Big upgrades, questions and parts order complete?
 

I have a '91 1.6 with Greddy and miscellaneous upgrades done by the PO. A little history of my time with the Miata here.

Now I'm finally planning to get it running on MSPNP with hopes of passing smog and finally registering it in-state in California. At the same time, because the car was leaking oil and coolant from all kinds of places and the Greddy manifold and Turbo Tony downpipe were both cracked, I decided to pull the turbo off and do a bunch of updates and upgrades:

Suspension - FatCat shock mounts and Koni yellows
Power steering delete - I followed the FM tech guide for depowering my rack
AC delete - heater duct is on its way from Rosenthal
Clutch line - from trackspeed
EBC - from trackspeed [after I get everything else running]
Turbo - swap to ceramic coated tubular ebay headers and custom 3" downpipe (both used from a forum member)
- oil return line upgrade (direct to tapped oil pan)
Cooling- coolant reroute using BEGI spacer + Kia thermostat housing + cadillac hose + trackspeed front block off kit [thanks to many threads on this forum plus Revlimiter's two blog posts on the matter]


So now a couple questions for anyone who's managed to get this far ...
First, on the oil return line:
- Is it safe to tap the oil pan while on the car, or should I pull it off and tap it to avoid any possible chip/shaving issues?
- Is there a drain line kit upgrade for the Greddy TD04, besides the rumored BEGI offering? I'm not sure on the length of line or the various fittings I need and I want to go ahead and order everything now [while I don't have access to the car because of work travel]

Second, on the coolant reroute:
- I just want a 180 degree '94 Kia Sephia thermostat? Like this one? [O'Reilly is my local parts store]
- Am I missing any parts I'll need from this list:
- 2 bolts for the T-stat housing/spacer
- 2 self adhesive T-stat gaskets
- the magic hose
- hose clamps
- the trackspeed coolant blockoff
?


Yaay shop time!

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1340777758

Oh, one more question on the Greddy drain line:
- what sort of fitting do I need to plug the existing drain line?

You want a miata thermostat but I'm guessing they are identical.
For drain line, make your own. Personally I would just use a silicone hose and a barbed fitting in the oil pan.

throw that ebay tubular header in the trash where it belongs, then get a proper manifold that won't crack.

also you won't pass smog in ca with mspnp unless you're in some weird county where they don't do obd/visual.

I'm OBD1 - I just have to pass sniffer emissions test and visual, no? I won't pass emissions with oem ECU because the car runs too rich with 1.8 injectors. This could be a big issue.



The ebay header is 5x nicer and IMO 5x less likely to crack than the greddy cast iron piece which was cracked in 3 places. A 'proper' manifold was not in the budget at the time and now that I have something I'm going to run with it and see how it goes.

https://www.miataturbo.net/diy-turbo...anifold-58878/

edit: the picture with the turbo in it has a casted logish style not a tubular.