Hi guys long time lurker here

Thought it was about time I made my own build thread




This is my car after owning it for a year I repainted it with my dad.Sadly got very few photos of this and all the work it entailed

Fast forward until 2013 when I found mt.net and a cheap turbo set up, super laggy t3/t4 knock off turbo complete with a gtx motor and "bolt in and go"
some joke that turned out to be.

I had all the pieces "ready to go"

so the assembly began




The old 1.6 engine had to come out so a good mate of mine helped me swap everything over and put the new motor in.

Then came to bolt the manifold on

It was quite warped but I didn't notice and bolted it on anyway

(The manifold was made of decent material just wasn't made very well)

got everything bolted up turbo oil lines etc.

The IC pipes were made of steel and were very rusty inside and didn't line up at all. So I decided to trailer the car to have the new aluminum pipes made up
from a local fabricator.

He mentioned that i had an oil leak (I didn't think much of it at this stage as the car was still in pieces)

The car was almost ready at this stage just needed the engine management sorted









This was also when I discovered megasquirt from you guys.

A local guy from up in the north island (I live in the south island) was building megasquirts, I picked one up from him. Its a ms1 extra which is very basic
and I soon had that running.

I couldn't get it to run properly. The problem was very simple in the end but i tried everything else first coil packs, leads ,plugs nothing made a difference
Until one of my mates came over and wondered if i had put the fuel lines round the wrong way. When I had swapped the motors (was 1.6, gtx motor was 1.8) Instantly started right up and ran decently.

After feeling like the biggest idiot the car was ready to drive

The ecu had a base map for a gtx motor so it was reasonably close and ran smoothly

I got an innovate lc-1 and got that wired in and the car was ready for veal
tuning.
I had been waiting about 6-9 months to drive the car at this stage

I Grinned like a kid with an ice cream the first time I hit positive pressure 5psi
wastegate spring was all I ran to start with. The car was transformed it was much faster and I was hooked on boost

The next thing I added was a greddy mbc which did work ok and I hooked it up wrong the first time and hit the boost cut (250 kpa) talk about jerky I thought I had broken something. After doing some research I figured out the vacuum lines were the wrong way around.

I slowly increased the boost 1-2 psi until 12 Psi man the car was fast now.

At the time I was living at my parents house and they have a sign from the petrol station intersection and the open road sign (100 Kph) its literally 400m or a 1/4 mile. This is how I used to test my modifications. The standard mx5 did 140kph by the sign but now it was doing 175-180kph depending how many gears I did.

The car stayed like this for about 6 months I had to get certification for the turbo and the bigger engine. Its around $500 and if you change anything you have to get another certification, its a frustrating system.

To save myself from having to go back for a recert a friend of mine talked me into swapping the suspension to coilovers.

I found a tidy set of tein super streets from the local mazda wrecker (who is also very into Mx5s)

Once I had them done it was ready to be road legal again,
I daily drove the car for six months and the car turned heads and I had lots of people try to race me down our motorways (The best fun beating V8s wrxs etc)

A drag meet came up in Oamaru which is 300km south of where I live in Christchurch, so a few of my friends and brothers came down with me.

I knew theoretically my car could run 13s (according to my sign test)

My uncle races an old Ford Fairlane which is fairly serious 600whp+ He thought I would be doing 14s as his best was 12.7and it wasn't a prepped track.

I even raced him a few times for fun

My best was a 13.3 and I was surprised a little mx5 with a turbo could be so fast. I beat a few skylines an rx7 and some other v8s all who were shocked

Then came the drive home. I decided to check the fluids etc and i had used almost a liter of oil. Wasn't sure whether to be concerned or not. Drove back home to Christchurch

 

I drove the car for another three months my oil consumption continued to increase.
Eventually it got as bad as a liter a week of oil and a fairly big blue smoke cloud following me around. I decided to pull the motor and inspect it. This is what i found



A fairly big chuck of the piston clearly from either bad tuning or the motor being worn to start with.

I found a cheap low mileage motor on Trademe (like craigslist) for $500 I picked it up and and installed it.

This motor was so much quiter than the old gtx engine.
Much less lifter tick and it ran stronger too being 9.1cr compared to 8.1 would have helped though.

Drove the car for 6 months no issues and enjoyed it.

Broke the standard 1.6 vsld replaced it with a later model torsen

Drove it some more smashed something in the gearbox still drove in all gears but was getting worse with each drive replaced it with a 6 speed that was in very good condition.

At this stage the Mazda parts wrecker and I were on a first name basis.

decided to go back for the drags in Oamaru a year later

Did plenty of runs. Struggled to come to grips (pun intended) with the new gearbox/diff ratios

Best run 13.6 at 108mph spinning most of the way through first and second

The big turbo seemed to suit the 5 speed better and was easier to drive

Last run I did I am sure would have been in the 12s I launched hard in 2nd and it hardly spun and i was beating the car who I knew was doing 13.0s.
At the 300m or so mark my gearbox decided it had had enough and would not go into 5th gear and i had to cruise through in 6th.

I limped the car back to the pit area and went and watched a few other races

I came back to the car and thought I would be able to select some of the lower gears. Managed to get it stuck in 3rd gear and drove back to my uncles house where he said i could leave it. Driving back at 5-6000 revs was not a fun drive and it took ages.

Put the gear shifter back together and was about to leave when I thought I would move it to a better place. Tried the gearbox and could get into 2nd and 3rd 4th and 6th decided we might be able to drive back after all.

Got the car back at about 2am it was a slow drive back.My girlfri
end had to drive back from Ashburton an hour from Christchurch as i was too tired from the days efforts.

