As this is a daily driven car, I have changed my brake pads over to Carbotech 1521 pads. Hopefully they will be much less dusty and noisy than the XP10/XP8 combo I was running.

 

oh man i really like ur engine and hooray for jdm gauge clusters!! i got the white faced one best oem gauge cluster evarrrrrr

 

Went to ChipTorque today and got the ECU modified to suit running in of the new engine:



New engine is very close to having all accessories swapped on and ready to be put back in:



Hopefully we will be firing up the engine on Saturday!

 

Oil return all sorted:





Engine is back in the car as of today, so we are on the home stretch now!

 

That return line looks like sex. Seriously, everyone should have a return line like that.

What AN size?

 

Thanks dude, it is a -10.

 

A few finished touches. We used an MSM intercooler mounting support and modified it with extra tabs to suit the aftermarket intercooler:



The engine will be started later this afternoon!

 

That MSM intercooler bracket looks really clean. Any more pictures? I'm curious to try this myself. Great build so far.

 

If you want to use the MSM intercooler bracket you will also need the MSM lower radiator brackets. It works out really nice though!

 

The car is back home now and everything seems to be working as expected!

Now I just need to finish the engine run in procedure then hit the dyno!

 

Such a clean build. Very nice.

 

Been a while since my last update but fortunately there hasn't been much to report as far as the new engine goes!

I had to replace the clutch master cylinder as it was leaking, as well as the alternator. I also had 3 of the 4 bolts shear off holding the harmonic balancer:



Fortunately this happened while I was driving slowly up my street so I could stop it straight away! :shock:

The car has now been tuned, although I haven't yet got anything to control boost so it was just tuned at the wastegate setting. It made 127kw (~170hp) at 8 psi.

First track day is on Monday, can't wait!

 

Track day was good fun, still running wastegate pressure:



The oil temps got up to 110c/230f on the track, so I've got a Flyin' Miata oil cooler kit on the way, hopefully this will take the edge off the temp.

Here's the engine bay as it currently stands:



I've fitted the boost control solenoid behind the AEM heat shield, seems to work nicely here:



Once the oil cooler kit is in, hopefully I'll be able to run ALLOFIT boost!

Cheers

 

Let us know how well the oil cooler works, or just me. I have their brackets for the Setrab, but using a bigger oil radiator myself. Mines not running though.

 

The oil cooler is here and mounted up, just waiting on a new sandwich plate for it before the lines are made up:





I have the Mocal sandwich plate but I wanted to keep the remote oil filter location, so I'm getting one of the GReddy/GREX remote oil filter mounts with built-in thermostat.

 

Oil cooler fitted using the Flyin' Miata brackets so it mounts on the steering rack. Here's a pic with it all mounted:



Jason at MX-5 Plus made up the -10 lines for me, I didn't use the FM -8 ones. I'm using a GREX thermostat sandwich plate as it has provisions for my oil temp and pressure senders.

 

Got some new shoes for street use, I was going to go for KU31 tyres but the price of the RE002 was right so giving them a go:

 

The Lakeside track day was awesome, here is my PB of 65.5 seconds:



There was a fair bit of traffic but overall it was a great day.

Good news is the oil cooler seems to be working really well; I didn't see oil temps above 102 degrees C.

Bad news is I am having issues with the studs between the turbo and manifold backing out!

I have also changed over from an iPhone 4 to a Nexus 4, so I gave RaceChrono a go and was very impressed! I used a RAM mount from CamZilla to hold the new phone in place. No issues here.

 

One of the studs between the manifold and turbo completely disappeared in a later session that day. Since the track day, the car sounds like it has a screamer pipe when I get into boost. Hopefully things are still flat and the gasket is salvageable.

To try and figure out what is required to keep the MSM/SE hardware happy on track days, I am going to be a bit of a guinea pig and try things in stages. The first stage will be to add a flex pipe on the dump pipe and see if it makes any difference.

I'm using an aftermarket dump pipe that doesn't have the brace to the gearbox like the OE dump pipe. Not sure if this is worth adding back?

 

Very well done! Thanks for sharring, you have me realy excited about my own build and hope it looks half as nice as yours.