Miata Turbo Forum - Boost cars, acquire cats. - Hi! Yet another noob saying hi.

So hi!

I'm DragonsMaw, I've owned a red 1990 miata for about a year now and driven it for about half of that. At this point I've garaged it for the winter and hope to at least put a slightly rebuilt engine in by spring. To this end I've bought a spare 1.6 and taken it apart to clean and replace a few items. If I'd thought a bit farther ahead I would've bought a 1.8 but I didn't think to test the engine before paying for it. Alas compression came out to 150-140-60-140 but I'd already paid to rebuild the head.

So now I've got the lower end apart and will be attempting as much of a DIY refresh as possible and see what happens in the next 10k. All I'm doing is replacing rings, weighing and balancing pistons and rods, replacings bearing sheaths and finally welding the key and pulley on the wonderfully worn keyway. Anything and everything made of rubber is being replaced along the way.

Once I break this thing in though I'm going cheap-ass turbo. We're talking budget ebay/pull-a-part build. If I'm done in 3 years I'll call it good. The eventual engine build is going to stay with stock internals and something approximating the GReddy kit except with 550cc injectors and a MS-I with wideband instead of a fuel pressure riser.

The rest of the car will also slowly be built up as parts and time are collected. The major components unfortunately all require quite a bit to upgrade. Being a 1.6 car I'll need a new differential eventually, the clutch will die soon after too. Brakes will need to be upgraded and thus wheels along with it.

At some point I suppose I'll have to replace the leaking soft top too =)

Luckily I don't need a car day to day and I enjoy working on it when I have the time so who knows, I might turn into the next Hustler.

Edit: My eventual goal is to hit 240hp/220lb*ft. Anything past that I think would get too expensive for the car.