I'm really terrible at making good threads and keeping them updated, so please, have low expectations for this one.

I finally, might, kinda sorta have some time to work on my miata so I figure I'd better start a build thread and maybe it will help motivate me to keep working on it. Unlikely but...

So without further ado, pictures

Here is a picture of my sh*tty '96 when I bought it last November. Completely stock, 120k ish miles, poorly resprayed front right, poorly painted wheels, torn top, wu-tang clan decal imprinted on the dash, etc. etc. I bought it from a guy who "flipped it". Supposedly it was a Tennessee car, which is why I bought it. The body is legitimately rust free which is hard to come around these parts. Oh, and it was fairly cheap. In general, the car is awful though.




Then I got an EFR6258.




So I told my old turbo to get bent




Then I took my old sh*tty manifold and cut off the T3 flange, and welded a T2 flange on




So I test fit the EFR on the modded manifold and all was hunky dori.








Then I got really busy doing this



and this



and this





All that plus having a job (and having another kid) sucked up a good 10+ months and I haven't done sh*t on the miata except fit some VMaxx coilovers and some wheels and tires.

Said suspension and wheels make it look like this now...





Sooooooooooo....... since I have such precious little time to work on the car I decided to shelve the EFR project temporarily. Biggest reason is EFR would require bigger dollar investment (need wastegate actuator and other bits for the turbo, new downpipe, new intake piping, etc.) and bigger time investment.

I've had my old DIY turbo stuff sitting in my garage for years, basically a complete set-up. I figured it would better for me now to just throw on what I have and get it running as a turbo car and enjoy it for a bit.


I've been buying stuff for the last 10 months or so in preparation for turbo'ing this car someday. First purchase was an Enhanced Rev MS2, which has been sitting in my basement, unused, since January. I also picked up some ID1000s which have gone almost completely unused for months. Also have acquired a rollbar and a shitty hardtop. Oh, and some FM frame rails to go over the mushroomed ones on the car, and an Al Ebay radiator. Lastly, I scored a motor out of a '97 with low compression in cyl 3 and a used FM Stage 1 clutch for $100 (for both!). At some point I installed a DW300 fuel pump too.


Now to today (last night really...).

This is where most of the work will take place, you're average suburban smallish 2 car garage.




It's messy and cluttered, so you can't even fit a Subaru inside of it.




But the miata fit's a bit better.




Luckily, while I was in Wisconsin for a week in September, somebody bashed up my perfectly good door while the car was parked in front of my house.







Here's the used BP I bought for supah cheap. I had always planned on doing some sort of engine build because of the EFR.






I pulled the car into the garage last night (when these pics were taken) to do an oil change and some other minor stuff. I noticed the coolant was looking extra nasty so I drained it. It was mostly chocolate milk, so my plans for building a motor accelerated rather quickly.


SO I ordered these



and I ordered some Ebay rods, and a bunch of stuff off of RockAuto to do a quasi motor rebuild. DNJ Engine gasket kit plus DNJ piston rings. I got some super low mileage stock pistons from ERAT that I'm planning on using. So motor build will be Forged Rods + stock pistons + re-ring. The 18psi method.

After assembling said motor, I will install and run N/A for a bit to break in. Then I will install the MS2 and get comfortable with that. Then I will install the ID1000s (or maybe Ford EV14s...) and get it tuned with those. Then I will throw my old Garret T3 (Super 60 maybe...) set-up back on. Turn the boost to like 18psi and see what it does.

That's the plan, hopefully it doesn't take TOO Long. All of the engine build stuff is on the way so I should be able to get a motor put together fairly quickly. The temperatures here in Ohio are trending down, so my goal is to get most of this stuff done before it's too damn cold to work in the garage.


Here's the engine bay as of right now, for my ref. mostly.







Ps - the car is mostly awful and I kind of loathe it. It doesn't drive too well and it has a nasty harmonic vibration (driveshaft or just loosey goosey chassis). I'm half tempted to take Tekel up on his offer and pic up his super nice low mileage car... Oh and now that the door is all bashed up I've lost all hope of it ever looking good.

This is my build thread. I'll do my best to keep it updated as I work on it, and to take lots of pictures with my wife's D3100. But, again, keep your expectations low...

 

Very cool dude. Though I'd still just start with the efr from the get-go and not waste time on the other crappy setup.
Knock it out once and for all because if you're as busy as you say you are, it will be years before you change things up, and what's the point of having the efr if you're never gonna use it.

Good luck

 

I may be the only one who will suggest this (primarily because I may be the only one who read that far into your post) but I would personally give that a lot of thought.

In fact, with plenty of caveats about me not knowing the financials, I would strongly recommend it.

 

Logically, this would be the smart thing to do, but well, I'm not smart.

With the EFR I would have to fab a new DP, new cold side piping, new intake, plumb water cooling to the turbo, etc. etc. It's not really that much work for how big of a benefit it would be but considering all the other work I hope to get done to the car in the next few weeks it's just not very feasible.

