Bell or FM I read back several pages.
 

The car will be used for autocross and time attack. It will be raced... I've been an SCCA Chief of Tech for 7 years now. I trophied SSM locally with a 90 Miata @ 10psi years ago.

I'm looking for 200 to 250 rwhp from 94 "A".

If I was spending your money, what would you do?

Honestly I like the FM cast manifold and downpipe, but I am pretty against the Hydra ECU. A guy I knew had it in his 99 and it was pretty horrible. So if you want a complete out of box solution, I'd probably go with Begi. Otherwise, I'd do this: Get the FM cast mani & downpipe, get a turbo yourself (2560 would be fine), megasquirt, 440cc injectors, 2.5" exhaust, front mount intercooler. Profit.

Be patient and wait for a BEGi to come up for sale secondhand.

To be honest, both are good companies.

200 HP is easily achievable with one of the higher-end kits from either. 250 HP is within the realm of reason in terms of the hardware you'll get from either, but know that this is definitely encroaching upon "danger zone" territory for both the stock 5-speed transmission and the stock connecting rods.

I would wait a few months for the Trackspeed kit.

I am dying to know more info about this kit.

I'd wait for the TSE kit or use ARTech. If you can't wait you will kick yourself later, but I'd do the FM hot parts and BEGi intercooler.

I keep checking to see if any new E85 stations have popped up in my area. I want your kit. I know its gonna be great.

THIS!!!

Can't wait to see what these mofo's will be putting together. I have high hopes.

If I were doing it, I'd get the hotside package from FM (mani, elbow downpipe), find a lightly used 2560/SR20 T25, and get FM's preformed charge pipes (these really make things easy). Get whatever intercooler you want and choose your engine management.

I'd build two completly different setups and use two different turbos for an autocross and time attack car...

ARTech hotside parts, used turbo off ebay (have it rebuilt), FM charge pipes, CXRacing intercooler, MS, and all the other random odds and ends.

I like FM. You pay a bit more sometimes, but their customer service is beyond amazing. I spent $10 a few weeks ago and still got a call from them asking if the part was performing as I expected. I've had two FM kits on two seperate miatas and they are quality, and made good power.

That being said, ARTech makes some amazing pieces too.

No expeirence from BEGi really.

If it was my money, I'd go FM.

BEGIs customer service sucks ass once you give them your credit card number, sales portion is amazing. Only reason i went with them is because of their manifold design and separated gas down pipe

I have nothing but good things to say about FM's customer service.

If i were to do it again i would get a FM kit

I did get a new turbine housing from BEGi. Worked directly with Stephanie. Pretty good experience for my only time dealing with them. I've been dealing with FM since getting my car 4 years ago and everytime I talk to anyone at FM, I just want to hug all of them.

Though the ARTech and Absurtflow products are pure sex and I'm sure their performance is pure win. I'd switch if I had money laying around "just to do something" just based on looks.

I love my FM kit!

As do I. Just make sure to upgrade to inconel studs.

Yup.
I had the manifold bolts back out a few times on the 240, even with those odd washers that you bent up to keep the nut from backing out.

Looks like a FM for me... for now. Thanks folks.

Are FM or begi kits are safe for track use with iconel studs and exhaust braces at around 200whp? I am lazy. Reliability is a must.

I have a T25 laying around that needs to spool again.

Safe for one person may not be for another. A lot of people can get away with regular studs, but the ones that push their cars, need inconel or v-band. If I was building a track car with either kit, I would use Inconel studs without a doubt. You can do 200whp pretty safely on a stock 1.8 motor with a good tune at the track, so you would just need to get cooling/brakes/suspension tackled.

Can the inconel studs, unless you already have an iron manifold. Buy the v-clamp piece. Cost and headaches wane quickly.

corky

FM. Especially if you don't know how to wrench.

I would go with the most mature setup, known to be easy to install. FM.

I think most experienced racers would seriously challenge the idea that the simplest, easiest to install turbo is the best one for the race track. Might substitute "laugh at" for "challenge."

A remote wastegate is more complicated than an integral. Works far better and makes more power.....if properly done. Or same power at less boost. harder to install.

V - clamps work better than studs. (easier to install too.......... opps)

10 mm studs are stronger, by far, than 8 mm's. 10'a are harder to use due to space.

Separated gasses dnpipes make more power..... or same power at less boost. Tighter fit, harder to install.

Metal charge tubes shed more heat, therefore, make more power. Or same power at less boost. harder to install.

Stainless oil/water lines are tops. more difficult to install than rubber hoses.

Better intercoolers make more power. Or same power at less boost. no added difficulty

And.................


Let me ask this; If one purchased a more complicated piece and took another 20 hours to install it, ran a year's worth of trouble free events, no broken studs, no failed rubber hoses, etc, and with a bit more power (or less boost), would you look back on those 20 hours as time miss spent?

