Miata Turbo Forum - Boost cars, acquire cats.

OK, so I let this thing steep for a whole day, and this is the thanks I get? I mean, yeah, digging up that old pic of me from the Vo-Tech Calisthenics Club was some pretty good sleuthing, but COME ON. What do I need to do, declare that I'm going to be drifting this thing on donut spares to really rile you guys up?

Anyways, here's the real dish. I'm currently a DSM owner...have been for about 14 years. Just in the last 5, though, did I realize that there was the potential to go beyond stock with the cars (I know, I know) and make some fun power. So my car is moderately built with an Evo3 16g (not a Chinese one), running on e85, and it put down 328AWHP and 361AWTQ a couple months ago on a Dyno Dynamics, and before the cams went in I ran a 12.7@109 in the 1/4 mile (3380lbs..yeah it's a pig). I'm reasonably well informed in turbo setups for DSMs, and I work part time for a shop that specializes in DSMs and Evos, so that feeds the fire so to speak. But I've always kind of thought a Miata would be a fun car, and given a chance to drive a stock one years ago I was reasonably impressed with it's ability to turn, but not so much with the power it had. So I joined this forum a couple of years ago and came around to lurk occasionally.

I've always been as interested in turning as I have been in straight-line power, as have the rest of the guys at the shop, so we decided to build a car ('90 Laser FWD turbo) for the Chump Car Challenge held this past March down in Pueblo, since it was a relatively cheap way to get into some 'real' racing. We did pretty well, placing 3rd on day 1 and 6th on day 2, and one of our team members turned in the 3rd best lap times for the weekend. Know what ran the best times both days? Of course you do...Miatas. Holding onto the line for dear life, on the edge of losing traction and spinning, those Damn Miatas would just go zipping by us. Inside or outside, didn't matter. They killed us in the turns, 2, 3, or all 4 tires on the ground, didn't matter, we just got hammered by them. And even though we had the most HP of any team out there, we couldn't catch them. So I'm sold on how well they handle.

So here I am, back to gather some more info before I most likely ditch the Talon and boost a Miata. I am about to install a PTE5027e on the Talon, which leaves me with a spare 16g for the Miata project. I still have a bunch of questions about converting a Miata, but this site is a great resource, and I'll be burning up the search button over the next year or so. I figure I'll get the new turbo installed on my Talon, and then when I'm tired of the car again I'll sell it with a decent dyno sheet and timeslip to fund the Miata.

It seems to me the least buttoned-down aspect of adding a turbo to a Miata is engine management, as there are a bunch of options but none that seem to rise to the top of the heap (open door to argument...now). There are a few really good options for DSMs (including MS), and we have the luxury of having factory ECUs with eprom chips for a few years of production which makes things a little easier, too. I may throw another option on the Miata pile by way of DSMs in the form of a 1st Gen DSM ECU with ECMLink, a full function tuning app that allows, for example, control of fuel and timing in both load-based cells and with 'sliders' as in a mixing console, can be run in a speed density setup, can control external devices (like WI), and has a logger that can't be beat. There's a guy using this ECU+ECMLink as a standalone in a Volvo turbo right now, so I'm going to look into doing this myself and figure out if it's feasible for a Miata. Check it out here: www.ECMLink.com. It may be more than I can bite off and chew, but I'm thinking it's worth a shot.

So that's that. Thanks for having a kick-ass site here.