Sorry for the incredibly late reply...

Yep, did back-to-back track days @ MRLS and some other stuff and I've had no issues with my belt since the mod. The failure mode you describe is *EXACTLY* what I was seeing after every 30 minutes of run time. Belt would roll and split in half. I would be really interested to see what Bellwilliam is running on his car. I don't think he is running KW hardware, but I'm still interested none the less.

Arny, hows things going for you? Car running yet?

As soon as I get some free time, I'll pull my crap apart and document it for you guys. As soon as people STOP ------- DYING I'll actually have the time a motivation to do some fun stuff again. It's not been a great summer thus far. The new NT01s in the garage keep mocking me :(

 

I will begin with injectors and MS next wednesday. I have never mounted a MS so it won't be easy

 

It has been a while...let me know if you need help.

 

Thank you Dimitris. I will probably have some questions about the mounting of the MS and how to make it works with my WB (Innovate LC1).

 

Guess who spent all weekend putting an intercooler in their car?
Guess who also had to get a ride to work this morning from his fiancée?

If you guessed both of those people were me, you may be right.

Big to Mobius for the shopping list for the hotside, it worked like a champ. I did things a little differently, but hotside still went together like buttah. At the last minute I ended up using a teeny little MSM intercooler that I picked up from god only knows where that has been sitting in my garage for some time. Its small, but its better than 175° IATs. I had all the steel plumbing for it as well, and that came in handy for some "hack-n-slash" plumbing job. The "behind the headlight" route on the NB is pure sex. Anyone not doing this is full of fail. When I redo this mess (and I will end up redoing it) I'll probably suck up and get the Precision 350 from TrackSpeed.

Relocating the Rotrex heat exchanger thingus was a pain as well, though it should see some decent airflow now. I used a set of "through-the-core" trans or PS cooler mounts to stick it to the face of my AC condenser. Tons more room now, no idea why KW didn't do this in their kits from the beginning.

Power steering was fun. I ripped out the entire cooler assembly, cut off the twisty end and then mounted it waaaay up above the intercooler right below the hood latch mechanism. I've got the feed side plumbed in, now all I have left is the return. It didn't dawn on me until I was in the shower yesterday that the cooler may now be above the level of the PS reservoir. Not sure if this will cause problems or not, I'll know more when I actually fill it and drive it.

Though I must say, big for that damn FM single piece 2.5" coldside tube. That thing is a fothermucker and I could NOT get it into place without kinking and twisting the hell out of it. It fouled on the 99/00 AC lines something fierce. I understand in theory how its supposed to work, but it just does not fit in that space with the AC lines in place on my car. I checked Mobius thread and the AC lines on his NB2 run through different locations than my NB1. *Sigh* If anyone wants it, PM me an we can work out a price or I'll probably throw it on the classifieds here shortly. I looked up the instructions that come with the FM turbo kit and they weren't exactly helpful either. I ended up ordering the parts last night to piece something together for the coldside, and paid $70 to have them shipped overnight. From Japan? Before RaceWars? No!

...because track day on Friday! Yay! You know, untested intercooler mess and lack of tune to go with untested intercooler mess should end well. I live on the edge.

Also, if I have time, I'mma get me a trailer. Might have to steal the PTI plate off my dads pop-up tent camper though because god knows if I'll have time to register it before I leave on Thursday night

Pics tomorrow.

 

Pics of setup when you get a spare minute?

 

I would appreciate some photos as well. I also sent you a PM.

 

Thanks guys, but its really not that impressive. Check out Mobius thread for the real deal. Search "rotrex intercooler" and you'll find it in the title. I think my real camera finally gave up the ghost yesterday while I was shooting pics, so we'll have to see how my BlackBerry does in low light. I'll get pics posted up here either tonight or tomorrow night one way or the other so people can laugh at my... "ingenuity." (Can't be any worse than some of the ghetto rigs I've seen on this forum though...)

3rdCarMX5: I got your PM, still trying to finalize some things before I commit.

 

Why you do this? I make it so easy for you! Now you have puny intercooler and rusty steel tubing? Where in my list you see FM coldside plumbing? Bad monkey! Coldside for me took more time than hotside, even counting sawing up the Kraftwerks crossover tube.

But seriously ... not quite following what you got. FM upgraded plumbing for the MSM? I can see interference problems there for an NB1, yeah.

