np man.. if you want his info just shoot me a pm.. i know he will do even the smallest of jobs. which reminds me, my subaru is there now with its blown engine and i need to go pick it up asap lol

Huh what? I don't know where to find either one if you mean me... So far I have just been finding people who build the best stuff in general I guess.

Sweet build. What are your power goals?

235-240 at the wheels. It should be capable of that without sweating much, but I don't want to kill my motor. I have no idea how close they can tune things like that, but we'll see.

it cut down costs alot. his shop is a tad bit too crowded for a mandrel bender. when i was there last tuesday he had 11 cars inside his shop, has an in-house powdercoater, only 2 lifts, tons of spare engines, and most of the time is working by himself. lol

I hear ya on space and overhead costs. But you can buy prebent mandrel bends in various bend radii. It would cut down on those pie cuts and number of welds. unless that's the JDM custom look you were going after in which case...nice.

Final Long Day
 

Today I installed the new differential and the rest of the exhaust. In case anybody forgot, the exhaust is a 3" Enthuza stainless piece with a cat. The diff is a 3.9 Torsen from a guy in Atlanta.

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Here's the axle-back section of the exhaust. It's pretty and the tip is nice and centered in the cutout in the bumper. My last car always had a tip that was off center and it would rub and melt the bumper and it always bothered me. No problem here. Here is also the half-shafts hanging where the diff used to be.

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You can see here the excellent bends of the exhaust, and the output of the transmission. This is about when I noticed I'd dumped about a half-quart of transmission fluid on the floor through that very hole. Without the diff and PPF, the engine rocks backward and dumps the fluid.

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This is the downpipe I got from Tim, and it's kind of long so I had to trim it to get the rest of the exhaust to fit. I ended up cutting the front off the enthuza exhaust so it would butt up to the trimmed downpipe and I used a band clamp to attach them. It was painful to cut these two pieces, but they are on the car now and I'm happy. The exhaust is a little louder than I expected, but it's .5" bigger than my last car's so I'm not really surprised. I probably should have gone with a 22" muffler instead of the 18", but it will be great once I get used to it. I absolutely love the tone and look, and the fit seems perfect.

I went out tuning after I remembered to put fluid in the diff, and the tunerstudio autotune did a fantastic job. The idle is still a little annoying, since it seems to get stuck sometimes and idle at 2200rpm for a while (like an hour at a time), and then it will just go back to normal. Is it possible for the idle valve to get stuck open? I guess I'm just having a really hard time tuning the idle properly. None of the settings seem to change anything very much even when the valve isn't acting stuck. I will probably post something in the megasquirt section in a few minutes here.

I'll change the oil in the engine and diff tomorrow, and probably tune some more and try to iron out the rough spots. They don't act much like poor fuel conditions, but I'll see if I can figure it out tomorrow.

That's a nice, clean car you have there. Exhaust looks great. As for idle, the first thing I would do is work on the mixture. Set the MS to warmup mode so that your idle orifice and control valve are under manual control, and then tune your VE for highest vacuum (lowest kPa) or highest RPM. Now, make sure all your idle cells are using the same VE and ignition advance (something mild like 12-15° BTDC). At this point, you can start messing with closed loop.

Apologies if I'm overstepping with the basics here.

Your PID lockout settings are off.

How did you like it besides the idle issue?

My idle sometimes hovers around 2200rpm too, as my closed loop idle stops above like 2000. Normally when I first start my stuff up after a long winter.

this. You need to alter these for your car.

The rpmDOT threshold should be about 10 point sabove what you normally see at idle. So change one of the gauges to display rpmDOT, blip the throttle around and let it smooth out, then see what you get. if it's like 70, enter in 80 into your threshold for PID lockout detection.

Next for the max decel %, I find the number that works best is the MAP value a few points under where (haha i said underwear) you idle. For example, I idle at 32kPa and my max decel load % value is 29kPa. This means the PID code will trigger once you breach 29Kpa on decel..too great and it's possible you wont pull enough vacuum and the PID code wont try to idle and it gets hung up.

Another thing is the max RPM when idle valve is open value. I can shoo tmy idle up to 2500rpm or so easy, so that was the value I had in there. But what I found was (since I dont have VSS), was that when I was cruising below 2500 that PID code would enable. It would open the valve more and more and then once I hit the clutch the rpms would shoot up and I'd get locked out of PID. So I lowered that number down to like 1300, since I never cruise that low and I haven't had the issue since.

That should help you cure the issue.

That contradicts what Ken states about the max rpm with idle valve open/closed. He says that just effects the sensitivity of the PID code and the actual numbers don't actually matter that much.

He says it... but I have logs where PID enabled while I was cruising below that number. The day I lowered that value, it never happened again.

Ha, brilliant!

<goes out and adjusts max RPM setting>

I got the major part of the install finished. Changed the oil in the engine and diff, and closed the gap in the spark plugs to .040in. Re-gapping the plugs fixed the misfire I was getting.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5070/...f8705086_b.jpg
I've got some greasy marks on the hood and fenders from where I touched it with greasy hands. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to get the car white again?

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Another picture of the front of the car with the stealthy intercooler. Not sure why I like it so much.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5133/...29775737_b.jpg
Here's the back with the end of the Enthuza exhaust. It's a subtle change from stock and I don't think many people will notice that the car is modified except that they will probably have ears. With ears, you can't miss the mods.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5228/...ff60eda1_b.jpg
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5065/...6122d7bf_b.jpg
Nice little cat, and the clamp that holds the center of the exhaust to the downpipe.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5265/...72e96176_b.jpg
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A couple pictures of the underside of the car here.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5056/...e9e5525a_b.jpg
This is the only part of the charge piping you can see from the outside of the car (aside from the intercooler which you would have to notice).

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5175/...8cfbbdb3_b.jpg
I think it might be time for some new tires. I'll order some RS3s when I'm over the shock of all this turbo money.

I got a chance to tune a little yesterday, but not a lot. My package from DIY hasn't showed up yet so my cooling fans still don't work so I can't sit and idle for very long, which makes it difficult to tune idle. Driving seems to be tuned alright, but warmup still needs some work. What happens at about 5500RPM? The car seems to just take off and run a lot smoother above there. I don't have VVT yet, and I haven't done anything on purpose to actuate the variable intake, but that variable intake thing is my biggest suspicion. Is it called VTCS? If yes, it is set to activate at 1800RPM, which is not even close to 5500.

I haven't gotten a chance to play with it too much yet, but I absolutely love it so far, thank you!!

Try a clay bar for the grease marks. Those things really work and are a lot easier to use than it sounds. Once you've clayed it, wax it and you're all set.

Nice car.

scott and i were discussing this at the gym while we were toning our thighs...

There is also a "leave valve closed above (rpm) XXXX" that may affect that.

Incidentally, the VTCS settings are correct for a turbo miata. You're thinking of VICS that activates at 5500. VTCS only affects warmup anyway. It doesn't affect idle speed (though it does affect idle stability when cold).

Just out of curiosity, what firmware version are you on?

So VICS is automatic, or did I set that up somehow without realizing it? I don't remember connecting it, but that doesn't mean I didn't.

I'm on firmware 3.0.1, waiting for the release that has VVT. BTW, do I have to do any hardware mods to make VVT work with the new firmware when it's released?

there is no ms3 3.0.1 firmware...you mean 1.0.1?
any of the 1.0.X releases are a safe place to be.

VICS was only on the 99-00 cars.
VTCS was only on the 01-04 cars.

i'm preparing a treat for your megasquirt thread.