hello all. just joined the forum as you might have guessed. i'm interested in getting a miata, so i am just trying to get familiar with w/e i need to know before i get one. i hope to learn a lot

 

please fill out your profile with location... if you are in Houston there are quite a few of us running around that can problem speed up your learning curve.

 

If your in San Antonio...
I cant help at all.
Or
I would but I don't know anything anyways.
Beers are always good though!

Just go ahead and buy a miata. Probably close to the most fun you will have in such a cheap car.

 

Budget? What are you looking to do with your miata?
Generally youll find that a 1.8L (94+) miata w/ tubo will do more good then you know. Im on a 1.6 right now and I am happy, but of course... once you have a bite, you always want a bigger one... (i want a 1.8 swap with a 2.0L stroker kit thats about 6g's right there not including head work)

 

Welcome fellow Texan, from San Antonio.

There is a lot of entry level info on miata.net if you have not been there yet. Though some of the same people post both here and at miata.net, the information here is definitely a notch up, especially when it comes to significant modifications.

 

thanks for the welcomes. i live in tyler, tx. i am also signed up at miata.net. i've just been signing and getting into the communities. right now, i'm just doing a lot of reading on miatas and watching prices. i probably won't be getting one til the end of summer. i'm thinking about miata in the NB series. i won't be doing any mods for a while on it, but i am one of those ppl that just like to know possibilities for when they might happen to arise.

 

Totally understandable. I did the same thing. I wanted to know what the upgrade paths were before I bought the car.

 

If your plans include forced induction (and since you're here, I assume they do) just know that each generation has its own particular quirks in this regard. The signifigance of these depends on your intentions as regards engine management, and your level of tolerance and skill with both electronic and software tinkering.

The 1.6 NA ('90-'93) and early 1.8 ('94-'95) are dead-simple to work on. There's just no other way to put it. You can build a vacuum-tube based ECU, install a turbo pulled from a Cat diesel, and run the engine on whale oil with one of these cars.

Starting in '96, you have the OBD-II computer system to deal with. If your town does smog-testing via plug-in diagnostics, this will limit your options slightly, ruling out full-replacement ECUs and complicating the matter of piggyback ECUs slightly, as you'll have to be more careful not to set off a CEL.

The NBs are a little tougher. Their returnless fuel system complicates the use of old-school adjustable fuel pressure regulators, but frankly I don't recommend them for new installs anyway. Electronic fuel management is so much easier and more precise. Some of the engine sensors are also a bit different, and while it's still possible to run nearly any engine management system on them, they're just not as widely understood. Some NB folks actually install the older NA sensors on their engines, though this is not absolutely necessary.

In case you didn't know, there are no "chipped" ECUs. If you want electronic engine management, you either install a piggyback / parallel computer, or pull the ECU out entirely and run a MegaSquirt. A few renegade hackers have successfully cracked the OEM ECUs, however no commercial products seem to have evolved of this, at least not any we've seen much of in the US.