1.8 swap worth it on a budget? And correct me if my plan is mistaken.
 

So, if you've seen my recent post I am looking to turbo.

My ending budget that I'm going for is hopefully no more than 2500$ and I will be doing this over 6ish months while I finish out highschool. '

I guess the main question is, if I'm on a budget, and don't have any experience with pulling a motor and wiring a harness or anything. Is it worth the money to swap to a 1995 1.8. I don't think I'll be able to keep it under 2500 though. It's not a matter of waiting to get more money, I have enough money to go 1.8, I just don't have more than 2500 for the car. The rest is going for college and I refuse to spend more.

Here is what I plan to do as far as a game plan if I don't go 1.8.
1. Buy megasquirt pnp w/afm delete. Buy wideband, then install them and learn my way around megasquirt. Roughly $1000
2. Buy larger injectors, probably rx8 yellows. $120
3. Get a intercooler setup going hooked up to my intake so that I can minimize undrivable time. Probably drive it for a month or two that way til I get a bit of money up for a turbo. $100-300
4. Think I'm looking at a dsm turbo and rebuild it, buy a ebay manifold that has a downpipe and midpipe, and reinforce the welds (if that's a usable idea?). Buy a boost controller with it and run maybe 6-7 psi, tune it correctly, get some dyno time, bump it to 10-12 psi, tune it, hopefully run a reliable 10psi. 1000$

$2220-2420 + dyno is 125 an hour and 200 an hour for tuning if I can't figure it out.


Does any of this sound reasonable? Or am I thinking this will be too easy. I have many friends, family, and connections to get this thing installed correctly and teach me tuning. So that's not an issue, but the pricing, game plan, and ideas are the thing I want your feedback on.

That's not the worst noob plan I've read to be sure.
If I were in your shoes, I would focus on reliability and drivability.
What I mean by that is keeping it NA, spending money on suspension bits and learning to drive it well as is.
A 1.8 setup is almost always worth it in the long run, but it will blow your budget if you stick with turbo plans.
You may not be thinking about supporting mods like a 94+ diff and stronger clutch.
That's half your budget right there.
For my money in your situation, I would do a 1.8 swap, upgrade exhaust, megasquirt, build eBay suspension and enjoy the 140ish HP.
Pick up mad dudes at college.

I turboed my miata in high school and ended up selling it because I got tired of working on it and being unreliable. And I spent around $4000 on that. Keep it 1.6, do suspension first, maybe a torsen. Do a track day and never get a turbo.

Welcome to miatanoturbo.net.

if dyno tuning was $200 an hour, I wouldn't tune.

Your timeline looks good, but your wallet is in for a shock. The unanticipated costs will hit you fast and hard. The worst is rinky-dink stuff, like plugs and wire and hoses and fasteners and gaskets and clamps and tools and bits and blades and fittings and fluids and...

You should handily bank on another $1000-1500 for unlisted and unforeseen costs and be able to back it up with another $1000 in case anything goes south.

Also plan for $400 for a clutch and then another $250-750 for a 1.8 rear end.

I completely forgot to mention the work I've already done to the car, my appologies.

It has an FM Clutch that's rated to 318ft/lb, has a 1.8 flywheel that I put on when the OEM went out, and the dif to my knowledge is a 1.8 open dif (what the guy told me). So I believe that's handled. As for the suspension I have some used VMaxx coilovers I picked up locally last month. It also has a 2.5 inch exhaust with a magnaflow muffler and magnaflow high flow cat. So there I should be good as well.

That's why I'm considering going turbo as there's not much more I can do. Maybe go for a built N/A, but that will be just as much as a turbo and not yield the same performance.

So knowing that does it change your guys suggestions? The engine is a late 1991 and doesn't have the short nose crank, it has near perfect compression, and the only leak it had was the valve cover gasket and that has been addressed and it currently has 0 leaks. From what I know it was a grandma owned car, then bought by a guy that side swiped a freeway barrier, the next guy bought it and fixed it, then the last guy bought it and did the rear end, put roll cage in it, and spray painted it in which he panned on making it a track car. I then came along, bought it for 900$ due to the paint being garbage, it having bondo all down the side of the car, and the tires being bald. I then put 3500 into restoring it to how I wanted it and bought a hardtop.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1444416625
When I bought it


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1444416625
How it sits today


As you can see the dedication is real, so if I go turbo, it will be done lol.

