How does it Look?
 

Had a Miata for a while, but drove this Turbo yesterday and may need to make it mine. Not positive the brand turbo, but it has a pretty well tuned megasquirt, FM cooler and radiator, PS and AC deleted when trubo installed.
Just from this picture, does anything odd or blatantly concerning jump out at you?
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...8c4cce84be.jpg

Looks fine to me.

Turbo looks to be a China one, on a custom manifold.

It's a 1.6. Budget for diff/shaft upgrades.

looks like there's some red overspray by the headlights, and the strut bar isn't there but outside of that looks ok.

NA cars didn't come with them.

Yeah, but there are brackets installed for one on this car.

Pcv filter isn’t up to turbo heat, those pencil coils are known to have issues, and if the manifold and downpipe aren’t built well, you’re looking at a $100 turbo and $700-1000 just to bolt it to something. Another $500-1500 to upgrade to anything that’s not China.

. Great info! Thanks.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...b17237678.jpeg
Here is a list of mods. There are a few others not listed.

So who builds an engine without throwing in rods? I don't see any listed and usually that's the first thing you want to upgrade from years of reading, maybe the 323 GTX rods went in as well but are the 1.6 turbo rods actually stronger? I think the 1.8 GTX were an upgrade but it's been more than a decade since I dealt with and researched GTX parts for my 1.8 BP turbo Escort GT. If the price is good, go for it and drive it until something breaks. You can probably sell a lot of the parts or reuse them in another NA Miata.

On the dyno

GTX rods are quite a bit beefier than the stock BP rods. I ran them in my old built motor for a long time making 294whp/270ftlb.

The car actually sounds and looks pretty good. Find out if the guy put in stronger rods, as others have said that is the weakest link in the bottom end.

I pick it up next Tuesday, so I guess time will tell. I'm in at a price point where I can keep this one, my normally aspirated, and neither are daily drivers.