My budget high school build!
 

Hey guys. I'm a noob 'round these here parts. I am in high school working on my senior year while working just a bit over minimum wage. I'd like to share my turbo build as I go along the process with my 1990 Miata with 188k miles. So far what I have done are a few low-budget budget supporting mods, such as a Manzo cat-back, Tein Street-Basis Coils, Kraftwerks FMU, and an adapter plate to run a 3" cone filter (I only have the ebay filter, I plan to upgrade to a K&N since I hear the middle part tends to fall out.
Some parts that I have collected as of today (1/28/18) is a Garrett T3 turbo which is externally wastegated and an ebay T3 cast iron manifold. However since the turbo is older than me and needs to be rebuilt, I do not have the budget for a decent wastegate with a manifold that works with it, I will be trying to sell it and purchase a brand spanking new Ebay T3 (I know, sounds awful right) but hear me out. As I go along, I will be learning some of everything I need to know for the future where I want to build my own 1.9 VVT motor and turbo setup. Any tips would be appreciated and I hope all goes well! (If this thread is in the wrong place, I'll delete it and put it in the right one.https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...dfc68637b3.jpg
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...5dd005830f.jpg

Fuel control. How are you doing it?

I will be using a rising rate FMU from the Kraftwerks supercharger kit to add pressure as it builds boost. Eventually I’ll upgrade to bigger injectors.

This is going to be a bad time.

Don't

Welcome to the forum. Sell everything you have now and spend some time reading.

Sell everything you have and wait 6 months and buy all my 1.6 stuff at the end of summer. It'll be a far better kit and complete and right.

With all due respect, what's your plan after high school? It may be worthwhile spending that time researching, and just doing fun suspension, brakes and tires. Then when you have stable higher pay, indulge with your bank software knowledge and all the development that will come in the future.

Right now my plan is to go to college for Cybersecurity. My problem is that I’m very impatient 😂 I probablly wouldn’t get much from selling my current parts, so it wouldn’t be worth it to try. If I were to do suspension I’d want to try a racing beat tubular sway bar in the front with a solid in the back. From what I’ve seen, a beefier sway bar in the front makes the rear end more predictable. Right now for brakes I have power stop calipers which from what I can tell are stock brakes painted red (I got them for free with the car). I like my Teins because they are a good mix between stock and firm with little to no bounce (hell of a lot better than the ultimos i bought from a YouTuber that I wasted money on).

Do it right or do it twice...
Youre just asking for ridicule with a thread like this...

There's nothing to learn, we can tell you everything you need to know about your intended plan and it sucks. Id rather see you get an MS1 for about the same money as an FMU, and "learn" to play with that while the car is NA. THEN add bigger injectors... THEN boost......Trust us, we know what we are talking about.

Because you're broke and impatient is not an excuse to do something half-assed.
It's not a learning experience if you know from the beginning what's going to go wrong.
We've all been young and made bad decisions.
You have an advantage in that you have some of the smartest people you're ever going to encounter giving you advice for free.
Listen to them.
Learn how to budget and save.
NOW! Not when you're up to your eyeballs in student loan and credit card debt, which is where you're heading, I assure you.
Listen to our recommendations and succeed, or cut corners and lose.
Your call.

alright, I’ll take your guys advice sell my stuff and find an ms1 for sale

If you can afford an FMU, you can afford a Megasquirt. It just takes longer.

Eat steak, not McDonald's.

Sounds like you already experienced what happens when you buy crap, why didn't you learn? You won't learn anything from doing a "broke and boosted" setup, you'll just reiterate why it sucks.

I did learn. I would have waited to buy better coilovers but since my Miata is my daily driver now I had to settle with what I could afford at the time

You got that wrong, though.

You had to settle, since you were impatient. Not because your Miata is your DD. ;)

But this is also why you shouldn't be boosting that car either. Turbo miata DD = bad time. Especially if you don't have the money to fix big ticket items in a hurry.