I bought a 1.6L with plans to turbo. I did all the maintenance items to get things running and instead of doing a timing belt, I went HAM and swapped/turboed/blew a built bp4W. More then 10 grand into the project later, I'm slowly fixing up the loose ends on most recent 1.8L and counting the days till it dies again. Then again, I was in grad school while I fucked my life over.

Enjoy the car as it is, then do a v8. Reliable. Powerful. Efficient.

There's nothing wrong with turbo 1.6, so long as you are aware it's not the pinnacle of miata motor. It will be more fun than it is now, and it can be pretty reliable.

The only manifold you should consider wasting money on is the cast iron ebay shit, with e-bay turbo. T3 is all you get, so go with the turbo Brainey, underdog, MKturbo and I use. I bought everything you need for less than $1800 bucks.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1444417474

If no can weld, just buy a mkturbo kit.

I figure for my expectations the boost will be low enough not to be a problem.

There is currently a turbo, manifold, and downpipe for 400$ (Think he'd take 300) right now locally. It's a second gen dsm ihi turbo. Is that a good deal? I might just go pick it up and hold onto it til I get ready for it. Looks awfully like a megan racing manifold and downpipe. Are those any good?

My vote if I get "new" stuff is a china charger, and a cast manifold (read about non cast cracking, welds ruining turbos, etc) and an ebay intercooler kit. Does that sound like it would be good? Or should I go for a turbo off a sr20, ej25, 4g64?

Probably not, because it's probably a shitty as fuck ebay manifold. I just told you the only 1.6 manifold worth wasting money on is a 1.6 cast tacotaco manifold for a reason.

A tacotaco and brand new t3 is ~$300. New. My car has over 20K on it, and it's never been down more than a week since turbo, so...

Don't waste money on a good turbo and downpipe, because if you ever 1.8 it's all useless. Unless you buy MKturbo, like you probably should.

And when you blow up your 1.6L you can pick up a 1.8 manifold from Lars + 1.8 engine and reuse the downpipe back.

Since you have the supporting mods of diff and clutch out of the way, I would look seriously at the MK Turbo 1.6 package and sell the exhaust you have now to recoup some costs. And get a good used deal on a MS, wideband, and injectors. It's what I would do, and I'm pretty cheap and practical.

Is this your only car? If it is, don't do it.

Since the 1.6 TacoTaco manifold is not available, I endorse all these posts. Mostly because I just gave Emilio all my money, so now I need more. Otherwise I would 100% endorse doing the 1.8 swap.

Xida price drop too hard to pass, right?

:party:

Well I finally got some 6UL's this week. So I had to get some Xida's to match and the price drop helped. Since I am spending that much I might as well get the BGK, which is what I really wanted. Well that is only a little bit away from the orange club. So YOLO I joined the orange club.

I did not need to know that was a thing.

I love when a price drops a few hundred bucks AFTER you buy something, before you even have a chance to install it.

I really like the MK looks. It could almost be a route for me. Just to bad it doesn't come with the intercooler piping and shit. I got backed into the other day and will be getting a check from the fucksticks insurance soon.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1444443737

So maybe I could take a bit of that, and fix it myself, have the painter that painted the car paint it for a bit of cash, and take the rest to get that MK.

Question time (because the more you tell me the more confident I get)
Would you suggest the MK Turbo setup, some ebay intercooler, ebay oil lines, Megasquirt, Wideband, and injectors? I really feel like that's a small list. I mean, boost contoller, bov, gauges, gauge holders, bolts, and other little shit I can deal with, but is there anything else that will stop me from getting the car to go/start up?

The plan I had will still stay though, megasquirt first, then turbo.

As far as this being my only car, I'm 17 and on my last leg of highschool and will have a job very soon (hopefully full time), I have 1300 now to get it started with the ecu, injectors, and wideband, then will use the job to pay for the rest over time. So what I'm saying is I can live without a car, I live with my parents and can have them drive me, or take my grandfathers truck. (I guess I contradicted myself, I do have a second vehicle.)

