Sort of a combo meet & greet and build thread but whatevs.

WARNING - EVERYTHING YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE IS INCREDIBLY DERIVATIVE. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE WHAT ESSENTIALLY AMOUNTS TO THE CLEARNACE BIN IN A DOLLAR STORE VERSION OF OTHER WELL KNOWN CARS (IE MORPHEUS) THEN LEAVE NOW.

Got my nb2 about five years ago. Traded a motorcycle (worth about $1500) for it. Car was rough. It was originally BRG but had been rattle canned black due to a hit on the driver's door (replaced with a silver nb1 door - thanks PO). Anyways the paint was only going to get worse during my ownership anyways. Ryan's build thread starting with talking about rough paint is laughable compared to this car.



Car was stock except for an exhaust dump right after the headers (ear plugs a necessity), new clutch, and a MS3ProPnP. Kid I got it from had planned to turbo it but I guess decided a bike was cheaper. Ran it at a few autocross events before getting new wheels.


Holy **** look at the body roll on that guy. Next to address was coilovers and a ducktail (thought it looked cool - had no idea about aero).

Much better. Drove it at a ton more events as is. Tried my hand at tuning and was god awful at it. This will surely be an ongoing theme.

Then I got a rollbar and did a track day. Boy was that a mistake. I was hooked.


Back to daisies for the track as we had a set of autox tires and a set of track tires. Also keep those god damn broom sticks away from me. I know, I know, next up was a kirkey and harness.

Better. Still not great, but better. Ran it essentially in this form for a few years. Improved my times and had a blast. Had a few scary moments

but didn't wreck the car. Outside of a few minir issues (alternator going out, radiator leak, the inevitable wheel bearings) all was well. Then we added a second car so me and my dad could be on track together.

Which was fun, until we killed it.



Threw in a replacement LT1 and that lasted less than a day before it started making strange noises too. So we hit the easy button and got another miat.

NC is a blast. Drives very different than the b but still feels like a miata. Fun in different ways. Anyways I knew I needed to up my game (b is mostly mine and c is mostly his) so I went looking and absolutely ******* plummeted down the aero rabbit hole. Big thanks to Ryan (@thepass), emilio, moti, beavis, occam, and all you other lovely ************* for all the knowledge and inspiration. I apologize for how I executed it..

First up was making a splitter and air dam. Why is it so narrow you might ask? Because the specialty wood store near me had 5x5 sheets of 12mm birch ply that was significantly cheaper than full size and I am cheap.

Realized the open top will kill my "mad aero" so I scored a second hand fiberglass top and hood w/ vents on marketplace from a guy who used to be on here, fcokc or something?



I also added a homemade lexan spoiler ala Ryan's old kit/the blackbird one and removed the rear bumper.



Decided the front end was far too benign and added 3d printed vents from beavis and did a big ol fender cut. Tried my best to make a fill panel with HDPE and think it came out okay-ish.




Now being solidly down the never ending aero hole I wanted more. So I picked up a 65" foil from wing logic and made some mounts out of 1/4" aluminum. Would have liked more height and lay back but was the best I could make with a 16" x 18" sheet (biggest on Amazon before prices get stupid). Since then I have found a local metal store which is... dangerous..







At this point my wing was over powering my front aero with any AoA dialed into it. Splitter was only 2.5 - 3" so that needed to be redone. Remade at ~5" and added end plates and tire spats. Much better balance. Also made some skirts/spill boards out of two pieces of 6mm birch ply - not stiff enough btw. Will remake with alumalite at some point.




At this point the car is a weapon and I haven't even addressed the engine. Just doing regular maintenance and let it run. During my most recent track day I was talking about wanting to LFX swap it in the distant future. Well the car must've heard me because next session out the motor decides it's had enough living life at 7400 rpm for 20+ min sessions for years in the Oklahoma heat with 190k on the clock.

Don't know for sure yet but sounds like a spun rod bearing. Promptly started digging deeper into swaps and realized it will be way more money and effort than I want to commit right now (two young kids). Decide to get a replacement engine for limited downtime.