Corky

And introduce several additional potential failure points. Trying to track down which coupling has loosened in a hot engine bay on the side of the road, at night, is no fun whatsoever.

When I was running all my Begi pipes there were 3 couplers on each side. It would take me less then 2min to figure out which one had blown out when it has happened to me. All of mine were also easily accessible and quick to tighten. You just have to use a little forethought and make sure the the clamps are pointed in an easy to get to direction.

Be that as it may, they are still additional point of failure (likely ones too, given that you, me and many others have experienced it). Corky was talking about trading install complications for reliability. For the parts in question, a single piece of formed hose is both easier to install and ultimately more reliable. OEMs, who treasure reliability above almost all else (at least for issues that will likely rear their head during the warranty period), generally use formed hoses, regardless of the fact they might cause the intake temps to soar by a few degrees.

pre-formed hoses are easier to mass produce, the reason they are OEM

We have spent considerable time, effort, and engineering to assure that IF a hose ever slips off, it will do so only on a rainy day. Further, one must be entering a freeway into five O'clock traffic. And, one must also be wearing a business suit and neck tie. It is also necessary that the wife, son, or daughter has quietly removed all tools and shop rags from the car. Added to all that, the installer had to neglect the specific instructions regarding how to install ................... a hose and clamp.

Corky

Corky, I appreciate the self-deprecating tone, I really do. That's the way I tend to deal with life's inevitable trials and tribulations - it's a great way to stay sane.

Regardless, I've experienced the inopportune hose pop-off, first and second hand, more times in my life than I have fingers. Seriously. My first kit, a much modified Greddy (which had essentially the same system of metal pipes and 3 hose connections per side), my brother's FM II kit (the original version, which was designed by you), a fellow club member's FM II kit (same vintage), another club member's BEGI 1.5 (almost an FM II), and a few others thrown in for good measure - every single one of us has had to lie on the ground on the side of the road trying to find a hose that has popped off enough to create a massive boost leak, but not quite enough to be obvious at a glance. If it's on the cool side, great. If not, burnt fingers were par for the course when trying to wrestle the parts together again.

Since I've gone to the new style FM II kit, with the formed hoses, I've never had a hose pop off, and I'm running significantly more boost now than I was back in those days.

All I'm saying is that metal pipes may be the last word in efficiency, but they are definitely not all that and a bag of chips with respect to reliability.

Shrug. I have run 35 psi with my begi pipes, couplers and clamps a d they did not pop off. Also over 500hp.

Doesn't it boil down to this:

The kit maker must supply a proper bead roll (or other such feature).

A T- bolt clamp.

A tough, high temp resistant and hydrocarbon proof hose.

Instructions regarding assembly.

If the kit maker does that, then the responsibility shifts to the assembler.

Having never lost a hose off my own vehicle (since 1973), I would find it most difficult to argue that four hose connections, rather than six, are a good trade off for all the features of: etc, etc, etc ............ I'd rather have just one metal braid oil line....

corky

The whole discussion is moot Corky. Neither you or FM make a "track" kit. Unless you want this to turn into a thread on who's broke a FM or Bell kit on track I'd suggest you stay out of threads regarding FI track cars. Street and track are two different animals. When you take the time to actually build and TEST a kit on the track...

To the OP, I would build a kit based on absurdflow/artech hot parts, rotrex, or wait for Savingtons kit.

Edit: So it doesn't seem that I'm bashing I like your intercoolers, Corky.

Goodness, I sure thought my efforts at building a piece with a four into one weld el header with wall thickness of 3/16, V-clamp turbo, V-clamp remote wastegate, and V-clamp downpipe connections, straighter dnpipe exit and straighter compressor inlet was a decent attempt a creating race worthy hardware. Available today...

Regarding "test," maybe I should name the cars running our stuff on tracks. We get the feedback, the do's and don't's, the encouragements and the criticisms.

Should it be that I need to do the testing myself? You can't imagine how much I would love to be doing exactly that. It would seem that I have the credentials.

Thanks for the comment on IC's. Even better things are coming.....

Corky[/QUOTE]

Valid point In My Honest Opinion.

Corky, please link me to your pnp track kit. Next please explain what testing was completed to call it a track kit. If you make it this far then please have any of your customers running that kit post their lap times for whatever track they are running. We should be able to get to the bottom of this and hopefully welcome a new track ready kit to the community.

[/QUOTE]

Speaking of this, any ETA on details of the new kit?

Sometimes I wonder if there is another group of "wholesome" Miata types around here who avoid us.


Edit: I wonder about it, but then I realize that if there were, we would have captured and ground them into a hallucinogenic powder by now.

Perhaps you should. Be sure to include their laptimes in relation to Spec Miata records at various tracks - it's all information you should have readily available.

