So, a bunch of years ago I started a build thread for my Miata, as found here. But then I got sick of constantly fixing Photobucket links, and perceived lack of interest, and got behind and never got caught up. If you don't want to reread the whole thing, I bought (and overpaid) for what I thought was a nice stock '90 B-package that had some issues under the skin. Fixed it up and built it into a fun street car and went autocrossing with it.
As I bought it:
As it sits at the end of last year:
So, the specs in its most recent form:
1990 Miata B-package
Stock 1.6L, Racing Beat header, FM high-flow catalytic converter, Good-Win Racing Roadster Sport 3 stainless exhaust.
Stock 5-speed. 10lb flywheels and FM stage 1 clutch. '96 4.10 Torsen swap.
Full poly bushing kit. FM/VMAXX coilovers. FM front sway bar (rear removed,) with FM billet mounts and Racing Beat links. FM front shock tower brace. FM rear subframe brace. Blackbird Fabworx GT3 rollbar with custom 2-stage Prismatic Purple Mist powdercoat. 1.8L brake upgrade with Porterfield pads and new calipers. Custom (aggressive) alignment by yours truly. Jongbloed 15x8" wheels with 205/50R15 RE71Rs.
R-package lips. Jass low-profile headlamps. Jass Performance Stealth turn signal intakes. Carbonmiata carbon fiber finish panel. Blackbird Fabworx tow strap. Nardi Deep Corn steering wheel. 1997 M-edition shift knob with alcantara shifter boot. Jass Performance vintage switch panel. FM pedal kit. Functional A/C and power steering and cruise control. Some aftermarket radio.
And probably some stuff that I'm forgetting.
It got me runner up in the Novice class for the 2015 season, then won C/SP (by default) in 2016, and then won me our composite SP/SM class for 2017. Also have done some sweet roadtrips in it, including three separate trips to the Tail Of The Dragon.
Also tossed it on a chassis dyno last year, and made a whopping 92hp and 79lb-ft of torque to the rear tires (it picked up a horsepower on the second pull)
And then I had a crisis of faith and got bored of it. I made a thread asking you guys what I should do. As the first post stated:
I'm having a bit of a crisis of faith in the Church Of Miata, and I am looking for you fellow GRM'ers to help me out (although I think I know what the answers will likely be). I've owned my Miata for the past 4 years and have fiddled with pretty much every aspect, in the process turning it into what I call a C/SP Lite car. Recently I took it out for about a 3 hour drive and came back to the house, and it wasn't until the next day that I realized that I just didn't really enjoy the drive. Didn't hate it, but it didn't put a smile on my face.
The problems:
-Power: I know that people insist that Miata's aren't a numbers car, but 115hp gets pretty tiring after a while, when you have to knock down to 3rd or 4th gear to climb hills, and you have to flog it away from every stoplight to prevent getting run over because even minivans make triple the horsepower these days. Planned on dropping in a built '00 1.8L this winter, but I'm not sure if I want to spend that time and money and still not really be satisfied. And, yes, I know Keith would be willing to sell me a turbo, or I could drop in any other number of engines, but that plays into Problem 2
-Uncompetitive: I kinda pigeonhold myeself into C/SP through a Torsen swap and an aluminum flywheel. I win our combined SP/SM class every year, but strictly because I'm the only person to show up consistently. Have yet to win an event where there is competition. And it's irritating to run fast raw times and then get bombed back to bottom of the heap overall. I could build it into true C/SP car, but that would be expensive and I wouldn't want to drive it on the street and I refuse to own a car that I have to trailer. I could go back to STR (now that the Torsen swap is legal) but I would have to change back the flywheel (ugh) and I'd be up against S2000s. I could also go to STS (switch out the flywheel and put the 1.6L VLSD in and munch through those like candy) but that'd go back to Problem 1 of still having 115hp.
Holding Me Back: I want to do Targa Southland or SCCA Nationals or even just track days but it's not really possible with this car. A lot of tracks in the area won't let you out in a roadster without a rollbar and harnesses. And harnesses mean race seats. And a lot of race seats don't fit Miatas or end up sitting higher than stock seats (not good when I'm 6'3" and 240lbs). The whole uncompetitive thing factors into Nationals (Not that I think I'll go decimate, but I'd feel dumb running C/SP at Nationals on 205-series 200TW tires and a stock 1.6L). And Targa Southland I would not want to attempt to spend a weekend and 600 miles in the car with someone and enough clothes and gear for the event.