BOV is a toy at less than 15psi and can wait. The boost controller can wait and can be done by the MS anyway. Another superfluous expenditure for a starter kit. Gauges are not necessary because the laptop will show everything.

Keep it simple and durable. Stick to the necessities.

Wouldn't a boost gauge be something to consider? I don't mean like oil gauges, temp gauges, and whatnot. The car 'has' those anyways.

The toy is what I want, is it true that bov can hurt turbo response?

And thanks for letting me know about the boost controller in MS, how does it work with the wastegate? Do you put the wastegate to the max, then lower it with megasquirt?

Not going to lie, people give you guys a worse name than you deserve, very helpful to noobs.

A boost gauge can be cheap, but it's not needed. I used a $14 one for a while, it just had a terribly shitty backlight. You aren't going to react to a boost gauge in time in overboost, so that's why the megasquirt does that.

I use a cheap ebay blowoff valve, like $30 cheap. If the valve is working right it should not hurt spool. Mine seems to be fine, it will still surge occasionally but it's much better than nothing. It's pretty decent at only opening in high vacuum which is why it occasionally surges. It's firmly closed at idle or better, hasn't given me any problems.

Ebay AN lines/fittings are junk, I use a 4AN brake line for oil and cheap silicone for a return. You can buy T3 hose barb outlet plates and 4AN restrictor inlet plates cheap.

I bought all my shit at once, but I ran just a megasquirt and rx8 injectors for a while. Widebands are cheap and a necessity for megasquirt.

You can still work in a lot of upgrades as you can afford them, so long as you are a sensible person and realize current limits. If you still run stock cooling you can't run full boost back to back on the highway, not for long at least.

You need to read how wastegates and boost control work, because it's totally opposite what you're guessing at.

Alright I'll read up on wastegates and boost controllers tonight.

What do you mean by stock cooling? Do you mean that by radiator and fan? Or deeper into the coolant lines and stuff?

Look up coolant reroutes.

Would you say a radiator is worth getting? My radiator is an OEM one, but less than a year old.

What do you mean by back to back highways? Say I wanted to handle that problem, could I make it run at different boost levels depending on the gear, like can megasquirt do that?
2nd - 8
3rd -10
4th - 10
5th - 2 (so that highway (around here is usually around 90 between cities) it doesn't get as hot?)

Or do you mean highway runs at full balls over and over. 20-90-20-90-20-90?

I'm sure I could search for this, but my grandfathers graveside is tomorrow and I'm a casket bearer so I'm heading to bed. I really appreciate the help.
1st - 6

Oh we're assholes alright. But we're the merry kind.
We don't reward stupidity, and that is where the reputation comes from. So be it; we have good information. Just do your part and try not to ask questions that are easy to answer with a Google search.

You telling me my last question was something I should google? Lol gg m8

I'm going to start on this shit soon and think I have learned what I'll need to know to get started. I'll probably have more questions down the road. Next step is either finding a megasquirt for cheap, or just buying it new.

Buy an MS3X.
Other versions will work, but it has more features, and all the support is being focused on it.

My problem there, is I really don't want to deal with building a MS, I just want a PNP ecu as I don't want to have the car sitting there because I fucked up the wiring.

If someone was selling a built MS3X i'd go for it, but if that doesn't pop up, probably not.

What exactly is better about it anyways other than more support? I mean I don't want a list of features, but what is actually going to benefit me being a novice tuner and not going for high horsepower?

There are several vendors of prebuilt MS3 units. Your very own forum admin Brain sells them.
Reverant is another good option who many people go with.
Or just buy an MSPNP from DIYAutotune.
Read this.

A distinct benefit of the megasquirt is the fact that it tunes its own fuel map. I don't remember what else you asked.

I have a $20 Bosch BOV that makes silly whooshy noises. No expensive crap needed. But they are completely unnecessary under 15psi if you are worried about money.

MSPNP2 would probably be the best bet right? Considering I've tried soldering and failed badly. Or is MSPNP (not 2) sufficient? I'm going to contact Brain though for sure.