Though my other setup is defnitely "crappy" the nice thing about it is it's basically complete, and I can install it in a weekend.

That and I don't have tons more money to waste and the EFR would require more $$$, it's missing some parts and I'd have to buy the materials to fab the new downpipe, etc.

Throwing the old setup on is an easy, cheap, cop-out, so I'm going to do that. EFR set-up will be done sometime next spring.

My old set-up is definitely crappy, but it did make like ~240whp on band-aids. Now with MS2, ID1000s, more boost, possibly E85, I should be able to make a bit more than 240 which is more than enough for now.

ALSO, it will be nice to show a comparison between the two turbos on basically the same set-up. My old setup on this car will basically be a baseline to show how much awesome the EFR is even on a poor quality DIY setup.


Again, that would be the smart thing to do, so I probably won't do it.

The money is the main hold up, that and if I'm spending the equivalent of $6k on a miata I'd much rather have a NB. Don't get me wrong, Tekel's car looks amazing, but there's a ton of other things I should be spending money on instead. I should probably PM him and actually talk numbers and see what the deal would actually look like, but



Back to the project at hand...building a motor and rebuilding my current turbo.

Still waiting on parts for the motor. I'm planning on spending some time disassembling the motor tonight, I will take some pics.

Also, the "old" turbo. Back in the day I bought this T3 "Super 60" off of BlaastPerformance (I think). The Super 60 is in qutoes because I paid for a Super 60 but I don't know if that's what I actually got. I've never actually measured the compressor wheel and see if I got what I paid for. The turbo was supposed to be professionally rebuilt but it came from Blaast with a bit more shaft play then one would expect. Well I ran the turbo as it was for tons of track miles and never had any real problems with it, but I figure I might as well rebuild it just to be safe. So, I'm going to order a rebuild kit from G-pop-shop but I'm not sure which kit I need (i.e. one piece carbon seal or 4 piece?) As far as I can tell the turbo is just an old Nissan 300zx turbo, not sure what m/y it's off of though.

If I get some time tonight I'll start pulling the turbo apart too, measure the compressor wheel, and try to figure out which rebuild kit I need.

More pics tonight or tomorrow...

 

Dam, you actually do own a miata...

 

I do, but it's a shitty one.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Not much has gotten done on the miata, I got sidetracked working on my Sh*tty '00 Civic and my Subaru.

Got the Suby detailed and mostly ready for sale. Took some pics of it yesterday. Will likely make a FS thread here for it.

















Also, I started tearing apart my T3 but couldn't get the turbine housing off, I think I was doing the order wrong or something. Mah, anyway, I measured the compressor wheel and it's definitely a plain jane 60 trim wheel. So yea, kind of got ripped off by Blaastperformance years ago, I paid extra for a super 60 but it's just a plain garret 60 trim wheel.

And the turbine housing has a wastegate crack from H ... E ... double hockey sticks. FTL

 

Dude. You've got an old sucky turbo with cracked turbine housing and needs a rebuild, and you're seriously going to do that when you have an EFR sitting next to it? Really?

Plus, what will you do with the manifold since you've already replaced the T3 flange with the T2 flange?

I know you're proud of making crappy decisions... but seriously...

 

Everytime I open this thread I think the same thing.

I'm gonna fly out there and take his EFR away from him, he doesn't deserve it.

Clean fxt, don't sell it lol

 

Forester boner alert.

Hows the mild built engine coming along?

 

Awesome Forester.

 

But would you mount?

Haven't had/made time to do much on it. I've received all the rebuild parts in the mail except the gates timing belt and the tensioner. I'm hoping to continue tearing down the old motor tonight.

Like I should take advice on selling clean FXT's from you? You're mom doesn't deserve this EFR...

Unfortunately, I've already re-replaced the T2 flange with the T3 flange.

I didn't do a very good job the first time I modded the manifold for the T2 flange, so worst case is I gave myself another opportunity to do a better job of mounting/welding the T2 flange...

Fixing the T3 wouldn't be the end of the world because regardless if I use it on this car, eventually I'll put it on some other car like my B16 Civic. I need to fully disassemble it to see how bad the turbine housing really is.


So yea, currently I'm not 100% sure what the plan is for the turdblow setup. First step is to tear-down and rebuild the spare motor I have. Then install it. Then get the MS2 installed and running well.

That will take basically forever, so it will give me a lot of time to decide WTF to do turbo wise...



PS - CoD Ghosts comes out tomorrow so I'll likely not work on this again for five months...

 

Ugh, such a good looking forester. You should trade me that for my miata...I wish. Good luck with your build sir.

 

I've received a deposit on the Subaru, so that is tentatively sold. No real turning back on that now...

So, the Suby sale will free up a bunch of cash, so maybe I'll use a little bit of it towards EFR install...

 

Holy crap another fellow FXT/Miata owner, nice.

 

Ok, so I got some time to continue working on tearing down the extra engine I bought. I got the engine with a used FM Stage 1 clutch for $100 so I didn't ask too many questions. After tearing into the motor a litte, I was curious so I asked the guy I bought the engine from for some more details.