Well one thing leads to another and I have a replacement engine and a whole host of parts to build it. Plan is as follows:
-Tear down replacement nb2 motor to crank.
-Quick and dirty dingleberry hone. If any concerning findings will have professionally honed/bored/whatever.
-Install na8 pistons with new rings (you know where I'm going with this).
-Install all new gaskets, timing kit, water pump, ngk7 plugs etc boring ****.
-Headgasket from nb1.
-949 coolant reroute + billet oil pump + ATI dampener.
-Eagle rods (+bearings if clearance out of spec) and APR head studs.
-Homemade log manifold ala Lars for gt2560r (yawn I know) with 3" turbo back.
-FF injectors + DW200 pump.

Still need to decide on intercooler and routing as well as sort an oil cooler. Then will need to sort out gauges (digi dash? - I remember last time I looked there weren't any great/easy/cheap-ish options for MS3 out for this).

Main reason I'm going with the tried and true 2560 is I want to keep power moderately low in hopes to maintain reliability on track. This car gets beat on and I want to keep it relatively trouble free. Shooting for ~200 - 225whp. Maybe on the lower end of that as I still have the 5 speed and with the cost of 6 speeds would rather not have to go that route. At least I have a backup if I do lunch this box.

Holy **** that was a long post. I'll try to keep this updated as I install the new motor and turbo. Sorry for everyone whos ideas I have stolen and/or will steal along the way.

 

Holy hell, what an opening post! Have a cat!

While my cars have never been quite this ... needy, I can definitely relate to a) the slippery slope that is the first few track days especially when you get the hang of Race Driver 101, and b) the whole DIY thing, plundering others' hard-won knowledge. That's why we come here, for the knowledge and encouragement so don't sweat that - in fact go and roadtest as many ideas as you can find. Just come back here and tell us about how they went, and how you improved them, or not, as the case may be.

I am looking forward to more of your journey, don't disappoint me or I will come looking for you ...

 

Welcome! Love the ratty track car build. Also props for going down the seat time/handling/aero routes before adding more power. The 2560 is a great turbo for that power level and what I have been running on my turbo NA8 for years. Your build plan sounds good, really only suggestion would maybe be a cast manifold (Kraken, Flyin Miata, etc) or just make sure you support the turbo well and have a flex pipe in or just after the downpipe to avoid cracking the manifold. I have had zero issues with my Kraken manifold on my car after years of tracking where as one of my buddies with a tubular manifold had his crack multiple times (he did not have any extra support of the turbo to be fair). Good luck on the build and keep us updated!

 

Thanks! Funny thing is this car has held up like a champ. Ive been calling it the hero car because the others kept breaking and the little b just kept motoring along. We were constantly trailering the other car home (c4 - all the engines; nc - clutch disintegration, clogged cat, etc) while this was the reliable one.

Really I just like tinkering with it. All the changes have been made over a ~5 year period or so since I started tracking. 30+ track days with multiple of those it being a two driver car so >2 hours of track time.

Its also currently on 3 season old Rs4s that really should have been replaced last spring as they heat cycled out. Compensating with aero to overcome the lack of mechanical grip.

Thanks!
The plan was to buy a Kraken manifold butttt this forum is full of bad influences if you go looking for it. Found this thread (among others) by @sturovo which led me down the weld-it-yourself route.

https://www.miataturbo.net/diy-turbo...8-63926/page4/

Making out of 1.25" sch 40 pipe (bought from King Metals online) and a 1/2" flange from straight line. Bought enough to make two in case I seriously **** something up. First will be straight log style with els and Ts and will eventually make a more flowy one out of just els. Decided on 1.25" as it will help spool faster and my power goals are more on the meager end.

Planning to add a flex pipe and a downpipe brace. Consensus seems to be that a turbo/manifold brace won't be of any help since there is so much expansion in the manifold and when you couple that with engine movement you end up just applying force in the wrong direction.

Will add more pics of splitter details and mounts later. Need to figure out intercooler piping and redo my radiator ducting. Also need to add brake ducts as I have been blitzing through pads on track and adding more power will only hurt that.

 

Nice, sounds like a good plan!

I definitely second the brake/rad ducting. My first event in my NA after boosting it I went through a brand new set of pads and rotors with no ducting lol. The extra speed into the braking zones with an extra 100hp is pretty substantial haha.

