For my birthday my friend gave me this book http://www.amazon.com/Mazda-Nineteen...286640&sr=11-1.

Its pretty awesome, in that it is has a very comprehensive history of the Miata. Has stuff in it that I never knew and never read online. One such thing is the BBR Turbo kit.




This turbo kit was made by BBR or Brodie British Racing for Mazda to be installed by Mazda dealers and retaining the factory warranty.

Things I found very interesting.

1. No blow off valve
2. Design of manifold and heat shield <--- Corky take notes
3. Intercooler piping, I found the elbow and its two ports particularly interesting. What are they for?
4. Location of oil drain.
5. 3 check valves
6. What looks to be a sandwich plate for an oil cooler
7. What looks to be like a piggy back computer.
8. Turbo is a journal bearing T25.

 

very cool stuff. did it really come with a oil pan?

 

thats nifty, i want that oil pan, and the pipes to the intercooler are odd looking, kinda pancaked

 

Wonder what this cost back in the day?

 

There's a few members on here with BBR kits.. They might know.

 

I have some on car pictures of that kit on my work computer, I'll post those up tomorrow if people want.

 

https://www.miataturbo.net/forum/sho...291#post158291

Doesn't show much, but yeah.

 

I think it does have a re-circ bov. I think it's that thing just under the exhaust above the IC piping.

 

Looks like the lower coolant passage "neck?" to me.

 

I concur.

 

A decent shot:

 

kinda retro, its cool looking
they came stock with dif fuel options?
what did they come with for power

 

From what I have read they were designed for about 150BHP. Sounds like it used a piggyback, basically like a watered down Bipes.

 

150 thats it? **** thats some shitty hp gains

 

Yeah, we have a few of these kits down under as well. They were fitted in the UK as a factory option and therefore were covered by the Mazda UK warranty....hence the lower power output. Not sure what the case is now, but when these kits were originally available Mazda UK was not owned by Mazda Japan and did not need to seek permission or agreement from Japan for many of their projects, such as the BBR turbo model.

There is a workshop here that fitted a kit to a 1991 Neo Green. They still have 1 or 2 kits available. I asked how much and was told AUD$5,000 plus AUD$1,500 to fit......that was about 2 years ago.

J

 

Back in the day when there was nothing avail. for miatas that would have been a pretty hot thing to lust after... yeah we've got tons of better options now, but we've had 18 years since it first came out to come up with it all.

-Ryan

 

i like the manifold design. looks like it makes for a straighter downpipe, but i guess if you have ac and ps it doesnt leave very much room.

interesting how the turbo sits low but the intake pipe is brought all the way back up...

 

haha this kit even came with spark plugs and an oil filter ....kool stuff

 

They were rated at 150bhp @ 6500rpm, 154lbft @ 5500rpm at 5-6psi. It cost £2500 back then. At the current rate (dollar is pretty weak unfortunately), that would be a whopping $5000
They were well made though. DP was stainless steel and it had hard oil / water lines. That's something we still don't see in any other kits on the market today! Downside is that the IC sits behind the radiator so it wasn't very effective.

 

Very nice! Looks extremely OEM even though its an aftermarket company that did all the work.

I think the bypass valve sits in the intercooler a-la Subaru WRX. Look at the circled part in another picture of the kit:



Some more interesting info I found:

http://www.cryton.demon.co.uk/mx5/p-bbr.html

So they had two phases, the standard one shown above @ 150 bhp, and stage 2 at 230 bhp. Not bad in 1992.

They claimed:

"Power is raised to 232+ bhp with 218lb ft of torque, giving 0-60 mph times of around 5 seconds and 0-100mph in 11.2 seconds!"

Here's a dyno chart from the BBR MX-5 Forum member:

http://www.mazda-mx5-bbr-turbo.co.uk...orum=8&topic=1



Not so shitty when you consider the fact that it came with a full factory warranty from Mazda UK. I mean on the engine, not on the kit. No one gives you an engine warranty today on an aftermarket kit, atleast not in the Miata world, even if the vendors built the engine for you.