Hi all, I've been slowly and steadily working on prepping my NB1 for boost and I've finally pulled the trigger on a Kraken high mount 2560R kit. The car is already running really well on an MS3 Pro, but sadly the weather sucks where I'm living right now so the car has been parked up for a few months already at this point and I'm excited to have a project to work on again. I'm going to start posting as I work through the install process once parts start to roll in. Hopefully this allows me to help others, and others to help me avoid mistakes as I go.

Some details about what I have already done:
- MS3 Pro
- Innovate PSB-1 Wideband/Boost Gauge/Boost Safety
- NB2 Header
- APR Volkswagen Coil Packs using Flow Force's kit (since then I have run new wiring with a Deutsch connector for sequential ignition)
- MeisterR ZetaCRD Coilovers
-15" Konig Countergrams (forgot the width maybe 7.5"?)
- Continental Extreme Contact Sport in 205/50 ZR 15
- Stainless Brake Lines w/ new stock brakes & Dot 4 Fluid
- Hard Dog Deuce Center Braced Roll Bar in Black Powdercoat
- Footwell mounted 8" Subwoofer (best sub setup for a Miata, but your passenger might disapprove)
- Cobalt Coolant Reroute w/ 180* thermostat (aluminum radiator will come once I see how summer temps do on the street)
- Cobalt Axle-back Muffler
- Revlimiter JNC Gauge Faces
- New leather steering wheel wrap with green stitching (& matching shifter boot) that replaces original leather from Redline Goods
- Flyin' Miata Stainless Frame Rail Braces

These are some of the parts I've ordered so far for the turbo build:
- Kraken 2560R top mount builders kit with AC & power steering
- ID 1050x injectors (I know, super overkill, but I've read that they have better drivability than any other aftermarket Miata injectors and what's a couple hundred extra bucks when you're already spending thousands on go fast parts)
- ACT Stage 1 clutch kit
- ACT Prolite 9lb flywheel

Here are some pics before the turbo process starts.

 

welcome. Just a fun car or track use too?

I have a cheapo 8" 500w amped box in my footwell too. Last summer, I tested it out in the trunk just for ***** and it was laughably weak. The footwell spot is awesome for sound and bass.

 

Mostly for fun street use, I'd love to take it to a track day or two to dip my toes into that scene but I'm currently trying to figure out if the track local to my home that I'm moving back to, Grattan Raceway in Michigan, will allow me to run with the double hoop bar. I might have to take up autocross instead. Yeah my wife isn't a fan of the footwell placement (she's 6' tall like me) but I told her I'd take it out if we ever do any longer trips in it.

 

Just realized you're from Grand Rapids too! I'm originally from there, and moving back from WV in a few months since my wife and I are here for her med schooling.

 

Oh snap! I did a double take on the license plate color at first glance haha. Check out Furrin Group for autox and Team 41 for grattan/gingerman track days on FB.

Nice man, welcome back! Yeah don't come til spring unless you like the snow hahaha

 

Thanks for the references, yeah I found Furrin Group when doing research and figured I'd reach out once I get home in May.

 

*IMPORTANT NOTE FOR ANYONE STRUGGLING WITH NOISE IN THEIR SPEEDO READING AFTER INSTALLING CoP's*

I have a FlowForce Audi R8 CoP kit with their harness that I installed a while back, and ever since then I have had noise in my VSS reading to the ecu (no issues with the speedo on the dash). Basically, the speed would randomly spike above the true VSS reading. I first tried running new trigger wires because I wanted to run sequential ignition anyway, and I figured maybe getting the trigger signal out of the factory harness and away from the VSS wire might fix it. It did not, but I wanted to run sequential anyway so no harm no foul.

Well guys I finally found the solution. I can't remember where, maybe I'll add it in an edit if I find the page, but ONE PLACE on the entire internet suggested to put a 10000 uF capacitor across the 12v power leads in the coil harness to damp the power pulses in the power wires to the coils. Makes perfect sense that the power wires would be far more likely to cause electromagnetic interference than the signal wires since they carry so much more current. Anyways, the capacitor worked! My VSS signal woes are no more and I can actually post a solution to a problem on this forum. I hope someday this helps someone else because I know how much it sucks digging through dozens of pages of forum posts only to come up empty handed.

TLDR; try running a 10000uF capacitor across your power leads if you run CoP's to fix any signal noise in other sensors (specifically VSS in my case)

Edit: For credit, I found where I saw the info, Beer Money Motorsports' listing for their Toyota CoP kit recommended the capacitor. I don't have one of their ECU's or their CoP kit, but I am very grateful to them! Additionally, while looking for the source I found an old page on this forum from 2015 discussing the capacitor... If only I had found that previously when I was trying to find a solution...

 

I know my 1990 1.6 NA has some kind of noise capacitor in the stock ignition loom. Currently in conversion to 1.8 VVT, I have considered deleting it but it's not really in the way of anything. I will still be running R8 CoPs but VSS will be new for me, so I am happy to leave it in place
Does the NB not have such a capacitor stock?

 

Sorry I missed this. I am not sure if the NB has one from the factory, I can't find any info on it and I haven't resorted to digging through a wiring diagram. If it has one, mine certainly doesn't work because my coil 12v & ground are the factory wires all the way up to and including the coil pack connectors.

 

A couple more pictures, and I kinda started to take some stuff apart because I'm getting restless.



Not exactly Miata weather out so I have nothing to do but rip parts out.

My ID 1050x's are the first big boy part to show up

Side Note: I've got the original, still functional N75 wastegate solenoid from my wife's Tiguan (It wasn't broken, the wastegate was cooked. Go figure, its a VW). Does anyone know what operational frequency these work best at? I figure its free EBC so I'm gonna run it on the miata.

