Aussie Noob
 

G’day, my name’s Kyle. I’m a mechanical engineer dealing with tunnel ventilation and fire life-safety systems. I’ve been regularly lurking here since I joined, soaking up the amazing amount of knowledge here. Money and parts are starting to come together now, so I figured I’d start an intro thread before I start asking questions.


I drive a ’93 1.6 NA, which I’ve owned for about a year and a half. My plan has always been to boost it, but I’ve been taking it very slowly for a couple of reasons:

* I was a poor student when I bought it, and I wasn’t going to waste money buying cheap but crap parts.

* I wanted to get into track-days, and I wanted to learn to drive fast *before* adding power.

Now that I’ve graduated and have a decent job, I’m slowly acquiring all the parts I’ll need. I’ll still be taking this one step at a time, rather than all in one hit. These are the things I need to do before boost:

* 1.8 Torsen upgrade

* 1.8 brakes upgrade

* MS-II

* Cooling system upgrade (alloy radiator, coolant reroute, ducting)

I’m not aiming for anything ridiculous power-wise, I want to stay within the limits of the stock bottom end (250hp?). At this stage I’m tossing up between an SR20 T25 or T28, because they’re cheap and plentiful here in Australia. I’m leaning more toward the T28, I’ve read that a T25 runs out of puff toward red-line.

Last thing, I just want to write up a little caveat I can point people to later – When I was studying, I did an engineering double major in mechanical engineering and motorsport engineering, and I did my thesis on intake manifold design (N/A, so not really applicable to you guys). So I’ve got the knowledge of most systems on a car, but little to no experience. So that means most of the time I think I know what’s going on, but generally I tend to be wrong :P

N/A or not, it's still applicable. Flow charachteristics and helmholtz resonance both play a huge part for power. Intake manifolds have historically been a weak point for us, but some DIYers are starting to make progress.

Well, yes and no. The general fluid dynamics principals are the same, but an N/A intake generally tends to have a lot more compromise than an FI intake. And Helmholtz resonance/tuned length effects are generally not worth the effort for FI, which makes the job of designing an intake manifold even easier.

I've seen a couple of intakes on here that have really impressed me. Gotpsi's intake seems pretty decent, but to be fair I haven't looked all that closely at it. There's another one that I've seen that I really liked, but I can't remember which car I saw it on. I'm pretty sure it was German though. The reason why intake design is a weak point around here is because there aren't that many people who'd see gains worth the effort. I thought the general assumption was that it wasn't really a cost-effective modification until you were already skywards of 300HP?

Hell yeah, a newb that can contriblute and not waste anybodies time! :giggle: Welcome to the place and please post up the stuff bout the intake manifold. Even thought this is Miataturbo there are some N/A guys running around here and there is no such thing as not enough knowlegde round these parts!