2000 Miata Turbo, nice and easy "56k is it's own reward"

[AbeFM]

Ok, I guess I owe fred a write up on my car.

It started life as a texas spec (single cat) 2000 miata, with many of the fixing's (limited slip, 5 speed, fog lights, etc). At ~one year old, someone rear ended something, and the car was totaled. A guy in california (LA) bought it from the insurance, as he rebuilt ~100 wrecked miatas per year and resells them.

He replaced the bumper with the base model bumper (no driving lights), and I was missing one tow hook, but basically I got me a 1 year old car with fresh paint, freshly done leather seats (nice hard leather, not that sticky stuff), with ~12k miles on it for <$7,000 US. Color me happy. I was going to get a WRX (new at the time) but for pushing $30,000, I considered myself ahead.

My first real mod was making the power windows go up and down without the key in. This was done super-clean. Uses all the stock fuses in the stock locations, only the fuse block is massively chopped in the rear.

Then I added a turbo and some other stuff, and it's just your average turbo miata, plus the window thing.

Short list:

FM-II (Flyin' Miata) GT-28R based turbo kit. Running ~15 psi.
Ported internal wastegate, smoothed entrance
Custom waste gate actuation lever with adjustable level length
Hard lines for water feeds
Brass extension on oil return
Upgraded for 10mm studs






Front Mount IC, with single piece rubber IC pipes
Flat Black Painted, 'stealth'

Headwork, +1 valves, fully port matched, blended, etc
Carillo H-beam rods
pistons from a stock '97, lower compression
Shimmed oil pressure regulator (would undo this if motor were apart today)
Entire rotating assembly 1/2 gram balanced





PWR Twincooler (combination radiator/oil cooler)
Remote mounted oil filter (Thompson Automotive, very nice, billet)
Custom Ducting for IC and Radiatior
Stainless Braided Lines for Twincooler
Custom Drain on Oil trapped in Twincooler for more complete oil changes
NAPA (Stant) 160* thermostat, opens extra far!





SPEC stage 2+/3+ hybrid clutch
Fidenza lightweight flywheel
C's (AKA Mazdaspeed) displacef fulcrum short-shift kit



2.5" FM downpipe, with redone downgoing mounting bolts
Port Matched
Upgraded to 10x1.5mm Studs
Team Rip EGT probe in collector
3" exhaust after a 6" transistion
3" dynomax bullet muffler as resonator
3" dynomax straight muffler, as muffler
Capped off EGR
Cat-less





550CC low ohm injectors from an EVO8



Simplified (non-electronic) carbon canister system

Manual Boost Controller, based on industrial gas controller
Lightweight ceramic ball for control valve


FM adjustable front sway bar with poly mounts
Stock rear sway (with collection of alternates)
FM Frame Rail Brace
FM Butterfly Brace for Frame Rails



Hard Dog center braced Duece sudo-double-hoop roll bar


Skip Cannon Rear Sub-Frame brace
Mazda 10AE adjustable shock tower brace



Koni "Yellow" street/sport shocks
custom revavled with race valving
Fat Cat Motorsports linear bump stops
Ground Control adjustable perches
Eibach springs, 550/300 lb/in F/R


Kosie K1-TS gunmetal 15x7 @ 11 lb wheels
Falkien Azenias tires



Wilwood 4 piston, lightweight Big Brakes, +1(2?)" rotors
"Smart Pads"
Custom copper pads behind brakes for anti-squeak
Braided steel brakelines




Removed other tow hook
Custom made hard-top mount-Flag Pole


Felt-enhanced (tighter) heater vents


DIN mounted, slanted 3 guage cluster
Westach dual oil pressure/temp gauge
Westach dual EGO/EGT gauge
Westach 16 psi boost/vacuum guage
Innovative Motorsports LC-1, no guage (feeds westach)
Custom heat sink for Innovative Wideband
Linearlized OEM water temp guage, adjustable
KnockSense MS
Lamba-Link O2 meter mounted in steering column






Custom trunk tool kit


Direct Audio input for OEM CD player, dummies tape deck with switch
40GB Creative Zen MP3 player, Car powered
Additional Speakers by roll bar, 100W 4X10" pioneers
Shared CB/FM antenna, with antenna motor lockout switch





Toyota Coil On Plug, currently bank fired (wasted spark)


External voltage regulator from 80's mopar van

(also pictured, lines for twincooler, FM front swaybar)

MegaSquirt-II V3.3 running V2.0.1 extra code, with barro correction
Only NB miata I know of running OEM sensors on a MS stand alone
VICS, Fans, controlled. EBC in testing



(This last one is impressive in 3-D if you know how to cross your eyes and view it)


I dunno, the truth is, I think the list of stuff I took off is longer than the list of what's on there, but that's what I saw on my pictures page, so it's what I mentioned.

Pics forthcoming, look for the edit.
Edit: Ignore the above line

[ababkin]

what's with cans from non-alcoholic drinks everywhere?

and lol @ the last pic. Sure nothing will short?

nice diy miata there!

[AbeFM]

Well, at the time much of this work was done I was in the process of removing 50 lbs of dead weight from the driver's area. A lot of diet soda there. Actually at the time I was hardly drinking anything which wasn't hard liquor, and there's only so much volume of hard liquor you can drink on a hot summer's day to quench the thirst without somewhat quenching your skills along with it.

Oh, yeah, I was having some serious doubts on component choice, and before I came up with this:


The 3D pic is a bit challenging, but it's much more vertical than you might otherwise thing, everything is pointed more or less straight up, but could be switched quickly without heating the components much.

[Fred]

there's only so much volume of hard liquor you can drink on a hot summer's day to quench the thirst without somewhat quenching your skills along with it.