My normal daily is being used so my original plan was once I have it back I was going to boost it. What type of functionality does ms1 have vs ms2? I’m looking at DIY boards and I’m wondering if the MS2 would be worth the extra cost off the bat

DIYPNP is the way to go for Megasquirt on a budget. MS2 technology, but you don't have to make custom circuits without good documentation. With a DIYPNP you just populate the circuit board and wire some jumpers according to a pinout and it's a plug and play ECU. It will run exceptionally better than an MS1, there's plenty of comparison threads around here to explain specifics.

You should really save and get a MS3X because it does so much more than the earlier models. And realistically if you cant afford a MS3 you probably shouldn't be turuboing a miata.

Biggest thing is learning from everyone else and their mistakes so you don't have to find out the hard way

Definitely. What confuses me is which PNP I need to use. I see different PIN numbers and I’m not sure how many exactly that I need.

The one that matches your car. They have an application guide.

https://www.diyautotune.com/support/...ilable-models/

You'll see all Miatas between 1990 and 2000 use the same DIYPNP, that's because they have the same ECU connector. The pinout is different, so if you click the link to the right of your year, it'll have instructions on how to populate the board and jumpers for your year. You can also check out trubokitty.com.

1. Go to trubokitty.com.
2. Follow steps to build MS3X.
3. Profit

JFC don't buy an MS1, I was just saying that if you can afford an FMU, even an MS1 would be a better choice.

Smart enough to understand how stupid his decisions are to use junk.
Dumb enough to pursue the pointless waste of time and money anyway
Lazy enough to post thread in wrong section, ask the most basic and beat to death questions ever, and create a FS ad with next to no info

You're just hitting all the right notes, aintcha?

Yeah IKR who asks frequently asked questions only LAZY dumb people who do pointless stuff I say like wow so bad harrumph smh thank you for putting my exact thoughts to words mr professional you are mod of the year right here, and it's only January thats how good u are, top tier.

you're very welcome.

1 post

1 ban


Impresssive

Reading through this thread, I noticed one big glaring factor- You haz no patience. I think you will have a really hard time building a megasquirt.


fixed and edited: Lots of deleted text. Maybe youngsters have less bills than i do.

Patients? Pay shunts? Pay shints? Patience.

I think that building your own ECU will scratch that itch to modify something useful. And it is a logical first step toward adding forced induction. Another side benefit is that installing the ECU will typically generate a bump in horsepower due to being able to eliminate the AFM and being able to tune spark and fuel for power.

And I'd like to thank 18psi for banishing the smart ass text talk kid. We address each other as adults here, using proper grammar and punctuation when we insult each other. Mostly.

what the fuck is going on in here?

I’ll definitely do that. Thanks guys for helping me better my project. I will wait and save to use good parts. Sadly based on my attempt to sell my turbo on my local miata groups, I don’t think I’ll have luck selling my other things. If it’s okay with you guys I’d like to have this post deleted so that I can start an actual build thread (I found the sub-forum I should have posted on originally)

Threads can be moved.

I hate to tell you but nobody's really going to want that turbo. You don't really want it either.

I've got a box full of spare junkyard T3 turbos and parts. They are virtually worthless.

Keep the good attitude kid.
If it seems like we're being hard on you, it's because we know that stoking your ego and enabling your previous plan does more harm than good.
We're assholes because we care.

Save that old turbo. You might want it one day for some science experiment that doesn't involve cars..

All i have to say is, basically if youre noob and you dont follow the path of
"learn about tuning -> MS -> tune -> injectors -> retune -> collect necessary turbo parts and knowlege -> install -> retune -> perfect tune -> chop SS/GT badge plebs"
youre gonna get flak around here.
yes, the "broke and boosted" setups work. But its not entirely reliable and you'll end up replacing the parts when you inevitably want to run more boost. You have a great attitude and seem willing to learn, dont spend money twice for the same end goal.