Speaking as someone who's been forced to R&D the products of other vendors in the past, I think my customers appreciate the extensive in-house testing we perform on our products.

At this point I will only by something track tested with lap times to back-up the stress for a few dozen hours and it will have a "no questions asked" near lifetime warranty. I'm willing to pay for this of course because I have better things to do that waste expensive track time chasing problems when I should be collecting trophies. When you factor in $300 in track time, fuel to get there, hotel to stay over night, possibly a tow truck ride home...paying to replace a broken part is salt in a wound.

If someone else is testing their stuff on competitive cars with competitive drivers, why not tell us about it? Additionally, if there is someone in Texas driving the hell out of a Miata while testing BEGi parts, why aren't they running TXMC? We really aren't that scary. We are drunk and armed, but pretty friendly.

And yet you literally worry about your car ever living moment of your life:giggle:

If you had lived through the pain and suffering known only to The Select Few as "building a track-reliable turbo car", you would worry about your car every moment too.

I literally have to tell myself "---- the car, just focus and go" when I want to set fast laps in Theseus. Otherwise I will spend half my time listening to the car and worrying about things.

Crickets

Part of it is due to the suspended disbelief that I (a drunk) put together something comprised of complex systems with a service interval so low that I can track it over and over without failure. A reliable, near zero maintenance turbo track Miata is a real challenge. Think about what we do, 10-20-hours per year on a car without a tear down, that's badass.

We are not far enough down the line to report lap times at competitive events.

Should we judge by lap times, I'd need to start selling drivers instead. That might not work so well, considering such things as rusty, age, eye sight, has been, never was, etc... nevertheless, anybody have any offers? What was it?? Will race for food.......!?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the calculator suggests lap time decreases are proportional to the sixth root of the power increases. Actually the calculator doen't suggest it, experience and "The Grand Prix Car" do. That lousey result of more power very clearly says a driver is more important than power.

So, lets find something else to compare other than lap times.

Corky

What is this???

Trackspeed engineering is Savington's company. He can speak for himself with more detail, but from what I understand he has been putting together a package of parts (some not available elsewhere) that he feels will have a very favorable price to performance ratio.

He has been running these parts himself (if I remember correctly) in race and heavy duty abuse situations so he can make sure that what he sells you will not fail easily.

You completely missed the point, Corky - although to be fair I'm not all that surprised.

The point of comparing laptimes is to give us an idea of the stress and strain your parts see when "you" put them through their paces. If you bolt a turbo kit onto a Spec Miata, and then drive it around at Spec Miata laptimes, it's not even worth discussing. If you take that same car and drive it hard enough to go 5+ seconds faster than a Spec Miata, then we know that the car, and more importantly the parts on that car (including the turbo system, the brakes, and all of the other components), are being worked reasonably hard. Experience has shown us that the stud issue, for instance, only shows up on cars that are being driven within 1 second of the Spec Miata lap record at a given track. If you are 4 or 5 seconds off the record, there’s no need to worry, but if you are 2 or 3 seconds under it, a mild steel stud won’t last a full session. We use Spec Miata laptimes because they are a fairly consistent metric of speed at any track in the country, so if a car at Barber or VIR is 2 seconds a lap faster than the Spec Miata record at the same track, and a car at Thunderhill or Buttonwillow is 2 seconds a lap faster than the SM record at the same track, those two cars would likely be very evenly matched if they were to ever meet up at the same track. It may vary a little depending on the track and what it likes (power vs. momentum), but in general the rule holds true to within a second or so. This is a widely accepted method of looking at the validity of someone’s tests.

To that end, I have no interest in comparing laptimes with you - laptimes are the metric by which to compare a massively intricate system which includes a car, the suspension and tires being used, the track conditions on that day, the driver's skill and comfort level, and all of the other items that make a car slow or fast on any given day, so obviously comparing lap times when there are so many other variables involved would be an exercise in futility. What I want to compare, however (and more importantly, what people want to see compared) is reliability.

Reliability, unlike power, spool, weight, temperature, etc. cannot be directly measured – it requires testing. It requires testing in the same conditions that you expect your customers to see - You can certainly engineer a part that you believe is capable of withstanding a certain level of abuse, but without actually applying that abuse to it, how could you possibly be sure? More importantly, if you aren’t testing your parts on track, how would you ever hope to compare your parts to ours? At the end of the day, our parts have withstood serious, sustained track abuse, verified by lap times compared to Spec Miata records – can you say the same?

We pride ourselves in applying that abuse to the best of our abilities. We are at the track at least once a month, and usually more than that, putting our cars through the paces. In order to ensure that our testing is relevant, we have to push ourselves to the outer boundaries of what these cars are capable of. Theseus has evolved into one of the fastest race-prepped Miatas in the country, and I am confident that the parts in that car today could survive on any other track car in the nation. The spectacle and the show that Theseus puts on is certainly enjoyable, but its main purpose in my mind is to provide us with the platform to push a new prototype part to within an inch of its life.

