KPLAFIN

iTrader: (1)

AA motorsports?

OK OK, I'm done this time for real.

viperormiata

iTrader: (24)

Pics of the motor/turbo setup????

Cspence

iTrader: (11)

Yes please!

SRS-NA

this right here. all of this. FML.

viperormiata

iTrader: (24)

Bro come on! Post up some pics of the motor/dyno plots!!!!!

thirdgen

iTrader: (26)

PM me your phone number cause I'd like to buy an 8 ball from ya! You gotta be dealin to buy a car like that beings you're in high school! What's your beater car, a Ferrari Testarosa? Know what I drove in high school? I had 1971 6 cylinder Chevy Nova, then a 1981 VW Rabbit, then I bought a '71 Pontiac LeMans that was a project, then I sold the Nova and the VW and bought a 1986 Pontiac Firebird. Then I graduated, so word to your mother. Now I'm 28 and have a turbo miata and I smile everyday. But seriously, good luck with the car, and even more serious...Be careful.

Sam Amporful

iTrader: (13)

Welcome sir. Im actually about to buy an E36 next month with plans of twin turbo. Great cars. Looking forward to see more of your new purchase

webby459

iTrader: (8)

What the **** is wrong with you?

17k, or whatever, was seriously ambitious for this car. 9k that the OP says he paid was a little more in the realm of reality, maybe still a little high. But guys, help a ************ out. The kid just bought the car, didn't come off like a douche introducing himself, asked a reasonable question as to where to get the car tuned, ie doing the right thing by it, and he gets this ^? What the ****.

I bought my car from a guy that got beat up here a little bit. I got what I thought was a reasonable deal (still do), and made my own way on here and with the car. Does who I bought the car from reflect who I am? I don't think so, and likewise for this guy. So, I say, give him some reasonable advice, or shut the **** up.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

We have a funny story about the history of that car while it was in a shop up here. We basically called the shop owner out. They blew the motor when fitting a 6-sp tranny swap, blamed it on the guy's tune, and pulled the head to replace "burned/bent valves" The shop owner eventually sold the business and never heard about the car since. The owner at the time was an idiot who trusted the shop, and wanted us to stop bothering him.

that's about it, so to us, it has a funny history, and even before that we used to lol for about a year with that car constantly on vadriven.com and CL for sale for like 17K and crap. His auction used to state the car was faster than a z06 corvette and it made me lolz, especially when I emailed him to call him out on that.

sounds like the car got back in some order and has a few loose ends to tie up.

webby459

iTrader: (8)

This. Just like my car did, just like probably every other car on here does if we were to list them for sale.

Thanks Brain.

Vashthestampede

iTrader: (17)

Welcome dude! Cars looks good! I'm not a huge fan of the tan interiors, but this one is super clean.

I almost never post in a noob thread, just because most of them are horrible. I think you'll fit in fine here.

Shitty history or not, everything is fixable. As long as you do the work yourself, you'll know whats going on. Learn as much as you can on here, and don't beat on it until your certain its good to go.

I'm also a fellow boarder. 15 years on and off skateboarding, about the same snowboarding, and 2 years into longboarding. There's a couple other guys on here that thrash as well.

buffon01

iTrader: (9)

So where is the OP...????

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

Still turning that CAS back and forth guessing at settings.

saint_foo

Good luck, OP! I hope you get the car straightened out without too much drama and cash. Did you get any sort of warranty or guarantee from the seller? Some sort of documentation regarding the stated HP? If he's drastically lying, then you might be able to get him to at least chip in for some of the fix ups. Just food for thought.

Anyhoo, best of luck and welcome!

KPLAFIN

iTrader: (1)

This...

Plus me posting drunk.... I apologize your highness. Oh and not reading anything past seeing the pictures and realizing what car it was and it's history that I have more or less first hand knowledge of.

SRS-NA

Since this thread is really movin now I guess I shall post my findings after the first weekend with the car. It's a lot so I'll divide it up.



Friday

Well I drove the car to school and was oh so happy to just be driving my first car that wasn't always in vacuum. It was a good day, went out to eat, put about 50 miles on the car. Then I headed back home and met a few of my friends there. So I put the car on my lift for the first time and prepared to replace my 3.90 torsen with a unit from an ad off miata.net. Well let's just say this was the first time that I actually got scared that I should have done a little more research before buying this car. I changed the engine oil, when I took it out I found it was black and not looking so good. Then I noticed both of my tie rods are near the end of their life. Oh and I noticed my right front wheel bearing had begun to make noise. Then I checked my IC piping and found it wasn't mandrel bent at all, it was verrryy inefficient, not to mention the back side and underside of the IC was pretty beat. Then I found I had a super inefficient oil feed line into the turbo along with a nice split in it. Then I moved my was back a little bit to find that the 6 speed tranny was covered in engine oil and was missing a bolt(thanks AA). Then I noticed that the exhaust was pretty much just barely bolted together(such simple neglect). So needless to say I wasn't too happy with what I found and I hadn't even dropped the diff.