 

That's a heck of a first post! I love a track rat build.

It's a Miata, the most popular sports car of all time, and the NA/NB is basically a 40 year old chassis design. There aren't many people/products out there truly making waves with new ideas on the platform.

Keep on going man! I'm looking forward to the build.

 

Oh hell yeah. Turbo track cars are very welcome here! You know this already, but your cooling stack and ducting is going to be very important to keep this thing happy. My only advice is to do it right and fit the biggest oil cooler you can. I highly recommend e85 if you have access to it as well.

My thread has some good ducting ideas using coroplast but I'm excited to see what you come up with and how you execute it. The car looks awesome and is definitely my style.

 

Everyone here, whether they admit it or not, has had at least one total POS build that actually worked, was fun and cheap. For some, that's all they ever build. It's a rite of passage and marks you as bonafide.
Welcome!

Cats, dogs?

 

Solid intro post dude! No hate here for building a ratty track beast. As stated above, it's what many of our cars are anyways haha. Love the car so far, and you're gonna be amped on the power level you're shooting for. Super good blend between speed and reliability.

At 200-220whp, stock front brakes will suffice (obviously ducting will help), but you might want to start looking at a BBK at that point as well. I ran a SuperMiata 11.75" Wilwood Superlite kit on my NA at ~210whp with no ducts and that nearly doubled pad and rotor life over the stockers. Ducts later on only helped things, but weren't totally necessary at that power level.

Stoked to follow along! Looks like you've done your homework and the car's headed for greatness.

 

Even NA I had to be careful about compound. I wore through my fronts down to the backing in ~5 sessions using the powerstop "track day" pads. Couldn't handle the temps and just *poof* dust. I guess that's mostly on me for buying the wrong pads but hey you live and learn.

Debating about corn. Would the flowforce 640cc injectors and dw200 be enough for my goals or would one, the other, or both need to be upsized further? I do like e85, had my gti tuned for corn for a while before the high pressure pump went out (3k psi in the fuel rail is straight bananas- DI cars are wild).

Love getting a point by from high power cars with this ratty little shitbox. Now I'll actually have the power to pass them on the straights too.

Question for you. Planning to do the mazdaspeed style baffle that you used to have on your site. Still a proponent of the plate style or is there a reason you guys unlisted it? Thanks.

Dogs. If I could get a cat that had the personally of a dog that would be the ideal though. If a dog had the personality of a cat thats just a wolf..

WAZ! Ive been following your nc build. Have a plan in place to swap a 2.5 into the c and your build thread has been a great follow. On the bbk, I'd really like to use one of the kits that utilizes the nd rotor to keep consumable costs down. Is that just knee-capping myself? Does the rotor life of the willwood/other two pieces rotors + the cost of just replacing the rings make sense for the performance gain?


Man this is so strange. Ive been reading through all yalls posts for years. Sorta feels like listening to a podcast for a long time and finally meeting the people who host it. Like I feel like I know all yall but I'm a total ******* stranger to you. Haha.

 

More details on the splitter if anyone sees something that would be helpful to modify. Material is 1/2" (12mm) birch plywood. Cut to 65" wide - figured would match the wing. Bent some 1/16" aluminum into ramps. Had tiny 3d printed ramps at first and hated them.




Side fences are 4" x 4" x 1/8" aluminum angle that I trimmed down one side of to bottom mount. Underneath that on the outermost edges are titanium pieces I cut/shaped for skid blocks. Titanium is awful to cut/drill/do anything with. Not planning on doing that again.



Marked where everything sat and routed out the wood so it sits flush(ish). Not crazy about the hardware but was the thinnest option/s I could find. Elevator bolts (used in some locations) don't work great when not in wood when you cant drill square holes.



Mounts are the cheap generic civic quick release mounts. They work pretty well but in highsight should have just paid up for the professional awesome ones. The top part that comes with the mounts are pretty weighty steel. Obviously they are far too short for this application so I modified my bolt in mounts from splitter v1 as a drop plate. Ugly but it works for now. Planning to remake with some 1/8" alum at some point.

Also have two sets of turnbuckles for splitter support. One solid set coming off the front crossmember (?) and attaching at the forward most point of the splitter that is behind the air dam and the lateral supports are turnbuckle on top with crimped to wire on the bottom for more upward flexibility.



