it'll just bake the air filter. Again, not sure how much of an issue that actually is, but it seems like the blanket would help with that. Now I'm wondering what would happen if I wrapped some of the aluminum intercooler piping in the stuff . Having said that, if it was worth any large gains I'm sure someone else would've figure that out by now.

 

I made way too many changes at once to be able to give much advice on cooling. I went from a mishimoto radiator with OK ducting to a SM rad with fantastic ducting and a setrab cooler behind it and a bumper bar delete for more airflow. All I can tell you is that my cooling stack works hilariously well now, with super low IATs and CLTs that don't budge even on high boost and a warm day. I'll have the car out at the FM trackday next week and will know a bit more, because the car was definitely getting hot out there last year (with 215-220* CLT's and rising when I was done with my laps) - which is definitely on the high end and about where I'd start shutting it down (after 220+). Lots of high RPM with low speeds at that track was pretty taxing.

I do feel pretty confident with my current setup that I could add A/C/ back into the mix, so far at least it does appear to be that efficient, which has me pretty thrilled. Kinda makes me regret getting rid of it, but I'm always torn on stuff like this. When I'm doing a lot of track days all I care about is that, then when there's a lull and I'm trying to DD or street drive it I always want those comforts back. Good thing I have several miata's, I guess, aye?

 

I go back and forth as well. I almost wish the AC was broken when I got the car so I could've just ripped it out and not thought twice about it.

I should probably double check all of my safeties too. IIRC they're all setup with pretty good ballpark numbers to shut the car down around 220 F, but it wouldn't hurt to confirm that now that it's warming up.

It's hard to tell which direction to go without more data. I'd be pretty bummed if I shelled out $400+ for a better radiator and found out the oil cooler was what I actually needed. I'd also be bummed to pull a working AC system to find out it didn't make a big change. TBF I ran the AC yesterday and ended up turning it back off because it was more comfortable with the windows down and a slight breeze rolling through the cabin. Decisions, decisions...

 

What about more hood vents? Do you still have the stock crash bar?

You have that dry heat anyway. Thats not real heat

 

One thing I can confidently say is that you won't be bummed about the SM radiator It's a work of art. It's crazy how efficient it is, I.E. if you touch it how much hotter it is and how much heat you feel coming off of it, compared to the cheaper mishimoto alu unit I had before. I know it aint cheap but you can sell your mishi to recoup some of the cost.

 

I do have more vents in the garage, I'd just need to paint them and cut the hood up, which would be a bit harder this time around due to lack of tools. Although that could be a good excuse to buy an angle grinder. I didn't see a dramatic difference with the vents I added already, although the efficacy of the placement could be argued. I have debated on throwing the 2 frontmost panels on.

You're welcome to come over here and try it out. We'll be in the mid 90's early next week