miata from miami fl

[danield1]

Hey everyone nice to meet you! I was hoping to get some information on where to start on this cool open source efi. I have a miata that I want to turbocharge, along with bigger injectors, fuel pump, etc.... I know I have to change the ecu and everyone says the typical megasquirt, however I would like to try this out and see how this works. This is relatively new to me and would appreciate your support. Thank you and look forward to getting started

[AndreyB]

Hello and welcome!

NA miata should be really easy, we have what, 4 or 5 of these running? NB would be a bit more involved since not the default pinout etc. You should start by reading some of the wiki at http://rusefi.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page and you would hopefully end up at https://www.tindie.com/stores/russian/

[kb1gtt]

Welcome along and good to hear from you. Feel free to ask questions, there are a couple of us here that do our best to reply.

[stefanst]

What year Miata?
Since you're planning the Turbo-route, I assume you've been on miataturbo.net?
What's your screen name there?
Any pictures of your ride?
How far along are your turbo plans?
Are you already collecting parts, or are you buying a kit?

And of course: Welcome to the journey that is rusefi

[danield1]

What year Miata?
Since you're planning the Turbo-route, I assume you've been on miataturbo.net?
What's your screen name there?
Any pictures of your ride?
How far along are your turbo plans?
Are you already collecting parts, or are you buying a kit?

And of course: Welcome to the journey that is rusefi

I have a 2001 miata and my friend has a 1996 miata, im trying to get him to join the rusefi bandwagon lol
I have been on miataturbo and I didn't have a good experience on there, I posted a few times on there and would get stupid and a**hole replies. However there is good info on that website and people who are willing to help out.
Currently the car is under repair, someone hit me, so im in the process of getting that sorted out.
So far I've sorted out all the turbo parts I needed online and wrote down a nice little plan lol however school is currently taking up most of my time at the moment and of course financial reasons as well lol
I wanted to get familiar with tuning and changing the ecu before pulling the trigger and buying all the parts.

Hello and welcome!

NA miata should be really easy, we have what, 4 or 5 of these running? NB would be a bit more involved since not the default pinout etc. You should start by reading some of the wiki at http://rusefi.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page and you would hopefully end up at https://www.tindie.com/stores/russian/

Both my friend and I have the 1.8L engine, however his is the NA and mine is the NB. Is the frankenso board wired for the 1.6L NA engine or 1.8L NA, would there be a way to purchase the board prewired for the NA/NB 1.8L (not to be lazy, im just not good with electrical connectors, soldering, etc stuff )
if not I would be willing to do it but would need a lot of help lol

Also once the frankenso board gets plugged into the car, what would I have to do afterwards? would I be able to connect my computer to it and start using tuner studio?

also how is rusefi different than megasquirt, would I be able to do most of the things megasquirt can do or are there certain limitation?
in a nutshell i just want a racecar miata lol

sorry for all the questions lol and thank you for the warm welcoming

[AndreyB]

Frankenso default wiring works great for both 1.6 NA and 1.8 NA, NA is simpler and rusEfi is pretty close to Plug & Play.

NB has it's challenges. 99 and 00 at least use the same connector - Frankenso could be re-wired for 99 and 00 NB nicely using the Frankenso connector. Alternator control is on of the areas where Frankenso would need some extra pieces.

01 and later (and that includes you) is a more depressing story: they've changed the connector. I am planning to start wiring my 03 pretty soon but that would be a pretty custom job.

You pretty much need to trade cars with your buddy

[stefanst]

Don't despair with miataturbo.net
We're a rough crowd and everybody HATES spoonfeeding. And of course the oldtimers thrive on humiliating newbs. Most people who stay around for while are serious about performance. Nothing else. OK, maybe looks (a little). But if you plan on stancing your car or drifting, you better be willing to take a lot of abuse.
That being said, if you are being reasonable, show that you've tried and researched, post a decent plan and ask intelligent questions you will get mostly useful answers. And there is absolutely no better resource to learn how to get Miatas to perform anywhere on the planet.

And don't despair that rusefi doesn't have the NB2 Miatas fully sorted out yet. I had my NB1 running on rusefi without too many problems, but went back to MS, since I have it and it works pretty well. I also have an NB2 which will run on rusefi over the winter, come hell or high water. We'll help you through.

[danield1]

My overall plans would be to acquire the frankenso board from here, set up all the wiring, become familiar with tuning the car, then proceed with the turbo build. Being a student and on a budget plus wanting a racecar may seem like a tough task, but I'm willing to dedicate some time to this and make this build come true, without cutting too many corners lol

Frankenso default wiring works great for both 1.6 NA and 1.8 NA, NA is simpler and rusEfi is pretty close to Plug & Play.

