Almost up to speed over here..progress was a bit on a slow side, but final product is a real piece of art












EFR positioned to get a semi-decent flowing 3” downpipe:



Only downside to this position is that power steering line will need to be modified a bit. Removing it did cross my mind, I’m just not sure about it yet.










Almost finished..



Disclaimer: Originally I wanted to buy complete TSE turbo kit for dat reliability and to support community vendors, but calculating how much would it cost me, I ended up with buying only BE pump and stud hardware from Savington. Even that was $800 in the end with shipping, customs fee and import tax.

 

Here's the finished manifold












Inside shot of merge collector



I'm considering some kind of brace to support weight of the turbo. I think it's quite heavy load on manifold itself or am I just worrying too much? I saw fab9's 'side' mount manifold which puts turbo on similar distance from the engine. I know that's not so popular kit but did anyone happen make brace for it just as a safety precaution?



Shortly after manifold fabricator did his job, I parked the car for winter, got engine removed, disassembled and delivered block to machine shop together with pistons to bore it into specs. Still need to deliver crankshaft and rest of rotating assembly to get everything balanced and that’s probably where I’ll finish for this year.



I’m pretty sure the car will be 100% ready and completed by february/march. Only 6 months left until next Hungaroring miata track day and I’ll definitely be there. Should be fun to see the difference and hopefully all this will be worth it

 

 

Well it turns out the car might still be finished this year..engine was completed and ready for drop in a month ago, but had to wait for workshop space to continue.





Gave it one last quick wash before fun times began and also switched to a de-powered steering rack while there was so much room for activities.










And after more than 9 months, engine was back in. Come to think of it, my son was conceived and born quicker than that










When moving on to make new exhaust, it seemed that 3" downpipe was mission impossibru at first..





..but luckily my fabricator has enough experience and made it happen anyway. Small part of shelf had to be cut and brake lines were slightly moved away for added heat protection.










Beside bracing downpipe to the gearbox, another brace was added on top of turbo just as a precaution so there's less chance manifold might crack. Complete downpipe was also wrapped the same way as manifold and a piece of oem-ish aluminium heat shield was added on top.






Another anti-heat measurement is this neat oil return flex pipe:





Here's better view from another angle. Regular braided nylon pipe might get really close to the manifold or even touch it and I guess that's not a good thing.







Going back to the exhaust; after couple of measurements the downpipe was finished and squeezed between steering shaft and gearbox. Still following through with 3" in diameter







This was the part that actually concerned me the most. Since I have butterfly brace beneath the car, I was worried the exhaust will have to be reduced in diameter, but in the end everything managed to clear just fine. It seems that stock exhaust is even lower and that's why I heard a bit of rubbing during hard cornering.







And the last part of the exhaust with semi-social muffler.









Next up was intercooler setup, which presented even less troubles piecing together than exhaust, an oil cooler and thermostatic relocation plate for oil filter with pressure and temperature sensors.











I rarely used front fog lights, so I had no problem relocating them to trash and re-using holes in bumper as a source of cold air. One side will be used for cooling the oil and the other for air intake, which is located directly behind the driver's head light:





It sort of almost looks like a finished car or nah?




There are still few details to address which includes installing fuel pressure regulator, trimming the under tray, making air ducts through fog light holes, hiding couple of wires in engine bay and lastly dyno tuning. Won't be long before it'll be in a state I like to call ready to party

edit: fixed the photos.again.

 

Anyone else notice the NSFW poster in the background? I'll let you search for it in the photo dump

 

Thanks for the heads up, cropped it out now

 

Very nice work! You have been busy.

 

It looks like summer is not only thing that’s finished

But before heading to the dyno, one last detail was needed. This heat shield should prevent spals from blowing hot airz straight into intake.








Finished product





Then it was finally time for numbers to come into play




Unfortunately, there was a small issue with crank angle sensor loosing signal at high rpm, so the redline had to be dropped to 6500, to prevent any damages to the engine. After couple of hours of tuning, the car still made very nice 318,3 hp and 375,2 Nm. Should make 15-20 more at the top end, once I try out another crank sensor I have in spare parts and raise the rev limit back to stock.



Target boost is set in following order:
4k - 14 psi
5k - 16 psi
6k and above - 19 psi (Basically allofit with medium canister)

Tuner said the turbo could easily make some more, but I’d have to swap in high boost wastegate canister. However, the car is already a beast and has traction problems with semi slicks, so I’ll probably just stick with medium canister and focus on drivability and reliability.



And since it was tuned at the same dyno with same tuner, I got another before/after comparison. Tuned 1.8vvt vs built with efr



I’m pretty sure 330hp mark could easily be reached if 340Nm of torque would remain till 7k. Keep in mind these are flywheel numbers, but it’s also low-reading european dyno, so in the end it’s probably somewhere around 300whp/300lbft to the us people.



I also have couple of concerns for the moment; Along the build, coolant reroute was installed with thermostat that opens up at a lower temperature. Ecu shows that’s at 160F degrees, aftermarket water temp gauge shows about 170F degrees and stock needle sits at about 11 o’clock. After couple of pulls, stock gauge does get to the ‘normal’ almost 12 o’clock position and ecu shows 175F degrees. That’s also the coolant temperature set point when the fans kick.

With some driving afterwards the temperature drops back to 160F and needle is again at 11 o’clock. I assume that’s fine, but want another opinion if anyone else had similar experience after reroute and different thermostat? Is 160-170F degrees ok or too low?



Second note is regarding the crankcase ventilation. Right now both sides of the valve cover are connected to a catch can with AN6 lines and the can is vented to atmosphere. No sign of oil inside after 500 miles and the car also doesn’t smoke or burn any. Shouldn’t there be at least something in the catch can? Do I need to enlarge valve cover fittings to AN8 or nah? Not planning to run any more power for now but the car will see track time in future.


And is there anything else I missed out to achieve dat reliability? mt.net has provided tons of info and I'm very grateful for that, but always happy to receive more constructive suggestions


Thanks for the input!

 

Nothing in catch can is ideal. Your operating temperature is too low. Extra engine wear can occur and the ECU may stay in warm up enrichment.

 

Sounds like I need to swap back to regular thermostat. Oh well, I thought I was doing a good thing to improve cooling *facepalm*

 

The thermostat does nothing to improve cooling capacity. It dictates the target temperature.

Think of it as a thermostat in a house. It sets the target for room temperature. Whether it reaches the target or not is determined by outside temp and capacity of the a/c or heat system.

If the engine is too cold during operation it will experience a lot of excess wear.

 

Thank you for explanation. Beside thermostat issue, I think there was also air trapped in coolant system as I had to add about 5oz. of coolant to top of radiator. Temperatures got a bit better afterwards; It holds 200-210F when idling & driving hard and then drops to 180F when cruising over 60mph.






After 20 minute 2-3k rpm cruise:




That's probably still too low to be safe, right? I'll try to burp it some more just to make sure there's no more air inside. Did some research on the forum and I'll see if any of the burping methods help with Skidnation coolant reroute. Changing thermostat with reroute doesn't look like fun time