Update time y'all! I was able to sneak away for a few hours today and make some more progress. I really had to kick it into high gear and make the most of my precious time in the garage - you older dudes with little kids and stuff know what I'm talkin' about. ;)

The intercooler arrived yesterday! It's from Ebay/CXRacing and measures 28x7x2.5 and has 2.5" inlets and outlets. Here's a few pictures.
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3487.JPG

http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3489.JPG

I really wish I could've taken more pictures of the intercooler install for you guys, but I was flying through it. I still have A/C and this intercooler fits great. I did have to gently bend the A/C receiver/dryer up and out a bit, but nothing too extreme. Other than that, it fit great.
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3493.JPG

Just for reference, here's the intercooler I was running with the old Greddy setup. I got a big old tooth in the grille now!
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2007_07/IMG_3305.jpg

I also jumped on the hot side piping today. I had these in my old' pipe bin, but they are steel bends from Summit Racing. They are 2" OD. I'll be running 2.5" on the cold side.
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3518.JPG

Here's the hot side piping all wrapped up and ready to be bolted on. As with most everything, I gave it a couple coats of Dupli-Color high heat Low Gloss Black.
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3527.JPG

Whew! So what do I get after working my butt off in the garage all afternoon? A cold beer, shower and some time in front of the TV? Hell no, more like "Mow the yard chore-boy!" :slap:
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3529.JPG

I hope to make a little more progress tomorrow so stay tuned and thanks for reading guys!

very nice car.

Quick update! I was able to spend a little time working on the car yesterday and today and got lots done.

Probably the biggest task was finishing the cold side piping. When I did my Greddy build, the pipe below was in two parts requiring a coupler. It just took a little more time and effort to make it a one piece pipe - and I'm very glad I did. As you can see I've also added a Tial blowoff valve. On my old Greddy setup I used a 1G DSM blowoff valve. The Tial was tricky to get in there just right, but I'm happy with how it turned out.
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3531.JPG

God, this is a great tool. I am happy inside when I can find a reason to use the sawzall. I love my chop saw for laser-straight cuts, but the sawzall is fast and makes nice clean cuts on steel pipe.
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3530.JPG

I also got my boost controller in the mail yesterday. I've used Hallmans for a long time and you just can't beat the quality, simplicity and low cost.
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3533.jpg

Besides finishing and installing all of the turbo/intercooler piping I tackled tons of other little things too. I re-installed my water injection setup today, but am having a little trouble with the pump acting like it doesn't want to prime itself. Maybe sitting for a year made it angry. Here's an old picture of the tank and pump assembly.
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3573_2.JPG

I fired it up briefly today to burn all of the junk off the exhaust manifold/turbo and it sounds great! I still have a long punchlist, but it's getting closer!

nice progress man..

post up how much the build is coming out money wise since you're doing everything on a budget

Tom, info on welding setup please.

Thanks for checking it out everyone. To reply to those with questions/comments:

Hustler Thanks! I wasn't too crazy about a yellow Miata when I first found it, but it sure has grown on me. I think some 6ULs and the right stance is all it needs appearance wise. Also, since the car is in such good shape I make sure that any mods I do are not permanent, everything is just bolt on stuff.

18psi Thanks! I'll work on posting up my budget. I have it all in a spreadsheet, but it's very specific to me since I'm using lots of old parts I've stockpiled over the last 15 years. I'll try to make it more generic for everyone.

dpexp My welding rig is a Lincoln Pro Mig 135. I also purchased a welding cart at Northern Tool (a must) and a Lincoln auto-darkening helmet. I got the welder and helmet at Lowes. If you're strapped for cash and are looking to save a few bucks Lowe's has good coupons floating around and you can get 0% financing too. The only other item you'll need is a tank of shielding gas, which can be had at your local gas supplier. A medium tank lasts me forever.

More progress! I got the water injection setup working, (pump needed to sit overnight with the tank full I guess) I got the boost gauge installed, did all of my heat shielding and set the timing. I still have to finish the intake setup, my filter and elbow should be here by midweek. For now I have a temporary setup on there.

Speaking of heat shielding, I have an old turbo blanket that I planned on using, but I wanted something simpler and that looked less "hacky". I'd seen folks on here using license plates and thought that was a pretty cool idea. Here's my spin on it:

Here are the raw materials that I used. Two TN license plates and some heat resistant cloth that I had leftover from another project. I put a piece of 3" exhaust pipe in the vise and used it to roll/shape the license plates.
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3537.jpg

Here's the shield with bolted up and waiting for the valve cover mounting holes to be drilled.
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3538.JPG

The finished product! Our nice flat license plates makes for a clean look. It seems to be working great and there are no rattles, etc even though the spacing is tight.
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3542.JPG

http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3545.jpg

I took it for a quick ride today and it sounds and feels pretty good. I still need to datalog it and get my tune sorted out. Thanks for reading - more to come!

any updates?