NB has it's challenges. 99 and 00 at least use the same connector - Frankenso could be re-wired for 99 and 00 NB nicely using the Frankenso connector. Alternator control is on of the areas where Frankenso would need some extra pieces.

01 and later (and that includes you) is a more depressing story: they've changed the connector. I am planning to start wiring my 03 pretty soon but that would be a pretty custom job.

You pretty much need to trade cars with your buddy

Hmmm do you know about how long it would it take for you to get your 03 wired up? I would be willing to help as much as I can to get this going. What extra alternator control pieces would be required for the frankenso?

should I sell my 01 and get a 99

Don't despair with miataturbo.net
We're a rough crowd and everybody HATES spoonfeeding. And of course the oldtimers thrive on humiliating newbs. Most people who stay around for while are serious about performance. Nothing else. OK, maybe looks (a little). But if you plan on stancing your car or drifting, you better be willing to take a lot of abuse.
That being said, if you are being reasonable, show that you've tried and researched, post a decent plan and ask intelligent questions you will get mostly useful answers. And there is absolutely no better resource to learn how to get Miatas to perform anywhere on the planet.

And don't despair that rusefi doesn't have the NB2 Miatas fully sorted out yet. I had my NB1 running on rusefi without too many problems, but went back to MS, since I have it and it works pretty well. I also have an NB2 which will run on rusefi over the winter, come hell or high water. We'll help you through.

lmao yea i pretty much got the rough end of the stick. I was fairly new to the miata scene when I was on miata turbo and pretty much got roasted left and right. And yes you are correct there is a ton of good information on there

how was your overall experience running rusefi in your NB1, compared to the MS ?
as for your NB2 how far have you gotten with rusefi and do you have any mods/forced induction plans?

[stefanst]

[...]
how was your overall experience running rusefi in your NB1, compared to the MS ?
as for your NB2 how far have you gotten with rusefi and do you have any mods/forced induction plans?

I didn't actually run the rusefi much. I just got the car started, made sure it responds to all the inputs and then returned to megasquirt, because a track day came up. With rusefi for NB2, I have installed the WBO2 sensor and the MAP sensor. Now I'm waiting for an adapter board that @russian ordered from Oshpark to make wiring a little easier. But I really don't anticipate any great difficulty. Maybe the tach-out will be a little tricky. Also the alternator control may have to be done in electronic hardware instead of in code, but I'm still confident we can get the alternator control working. VVT will be fun, but with @russian being fully committed to making VVT work, I know we'll get it sooner or later.

F/I Plans? Of course. I'm actually thinking of moving the old turbo setup from my '99 to the '03, because the '99 will eventually get a little more ooomph. So that would be an old FM2 setup pretty much. Plus the rusefi and larger injectors.

[kb1gtt]

rusEFI has some incremental options that might help you get a feel for what it can and can't do but for low $. There is an option that's really just for hard core developers, but it requires no hardware, just a PC, and everything is a simulation. However it's not very user friendly so you really have to be a hard core programmer for that to work. Another option is to get just the discovery board. With that you can set it to self stimulation, and you can get a feel for things like how tuner studio works, and what you can and can't program. The discovery board is something like $15 from mouser. The the next increment would be to get a Frankenso which you then plug the discovery board into. This is when the $ and time start to get more serious.

[danield1]

[...]
how was your overall experience running rusefi in your NB1, compared to the MS ?
as for your NB2 how far have you gotten with rusefi and do you have any mods/forced induction plans?

I didn't actually run the rusefi much. I just got the car started, made sure it responds to all the inputs and then returned to megasquirt, because a track day came up. With rusefi for NB2, I have installed the WBO2 sensor and the MAP sensor. Now I'm waiting for an adapter board that @russian ordered from Oshpark to make wiring a little easier. But I really don't anticipate any great difficulty. Maybe the tach-out will be a little tricky. Also the alternator control may have to be done in electronic hardware instead of in code, but I'm still confident we can get the alternator control working. VVT will be fun, but with @russian being fully committed to making VVT work, I know we'll get it sooner or later.

F/I Plans? Of course. I'm actually thinking of moving the old turbo setup from my '99 to the '03, because the '99 will eventually get a little more ooomph. So that would be an old FM2 setup pretty much. Plus the rusefi and larger injectors.