Edit: I apparently flipped hotside and coldside when I first read your post. I blame the three beers. I had to trim about 2" off of my FM tube, and had to clearance the undertray a bit as well. I have shielded the area of the FM intercooler tube in the undertray area with another piece of silicone tubing split lengthwise and ziptied in place to act as a shield. Sucks that your AC lines are in the way.

Hopefully you gets it all figured out. I doubt tuning changes will be needed, my stock setup at least was thuper rich. Dragonfighter over on m.net seems to be fine so far with no changes after intercooling, but he doesn't track. At 6-8psi blowing couplers shouldn't be a problem so don't worry about lips if the tubing doesn't have any (for now).

I am interested in your tire comparison feedback. My prediction, which is in an envelope hermetically sealed inside a mayonnaise jar, is that your 205 nt01's will feel much sharper and you will be able to drive closer to the limit of the tires due to better driver feedback (compared to 225 on an 8" rim). But I'm not going to tell you that so as not to spoil your perception going in.

Actually faster requires instrumentation and repeatability, which alas are in short supply in our amateur enthusiast world. I bet on the 205's though.

Tip for anyone reading this thread about to do their own DIY intercooler setup - Silicon Intakes will take everything back that you don't use. They in fact encourage you to do this. Guesstimate what you need, then add in extras of the couplers you think you need, then add in a couple of the bends you don't think you need (a 90, or a 60, or whatever isn't in your list), get a couple extra pieces of pipe, and order it all. Build it, then return what you don't use. You're only out $15 or so for shipping. It sucks to be sitting there, realizing you only need the one 135deg coupler to make it all hook up properly, and have to wait several days and pay extra shipping. Just do the shipping once on the front end, and once again on the return.

 

Well, ****.

More late when I figure out WTF.

The car did fine all day on the track and I had a great time. I discovered that I completely fucked my alignment somewhere along the line so the car was loose as hell, but I still had fun.

I parked and let her idle for a while to cool down before shutting down, swapping tires and loading gear. I was ready to go when things started to go poorly...

crank-crank-crank-crank-crank-crank-crank-crank-crank-crank-crank-crank-

Well, **** my life I could smell plenty of fuel in the exhaust, and screwdriver in the spark plug boot yielded no spark on crank, so I immediately suspected coil. My buddy Gesso was there with his NB (also 2000 w/CA emissions) so I robbed his coil, but still no spark. We plugged my coil into his car to double confirm, and his ran fine.

We then robbed his MAF and ECU (I'm still wired for it) and what do you know? My car started! ...4 hours away from my stock ECU and MAF in my garage. So I'm thinking "******* magasquirt!!!!" right? Well, read on.

I managed to get a hold of my girlfriend who was kind enough to grab my stock ECU and MAF and bring them with her an hour north (she was meeting with her folks already) and Gesso was kind enough to make me on the round trip to go get them. We finally got back to the hotel around 3am...

The next day we went back to the track, installed the ECU, MAF and Powercard (it was still bolted to the firewall, because I'm lazy) and I got my *** on the road. I made it exactly 110miles down I-5 when the car started running like **** with a flashing CEL. I pulled off and it felt like it was running on 2 cylinders. FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU! I burned my AAA Premium single 200 mile tow for the year, and was nearly charged $450 for the trailer. In the end, I was nothing out of pocket. The driver informed me that this would have been a $1000+ tow had it been a commercial call rather than AAA.

Ignition? Injectors? Wiring? Powercard? Flaky coil? I'll know more this afternoon when I rip most of this **** out. I'm so incredibly frustrated right now that I may go back to stock for a while and re-evaluate my goals.

Full disclosure: I did **** with my tune at the track, but the only thing I molested was the FuelVE table and even then, nothing under 900RPM. I can think of no reason why it would suddenly not start like this, very bothersome. I manually reset the table to pre-fuckery settings and it still wouldn't start.

 

Damn that blows! I'm guessing wiring. Which, if true, would have bitten you even if it were still N/A. Drink three beers and curse and hit a speed bag for a while. Or do the Boxing Training on Wii Sports, if you have that.

 

Crank Position Sensor? What did your tuning laptop say was happening? Losing sync?