-Minor Issues: The body is getting kinda scruffy, minor dents and dings and a really E36 M3ty repaint. I'm tired of incurable water leaks. I'm tired of rattles. I feel like if I ever got in a crash or hit a deer, I'd just straight-up die. I go on long road trips and it's kinda buzzy traveling at 70mph and 3500rpm. I dislike that I can't fit real tires under it without hacking up the body or running monster truck ride height.
What I Do Like: I have it pretty much sorted out, as far as gremlins and reliability. Parts are cheap, consumables are cheap. It's easy to work on. It's pre-OBDII, so I can go wild with mods. The underlying chassis is great. These cars are pretty well-known, if it has an issue, can likely find the solution easily.
There was a lot of discussion on selling it and replacing it with a 350Z or a Frisbee or a C5 or an E36 M3. And then it all went full circle and I got talked into keeping it and building a full force supercharged engine and saying to hell with PAX and competitiveness. I know this particular car, I like the Miata chassis, I like how consumables and parts are cheap.
Now, time to backtrack a little. In the spring of 2016 I had been randomly wandering the junkyard when I stumbled across this sad-looking 2000 Miata with it's 1.8L still installed.
I promptly returned and mounted a full force salvage effort and stashed away the BP-4W out of it.
Sadly someone had left the #1 sparkplug out and the engine was full of water and it was seized. So it then proceeded to sit for almost a year, although I routinely pumped it full of ATF and MMO in hopes of loosening things up. A teardown in the winter of '16-'17 revealed some weird findings.
Clean top end.
Bearings with little to no wear
Crank and rods that showed no heat damage or oil starvation
Cylinders 2 thru 4 all had clean bores with little to no ridge and crosshatching that was still visible.
Cylinder 1 was ugly, but that was because of water intrusion
It seems to me that this engine was rebuilt and then barely run or even never run. I wish I knew what the story was. I then loaded it up and ran it over to my favorite machinist, Kevin Miner at Blockhead Enterprises and dropped it off with him. For $750, the engine was bored 0.010" over, honed, line-honed, decked, hot-tanked, pistons were installed on rods (pistons, rings and bearings were also included in that $750), crank was polished, head was disassembled and cleaned and rotating assembly was balanced. Yeah, it was a real steal, worth the month wait. The machine work is beautiful.
But by then it was too close to the start of the '17 season and I didn't want to miss an event on the chance that I had a problem, so I sprayed the block and crank with WD-40, bagged it all up good and then stored it someplace safe until this year.
subbed for supercharged awesomeness
Nick, I REALLY like what you've done to the appearance of this one. Exactly what I'd do to one too. Bonus that this blue is my favorite color.
I'll be following along.
In reply to Indy-Barely Functional-Guy :
I've tried to straddle the show and go lines. See a lot of pretty Miatas that don't get driven hard and a lot of fast Miatas that are really ugly.
That's a head turner of a car. The sleepy lights and purple roll bar are a great combo.
Why is this called Project Barbados?
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
So, there's a funny story on the purple rollbar. Back in college a friend of mine that had a DB8 Integra that he was setting up for road racing and it had a Maeco paint job that was a similar shade of blue and he had a bunch of purple-anodized bits and I loved it. Jump forward a few years, and while planning on getting a rollbar I considered metallic purple but then decided I would get the standard black in case I ever decided to have the car painted or wrapped in a different color (considered the Renown scheme for a while)
So I call Blackbird Fabworx and get on the phone with Moti (super nice guy and hell of a fabricator) and tell him I need a GT3 rollbar for an NA Miata and he asks the color. I answered with the standard semi-gloss black and there's a pause and he says "Well, I might have an offer for you" Turns out someone ordered a rollbar with a custom 2-stage powdercoat and the bar had just returned to the shop that day, but the customer called and backed out of the deal. He says he'll knock 50% of the powdercoat charge and the bar will ship that day, rather than wait the standard 2 weeks for it to get bent, welded and powdercoated. I ask the the color and he goes "Well, it's bold. It's metallic purple" I started laughing and took it as a sign that it was meant to be and bought it.
A couple days later I made an offhand remark on her about it and Keith Tanner says "Oooh, I saw that. It's pretty wild" and I start having second thoughts. When it shows up, I open it up, take one look and start laughing. And proceeded to do so every couple hours. I would sneak down to the basement and look at it and just start laughing to myself. Response has also been super positive, aside from a few old guys who "don't really get the color" That was literally the only cosmetic change I made last year and the car went from an occasional approving nod to people nearly crashing and burning on the highway to catch up to me and tell me how awesome the car is.
I love this photo taken at an autocross with the rising sun casting a nice hue on it.
The world needs more purkle!!!
Woody said:Why is this called Project Barbados?