Apparently it's a '94 bottom end from a junkyard, <150,000 miles but that's the only info. Cylinder head is from a '97. The previous owner tracked his car (the '97) and ran it a little low on oil and spun a bearing in his original motor. So he bought the '94 engine from a junkyard and threw his '97 head on it. He ran it a few more times on track like that, he said it consumed a little bit of oil but generally ran pretty well. His last time on track it threw a check engine light so he parted his car out....lol

He said he did a leakdown test on it but couldn't remember the numbers or where the leaks were coming from. He said cyl. 3 was the worst for the leakdown, cyl 1 + 4 were really good.

Anyway, here's the pics:

After removing the cams and cam caps






Here's the "Exhaust 1" cam cap. There's a "gouge" on the inner surface, a pretty good nick. Does this look like a problem to you guys? It looks like the gouge is right next to the oil channel. Should I just try to sand it down a bit?





I try to label everything and put them in bags. I've been numbering everything to so I can assemble back in the exact location.



So I flipped the head over to see what it looked like:








What do you guys think of the condition? I think it looks pretty good, much better than I was expecting actually. The head sealing surface looks kind of goofy, like someone took some sand paper to it to get the old gasket material off. Maybe it was just scotchbrite, I dunno. After seeing the surface I asked the previous owner if he'd had the head milled before using it but he said he didn't do anything to it, just threw it on the '94 bottom end.

I'll do the poor mans valve leak testing and see how the valves are sealing. I'd like to tear the head down and give it a good cleaning and maybe do some very minor polishing of the combustion chamber, and maybe the ports. I'll also slap a machinist edge against it and see if the flatness is in spec. I don't really want to spend any money in the head (it's not a 99 head so why?) and I've never replaced valve seals, so I'm not really sure what the exact plan is. First I'll check the valve sealing and flatness, and then go from there.

18psi - can you tech me your hand valve lapping technique / know-how?


On to the block:












Impressions? Overall, I think it looks pretty good for 100-150k miles. You can still see the factory cross-hatching, which is pretty common for BP motors, even high mileage ones. The pistons look pretty clean and I couldn't see or feel any vertical "marks" or "gouges" in the cylinder walls. Cylinder two was worst for the TDC "lip" on the cylinder walls. My first impression of the block was it should be a decent candidate for a DIY re-hone with the ball honing tool and a re-ring.

My initial plan was to re-use all of the bearings in the bottom end, obviously that was/is pending inspection. Even if they look decent, I'm a little leary of using ~130k mile bearings that have seen some track running.

Remainder of the block teardown will hopefully happen soon. Does anyone have any recommendations or instructions on how best to clean everything, including the block? I'm planning on doing everything myself but don't have any experience in the proper methods of cleaning a block, crank, pistons, cyl. head, etc. etc. Teach me...

 

please tell me you labeled each cam cap individually and didn't just toss them all into a bag....

....also definitely have the head machined

...also the poor mans valve leak test sucks, I wouldn't trust it and would still re-seat the valves

....also its not terrible overall. definitely not peachy tho

 

I mean, they're labeled from the factory so yes?

Why do you say this, because mine looks suspect, or because you always have it done when building something like this? I have access to a seriously good machinist straight, so if it's within flatness spec, why would I have it decked?


It does, but if the valves FAEL the poor mans leak test then I know they're properly bad...


What specifically makes you say that? The head? The block? any specific things you see that I should definitely look into fixing?


Spanks for your input.

 

hes making **** up because its the internet.

if the head checks out, no need for a rebuild.

Get a copy of a service manual and go through it doing the tests. valve play, deck flatness, etc and you will be fine.

you can get some lapping compound if you like and go over it lightly. replace the valve stem seals and be good.



as for the bottom, cant tell much in pictures. if you take it apart, do the least hone you can and put new rings on it.

 

-because if you mis-match them when re-installing you're gonna have a bad time.
-because it looks like someone took a sanding disk to it and I seriously wouldn't trust it. I guess if you checked every square millimeter of it though...might be ok...I still wouldn't trust it lol
-mine seemed ok on the test, then I added a tiny bit of pressure (while keeping them pinned closed and found a ton of tiny leaks
-I don't see crosshatching, also there's yellow/brown buildup, also the scoring on the cam cap thing, etc. Nothing major, just not a mint motor. I'm sure it will be fine once you give it some much needed lovin

 

Again, thanks for the input. Yea I was a little concerned about the "sanding" marks. The pictures aren't very good, but there is definitely cross hatching still evident. I wasn't so concerned with that as much as just general vertical marks or scractches, of which there are basically zero. We'll see how it turns out after the DIY ball hone.

Also, how do you clean all this stuff when you do these motors 18?

Shlammed - I do have a copy of a service manual, unfortunately the Engine Overhaul copy I have is for a VVT motor. I assume it's basically the same minus the VVT system. I'm cross referencing that manual with a couple other references on all of the clearances/specs to make sure it all matches for the earlier 1.8.