I have a mostly stock '99 10AE. I was preparing for a turbo kit install, when I did a compression and leakdown test, and found that two cylinders are leaking around the rings pretty bad. I don't see any smoke or lose much oil, but I would probably start to the day I turned on the boost.

While I'm looking for a new motor or a reliable builder, I thought I'd get started on engine management.

I'd like to install a MS via boomslang-style harness in parallel with my stock ECU.

Once I've learned how to operate this thing (and maybe even see some better mileage in the meantime) I'll be in better shape to tackle the turbo project.

Mods currently on the car:

Future plans are to find a 1.8L block in good shape, or rebuild the one I have. I'm debating on whether it's worth the money to do a five-angle valve job on the head while it's out. Then I plan to slap it all back together with a BEGI-S kit, and tune for ~200whp. I really like the idea of water injection in principle, but I'm not sure how well the kits available will work with the Megasquirt. I'd want protection from the tank running dry.

 

Welcome to the forum. I see you don't need any acoustics!

About the MS, Cjernigan and others run theirs in parallel quite successfully.

Your last 2 phrases sound a little confusing. You ask how the kits available will work with Megasquirt (they will run fine btw) and immediately after you state you'd want protection from the tank running dry; I assume you mean the WI tank.

Now pics or ban!

 

About the WI: I'm thinking about in the future, once I have the basic setup running and tuned, and I begin to hunger for more power, that WI looks like the right technology for the job. The only challenge is, I'd want it to be controlled by the MS so that it could automatically "de-tune" should the WI tank ever run dry.

As for pics or a ban? I better get right on that. Here she is, midway through a 2900 mile roadtrip last summer, before the rollbar.

 

The car is looking good.

About the WI; I suggest you search for a thread started by Joe Perez on that subject. I think you're a little confused about WI.

 

Same year car, running a MS parallel (built by Chad aka cjernigan), with a BEGI-S (GT2560 turbo). MS kicks ***, turbo kicks ***. You will enjoy both immensely.
I also have the same speakers, Daytons in the doors and Whispers in the kick panels.

Welcome to mt.n

 

Wow - that is a coincidence - I bet we were reading the same posts on the m.net audio forums.

I also have a Nakamichi head unit and an Omnifi DMS-1 hard drive MP3 player (modded to run OpenFi) with an upgraded 100GB hard drive. My tunes are kickin', but I need to replace one of the whispers. I think I screwed up the cone when I was soldering it.

The only downside was the amount of time I spent making MDF rings to attach everything. Now that it's all in, and wired to a US Acoustics 4050 amp (eBay), I'm happy as can be. Plenty of thump.

 

First, I would avoid five-angling the valve seats if you plan to run a turbo. Doing this reduces the total surface-area of the contact patch between the valve and the seat, and will impair heat transfer from the valve to the head. There is obviously going to be some benefit in hand-lapping the valves to the seats.


Insofar as WI is concerned, I have gone through two iterations of a failsafe mechanism. The first was back before I installed Megasquirt, and used a pressure switch in the WI line to close a solenoid which normally bypasses the boost controller. Here's the writeup: https://www.miataturbo.net/forum/showthread.php?t=9083



Even though I have MS now, I'm still using my original DevilsOwn progressive WI controller, and the system is totally separate from the MS. However, in addition to the above failsafe, I added a relay which not only drives the solenoid when the switch closes, but also sends a closure to the MS on JS9 which switches the ignition tables when WI is active. My Spark1 map is very conservative in the boosted region, whereas Spark2 is very aggressive. When the engine gets into boost the WI turns on, and once the WI has come up to pressure the MS flips to the more aggressive Spark2. If WI pressure is lost, the MS flips back to the conservative map. Amazingly, I don't think I have a writeup on that, but here are the details on table switching: http://www.msextra.com/manuals/MS_Ex....htm#mapswitch



To prevent the tank from running dry (I am using the washer bottle) I installed a large reserve tank in the trunk, a transfer pump, and a pair of level switches in the washer bottle. When the level drops below a certain point, the transfer pump is activated to refill the bottle, and whenever the pump is running a light comes on in my dash. If that light stays on for more than ~10 seconds, I know that something is wrong. Here's that writeup: https://www.miataturbo.net/forum/showthread.php?t=9256