Happy to say that I ran back up the mountain today and saw a peak coolant temp of 93C. I went back and found a post from last June where I reported 105 C after just a few minutes of driving up, which seems pretty bad even for last year... Today I would guess I did 10 miles or around 15 minutes. Might not have been quite as aggressive, but it was a lot of high rpm sustained uphill load.

Regardless, I'm still not convinced I'm completely out of the woods, but 93 C has the fans at 80% of ~94% effective duty cycle. I command 90% at 95 C. This is after putting through town with AC on, so things were warm to start. We'll see what things look like in July/August, but at this point I think this is the largest improvement in cooling that I've seen.







Oil temps hit 121 C ( ~250 F), so those aren't looking too great. The drive was a lot of consistent high RPM uphill load, but still, it was only around 20 C (~70 F) ambient, and getting cooler as I climbed the mountain. I'm not shopping for oil coolers now, but I wouldn't be surprised if I am by the end of the summer. Also, I take the exact temp with a grain of salt given the cheap sensor I got that came with no calibration table. I took some measurements myself and found some data online, but I still consider it a ballpark value more than an exact measurement.

 

Well, I knew this day would come eventually, but I decided to retire the blender bottle that's been functioning as a catch can for the past couple years. The lid started cracking and the "vent" holes I put under the lid flap seem to let a good deal of oil vapor escape and get all over the white hood vents.




The "baffle" I'd glued in to try and help with the oil spray pretty much just fell out when I pulled the lid off, so I guess the oil and heat was a bit too much for it. Honestly it's surprising it was still holding on at all.







This has been the hands down fan favorite part of the car. Any time the hood is up someone comments on it, but it's time for it to be replace by something that fits the car a bit better. Enter Organifi








Look at that! This bitch isn't cracked, it's green, it's organic (or something?). For $2 at Goodwill I'm stoked on it.


Had to trim the little handle that the old lid didn't have. The plastic seems to be slightly worse quality than the official Blender Bottle, but should hold up well enough. I actually grabbed the taller bottle so I can swap the lid onto the old catch can in the future if the green one doesn't hold up.
I didn't put any holes in the lid and I'm honestly wondering if it's going to pressurize and pop at some point. I'm debating putting a small relief hole in the lid, but I don't really want it spraying oil vapor all over the place, granted I also wouldn't want it to explode when there's oil in it either.




It held up fine for a quick test drive and boost, so I don't think it's getting too pressurized if at all, but we will see.

Always remember gents, Be Quench, Be Clean, Be Prot.

 

I was about to be extremely sad seeing a shiny new aluminum catch can in your engine bay. Great job staying true to your roots man

 

No way, the dumb blender bottle is basically the star of the show. It does actually work quite well. One 10mm, unscrew the bottom, throw a rag under the hose/lid and dump it.

 

ITT I learn that a sealed catch can doesn't provide much ability for crank case pressure to exit the crank case. Fun fact, a blender bottle is capable of holding more pressure than your dipstick, which is very good at covering your engine bay and exhaust in oil.

We had another autocross yesterday. After a few corners on my first run I noticed that it smelled a bit like a barbeque, which I attributed to the Golf R that was running ahead of me. Red flags in the distance and plenty of smoke coming from the engine bay appeared seconds later. A group pushed me and the car back to the pits and thankfully the track was clean aside from a couple spots that were off the line.

Thankfully it wasn't too notable other than that. I missed a run getting the engine bay cleaned up, used some wire cutters to put some vent holes in the blender bottle and was back out pretty quickly. Definitely a facepalm moment for me, and I should've (did?) see this coming.

I failed to record my fastest run yesterday, but I'll scrub through what I did get and post if there's anything notable. Side note, I had, very conveniently, moved my engine bay camera into the cabin to see how the audio would sound from there. If it was in the engine bay it would have a very nice rust proof coating on it currently.

 

Wow, I totally read that post and misinterpreted what was going on, thinking the bottle was venting some other way lol. Sorry to hear you had to do the walk of shame, but I bet your engine bay is nice and shiny now!

In for AutoX footy. I just wanna hear more of your turbo singing with that fancy new engine bay mic.

 

Oh snap dude! I'm glad it was a walk of shame and not any worse. In for footage as well.

 

OOF I did similar with my buddies MSM, filled the AOS and purged 1/2qt onto the drivers side bay. was NOT a good time.
Rerouted the AOS vent and did another pull..... 1/2qt all over the passenger side.


But at least he doesn't have to worry about rust for a few years.

 

Here's what I could salvage from the weekend footy. Mounting the second mic in the cabin picks up basically nothing but transmission rattle, so I think it's going back in the engine bay unless I'm doing commentary, which I don't really expect to be doing. Having said that, talking in the cabin seems to be picked up really well by that mount, so maybe I'll try to do something with it down the road.


Aside from the obvious downsides of the weekend, I still think it was valuable. I ran low boost all day and temps seemed fine. I still think oil temps are likely going to be concerning in the summer, but we'll cross that bridge later. At the end of the day they let us do fun runs, so I was able to do 2 laps back to back at what was probably the hottest part of the day (around 27 C or 75 F). I was taking a novice along for a ride so I threw it into high boost on the second run and temps peaked around 95 C, which is pretty encouraging to me. I didn't spray the radiator all day and I didn't have my override switch to force the fans on the whole time, I just let the ECU do what it wanted and everything was alright. I even turned AC on for a bit on the way home.

I'm still loving the ESP32 gauge. I just ordered some LED strips that I think should enable me to do RPM sweeps, warning lights and whatever else I can think up.

