very nice progress.
coming together like a champ

 

Sexual.

 

You make it all seem so simple. The work you just posted would have taken me 3 days...Thanks for taking the time to document this build.

 

Three days? It would take me 3 weeks!

 

Tonight I went to asses the situation as Dane Cook would say. I mocked up the turbo to make sure my oil return line would work and everything is looking pretty.


Set the heat shields in place to get me excited.



Stepped out to take a look at the engine bay- just to make sure I'm not missing anything. I think I'm all set for installation tomorrow night. I might get a bug in my *** and decide to re-spray the engine bay but I'm pretty excited to drop this engine in so I have my doubts.

Now is my time to take a look at some Adaptronic base maps!

 

Ok that's it consider yourself commisioned

 

Your build is making me so excited to take my engine out and clean it up!

 

Did some very minor wire prep last night. I'm using a couple of Marshall gauges for my Oil PSI and a Boost gauge. The gauges are tinted faces with Amber and White LED illumination. They have two feeds for these Illumination options so I'll use the other for an input to signal when my METH pump is on. I do have the AEM monitoring system with the flow gauge but it's easier to see these light up out of the corner of my eye.

When all is working and I'm not using meth, they will light up AMBER. When Meth is active they will light up WHITE.


While I was doing some testing...


Incorporated a fuse.

 

So you'll have them white normally, and turn yellow if your engine is using meth?

 

Nope I said

"When all is working and I'm not using meth, they will light up AMBER. When Meth is active they will light up WHITE."

All of my gauges in the car light up Amber under normal operation. The white would signal the Meth activity.

 

I must have skipped that line when reading it, sorry. Thanks!

 

The engine is in. Spent some time last night getting everything in place and for the most part buttoned up.

I pulled the trigger on a small project I had been considering for awhile and that is to switch my vacuum system over to mostly hard lines. A couple bills later and I had myself the essentials from Vibrant Performance. The lines are made up of two compounds one is a high heat and the other is standard.

Vibrant:
17400 All purpose boost connect kit
2662 Fitting x 2
2667 Fitting x 2
2682 Fitting/Quick release Y
2794 T Bolt new TB clamps x3
2788 T Bolt for MAF bridge x3
12053 Joiner to bridge from MAF to filter
11809 Coupler to eliminate the MAF

DEI:
010403 Heat Sleeve


This is the difference. The bottom fitting is what I had on my turbo housing, above is what I'll be installing.


The engine dropped in pretty flawlessly. I mounted up the dust shield for the trans and the motor went in without fuss.


Dropped in the turbo, mounted the DP and snugged it down. Still need to go through and tighten everything up but shes about ready to fire.

 

When you say hard lines, you mean stiff but flexible plastic, not the same as hard coolant lines, correct? That is a great idea.

 

Correct. 6mm diameter Polyethylene Tubing. Safe to 100PSI and 500F.

 

Big news. I started and drove the car last night #likeaboss

After switching the Adaptronic triggering mode to what was conveniently displayed as the "NBB Miata..." I cranked her over and she started right up. I let the car idle for 10-15 minutes while I inspected the engine bay for fatal errors but everything was cake. I did have a whining noise from the timing belt so I'm pretty sure the tension is a bit too high.

This is a quick video just after I started it for the first time. I think my neutral sensor on my trans is disconnected or malfunctioning because the idle is sitting at 2k but she ran and sounded great.

LINK TO YOUTUBE VIDEO - Not sure why I can't embed the video

I took it for a quick spin up the block and to my surprise the Adaptronic was running this thing flawlessly. A bit rich but I've never been able to do that with ANY ecu. I loaded a pretty random base map, punched in my injectors and started the thing. Kudos to the Adaptronic team.


While cleaning up, I took a minute to make myself a new key chain to go with my new Miata.
Throw me props on the key chain..

 

lol@keychain.

great progress man.
adaptronic is a bitch to set up a proper idle with, so it may take some time, but shouldn't be too bad. make sure you mark those cells "tuned" in case you start autotuning later, cause it will start adjusting them all over the place. you'll see a few good writeups in the Adap section from Stein, myself, and many others on how to dial that bad boy in.

happy tuning

 

Boss keyring indeed

 

is your adaptronic the 420 or 440?

 

I'm using the factory ECU for the idle. Still think it's the Adaptronic that's got me sitting at 2k?

420. I've got my eye on the 440 though.

 

Great work! Love the build!

-Sam