Im excited to see this, do you have a build thread or post to follow?
If you don't mind me asking what was your old turbo setup on the 99? do you know roughly about how much power you were making?
Do you think vvt will cause any issues when tuning the car?

rusEFI has some incremental options that might help you get a feel for what it can and can't do but for low $. There is an option that's really just for hard core developers, but it requires no hardware, just a PC, and everything is a simulation. However it's not very user friendly so you really have to be a hard core programmer for that to work. Another option is to get just the discovery board. With that you can set it to self stimulation, and you can get a feel for things like how tuner studio works, and what you can and can't program. The discovery board is something like $15 from mouser. The the next increment would be to get a Frankenso which you then plug the discovery board into. This is when the $ and time start to get more serious.

Im not that advanced with programming and stuff, but ive always wanted to learn lol I would most likely be getting the frankenso fully assembled board
I was originally going to buy a megasquirt pnp until I saw how much money it was the cost of the megasquirt was pretty much the cost of the turbo kit I was looking to build for the miata

[stefanst]

I'm still running my turbo setup on my '99. It's an old FMII kit. Currently sitting at around 230hp running around 8-9psi boost. I did blow up an engine running 14psi.

DON'T buy en Ebay kit. They are total complete and utter crap. The only budget option that works is the MKturbo kit. If you are good, and I mean GOOD, at welding, you can make your own kit. If not and you're ona tight budget, get the MKturbo kit. Don't even THINK about anything else. If you have more of a budget, get an FM/BEGI manifold and downpipe. Buy a used Nissan Silvia turbo. And an Enthuza exhaust.

Again: No Ebay kits. Total, complete and utter waste of time and money.

Budget needed:
- MKturbo $1,500 + $100 or so S&H
- Injectors (Flowforce) $300
- Intercooler and piping $200 (this is the only thing I will allow you to buy on Ebay)
- rusefi $320
- Clutch (FM Level I) $350
- Misc. stuff, S&H, broken parts, $500

Total around $3,400. I'm probably forgetting stuff.

EDIT: add $150 for WBO2 and $80 for MAP sensor and boost gauge.

This is the absolute minimum. There is no way you get a running, even halfway reliable turbo Miata car with less of a budget if you're not one hell of a fabricator.

[kb1gtt]

I want to see someone weld some of our politicians to an inter-cooler and connect that to an intake. You'd need a large blow off valve, as these wind bags put out allot of hot air Sorry for high jacking the thread with my bad humor, but I had to do it.

Yeah a turbo conversion is significant $ and significant labor. Does the MKTurbo kit include shorter pistons? Typically a turbo engine has a lower compression ratio, often this is achieved with shorter pistons.

[stefanst]

No shorter pistons- most kits retain stock compression ratio. Some people are lucky enough to have E85 readily available and can run high compression AND quite advanced timing. Us other poor schmucks have to live with severely retarded timing, or bite the bullet and rebuild the engine with lower compression pistons.

But, the effect of the retarded timing on hp isn't all that bad so you can still make some real good power on turbo Miata with stock pistons. Usually the first thing to go is the clutch, hence my recommendation for a stronger clutch in the post above. A stock 1.8l Miata clutch can handle maybe 160 or 170 ft*lbs. After that it's the rods. Stock rods can handle 250 ft*lbs at best. I'd keep it under 230 to be safe. On a racetrack even less.

[danield1]

I'm still running my turbo setup on my '99. It's an old FMII kit. Currently sitting at around 230hp running around 8-9psi boost. I did blow up an engine running 14psi.

DON'T buy en Ebay kit. They are total complete and utter crap. The only budget option that works is the MKturbo kit. If you are good, and I mean GOOD, at welding, you can make your own kit. If not and you're ona tight budget, get the MKturbo kit. Don't even THINK about anything else. If you have more of a budget, get an FM/BEGI manifold and downpipe. Buy a used Nissan Silvia turbo. And an Enthuza exhaust.

Again: No Ebay kits. Total, complete and utter waste of time and money.

Budget needed:
- MKturbo $1,500 + $100 or so S&H
- Injectors (Flowforce) $300
- Intercooler and piping $200 (this is the only thing I will allow you to buy on Ebay)
- rusefi $320
- Clutch (FM Level I) $350
- Misc. stuff, S&H, broken parts, $500

Total around $3,400. I'm probably forgetting stuff.

EDIT: add $150 for WBO2 and $80 for MAP sensor and boost gauge.

This is the absolute minimum. There is no way you get a running, even halfway reliable turbo Miata car with less of a budget if you're not one hell of a fabricator.

Thank you!!!
I have a friend who is going to fab the exhaust
I can't wait to get this project started !