Then we drained the diff fluid. It honestly looked like mud. So then we began to unbolt the thing and soon found nearly every bolt holding it in was a different size. That led to a lot of confusion and was just an inconvenience to have to keep switching tools. We unbolted the axles and after talking to David(very helpful recommend him for sure) who I bought the diff from, he informed me that the axles on the car had not been upgraded to 1.8 axles like they should have with the 3.90. Also found that my left rear axle ain't in too great of shape considering when I popped it off it was covered in grease and then the metal contact point in the center was popping out. Then we got the diff on the ground and disassembled it and inserted the new diff on to the wings. The old diff isn't in as bad of shape as I expected. There was a definite whine to it, but other than that I don't think any serious crunching was going on. Well we finished up that job and found out where my madddd oil leak was coming from. The CAS o-ring was shot. So I planned to do that on Saturday. Took the car off the lift and went for a drive enjoying the quietness while cruising. Loud exhaust vibration was still present unfortunately though. And that concluded Friday's discoveries.



Saturday

I had SATs in the morning and enjoyed driving the car without heat at 7AM on a 25 degree morning...NOT. Then I went out to lunch and stopped by NAPA too pick up some goodies. I picked up engine oil, some butt connectors, and some top secret specially mixed up spray paint which I will use in the coming weeks. Car felt great and I chose the backroads to enjoy the dry weather and because I felt confident this diff wouldn't lunch box at some unexpected moment. Let me tell you, I love driving this car more than any other car I have driven. The combination of wide stance, stiff coilovers, summer tires, and no power steering made it feel like I was driving an overpowered go kart. Which it really is, but anyway it was fantastic. But to put a damper on the mood, Saturday was the first time I was having real shifting issues. The car really did not want to go into third gear without grinding at all. Everytime I shifted to third it grinded. Then it became hard to shift into other gears. And then the other gears would be fine and it would go into third like butter, then a few minutes down the road it would be grinding to go into third. Then I had the pleasure of cruising with my friend in his Rover V8 MGB. Two roadsters with the tops off on a 40 degree afternoon haha. You should have seen the looks we got.

Anyway, this is where my weekend really starts to suck. Went back home to change that o ring on the CAS. Well I followed the DIY except for one very important step. In my haste of unbolting the unit and proud to show my friends how quickly I had gotten the job done and was going to have my car leak free before my friend could bolt the exhaust back on the MG, I forgot to mark where the sensor was. Well then I really realized that I was kinda fucked. So after a group huddle we decided to reinstall the CAS and see if we could guess where it needed to be. Well it seemed as if wherever we set it the car did not like what was going on at all. It had always started right up before. Now it cranked, then bogged, cranked some more and then turned over. Once it was running it ran so rough, almost as if the motor was running on 2 cylinders. It was missing badly and backfiring. It didn't seem to really matter where the CAS was set, it just ran horrible. So we gave up for the night. And I had no idea where the timing was supposed to be set because it surely shouldn't have been stock with the wack *** tune on the car. So I left the car sit and came back Sunday afternoon.



Sunday

So I was definitely disheartened after my failure on Saturday. I arrive Sunday and find that my stepdad has decided that the car is not leaving his garage until my dad(who authorized the purchase) has gone over the car with him because he believes it's unsafe(which it is). I had planned to replace a bunch of safety equip, but this just made me make the move a little earlier. It also meant that the car would be down for a bit so it made me think about redoing some things. For some weird *** reason he took my spark plug wires and hid them. Well I got those back and put them on correctly. Then noticed that the exhaust manifold had a nice crack in it before the flange. Well that's great. This is when the shittyness of the wiring really set in. I had reinstalled the CAS and was attempting to start the car. Well now it was just cranking and not even trying to turn over. BTW I have a 13b ignition. So then we tested the wires. I was getting spark when I turned the battery and ecu on, but not when I cranked it. Well then we found that a wire on one of the pins on the CAS had just decided to pop out. So we rigged that to go back in the pin and found a **** ton of grounds and other wires just kinda hanging. And wires everywhere. Some hooked up, some not, some aftermarket, some oem. Well anyway, we put that wire back in the pin and started it. It ran just as bad as before with it missing and just running like crap. Again, I adjusted it from all the way retarded to all the way advanced with little to no change in how the car acted.



Monday

I've got a half day of school and I've spent all morning real worried. I am seriously in over my head. I need to replace the roll bar with a taller one before I even move the car, and I need to get some fixed backs and harnesses. At that point I may as well pull the interior and put a black interior in. Then I'm thinking that I should rewire the whole car. But I don't know hardly a thing about wiring besides basic soldering. Then I thought whether I should stick with Haltech or if I should go MSPNP. And I have the afternoon off so I'm thinking what in the hell do I do with my time to be productive. I'm thinking I'm just gonna start dissassembling the interior and take the bar out and start looking for a taller one. I'm 6'4" 180lbs. btw. So FML it started as an awesome weekend and ended in a terrible one. Oh and the other issue, I'm pretty much out of money. So now it's time to start selling **** and then most likely have to borrow money from my dad to make this thing pass the parent's safety inspection.


I'm probably about to go down in this forum's history of that kid who got completely owned and now has a hunk of metal sitting in his garage. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

post this on FML.com

SRS-NA

Btw I am in Richmond va if anyone is local and wants(or has enough sympathy for me) to take a look at this. I'll provide something, I'm not sure what, money, food, parts I don't need...anything really lol.

neogenesis2004

iTrader: (12)

Sucks, the car has a ton of potential. Nice that you have a lift at home to work on it though. What exactly does the "parent safety test" entail. Assuming you get the wiring issues solved, replace the oil feed line, and get it fully tuned what else is there? Do you have another car that you DD?

shuiend

iTrader: (24)

What exactly do you consider not safe?