Hey Everyone! I can't believe this thread has gotten so many views, thanks for checking it out, it makes the hobby and build much more fun when so many folks are interested.

Anywho, big update today. First off, our baby boy hasn't showed up yet, but could arrive at any moment. My poor wife has been on bed rest and is pretty much ready for the baby to show up. Needless to say, the phrase: "honey, I'll be down in the garage for awhile" doesn't really work these days. :laugh: That said, I have got a little time in.

I drove the car around for a week or so, running little errands and stuff, datalogging, etc. Long story short, the turbo was too laggy for my tastes. I mostly expected this, as it is a big turbo for a stock 1.6 to spin up. I think it would be fine for a built 1.6 or larger 1.8, but I need a little more response. I was prepared for that letdown coming in, which was why the T3 frame is so great. I also had a local buyer lined up, knowing that I may not be thrilled with the powerband. So I ordered this Ebay T3 Turbo.

Here are some comparison pictures:
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3575.JPG

You can definitely see the smaller exhaust housing here.
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3572.JPG

Here's something a little odd, the bigger turbo's wastegate flapper (top one) was much smaller than the new turbo. I figured they would be the same, so I pulled the one I modified off the old turbo only to find this. I ended up going with the bigger one and modified the housing so the lever could open all the way.
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3586.JPG

Here's the turbo bolted up before final clocking. Between the great turbo location and the V-band downpipe, swapping turbos is a breeze. The only thing I had to change between the two turbos was the intake and turbo outlet pipe. You could definitely have two turbos and easily swap them out for different track events/preferences.
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3594.JPG

All done, except for the boost controller. For now I'm going to leave it this way and see how it operates. The Ebay listing says 8psi, but we'll see. I clocked the wastegate diaphragm too, as the as-delivered location pointed the vacuum outlets straight up to the hood.
http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3595.JPG

http://turbomirage.com/miata/2010_06/IMG_3597.JPG

That's it for now, I'm going to try to drive it then I'll report back the results. Thanks for reading!

Can you post up the logs of the old turbo

I just went for a quick ride...now that is more like it! I guess I have a pretty low tolerance for turbo lag and just love my midrange power way too much to sacrifice it for top end.

miataspeed2005 About those logs - ahem, I've actually kept this part of the build to myself to avoid confusion, insults, tomatoes, etc. I was planning on letting everyone in on it a little later, but here goes!

I am running a 1G DSM 4G63 Turbo ECU. Some folks will be able to spot the DSM bits in the engine photo in my last post. The most obvious is the throttle body and elbow, you can also see the injector resistor box on the passenger firewall. The cam angle sensor is the stock Miata unit, the power transistor is from a 1G DSM (almost identical to the stock Miata unit) and the coil packs are DSM units swapped into the Miata bracket. I'm using the factory DSM knock sensor screwed into the empty intake bracket hole in the block. I literally had all of this stuff in an old bin from a swap I planned on doing, but never did. So many of the Miata components were similar, I couldn't resist. I got the idea from the guys that running the DSM ECU on the KA24 240s.

The car runs perfect, and the DSM ECU doesn't seem to know/care what name is on the valve cover! :noob:

That is AWESOME. How does the knock sensing work? Well? What kind of capabilities does the DSM ECU have?

Told you.

:brain:


PS. Welcome to the Chinacharger T3 50 trim club. I see about 10-11psi on that wastegate.

That kinda blew my mind. It all looks so familar. So you're running it in MAP mode eh? When it gonna be time for DSMlink?

ok now that is just crazy cool and different.

Well first the ecu is setup for boost, and also 440s(iirc) out of the box.

Yeah, i had one of those ECU's in a turbo car before.

An Eclipse GSX. :P

And so it can do stock injectors and boost... yeah, i get that... but is it comparable to a Tunix'ed Subaru or something?

Great car. Nice progress. Very clean. I approve.

Well since I don't know what a Tunix'ed Subaru is, and google failed at searching for it. I can't answer that question

Tunix is like Accessport... it's basically where you can program the stock ECU, but the Subaru ECU is pretty powerful, so it's kinda a baseline for me. :) Maybe like Hondata, if you know that?

Ah.. ok I was wondering that.

The short answer, is No the stock ecu is not reprogrammable in stock form, but it is similar to the hondata. Depending on which version of the ECU, he can run what is cause a DSMLink, it replaces the ecu main chip, and also for reprogramming. Unfortunately it getting harder and harder to find the few DSM ecu that have the eprom chipset.