LOL

Nice setup you have there :-)

[AbeFM]

oh oh oh!!! I got a catch can from a friend! I'm so excited. It's kinda heavy but I might use it anyway. Maybe I'll mount it in the trunk.

Anyway, a whole new world of possibilities in underhood decor

[dealwithit]

nice setup you have there! i like the leds in the colum

[AbeFM]

This seems a dumb thread to post in, but I can't think of a more fitting one.

Wow. So. It's been like years since I touched anything (important) on this car. But now with other things in my life eased up (no job, no girlfriend, no reason to live) I thought, hey! Let's finish up the Mazda. But now I have a lot of questions since I'm redoing so much of it.

So let me give a little background on what I've done, then I have two main questions:
How should I trigger, and what connectors should I use?

Ok, so the car is basically as described:
GT28R (well, actually, that broke so I'll be breaking the new motor in on a GT25) which tops out around 320 whp, most get more like 250-280 on a detail oriented build (0.64 hot side, 0.60 A/R)

The stock 2000 motor died the death of incompetent machinists long ago, so I started a new build:
2001 head - Variable (Intake) Valve Timing, higher lift, steeper but not long duration cams.
Did head work to it: better springs, +1mm valves with nicer shafts, porting, etc

Carillio H-Beam Rods, Main Bearing Support Plate, ARP main studs, Weisco "turbo" pistons 8.2:1, billet oil pump (high capacity)

Coolant reroute (utilizing original FWD flow path), higher flow thermostat with dual thermos

Toyota Coil On Plug,s

Other Car Upgrades:
Flyin' Miata new generation exhaust manifold and semi-divorced wategate elbow
Factory 6 speed, fully rebuilt, hoping to get short shift on it.
Factory Torsion rear end with rare 3.636 gears (to be fitted)
Some custom valved shocks and other odds and ends

Very likely will see a Borg Warner 179355 going on there soon, which is a ~500 hp turbo, plenty for the 300-400 hp car I want to build. This turbo, in theory, gives me something in the neighborhood of 22 psi at 3200 rpm, providing "adequate" mid-range (before I was perhaps 14 psi there), and I should have enough authority over the wastegate to run anything from 12 psi to 30 all the way across the rev range.


Now the issues:
How to read crank position
The OEM crank trigger is shit. It's noisy, it only has 4, VERY small teeth on a VERY thin piece of metal, unevenly distributed. The cam isn't too bad, with a single tooth at TDC (depending on cam phase) and a doublet on the inner cylinders. This means you hardly ever know where you are, and not to any great accuracy. I'm not wholly convinced it matters, as long as you can trust your mark, but it seems a good thing to upgrade.
Since LOTS of high power guys lose their oil pumps due to harmonic balancer issues, I'm wary of hanging anything more off the nose of the engine. Perhaps I could further notch the plate I've got to add more "teeth", but there's not a lot of room to work in there.

That means I COULD try to read the starter gear as a way to get accurate crank positioning, perhaps using the OEM plate for a TDC mark, even cutting off some of it's teeth if need be, or finding some other convenient mark. Using the statically phased exhaust cam might be another way to go, I've heard of people putting magnets in the cam bolts to get a hall sensor signal out of them and I would not be opposed to this either, merely as a TDC mark.

Note I can't mess with the intake cam much since it moves around. With the factory setting, the cam pulses come between the same crank pulses regardless of the VVT phasing, even if they move around in that window significantly.

FYI, until I get a computer which can control cam phase, I'm going to run the cam at full retard, slip the belt a tooth which gives me 6 degrees retard relative to the "average" position of the factory car. Should be ideal for breaking in the motor while I get my computer under control.


Wiring Harness Suggestions
The other big unknown is that I want to rewire the car. Perhaps not the cruise control or the air bags and back up light, but I think it would behoove me to redo all the engine-related bits as there IS no stock computer which will even talk to the assortment of things I have on there right now. So while I could try to build a factory harness which emulates a 2001 car, and then find a computer for it, I really don't see an overwhelming need for that just now.
I would like to get some "universal", robust-enough connector that I can run every wire through - obviously plus a few more (things like WBO2 and wastegate, etc). I hate to get into a connector discussion, but I don't see much reason to use a factory one. If I ever need one, I can make an adapter from what I have to that.

Right now I'm leaning towards a DB100 (though I'm not sure it's enough pins?).... It doesn't need to be super water proof (nothing else on the car is), it's in the cab so it won't get rained on aside from scared passengers pissing themselves)... It does need to be reasonably available. I've seen a number of these connectors used in aerospace (if you shell out an extra $10 they are pretty good with shock and vibe and corrosion and all that), they are lightweight and easy to work with. But I'm still very open to ideas. Is there anything that's particularly forward looking (right now, ideally, I'd like something I could make work with OEM, FreeEMS, and maybe MS3. I would like to have a test bed that will allow me to go between systems with minimal effort so comparisons can be made. In the short term, I would have to make it work with MS2 as that's what is running the car (on OEM sensors) until I get my "shit" together enough that I can try a FreeEMS build... and the motor's broken in enough it's a good idea to test on it.

Oh, and I should leave enough room for secondary injectors, fuel pump in case I ever run that.
-Abe.

[Fred]

Stock sensors ftw. I would have written the sw while at your house if you'd pulled finger and wired it up :-p Connectors, no idea.

[AbeFM]

Ha. I don't know how much I like the stock sensors. Certainly the mechanical design of them is such that the signal is well buried in the noise floor. Add to that the fact you get nearly no refrences....

Anyway, the current plan is to leave the OEM one hooked up just for interestingness' sake. It would be nice having something reliable as a TDC mark. Like, a 20-1 or 20 + read a magnet or some other item.

[Fred]

I think you should use a prime number minus one wheel. Just for shits/giggles :-)