Okay, so I'm big into Japanese culture, including anime, particularly Gundam. In the most recent series, Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans, the main protagonists Gundam was the ASW-G-08 Barbatos. When it first shows up early in the show, the Gundam is an old relic, beat up, missing parts and generally incomplete. As the show progresses, parts are stolen from destroyed enemy units to upgrade it, as well as having some new parts built for it. Compared to other Gundam series, Barbatos is generally less powerful than other Gundams, and is a lightweight, agile, close-range melee fighter. It also tends to be rather difficult to pilot, and kind of has a mind of its own.
My Miata was pretty beat up when I got it, with bent front and rear suspension parts and the unibody ahead of the shock towers has been grafted on, hinting at some pretty severe trauma at some time. The top leaked, it had a lot of poorly-done work and has a scruffy repaint that wasn't well done (condenser and bits of trim are painted over). It has a non-original transmission from an early "1989" car (done before I got it), a '96 Torsen rearend swap, a junkyard front bumper off another Mariner Blue '90, and soon an engine from a 2000 Miata. And the Miata is typically less powerful than it's peers, but light and agile. And between the lightweight, the lack of ABS and the fact that the car is hard to catch once it starts to spin, people struggle co-driving it.
While watching the series, it was my non-car friend that made the connection. It also doesn't hurt that the "real" Barbatos was one badass looking piece of equipment.
There's one other slightly more sinister comparison. Gundam Barbatos slowly consumes its pilot, leaving his right eye, arm and leg useless through neural damage from interfacing with it. In a similar way, my Barbatos consumes my finances and time
So, with my course decided, November of 2017 I began my engine build.
Cleaned the block, installed the piston oil squirters, checked my main and rod bearing clearances and installed ARP main bearing studs. I had forgotten how therapeutic engine-building can be. I also learned that when you ask the guy at the parts store for Plasti-gage, you will get a blank stare.
Set my piston ring endgap on my Mazda Motorsports 0.010" over pistons. Mazda recommends 0.020" gap as the maximum for stock applications but I went to 0.025" after consulting with BP Performance Specialties. I'd rather have a little blowby and oil burning than stick a ring and bust a piston off.
And then slammed those guys home.
Installed the new oil pump, front and rear main seals, and that finned cast-aluminum oil pan
Around this point I noticed that there was a non-threaded hole in the oil pump. And my old pump didn't have it? What the? Do some research and find that all replacement pumps have that hole for the dipstick tube in FWD applications, and that you have to order a $3 blind plug to fill it in. I bought it from a company that caters to Miatas, so why don't they just raise the price the $3 for the plug and automatically include it in the kit, considering probably 99% of the people ordering a pump from them are buying it for an RWD application. So I ended up waiting a week for a $3 plug + $6 S+H to show up.
And with that, the short block was wrapped up
Moving topside, I installed ARP head studs
Then dropped on that sweet solid-lifter, raised-port head that makes the BP-4W the guy to get
Then an M-Tuned coolant reroute, new water pump and all the timing stuff
Also, unseen is the Miataroadster phenolic intake manifold spacer kit
And this is where the engine build stopped for the time being, as I had to pull the 1.6L from the car to grab all the sensors and timing covers to swap over. So I set the valve cover over the top, wrapped everything up nice and rolled it off into a corner.
In the meantime, while I waited for the garage to get free, I did order my MegaSquirt PNP. My thought process was that even if things went financially sideways and I couldn't afford a blower kit, I could at least drop in the beefed 1.8L and have a little more power on tap
I will also admit to having no clue what I'm doing with this E36 M3, and once the car is together will likely try and get a local GRM'er to come help me get it street-tuned.
After a lot of thought and wringing of hands and consternation over the impending financial impact, I then pulled the trigger on Track Dog Racing's supercharger kit. Although I had originally considered getting the Kraftwerks kit, I liked that Track Dog's kit could be tailored to the individual car and the bits I didn't need could be deleted. Also, the fact that Track Dog's kit came with the bigger C30-84 head unit, versus Kraftwerk's C30-74 (resulting in 240whp vs 195whp) didn't hurt. And Track Dog's customer service is also phenomenal to deal with. A little back and forth, and a considerable sum of money (more than I spent on the car ! 
) and I was the proud owner of a supercharger kit.
The tastiest thing to come out of Denmark since the cheese Danish
I also ordered a Hoonigan boost gauge because I'm juvenile
So if a Koenigsegg uses twin Rotrex blowers on a 32V, 4 cam V8 and I'm putting a single Rotrex on a 16V, twin cam 4-cylinder, does that essentially mean that my car is half a Koenigsegg?
