Last time I had the rad out I took the shop vac and hooked the brush attachment up to the exhaust side and did what I could to push/blow crud from the back of the condenser to the front. IIRC I looked at the fins and didn't see anything excessively bent.

Anyway, cars at Ultimate Tint and Barber Shop right now getting 35% tint. Should be a good improvement even without AC

Car is still hot as hell. Haven't got the new fuel pump in so it leans out at high boost. 91 Octane can eat a dick
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...889dc5e4df.jpg

If you're still overheating with this level of attention to ducting, a Supermiata Crossflow rad, and a vented hood, I would say you need to ditch the bumper bar to give air an easier path to the top of your radiator. Matrussel122 was making them for a long time, but I'm not sure if he still does.

Radiator Support Bars---MORE AIRFLOW & COOLING - Miata Turbo Forum - Boost cars, acquire cats.

Charlie Moua regularly posts in Miata groups on Facebook and still seems to be churning out something almost identical, and he'll let you customize it if you like.

I'm only having cooling issues with AC on, but yeah, that's the direction I've been looking. Padlock mentioned trying to allow more flow over the top of the IC, but the IC fills basically the whole bumper mouth. I thought about trying to lower the IC a bit, but having a bash bar would make it so much easier. I've almost pulled the trigger on those a couple times in the past. Probably should've grabbed one of those instead of the radiator.

hen I was looking at my ducting I realized it's probably tripping up the air at points. I might do some testing later, but I'm getting prepped for Packwood right now so I don't want to make major changes right before that.

So 2 weekends ago I got the car packed up to roadtrip about 3 hours each way as a test to see how the car would handle the larger roadtrip out to Packwood. That ended up being a pretty dumb trip because it was obvious the car was not going to be able to maintain temps with AC on and the windows couldn't be rolled down since they had fresh tint. Realistically I should've turned around about 5 minutes after I hit the highway but I decided to suffer. I had a cooler in the passenger seat with some ice and a rag so I was able to stay cool enough.

I signed up to play in a fundraiser golf scramble the morning of the wedding. Hadn't played in years so it was fun to get back out on the greens and find out the Miata can just barely fit my clubs.
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...68f055544d.jpg


My plan was to work on better ducting after that trip to try and get AC operational for Packwood, but for whatever reason I didn't. I made some changes but they were rushed and frankly half-assed and likely made things worse if anything. Regardless, last Thursday me and a couple buddies set out for the Packwood Prosolo over in Washington.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...b14fb21caa.jpg



https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...b49f0f6419.jpg


Don't let the picture above fool you, the majority of the trip was driving on desert highway. The last hour or so of the trip is a pretty drive through the mountains of Washington. The road is terrible and I actually scraped on one compression, but the views are great and the temperature cools down a lot which keeps me and the car happier.


https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...04db31f787.jpg


We always camp on site. Evening course walks are always a good time. It's a pretty rough weekend \s.

Fun fact, in the photo below there are about 20 red pixels in the background that are Bob Bundy's CSP car.
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...f8be94fa6b.jpg


I ended up running in S1 which comprised mostly of XA cars and a pair of CSP cars. XA is pretty much the same class I run but with a slightly better PAX and a heavier minimum weight. I ended up taking 6th out of 9 cars in the class and coned away a run that would've put me in 5th. For context the 1st spot was taken by a Model 3 Performance driven by a national champion and 2nd was taken by a 2016 GT3RS with some aero mods. Bob Bundy and his codriver took 3rd and 4th. I like the looseness of the XA/XB classes, but in the grand scheme it's going to be tough to compete with cars who have double my horsepower (or more) and 100mm more tire. I could've driven better but was ultimately pretty content with how I performed. It's been a while since our last event so I'm a bit rusty. Unfortunately this will be the last event I attend until another regional event in a month or so.