Tire spats are something I really struggled to find examples of how people were mounting them in conjunction with an air dam. Everything has to stay modular to load/unload onto the trailer so the bumper and splitter have to be separate pieces. My bumper cover comes off with 4 push buttons and the splitter has the 6 cotter pins. Love the ease of removal but presented a challenge with spats. Ended up cutting little 1" x 1" pieces of alum angle and riveting them along the inner surfaces of the dam and the abs. I still need to trim up the inner side of the abs but you get the picture.





The bottom of the spat was too flexible for my liking with the only support being the hdpe but again I didn't want to hard mount it to the splitter so I cut the abs long and added a small piece of alum angle on the backside of the splitter for it to nest into when installed.






I made some rad ducting last year with coroplast at some point in the summer due to rising coolant temps. Has worked like a charm but will need to redo to accommodate intercooler and brake ducts and larger radiator. Funky front cuts are due to bumper interference as I hadn't fully chopped off the bottom half of the bumper cover at that point. Not anywhere near air tight and the next go round will be much better.

You can also see the eyebolts for the splitter and my hastily made brackets to secure the front of the bumper cover.



Planning to chop off that whole mess of sheet metal and bend/weld in a piece of dom to act as a new front brace. Will give me much better clearance for proper ducting. Zip ties work well to hold coroplast btw. And even having it straight up against the radiator it hasn't shown any signs of melting or deterioration. Strong stuff.

While I was playing with plastic I decided to redo my driver's door card. Its an nb1 door that had an nb2 door panel on it which never really fit right and I figured I could use the extra elbow room. Didn't really want to spend the money on aluminum door cards and going bare door with a fully carpeted interior (for now) seemed kinda silly.

Made with a sheet of 24" x 48" abs off of Amazon and had enough left over to make the front and rear tire spats. Thermoformed for the u-bend at the top by heating with a heat gun and bending around 2x4s. That part was tricky but I think it came out fairly decent.

Sewed a piece of nylon into a loop and threw some rivets in the door to secure and boom, new door panel.

 

The Mazda Motorsports baffle works, we're just dropping engine parts from our product offerings. Circuit Sports offers a nice baffle too.

 

I went with a SageSpeed baffle that replicates the flat plate style Mazda Motorsports functionality. I bought that to pair with a vertical wall, rubber flap style baffle as well. I ended up having to pull that engine back out after less than 2k miles and 2 hours on track and found the rubber flaps significantly shrunken and degraded. It seems nitrile knock offs made it into the vendors supply chain. I'm a bit wary of the rubber flaps now, although I know many people have had them installed for years and years without issue if they get good Viton rubber units.

Props for the info about the Civic splitter disconnects. I have been wondering if something like you made here would be good enough to make the lower price worth it. Experimentation is great, but hearing "I wouldn't do that again" is good enough for me to pay up for a more polished solution.

 

This is exactly what I was needing to hear. I actually have the sagespeed baffle coming in today and was looking for some reassurance.

Yeah it's just not worth the savings when the cost delta is only ~$80 for the generic QR prof awe ones.

 

Awesome stuff in here. Coroplast ducting is surprisingly durable. I had a piece dragging on the asphalt for a good while and it ground down a bit, but not too bad.

I like those door cards as well. I've thought about trying to do something like that in the past but never committed to it. Fit and finish looks good to me.

I want to say Fire used those eBay civic splitter mounts as well? Maybe they were supposed to be for an NC and not a Civic.

Regardless, welcome and great intro

ETA - I'm running a DW200 with flex fuel and haven't seen issues from it around 300+ WHP. IIRC the 640's should be okay to around 250-300 on E

 

I was looking at those civic mounts but they wouldn't fit due to my IC and pipe routing. I did manage to fit NC eBay mounts though, which worked great.

Your fuel system should work fine for e85. Mine makes 315+ whp on a walbro 180, stock FPR, and id1000. Tested up to e98. I highly suggest it, not only for detonation resistance safety but the cooling properties are huge for a track car.

 

Ha, no way! Glad to provide a little entertainment.