Most broke and boosted setups can't keep up with a v6 Camry.
Those that can keep up with a v6 Camry can't idle well and get less mileage than a 1980's full size pickup truck.
Ones that can beat a v6 Camry are few and have engines that don't last long.

Proper timing and fueling lets you tune for all the power, plenty of engine longevity, and off-boost economy.
And you are a computer guy so you will LOVE tuning!

To be fair the new Camry V6 has 301hp...

The point still stand; 301 brake hp means probably 270 at the wheels, in a car that ways 1000+ lbs more than a stock NB2...

**edit**
It was a good guess, but it turns out I was being generous:

Exactly, it doesn't really matter.
Having issues overtaking a compact economy sedan on the road in a turbocharged modified "sports car" is pathetic. At a certain point you come to realize the meeting of Benjamin Franklins words:

"The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten"

1. The new Camry looks great.
2. I love that quote and need to use it more often.
3. It sounds funny, 'till your turbo miata ACTUALLY gets skunked by some hot mom sipping a diet coke, in a Camry, who didn't know you were racing.. She was just in a hurry to get home to pretend like she wasn't out humping the 20 yr. old from the grocery store.

I like the quotes in my sig better.

I am very excited for the tuning aspect. I want to build a raspberry PI that I have laying around and rig up a "mini laptop" that can fit inside my center console storage as a portable tunerstudio rig. Not knowing the specs and system requirements of tunerstudio may hinder that though, but it'd be a fun secondary project after I go MS. I may have an old laptop or two laying around with a DB-9 port that I can use for tunderstudio until then.

There are several people here with tablets being used for gauges and running Tunerstudio to do it. A little searching on the site and you can probably find them.

Thinking about getting either an ACT HD clutch kit with an F1 racing 10lb flywheel, or a clutch kit by McLeod I've seen on moss miata. I haven't seen any reviews or threads that indicate that it's been used but it's a decent price.

I have an ACT XT on the light weight F1 flywheel and couldn't be happier.

Get a fm1 or 949 organic clutch, reuse stock flywheel. Cheaper then your plan.

QFT. You are on an extreme budget. No need to be buying a new flywheel.

ACT XTSS will hold all the power and engage smoothly and last forever. Don't waste money on a flywheel when you need other things first.

never understood adding a boost gauge. Set and forget in Tuner Studio

Totally disagree about a LWFW. Light weight fly wheel was one of the best mods Ive done, boosted or not. But if you're not specifically after LW, then I'd agree you're wasting money.

Agree

My boost gauge is coming out. AFR is also gone. The AFR served a purpose for a short time. Boost gauge is for show only.

In the end, use the MS and TS with proper safety settings to control.

I can understand boost, since that's something you can feel, but aren't you worried about not being able to catch a wideband on its way out?

millions of OEM's drive without it every day, let alone have it but simply not diplay it.
the key is the tune and the built in failsafes

Chicken and egg issue, no? Don't the failsafe options rely on the wideband registering correctly and staying in calibration?

I was in your position a couple years ago. It will take you roughly $2,500 to turbocharge your car reliably for a good power level (200 whp). I went the ms1 route, it's extremely basic but even for the $200 i paid for it from savington it's heaps better than the fmu.
I would recommend getting the ms1 from DIY with a stimulator, get your IAT and wideband installed. Put the megasquirt together, yeah the mods are pretty old but the info is out there.
Get the car running NA
Find a good second hand clutch, I paid $135 for my ACT HD
Add bigger injectors (Rx7's or carefully look for OEM rx8 ones)
Find a manifold for your application
select a turbo with the characteristics you like
Make a down pipe/ exhaust
Set up intercooler
Learn to tune/ bring to tuner
Enjoy having a somewhat fast car that doesn't run like absolute donkey dick

Also you may think you've read enough but it's clear that you still need to keep reading some more. I loosely followed the directions that the senior members gave me a while back and big surprise, things broke when they told me they would and were fine when I bought what they told me too.