A couple of weeks later I pulled the box to see what was wrong with it

Found a workshop manual on here with instructions

Found this

 

That is the 1st and 5th gear selector and it was wedging it out of 1st i could still occasionally get 5th gear.

Managed to get an rx8 one for $50 and put it back together (what an absolute mission! those little detent *****)

Got everything assembled that was January this year and drove it until march.

Was running well everything running nicely and I had a vacuum line come off my wastegate had a boost spike to ~20psi was scary fast but i knew it shouldn't have done that. Drove it quietly home got a couple of streets away and this odd noise was coming from the engine thought it was a loose belt or something. All the belts were present and accounted for.

Thats when I pulled the engine and found this




which was bent both ways fairly badly so naturally I bought some fresh rods (ebay special)




and fresh acl bearings, rings bore looked ok and bearings in much better condition than the gtx engine did.

So the car is in bits now and I had gone a little overboard and the sub-frames are away getting powder coated, Frame rails installed




that brings us to where we are now

waiting on poly bushes from fab9 tuning and powder coaters

lots to buy still

Wheels
Tires
Head gasket
Oil Pump
Head studs
Seals
Carpet
Clutch
New 6 speed (not 100% happy with the fix still too notchy)

Thanks for reading

James

 

Update

Stripped out the engine bay ready for painting. I had a brake master cylinder leak which ruined one side, shouldn't be too bad a job to tidy up.




I bought a new manifold and turbo set up should be much better






removed dash and old carpet heater boxes didn't get a photo sadly

wont get a chance to work on the car until the weekend now more updates then

 

manifold looks decent, way better than that hack job it's replacing. who's it made by? (trying to make out that emblem)

 

Welcome from across the pond!

I have done the reversed fuel line thing too!

Did you mention an RX-8 gearbox or did I not read things right? Does the box bolt straight in?

 

The manifold is made here in nz a company called sinco customs very nice work. Sorry for the crappy pics.

The selector fork that I replaced was from an rx8 box.

The other manifold was the biggest pos

 

still planning on running MS? unfortunately doesn't seem the most well supported of EMS in town...

 

Yeah definitely what would I swap it to?

Megasquirts and mx5s go together like candy canes and christmas.

Although an upgrade to ms3 is likely

 

I don't know, but New Zealand as a whole seems to be pretty anti-MS.

But agreed, the majority of the MX5 crowd, even in NZ, are very heavy users. Just difficult to find a tuner outside of the north island who'd touch it, so left doing my own tuning on the road, where I can only touch about 30% of the cells. :/

I'm sure you understand the feeling...

 

Yeah man sure I know what you mean. Thats why I come to this forum and not others.
Ive heard Gary from PAD tuning will do megasquirts not sure if this is true. I have been very happy with my tune even though Ive cooked two motors, Still cheaper than buying a link and getting reamed $2000 for a tune. Where are you in Christchurch? Would I have seen you around?

 

Oh yeah, agreed on the Link alternative. I hit up NZEFI (not knowing any better) for a price and that alone convinced me that even going to MS NZ in Tauranga would be cheaper. And to be honest, the Link sounds like the cheapest well supported alternative locally.

I doubt you would've seen me around - I actually live in Rolleston. Location is set to Christchurch on international forums so it's easier for them to find (quote shipping etc.) than anything. It's rare I see another New Zealander. Rarer that they're from the same city!

If you have seen it - it's a black 2001 - NB8C, relatively stock looking, excluding a rollbar and black with red lipped wheels.

EDIT: Sorry, a couple of other questions, since you're local:
1/ You did a 3" exhaust in your sig?, did you weld it up yourself, or can you recommend a fabricator?
2/ Who are you looking at to do your cert? I've read all sorts of nasty things about Don being a bit of a ****.

I'm accumulating parts now, looking to do it all over the summer.

 

What did they quote? It annoys me how much they charge people!

Yeah my mate helped with the exhaust he has a mig. Mark at Pitstop Hornby is good but i'd still expect it to be expensive.

Don did my cert and was fine to deal with honestly. You just have to do exactly what he wants which can be a pain.... Driveshaft loops are mandatory too.

Im in hornby It cracks me up your name is James and you live in Chch too so weird

 

Old set up













compared to new one

The difference in spool is going to be comical

 

Haha, that wastegate dump looks like a tree root.

 

Yep, should be a really big improvement

 

Can't remember price in total, or with much actual precision, but it was around $2300 for ECU and wiring (since there is no Link PNP for 01).
Plus dyno time on top.

Did you keep any MS logs from the old setup? Be interesting to see how much difference a best-to-worst scenario gives you on the manifold. You must've paid out the *** for anything from SINCO anyway.

Most of my mates had exhausts from Uniweld, so tempted to go there on their recommendations alone. Doing my best to do everything I can't myself on a "I'll provide, you manufacture" basis so will source my own muffler and cat and beg someone to link it all up. Like you, it'll probably be done on the advice of this forum.

If you live in Hornby, chances are you've seen me parked up at Repco what seems like at least once a week for the past three months. You can never have enough tools. Hahahaha.

 

The manifold was $700 I think its pretty good considering it has a 5 year crack warranty, also was a one week turn around

I have had work done at Uni Weld. I cant remember his name. He always fits you in and does a nice job.

Haha I will keep a look out for you

 

Update

Got the front sub frames and bushes so that was this weekends job












I did run into an issue though

Two of my inserts were too long and had far too much clearance for my bolts.

I have emailed Fab 9 will see what he says. I might have too just go to our local mount shop and get some to suit.

Pics of said issues





This is what it should look like





This one not so much

 

$700? Only?

That's really not too bad at all for what you're getting. Maybe when I go mad and build the engine... hmmm!