 

Got the intake manifold, fuel rail, valve cover + more off last night. I've got a brand new in original packaging square top coming in the mail today off of Facebook marketplace from a guy who gave up on his track car build for only $300 so that's pretty nice. I've been in here before a couple years ago already to do timing + water pump + front seal but I forgot how good the inside of this engine is looking for ~145k miles.

 

Got my squaretop in the mail a few days ago. The difference in the runner diameter is huge, I guess this is a big part of why they flow so much better.



Also, was going to rattlecan my valve cover wrinkle black but a friend talked some sense into me and told me to look into powdercoat, so I did. I got a local guy to powdercoat it wrinkle black for $75 and it turned out great. I also followed Miata Dad, Greg Peters' guide for drilling and tapping the valve cover for -10 AN fittings and drilling the central passage.

 

The NB2 Miatas do have an ignition condenser in the back of the head, but NB1s don't have it. The Mitsubishi cars I've worked on have also had a condenser for the ignition, but it makes more sense on those since the tacho is fed from their igniters, unlike in a Miata. Interesting that you had erratic readings on your speedo @Riley8425 . I'm running the R8 coils in my car too and have had no issues, but I did not get mine from FlowForce. Before the R8 coils I used Denso coils and also had no issues either. Where are your coils grounded? Are they using an extra ground from the OEM ground? The R8 coils are very current intensive, so if you use the OEM ground it can cause noise. My setup has 3 grounds, 1 OEM ground, and 2 extras. All ground to the head at different places and I made sure they're far from the sensor grounds.

You can try anywhere from 19 to 30 Hz frequency for those or even more. You'll know if it doesn't like the frequency by looking at the wastegate duty-cycle resolution. The wider the range of duty you have, the better. Usually you want to have a resolution of at least 60% overall (say starting at 20% and ending at 80%). I haven't seen a solenoid that has all 100% resolution as they usually have a safety cutoff where they stay fully open or closed after a certain duty cycle. In my opinion though, safe yourself a big hassle and get a legit MAC solenoid. They're tried and true across the tuner world and are not expensive.

I hope that helps enough to get you started.

 

So I am currently using the factory power and ground wires in the original coil harness, including the plugs. I just divorced the coil signal wires to get sequential ignition. That makes sense as to why I was having issues, as this is an nb1… also, I wasn’t having any issues with my physical speedo on the dash, is was just that the VSS signal in tuner studio was bouncing all over the place so I wasn’t able to use it for engine states, etc. Also thank you for the info on the boost control, I hear you on getting a MAC valve, and I probably will but I kind wanted to mess around with using the oem VW part first cause I thought it was kind of fun reusing a part off of another one of my cars. If I run into issues the first thing I’ll do is order a Mac valve.

 

Looks like you’re building something awesome That Kraken kit is going to be sick, and the car already sounds like it's got a solid foundation. The injectors are definitely overkill, but hey, better safe than sorry, right? Can't wait to see how it all comes together keep the updates coming

 

Little update, car is back together and I'm working on tuning N/A before the turbo kit comes in about a month.



The idle is a bit less stable now, but I'm attributing that to the combination of the lightweight flywheel and the big injectors. It kind of bounces around between 800-900 rpm now and the AFR's dance around a about a whole number when the car is fully up to temp. Ill drop a data log and the current tune in this post if anyone wants to see if they notice a glaring problem. Overall though, I love the 9lb flywheel! So much more rev happy and fun on a back road. In conjunction with the square top it actually loves to pull to redline now, as evidenced by these Virtual Dyno graphs. The 3rd gear pulls were both on the upshift so ignore the start of them having way lower torque, look more at the 2nd gear pulls from 2025 compared to the pulls from 2024.




Finally, I got the new Bosch knock sensor installed with a shielded cable all the way to the ecu pigtail. at anywhere from 12.6-13.9 kHz (roughly double the 6.85 kHz frequency of a 83.5mm bore engine) i only get somewhere between 3-6% knock signal (without any knock actually happening) so I'll have to try to come up with a tune where I can get it to just barely knock in a few cells and test a few different frequencies to see what the true knock frequency is, then dial in the threshold on the knock retard from there. Let me know if this sounds like a good plan or if I'm an idiot please.



Bonus: saw a twin and was jealous of his hardtop ownership

 

Now that I'm actually looking at my idle data log, it looks like rpm is following a wandering MAP... maybe CL Idle PID settings need retuned now too?

 

Got the oil pan drilled, tapped, and cleaned out with mineral spirits. I think I did a pretty good job keeping shavings out, I put my finger in the hole with grease on it and felt around and really didn't pull much of anything out afterwards. Also the mineral spirits only flushed out two tiny tapping chips.

This is the fun part:
I test fit the turbo for the first time


My catch can line 90* AN fitting is going to be touching the silicone coupler on the turbo outlet, I test fit it and there's not much pressure there... Anyone concerned about that? I'm probably going to send it because I don't really want to order a new 90* fitting...

 

I think the AN touching the coupler is fine, assuming you can get a clamp on there. That all moves together so shouldn't really be a problem assuming you can get it all to fit. If it doesn't fit, look into clocking the turbo, I run mine 180* out from where you have it, which works surprisingly well with FM silicone pipes (with some modification).

You might flush some cheap oil through the drain, the mineral spirits is kinda thin to carry shavings away. Probably worth it to just dump some cheap oil in through the drain and let it flush anything it might find in there. Otherwise you are probably fine, TBH, even without that.

Looking good, this is always the exciting part of a build!

 

I'd echo what Fire said. I did the mineral spirit flush but when I pulled the engine I remember that it seemed like a lot of metal shavings were still in the pan and/or on the pickup screen. I can't remember if I did an oil change between getting the turbo installed and pulling the engine though.