A couple things I'd welcome feedback on regarding the car.
1. Currently, I have a 7 PSI wastegate spring. I'm running around 80-85 duty cycle on my boost controller which seems to hit somewhere between 200-220 KPA depending on conditions. I'm debating on getting either an adjustable wastegate actuator or just bumping up to an 11.4 PSI actuator to better suit the boost range I'm running in. This will also require porting the wastegate flap I assume, as the boost creep on this turbo is pretty wild. Or... I just leave things as is so I have less chance of turning things up more and blowing the tranmission.

2. Should I swap out my 6 speed? Honestly the noise it makes (not too terrible while street driving, but horrible at high RPM), isn't getting better and with the way I use the car I'd like to be a bit more confident in it. I'm not sure that it's an issue with the trans, and I think it could be partially to blame on the shifter, but I'm not totally sure what to do about it. I could grab another 6 speed I suppose or just leave this one in until it blows. I've been looking more at the TKX route, which seems like an ideal solution, but that's a pipe dream for now. I did bump into a guy last weekend who was plugging a drivetrain shop about 30 minutes away from me who specializes in custom drivetrain work and is a Tremec dealer, so that's promising, but also likely to be very expensive (I'd assume $5-10K, but that's just a SWAG).

 

the last 4 5 speeds ive had, 2 in this car na/nb, short shifter and stock shifters on most of them, have had a horrible noise/rattle at high rpm, not sure if this carries over, but ive never found out what it is, sounds like someones jingling rocks in a coffee can in my transmission tunnel. Hopefully its just a quirk for you and not a transmission issue.

 

Probably pretty similar to mine then. Mine has always sounded like this, it isn't anything new, just annoying and concerning. I have no real idea about the condition of the transmission, as the guy I got it from seemed to have a couple lying around and wasn't sure which was which.

I should've also mentioned that I have considered rebuilding a 6 speed. There's a mod where you weld one of the gears to the shaft to keep things from pressing apart which is a common failure method. Even if a TKX goes in the car I don't think I'd ever push more power than the 2860 is going to put out (so upper 300's optimistically), so I think I'd be safe from shearing the gears on the 6 speed for a while at least. I think that would definitely be the least intensive option given my skillset.

 

Seconding Bloop. For sure I can't try to diagnose anything from three states over, but I'm curious if it's just a standard characteristic, or a shifter rattle. Not a direct comparison, but my current car started getting a pretty noticeable decel chatter when I swapped from the original 5 speed to a 6 speed. No other changes, car's had poly diff mounts since day 1 and poly motor mounts almost the whole time as well. I thought maybe it was an issue with the trans but the current 6 speed in my car does it as well, so I guess we're good.

I know you've got a nice MR shifter in your trans, and those don't generally have rattling issues, but have you tried swapping shifters at any point? You're kinda describing shifter rattle, and sometimes it's not an obvious culprit as the rattle won't lessen even when you grab the shifter.

 

I haven't swapped the shifter out mainly because I don't have another shifter. When I got the trans it came without a shifter and a decent deal popped up on the MR one so I grabbed it. I did have get some parts for it from MR that were missing, so it is cobbled together a bit with old and new parts.

I have seen a few reports of rattling with the MR shifter, and apparently Bill (?) at MR has worked with some people to at least troubleshoot it, so that might be worth a shot.

My old roommate has a 6 speed on a shelf as well that I might be able to rob the shifter from for some diag. Not 100% sure the shifter is there, but I'm pretty sure it's also an NB1 trans

 

Shucks, yeah I remember it being hard to find 6 speed shifters in general. I actually modified an eBay 5 speed shifter to work in my 6 speed trans (I think the early 6 speeds had the same cup size as the 5 speeds?) because I couldn't find any shifters except for MR and GRacing. I'd say go that route to test for rattles but that ghetto-rigged shifter rattled so it's probably not of much use to you.

Interested in following along if you pull a 6 speed apart. I remember tearing down my old 6 speed then coming to the conclusion that I wanted to do other things rather than put it back together lol. With the 4th gear circlip issue circumvented, that transmission should live in the safe zone on your setup for some time...

 

I should say that I expect rebuilding the 6 speed would be the easiest. I guess the downside there is that it's a one off and if/when it did go it would require ripping another 6 speed apart.

I'm surprised the TKX route hasn't been picked up by some aftermarket company, although I'm pretty sure I saw Miata Roadster comment on facebook saying they were going to have to make an adapter plate or bellhousing a swap kit due to the quicktime one being gone. I'm not expecting that to happen, but if it did...

 

I would at the least make sure nothing is up with the shifter causing it to rattle. At FM Summer Camp last year my trans started rattling like crazy at higher RPM and I half expected it to grenade. It then started doing it at idle too, but would go away if I held the shifter. My shift **** was loose . Would be rough if you tear that thing apart for some loose hardware.

 

My buddies 6 speed loves to loosen the turret bolts over time, itll cause his shifter to get sloppy and rattle. Worth checking

 

Guys... you're supposed to be pressuring me towards going down the TKX route, not talking sense into me.

All good points. The idea of getting the car into gear, pulling the shifter out of the turret and getting it to high RPM has crossed my mind a few times lately, probably best to not let the intrusive thoughts win on this one.

I'll see about pulling it apart sometime soon and see what I can find. I should probably reach out to Bill as well based on some forum posts I've seen on the subject.

 

Just to confirm.. your shifter bushings are all properly installed and accounted for, right? On the trans side below the white bushing cup, you have the spring in place? Same goes for the spring on the top of the upper cup, etc? And the whole thing is greased? My Miata roadster shifter on my nb1 6 speed is dead quiet.

 

As far as I know everything is there. When I got the shifter from someone on here it was missing a few parts, so I remember spending a decent amount of time looking at the diagrams provided by MR to see what I was missing/needed to order. It's been a while since I've pulled it though, so I can't say for sure.