I was pretty happy to have beaten this supercharged LS swapped BRZ. I've seen the car evolve over the years and it's wilder every time I see it. This year the radiator and intercooler had been moved to the rear of the car. I want to say he was running 345R17s. Also note the white Miata in the back. I failed to get photos, but that was running 15x10's (or maybe 11s?) on stock fenders. They were rolled and pulled like crazy but it was a very well done job.

The car held together well, but was getting hot. For context the prosolo format is a drag racing start into the course. There are 2 courses side by side and you do 2 runs on each side back to back, so left, right, left, right or the opposite. The courses were about 30 seconds this year, so pretty short. When you finish a run you drive back to the start for the other side and usually have about a minute between finishing one run and starting the next. My warning light for coolant temp came on at the end of the last run on each of the 3 sessions of the weekend. I have logs but haven't reviewed them yet, but I think I was probably topping out around 105 C.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...e4664923e1.jpg


Afterward, with the car still in tact, we ran over to Leavenworth to relax for an evening before driving the ~7 hours home. Thankfully it was pretty cool out all weekend so the drive home was comfortable with the windows down.


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...43118ae01f.jpg


Always a bit of a slog, but also a super fun weekend. Something like 17 hours of driving and 1000+ miles (for 6 minutes of seat time :nuts:). No real mishaps other than my 3d printed speedo gear failing on the drive home. I have a spare so I'll swap that in and figure out a better solution while that one wears out. I'll probably post some videos and logs in the next couple days.

As far as the car overheating, I plan to rip out my ducting and start over. Like Padlock pointed out before, I don't have much room for the air to pass over the intercooler, and I'd like to try a couple different setups with less ducting in place to see what helps and what hurts. With the quick releases on the bumper it's so much more convenient to get access to the front end, so I'm way more willing to fiddle with that now.

Fuel pump covers are off as well and I'm starting in on swapping the DW200 in and getting a relay wired in. Hopefully that will be finished up in the next day or two and I'll get back to dialing in the E85 maps. I didn't bother trying to get E85 hauled up for the Prosolo but might for our next event. Flex fuel is mad convenient.

Can't decide what to give my cat for, the golf club packing job or the fact that you didn't die in your car with no A/C and the windows up. Either way, great update. I got respect for you driving your car 1k+ miles round trip on a race weekend haha.

Interested to see the second ducting revision. Hopefully you can get those CLT's under control yet.

Got the DW200 swapped in last night and added a relay for the fuel pump. Not the cleanest install I've ever done but it's done and should hold up fine. For whatever reason the relay holder uses the black wire for power, so it took me a second to be confident I had the wiring correct. Since I had already swapped over to a DW100 previously the fuel pump install was plug and play.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...f94a11ce3a.jpg
Slapped a 15 Amp fuse in for now. Should be plenty for my purposes.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...07a4733cc7.jpg
Glad to see the fuel tank is looking pristine.
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...fbd05b7a23.jpg


I think I'll move over to uninsulated crimp connectors in the future. These always seem to be the wrong size for whatever heatshrink I want to use and then the heatshrink doesn't actually seal to the wire which defeats the purpose. I suppose that's how you learn.

Got some E85 in the car and lambda seems pretty good. Might need to pull some fuel in places but for the most part it's on target even with the boost turned up.

My odometer is about 5-600 miles behind now due to the speedo gear failing. I didn't realize it at first, but when the speedo gear goes out your trip meter and odometer stop ticking as well. Not too hard to fix. After talking to @Ironhydroxide I decided to jack the rear of the car up to keep the fluid from spilling out (not sure if that's necessary) and got the gear/assembly out. It's a little bit of a puzzle to get the assembly out since it hits the PPF, but if you rotate it a bit you can snake it out.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...80e411b505.jpg


Yup, that'll do it. Thankfully I had a spare which I think should hold me over until I see Iron again, at which point I'll grab some upgraded ones from him.

