Greetings, this is my first attempt at building an engine, a car for that matter. A little background of the car, Its a 91 so 1.6 obviously. I got the car towards the end of June of 2016 right after I graduated high school. I had some money laying around from working and graduation so I figured why not buy a car. I went into buying this car knowing nothing about Miatas but the price was right and I wanted to have a little fun for the few weeks of summer I had before leaving for basic training. This is the car getting pulled away on the trailer the day I bought it:


Anyway, I drove the car everyday for about three weeks before I left and it was a lot of fun. So, after I got out of basic, I started to do a little research on the car and was not expecting to find such a good following on these things. (Where I'm from I don't think I ever saw one of these driving around so it never caught my interest.) Obviously the first thing I stumble across is the car passion channel and broke and boosted. Me being the idiot I am decided to go that route. Not that it is necessarily the wrong way but I went as cheap as possible and quickly learned my lesson. Again, I didn't do much research and went with the Cx racing kit. What a mistake that was. I'm not saying that it was crappy, but in my case it was. With no supporting mods besides what came with the kit the engine didn't last more than like a few hundred miles.. Unfortunately (Or fortunately) I don't have any pics of the car in that state.

Fast forward to March of 2017, I found another 1.6 with a trans for $650 so I jumped on that. Two nights of work and the miata was running again. It was my daily driver for a few months completely stock but of course I couldn't leave it alone. I decided I would attempt to turbo it again, only this time kinda right. At this point its the end of spring/early summer and after a decent amount of scouring the forums and doing my research, it was time. I bought a megasquirt, flow force 640cc injectors, wideband and all that good stuff. I tried the Cx racing kit again (the one I still had) because it seems hit and miss from the research I did. It worked for a while.. The manifold ended up cracking at every point possible so I was getting tired of welding it and jumped on the new at the time Kraken manifold. I utilized the Cx racing turbo because it didn't seem too bad. So after all that was said and done, the car was finally running pretty good. I was pushing 15psi of boost on that little chinese turbo and it was doing great, I was dailying it back and forth to work about 90 miles a day with no problems. But I can't just leave stuff alone so I saw a used Gt2554r on ebay for $400 so I snatched that up. So I get that turbo and put it on towards the end of the summer, maybe early fall and I ran into a few problems. The oil drain was directly over the coolant line so it was going going to kink it so I figured let me stop right here and do it right. At that point I decided to start my build.. This is how the car was at the end of the season last year:



These are the specs of the car as it sat in the picture above: (Everything not listed is stock)

Engine:
Stock 1.6 with roughly 150k miles on it

Fuel:
Flow Force 640cc injectors

Turbo:
Kraken Cast Iron T25 Manifold
Cx Racing T25 IWG turbo (roughly the same size an an sr20 turbo?)

Wheels:
Team Dynamic Pro Race 1.2's
Toyo Proxes r888

Suspension:
Yonaka Coilovers (one of the first mods I did so maybe not the best choice but it fit my budget)
I wanna say Eibach sway bars, not too sure because I found them on a miata at a junk yard for like $50

Drivetrain:
Stock 5 speed with 180k
Act HD clutch & Pressure plate
Stock Flywheel
What I believe is a original VLSD that surprisingly held up nicely

Cooling:
Ebay aluminum radiator and shroud/fans
Coolant reroute
CX racing intercooler

Exhaust:
2.5 inch turbo back

Interior:
Corbeau Race seat
Pci one piece mount

Brakes:
Stock brakes with Hawks HPS

Miscellaneous:
Hard top
The usual ebay front lip

Sorry for the lack of pictures at this point in the thread but I just never really took any pictures. Please feel free to roast me on some of the choices I have made with parts as of now, I just see it as constructive criticism. Like I said this is my first build and even post on the forums so if I am doing anything wrong, Please let me know. Also, I would like as much feedback as possible so please tell me everything I need to know because I want to do this right the first time. Yes I know I will be wrenching on this thing all the time but I just don't want to go into the engine so I would like to get that done right the first time. I already have a lot of parts that I will list in the next post but for now this is where I will end it. The end goal is maybe 350whp but I want it done correctly.. while budget is not too much of a concern, I'm not looking to throw all my money into this. So please let me know what you guys think throughout the thread as I post more and I will have some stuff up for sale for cheap once I post the minimum of ten posts to be able to post in the classifieds. (yes thats how new I am to the forums.)

 

Welcome to the forum. There's a huge lesson for others who watch the broke and boosted videos here. I'm glad you had a good enough job to afford a replacement engine and had a good place to change it. Most kids don't realize that broke and boosted means your car is broke and boosted.

What branch of the military are you in? Where are you stationed?

The 1.6 won't readily make 350whp, even with forged rods. You will need a 1.8 for the improved port and manifold breathing for volume of air flow.

You will need a 1.8 rear differential and axles if you don't already have them. The 1.6 diff is weak and often fails at stock power.