 

So I don't have pics because RAGE, but I started absolutely ripping the car apart on Sunday morning. I was trying to eliminate variables so I removed all the aftermarket stuff under my hood and replaced it with known working stock parts. I had the Rotrex off all my stock induction stuff in place in about an hour. Another hour and the powercard was out and the manifold was back together. The miss persisted and new plugs confirmed that it was cylinder 1-4 so I assumed coil pack, again. Installed my COPs and the problem persisted. I pulled the spare coil out of the garage and still no change. I pulled out the meter and checked the coils themselves, (FSM FTW) coil lead grounds, coil lead power and it was all good. My Fluke is not quite awesome enough to check the signal portion of the coil harness, plus I was working alone and could not crank and watch the meter, but it gave me somewhere to start. As my British car experience has taught me, time to physically check the length of the wire.

Guess what? muthafucking coil harness.

(+1 to Mobius on that one - though something in the ignition or ignition wiring is what I suspected all along)

When I was struggling with my previous burned out NB1 ignition coil, I cut the harness ends off, installed a weatherpack connector and got a set of COPs because they were 1/4 the price of a new OEM coil. I also loomed and electrical taped the harness. I went to smog the car and got called out on the COPs before they even hooked me up, so I got a used stock coil from here on the classifieds and used another weatherpack with the stock harness ends to install it. Everything ran fine and I left this in place (because I'm lazy) but I did not re-use the factory harness retainer push clipy thing, I instead used a zip tie to keep the harness snugged up next to the coil.

Apparently the zip ties I used were not rated for heat.

The zip tie melted at some point on the track, allowing the coil/temp sensor end of the harness to fall down onto the bare EGR tube and burninate thus shorting out the trigger for the 1-4 coil. As to why this was intermittent and how I was able to get 110 miles down the highway before it happened again, I may never know. I didn't immediately notice it because it was burned on the bottom/backside of the harness, about as hard to see as physically possible under the mess of other tubes and wires that's back there.

Luckily, I had a spare coil/temp sensor/injector harness in the garage that was destined to get my EV14 injector clips (yet another incomplete project) so it was just a matter of pulling the TB and upper intake and swapping the harness. As the British say "reassembly is reverse of assembly" and the car was running again on the MAF and stock ECU. I'm feeling retarded and frustrated, but at least I didn't have to pull out the compression tester. I'll be putting some sort of thermal barrier over the EGR tube, and/or eliminating it when I put a real header on the car.

This last trip to ThunderHill taught me that I really, really need more seat time and I really need to get my suspension/alignment dialed in. Gesso and I swapped cars for one session and his car is SO much better dialed in than mine. His car with the Koni/GC 450/300/RB front AND rear bars & NT01s felt about 1000x better than mine. Set up your corner entry, stomp on it, and the car runs like its on rails. My car was loose as hell... going into a corner at the same speed and all it wants to do is wiggle all over the place and the rear end wants to step around, or the whole car wants to slide sideways. He and I are running 15x8 6ULs and NT01s, but he is on a 225 and I'm on a 205. He did seam weld the door openings and does not have my "custom" (read:crushed) framerail, but no other real differences.

The Hustler Build 2.0 thread without the competitive edge is looking really awesome right now, I'll be following that one for sure. 150-170hp N/A build that Emilio posted on m.net and Hustler has laid out is very, very attainable. I already have:

• BP4W head w/BP5A cam
• Complete BP6D VVT head
• Squaretop
• Megasquirt & wideband
• free flowing 2.5" exhaust

Add an RB header to that (something I've wanted for a while now) and I'm guessing 140-150 is completely do-able even with my 9.5:1 comp motor. Emilio did this as the old 949Rental formula (yes, with 10:1) so why not?
(THEN add 7-8psi of Rotrex on top of that mess...)

But having said all that, I realize I need to stop chasing power, get the car set up correctly and drive more. Period.
Like Hustler, I'm mentally burned out and I'm not having fun anymore, but this is mostly due to my poor decisions rather than any external force. 5 hours in a truck with a sociopathic tow truck driver will do that to a man. I'm going to leave the Rotrex off the car for a while and get back to basics, and try to have fun again.

 

Well, at least you found it, and it's not expensive.

 

And I had the part. I'm just phenomenally annoyed right now

 

Well, you can look forward to the FIC 650s. I have the 775s and they are great to tune with, so much better than even stock. I am running N/A at the moment.