Re: BBK. I’ve only ever run a kit that uses the larger RX8 sport rotors to keep consumable costs down. Keisler Automation and SakeBomb Garage both make em and use the same Superlite calipers. The RX8 rotors are 1.2” bigger than the stock NC ones and only go for $40 a pop depending where you get em. Mine lasted almost 20 track days N/A before they developed enough surface cracks to warrant replacing. Pads were a similar story, I think I was getting 10-12+ days out of a set at 180-200whp. 100% would go the same route again.

Splitter’s looking good, interested to hear how the aero balance is with those tunnels. Adding a cheapo set of 3D printed tunnels to mine tilted the aero balance to the front substantially.

 

In my mind, the ND rotor 11" kits are for pedal feel, weight reduction, and swag on cars with close to stock power. The pad volume and rotor size are too close to stock to worry about increasing pad and rotor life.

11.75"x1.25" will get you a significantly larger pad to serve as a heat sink, and much more cooling from extra airflow through the rotor. Pad life is going to increase by a lot, you get a lot more pad material for your money every time you swap pads, and you should be able to run a less aggressive pad compound. Brofab has a good budget option, and Supermiata has a very complete kit. Neither is a bad choice.

I think that you'll be disappointed if you get an 11" setup for a turbo track rat NB. Emilio has already posted in this thread and he'll have better advice for you on his own products, but there's some good discussion in the launch threads for the Boxmount kits.

Supermiata BX11 Boxmount BBK - Miata Turbo Forum - Boost cars, acquire cats.

 

Bbk: yeah for the nc we'll upgrade to the keisler set for sure once its needed. What were you running on your NA?

Nc cams: did you prefer the fab9 stage 1 or the Brian Crowder stage 2 when you were still na? (Top of the head but I think I'm remembering those were the cams you had.)

Tunnels: had these alu tunnels on the v1 splitter and swapped them to the wider v2 when I made it. The old narrower, shorter splitter + ramps overpowered the lexan spoiler but was not enough for the wing - had to run at basically 0* to not induce understeer.
With the v2 splitter + ramps I adjusted the wing down and somewhere around 5* is a good balance. For ***** and giggles I added in like 10* AoA and it defo wasn't balanced but wasn't undriveable by any means.

Another note on the wing - was originally looking at the 9LR big **** but ended up the WingLogic MSHD in large part due to Occams write ups on his blog. And it was more cost effective and I'm a cheap bastard. Not sure if he's still active here or not but the wing is phenomenal. Dropped 3-4 seconds on my ~1:30 lap times with no other changes. Its a bit draggy for a na car but the track I frequent is short (Hallett) with no real long straights so I didn't feel the impact too much. My vmax is ~5mph faster at the end of the front straight with the wing compared to before.

Thanks for the info. Yeah, I've been eyeing the boxmount kit. Don't really have the funds to drop on it right now with all the engine stuff so will probably run diy ducts with stock brakes for now and upgrade to it in the near-ish future. Don't want to spend money on the singular duct kit just to replace it.

How is everyone running inlet brake ducts with a removable air dam? Ive seen the twist locks but getting to that isnt ideal and would rather not have another fixture to fiddle with during set up/tear down. Was planning to have my friend design and print something like this to add inside the radiator ducting near the front then run the tubing out the side and back. 949 has the pic of the tubing going into the ducting but no pics (that I could find) of the actual inlet piece.


Stolen pic but you get the idea. Only one inlet instead of the divided one and have the decreasing radius incorporate into the bend to go through the ducting out and back.

 

Looks good! I had looked at the nc mounts (and read that thread) but figured I already had the aluminum plate on hand so chose to save the $100 instead. Is the upper portion on the nc mount ~3/8" steel? Seems pretty bulky/heavy to me on the Civic mounts. Could get away with using 1/8" aluminum for the whole thing imo if you have outboard/forward supports. Granted my tunnels are also fairly wide so I think I would need some sort of support lateral to those no matter what.

Good to know on the e85. Will need to confirm where it's available around me. I am in middle America though so shouldn't be too difficult.

If I'm running straight e85 do I need a flex sensor or just tune it on that fuel and never add anything else? Places around me seem to be pretty consistent at 70-80% ethanol and can always test at the pump if need be.