Unfortunately while I was under the car I realized that one of the dust shields on the Tecna's had torn. I've also noticed some surface rust on the tops by the adjusters which is a bit of a bummer for not even being a year old at this point. Still happy with them from a suspension standpoint though.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...364f7de444.jpg
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...cdb4a8e489.jpg


I've been chipping away at the ducting as well. One major thing I realized was that I needed to add a flap to the bottom of the bumper inlet. I had a flat sheet below the inlet but it didn't really seal the bumper to the intercooler and the rest of the ducting. In the great illustration below, the red line is what I added. TBH I feel pretty dumb for missing that before, but I guess that's how you learn.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...f406a95bde.png
Call me Davinci

I still need to fine tune it, but I was able to use some leftover coroplast and the metal tabs on the bumper to create the flap.
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...8f719c8f2c.jpg



Got the oil changed as well. I figured it was due after all the roadtripping and autocross the car's been seeing in the heat. A bit of gunk on the magnetic drain plug but nothing out of the ordinary. I'll probably send the next batch off to Blackstone to see how the engines doing.

No autocross last weekend. I wanted to drive but a couple buddies and I had a backpacking trip on the books so I ended up doing that instead.
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...b4be7e2b37.jpg


Oh, and yes, the car is still a blast. I cruised around a bit yesterday to relieve some stress and man, on E85 at ~15 PSI the thing moves. I still need to do a bit more with the timing table, but I think I've added about 10 degrees so far. I swear I can feel the front end pick up a tiny bit when the torque really comes on which is wild. Definitely might be buying a couple jugs to take some E85 to our next big event in Montana.

+1 for the weekend views. You know I'm a sucker for a lake.

Fingers crossed that bottom flap helps!

Try Boeshield for corrosion prevention. It comes in a spray can. It goes on thin like a penetrating oil and then the lighter elements evaporate leaving a waxy protective coating. It was developed by Boeing aircraft company to prevent corrosion in wire connections. It is also commonly used on boats and trailers exposed to salt water.

Not a bad idea. Since I have it on hand I might rub a thin coat of WD40 on there and see how that fares. I'm not too worried about it but I'd rather keep them from rusting further.

I haven't found a ton of posts of E85 timing maps to look at. Curious to see what people think of what I'm running currently. I haven't spent any time fine tuning it, basically just threw more timing at it based on some info I found around the internet and kept an eye on the knock sensor. I'm hoping to go do some VD pulls and see what +/-2 degrees shows, but figured I'd ask for some feedback here as well.

Targeting a max of 200 KPA right now. 9:1 pistons on a 2560R. Sensor shows around E70 or so

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...d0337fb2f4.png

Seems pretty good to me for E75-E80. If anything maybe 1 or 2 degrees too advanced on boost, but that "too advanced" depends what your engine's MBT ends up being, but I wouldn't advance it any further. Have you registered any knock with it? Maybe even run a few more degrees in the cruise areas.

Glad to know I'm at least in the ballpark. I figured I'd pull timing and compare before adding any. If anything I assume I'm in the range of diminishing returns.

Haven't seen any knock but also haven't been super eagle eyed on the logs. I pulled a couple randomly today and didn't see any knock in it, but that was just a couple pulls.

You won't knock with E85, you'll just stop making power, even well past MBT. Concentrate on fueling and see what dyno or virtual dyno says.

Well, that was a very aptly timed comment Curly. I took the car out to do some more pulls tonight. I didn't change the spark map while I was out, but logged a handful of pulls to see where things were at. I did pull a half degree from most of the map in boost around 4K due to some knock picked up on the sensor during some mountain runs with buddies this weekend. Not sure how realistic that is, but I figured I should mention it. I should also note that I raised the boost target from 200 to 220. I was undershooting the 200 KPA target previously (probably around the ~190 KPA range most of the time), but the car was working well enough so I didn't worry about it. When I turned up the boost I did get a good amount of misfiring in boost at first, but adding about 0.1 MS(?) of dwell and gapping the plugs down from ~0.038 to 0.030 solved that.