I have heard the '01 header is just as good as the R/B header, I think the RB has issues with S/C clearance.

I had a good experience with an alignment guy (Santa Clara/San Jose) if you want to PM me for a phone number.

 

Well, now I need to do some work on this harness anyway to fix it, so I might as well get the injectors installed and see what fuckery I can cause on my tune. I really wish I had a better handle on the Megasquirt.

I've got the '01 header at the moment, but I'd like to pick up the RB simply because it will be a better match for the 2.5" stainless FM exhaust that is sitting in my garage at the moment. The factory DP has internal welds around the ports and also where the collector is welded to the 3 bolt flange, both are pretty good restrictions. Then the factory downpipe is kinda scrunch bent anyways, and I think its somewhere around 50mm (roughly 1.9".) The RB collector is 60mm (roughly 2.3") and the boys at FM say it should bolt up to the 2.5" FM midpipe with no issue. I *SHOULD* be able to get a solid used older RB Tri-Y style one somewhere but I've been a bit slow on the draw. Header fitment has been an issue with the hotside roots blowers, the rotrex, not so much

I've got a decent alignment guy but he's not "miata experienced" so I'm pretty much guessing here. I have an invite from Shake @ FatCat for a corner weighting and alignment session if I ever have time to get up to Redwood City. Where are you at? I'm in Monterey County. You ever hang out with the guys from NCR or AX with the NorCalUFO crew?

 

Dude. How many parts do you have just laying around in your garage? Seems like half a miata.

Oh hey, and toast to not being that guy at our respective track days hemorrhaging vital fluids onto the track at our respective track days!

I'm not much for wishing kharmic justice onto people. Well, ok, maybe I am ... The driver of the Z06 that ventilated his block yesterday - I sat near him in the stands a month ago at the last track day I did, during one of the instructor sessions. He was conversing with a female of the species. It's so fun, it's so challenging, my car is so fast, blah blah blah. Several of the instructors drive miatas, and two of them were playing tag. As they came around he said "Look, one blue flag chasing another!"

That irked me. I'd like to see if his lap times were under spec miata, which is a 1:31 for PIR.

 

I'm near Palo Alto. The guy I know has a miata but I wouldn't call him an expert on them. He is, however, very knowledgeable in general and lots of non-miata drivers go to him(races AX). He is also very affordable. I think I spent 2 hours with him while he worked to get it right. I think FCM has fallen off a little in popularity due to the exponential increase in prices, but his knowledge is very highly regarded.

Makes sense with the rotrex. I have a PD project of my own, so I tend to think in those terms for S/C.

Let me know how the noise/smog issue is with the FM Midpipe. Any reason you didn't go 3"? I am considering a Mid pipe, and I was looking at the various options.

As far as the switch to ev14s, you can look up my posts and you should be able to find some info on what to change in the MS. It isn't just req_fuel.

 

Nice! I'll keep it in mind if I decide to try another place. The guy I used last time is up in Santa Cruz/Soquel area, as recommended by Gesso. They were friendly and affordable and did everything I wanted. Out here where I am, I wouldn't trust most of the jackasses. Most of the "decent" shops out here are totally unwilling to use a "customer supplied spec" without charging and arm/leg/********. I had a $300 alignment quote from one place... to many rich bastards out here with Porches and Bimmers

Shake knows his stuff, I'll give him that. But you are right, he is damn expensive. I love my suspension, but it was NOT cheap.

Haha! I'm not even going to TRY to smog with it. Its an older FM stainless 2.5" TURBO exhaust I bought from Cordus when he upgraded to 3" on his FMII equipped 99NB. Its actually not loud at all. We had it running on Gesso's 2000 for a while and I was almost disappointed that it wasn't louder. Not that I really WANT it to be louder, I was just surprised that it wasn't louder. It was also cheap comparatively. I don't think FM even makes an N/A exhaust anymore, come to think of it. It has a high flow cat, but I seriously doubt its CARB legal. This isn't an ALLOFIT racecar either so I doubt I'll get to the point where 2.5 starts to choke me, at least not any time soon. If it decides it is going to be raspy or has some stupid resonance I'm not expecting, I'll get a stainless resonator from Vibrant and give that a shot. Gesso claims to have a TIG but I ain't never seen it...

Crap, I was afraid of that. I'll have to go take a look.