My point is that we don't aim to sell lap times - the lap times are up to our customers to achieve. What we do sell is reliability. In order to show reliability, though, you must test the parts in the same environment you expect them to operate in, and you must have the lap times to validate that environment. We sell parts that we have personally tested and abused and re-tested to ensure that they are up to our standards. We strive to make our cars as fast as possible to ensure that the testing we do is relevant and adequate, so that our parts will hold up should a customer of our decide to go just as fast as we do.

Our new turbo kit will be out in the spring, and it will follow in the footsteps of the other products that bear the Trackspeed name – high quality, thoroughly vetted racing parts that can be trusted and relied upon. In order to test our kit in an adequately stressful environment, we could have built a basic track day car and driven it a bunch to prove that our kits are reliable in that situation, but in the end we decided to turn the abuse up to 11, to ensure that our kits are as reliable as possible. The solution that we came up with is to take one endurance racing with NASA in 2012. We figure that if a 100% production Trackspeed turbo system can survive a 4-hour endurance race, our customers won’t have a problem with 30 minute sessions. Turbos have an incredibly poor reputation in the Miata community for being unreliable, finicky, and generally not worth it, but we aim to change that reputation with our kit. If you aren’t willing to do the same kind of testing, I wish you the best of luck.

Sorry for taking so long to reply, by the way – I’ve been at the track all weekend.

Also at the track all weekend. Spoolin2bars down pipe broke off in the last session Sunday. Good thing we tested it at the track. New fender flames coming soon. Also testing the new aluminum top hats we waterjetted. I think the rear ones need a redesign.

What if Alec Udell is driving the SM and a half-drunk dumbass who can't maintain corner speed is driving ~1 second under in a 2456lb Miata with no aero and no real "driver skill" and 10-weekend old NT-01s? Does that get me anything?

I think BEGi, FM, Artech, Trackspeed, and Taco Taco should all prepare and bring cars to TXMC for destruction testing. Shure it sounds funny, but that's not a bad idea if you want destruction testing. Yes, I know this will never happen.

I want to drive the Taco car.

Taco Taco = Turbo not hit block
ABSURDflow = Turbo rub block bolt (shave it down with a grinder)

Running a Taco Taco car would be fun, but we'd need more than one to see who could break it in the fewest laps.

Track tested - stupid approved :facepalm:

Took 7 laps at barber on new Taco before I had the turbo hanging off the taco - stripped threads in the manifold.

Hi Andy,
I don't think I missed your point. I think my poor attempt at humor didn't make the point I intended.

Most of us on these funny forums have admired your efforts and what you've spun off to this group regarding lessons learned.

Some of us older dudes are vicariously reliving our fond memories of times long ago every time you bring up the subject of racing.

Somewhere in the discussion, I was challenged with lap times. Having built every race car I've driven, I too am well aware that a fast lap has a very complicted background. Clearly you would agree that the fastest lap is not reserved for the most powerful.

Perhaps the situation wherein one steams by you, by a decent margin, on the last lap straight and gets the checker thing first would be the measure of both durability and power.

Stressing reliabilty is absolutely the first rule of racing. I never was a safety freak. Test sessions ara a decent trial and always useful, but pale to the reality of a race track. Fielding turbo racers in the mid/late 80's was different, (I wasn't driving, rather crew chiefing), and we had more fun than should have been legal.... even finished two 24 hour guys. All that, and much more, suggests to me you are on the right track (?), thinking wise, with your priorities.

Perhaps a bit hasty, but your general tone suggests to me that you don't regard many on the list as having much to offer. If consciously, I'd urge you reconsider. If I'm all wet, my most sincere apology.

Go at the endurance racing as hard as you can afford. I found it far more satisfying than sprints, although I found more success in the sprints. I suspect you will find them more your cup of tea as well. The difference for me was the chance to reject the chaos of sprints for the craftsmanship and dicipline of driving/racing for several hours.

I suspect you will love it. Let us know how it goes.

Any thoughts on the fees for a guest driver? What percentage of your lap time would make one acceptable?

Corky

Fixed

I spend a fair amount of time setting up Miatas from around the globe. At one point or another, everyone that has a hyper fast Miata calls me for one thing or another. I know how many dialed, reliable, frequently run/raced and Z06 fast Miatas there are on the planet: few. Theseus is one of the few.

/drift

:giggle:

There are plenty of people on this board with lots to offer, by way of driving ability, mechanical ability, or by owning an adequate R&D testbed vehicle. In fact, I'm sure my customers are more than capable of doing my R&D for me - I'm just not selfish enough to ask them to do so.

Being the best in the world...that's America!!!

My time and place both suggest I should leave the floor to you. Go for it.

Best wishes,

Corky