Yes, a Gsegg
Or if the turbo is at the other end of the motor, a Ggesg, which I prefer for breakfast.
Wheee! Belt driven snail! I'm liking where this is going 
This thread makes me happy.
Finally, on February 11th, it made its journey indoors under the propulsion of its original B6 for the last time. The little 1.6L had lasted 28 years and 140k miles, but was starting to leak oil from every orifice, smoked a little under hard acceleration and was making 15psi of oil pressure under hot idle. It had started to develop some piston slap under cold startup, as well as the usual lifter rattle when hot.
Also, in the above photo, note that this is essentially being done in a single car garage without a lift, and without the major use of any power tools. There is an air compressor but it's very inefficient and noisy and irritates the hell out of me. I did use a Snap-On cordless impact for some stuff like the powerplant frame bolts though
Removed and tossed the A/C system. It was still charged with R12 and operational, but I rarely used it up here in New York's more temperate climate, and with the supercharger going in, I wanted every bit of air going through the radiator and intercooler. I couldn't get any of the inline fittings or the fittings at the condenser to separate, so I had to pull the complete lines and condenser. And then broke a bolt off in the compressor.
So long weirdo restrictive flappy-door air flow meter, you won't be missed. A GM IAT and a MAP sensor with Megasquirt will instead be taking over from here on out. And deleting the AFM allows me to keep my cruise control, which makes me happy.
But first, we discovered that even with the front bumper and crash support removed, the Harbor Freight 1-ton engine hoist with load leveler still won't reach the engine. So Dad took it down to the old '40s Craftsman drill press in his basement and did some modifications to it. Kids, don't try this at home, please.
Surprisingly there was very little jockeying to remove the entire driveline assembly, although we had to angle it pretty severely. I wanted to take a Slim Pickens/Dr. Strangelove pose on the removed driveline, but others were not so amused by the idea.
So long, little 1.6L. Not sure what I'm going to do with it at this point. It still ran okay. Maybe freshen it up and drop it in something else. I'm not sure. Also, that motor mount lying on the floor had the rubber completely ripped in 2. And it appeared to have been that way for a while.
The engine bay is rather gooey.
Then I grabbed all the sensors and harnesses of the 1.6L and swapped them over to my new engine. I also jammed in some of Herr Deatschwerk's 700cc injectors. You can see the Miataroadster phenolic spacer kit from this angle as well.
I also triple-checked the timing repeatedly, because I am paranoid about timing on Miatas. The procedure is so vague and uses "approximate" a few more times than is appropriate. Yes, it won't crash the valves, but it will run rough.
Finally I got to bolt on my prized JDM/EDM BP-5A intake manifold. Until the Skunk2 Ultra intakes come out for the Mazda BP family this year, this intake was the best intake available for these engines. Also, it lacks the variable runner system, which is one less thing to wire up and sort out. Strangely, it comes with a few less vacuum ports than the 1.6L or BP-4W intake though, so I'm going to have to build a vacuum distribution block or something.
Also worth noting is the Mazdaspeed Miata PCV valve, the Flyin' Miata throttle body adapter and the Flyin' Miata throttle cable bracket for adapting a 1.8L to a 1.6L car.
NickD said:There's one other slightly more sinister comparison. Gundam Barbatos slowly consumes its pilot, leaving his right eye, arm and leg useless through neural damage from interfacing with it. In a similar way, my Barbatos consumes my finances and time
Goddamnit the show is spoiled for me now.
But seriously, I'm really excited for this. Personally, I don't see many 4-cylinders get a supercharger.
GIRTHQUAKE said:NickD said:There's one other slightly more sinister comparison. Gundam Barbatos slowly consumes its pilot, leaving his right eye, arm and leg useless through neural damage from interfacing with it. In a similar way, my Barbatos consumes my finances and timeGoddamnit the show is spoiled for me now.
But seriously, I'm really excited for this. Personally, I don't see many 4-cylinders get a supercharger.
Sorry for the spoiler.
Yeah, I considered a turbocharger, but they seemed very fiddly. Plus there are extra coolant and oil lines to develop leaks and junk your engine (like the magazine's project Miata), or if your turbo blows up it can contaminate your engine's oil supply. Also, a vacuum leak can cause a swift death as well. And they are more difficult to tune than a supercharger, due to no direct constant correlation between engine rpm and boost.
The supercharger is self-contained. The usual failure mode is either a thrown belt or a slipping belt and a lack of power. It's easier to tune. And the Rotrex superchargers have nearly the efficiency of a turbocharger, making it a best of both worlds scenario
You'll need to log in to post.
