They got me by the ballzzzzz. My only other option is to pack it up and take it to AZ and have it professionally tuned, which I realize is my best option but money is tight (7mo old baby and a stay at home mom, I'm the income) and this is essentially just a toy car to me. I was hoping to put that off until next year.

There is a Mustang dyno in El Paso but the owner genuinely and deeply dislikes me... I'll look into it anyways.

 

You can't street drive this car? A bunch of tuning (especially fuel) can be done on the street.

Also, it is important that there be a way to circulate coolant in the block while the car is warming up. That's what the permanently open side-route through the Miata heater core is for. If you're planning to do a reroute with only the Kia waterneck, what are your plans for this? No thermostat? Enlarged hole in thermostat? Never thought about it?

 

I can and do street drive it and that's where we've done a majority of the VE tuning but for WOT pulls I'd much prefer to be stationary and not breaking any laws.

Never thought (knew) about that layout. I purchased this car as a 95% complete SM that I have since just turned into a lapping toy, it never had a heater core and the only coolant setup this thing has ever had is the stock upper setup and an altered lower which consists of only the rad hose, nothing else on the housing, IIRCC... I'll snap some pics this evening...

 

After reading "some" of this thread, I get the impression that you have a 99 head on a 97 or earlier block. This would drop your compression quite a bit less than either stock 97 or 99 setup. Great for a turbo.

 

This thread has gone from "Why is my WHP low?" to "Why is my car such a basket-case?"

 

Therein lies the problem with buying someone elses modified car. When you start from stock, you can compare your setup to tens of thousands of other stock '94s. When you start from a previously modified car, you have nothing to compare to.

Good luck getting all this stuff sorted out.

 

Shiiiiiit, I'm trying to figure out how to make my simple NA setup function properly, I don't need to get all crazy with turbos and boosts and positive manifold pressure.

 

I lied. We altered the cooling system. We drink a lot when we work on this thing. Like, a lot.

 

You are going to seriously cook your rear cylinders running you coolant system out of balance like that. Search for "Miata coolant flow" or something like that to see a picture of how coolant flows through the engine. Pretty sure Joe Perez has posted a clip out of the OEM FSM that shows it.

Given that you've blocked off the rear coolant outlet from the head, I'd say that a proper reroute needs to be moved way up in priority.

 

Wow. Stop touching Miatas.

 

It's been like this since April of '12.

Yeah, I'll fix it right. :(

 

No dude.

 

Fortunately, by running pig rich, having low compression due to using 94-97 pistons with a 99 head and running at high elevations, you're not making any power (hence the thread). Might have saved you. LOL.

 

he wants you to stop touching miatas, so you can start touching him.

 

God works in mysterious ways. Praise be to him.

 

I'm not saying no but I haven't said yes.

 

Hello.

So we had our annual night event on 7/16 and I made had some changes. Adjusted the MAT correction table per Brain's example, worked on my BARO correction table, trying to zero it out even thought it looked like it already should have been and got my CLT sensor seeing actual honest to God values. Obviously, this threw my VE table for a loop...

Ari and I did a few laps while he did some adjusting, looking for 12.5:1 - 13:1 to redline. Got it dialed in and the car felt good, not like a "holy ****, that's incredible!" but it just felt better. I made the comment that it still kinda felt like it was "choking", like it had more in it and we both agreed that that was probably the timing.

So we did some logs and that was that. I turned laps for about 6 hours and drove it home. When I looked at the logs I was surprised to see that it was showing 10.5 - 12:1 by redline so I thought about the AEM calibration thread I saw a while back and went ahead so I went ahead and followed the modification shown here and it seems like the laptop and gauge matched up for the short time I let it idle today. I'll take it to work tomorrow afternoon and see if it really helped.

I'll attach the last log so you guys can tell me I'm a moron.