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...df00a3f6d2.jpg

I feel pretty good that the car's making around 265 WHP or so right now. With smoothing on 3 I was seeing pretty similar numbers, so I'm thinking this is reasonably accurate data. Based on this I'm assuming I would benefit from some additional timing past ~4800 RPM due to the torque slowly decreasing, but I'm not 100% sure on the theory behind that.

A couple things to note. The AFR/Lambda spike around 5500-6000 seems to be caused by closed loop pulling fuel on spool up due to being overly rich, and then being slow to react to a closer VE value in the 5500-6000 range. I only had ballpark numbers in the 220/240 KPA rows, so I'm not totally surprised by that. When I was reviewing the logs I made a couple changes to the VE table, so I think I'll be closer to the target going forward.
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...2cdd15b870.png
Lambda in the bottom left is the realtime value, so that can be ignored. Note that the ECU is still pulling 1.1% fuel even though it's fairly lean.

Another thing to note is the boost target vs MAP.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1af0549a42.png

Again, ballparked numbers since I haven't been running 220 KPA, but it looks to me like 200 KPA is about all the setups got. From what I've researched these MAC valves seem to top out around 80% duty cycle and even commanding that the max KPA I'm able to hold is about 200. You can see the IATs climb pretty aggressively at that point as well, so I'm thinking that's approaching the practical limits of this setup. For reference, we're sitting at about 92 KPA atmospheric, so ~202 would be 16 PSI of boost (correct me if I'm wrong) which seems to be around or approaching the generally accepted limits of the 2560R.

I definitely have an itchy trigger finger right now looking at those Pulsar 2860s. I also realize that things like brakes, hubs/bearings, clutch, etc... should probably come first. We will see...

Oh, and there's an ORP trackday in early October that may or may not be happening.

Can you post a plot of those knock events?

Man, the Pulsar on Nate's car is insane. Those 200kPa hit different so I would really suggest brakes, clutch first :2cents:.

Edit: And those are some really nice numbers for a Miata. I bet it's a lot of fun.

Here are a couple from last weekend. I will also note that my knock settings are largely stock. I did run the 91 Octane map with E85 to try and get a better sense of an appropriate knock threshold value. Most of the other knock settings are largely untouched.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...5c281b91ba.png


https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...6861d25993.png



I figure I'm pulling the transmission this winter for some servicing so the clutch will happen then. Brakes should probably happen sooner than later...

Good stuff dude! It's honestly been a lot of fun watching you get to a point where you're squeezing the setup for all it's worth. Seems like only a little bit ago when your "Why does my setup make no power?" thread popped up on the feed haha.

I agree with Ricardo, 260-270whp is a super sweet spot for these cars. I remember hitting that number in my NA and having this epiphany where I realized there was no point to having more power running my local canyons. The turns would come up on you faster than you could count or react to them :rofl: I never tracked my car at anything over 270whp either, but I think it could be said that no average joe needs more than that. You're already beginning to run up on the Coyote Mustang and stock-ish 'Vette guys in the straights at that point.

Not sure how that power level directly pertains to brake needs in autoX, but I'd feel a lot safer in general with some bigger rotors and 4-pots up front. :D

Make sure individual cylinder trims for fuel and ignition are enabled. Keep the tables simple, every 1000rpm and like 100/125/150/175/200kpa rows, they should be small. First check if those cyl. 3 knock results are repeatable, and if so, grab those cells looks like 3000-5000 and 150kpa+ and add 2% FUEL to cyl. 3. See if it improves. If not, try 1-2 degrees retard too. If it doesn't, you may have an issue with cyl. 3. At that point, tell Link to fuck off and send it.

What's the ORP maybe date and group? I'm in Atlanta for the petit le mans build up 8-11th, but wouldn't mind a test in Laz for fun, I mean science, if I can sneak it in.