help me figure out exactly what im looking at with my new to me miata turbo

and yes, ill need spoon fed. i have no idea what i don't know yet.

long story short, i bought this car: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/cars-sale/2000-hardtop-miata-nb-mild-built-engine-with-fm2-6/174429/page1/
supposedly a flyin miata voodo 2 kit running on AEM management. 

so, im trying to figure out what's actually there. and what's missing. and what i need to do next. my plan is to scab the wreck back together enough to drive around the neighborhood and make sure everything is still healthy. then, assuming it is, drive back to back with my v6 drivetrain car and see which one i like better. then combine the best aspects of both cars. like i said, general plan. i want a less racecar miata again, and more joy in life. less hassle, more seat time. less compromise, more...

anyway, ive been getting it cleaned out and starting to assess all the stuff the svrex sent with me and what is there. ill start with the engine bay pictures i took yesterday. i moved the air intake and maf from the turbo inlet to the throttle body side so the car would run and drive itself onto the trailer saturday. so i know where that goes! I've just never seen that particular intake setup with a turbo anywhere. the blowoff valve(?) doesn't seem to have anywhere to go. it may have been on the old intercooler piping, but that's gone. the manifold has some odd extra fuel rail and injectors that aren't hooked up to anything. there's an unplugged sensor and no corresponding wiring in the piping that had gone to the intercooler. turbo seems to be a Garett, but didn't find any markings other than what's pictured, and the manifold is cast with flyin miata. the vacuum wastegateseems fixed in place, or maybe seized.
20240526_111732 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20240526_111742 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20240526_111807 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20240526_111811 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20240526_111821 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20240526_111909 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr

so, what do i have in the engine bay? what do i need to know about it, and where's a good place to start my education on it? i know its based somewhere in flying miata parts, but cant seem to line it up with any of they're website stuff. basically how does it all go back together to make it run like it was before?

next is engine management stuff. im a total newb here. its currently running on this AEM unit i think. how can i learn what it is, and what it does/doesn't do? im not sure if its a standalone or a piggyback. 
20240526_112033 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr

in the trunk was what i believe is a megasquirt plug and play and a coil on plug conversion kit. any idea how to figure out just what this stuff is?
20240526_161524 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
 

thanks yall. start with the baby spoon. 

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

Baby sized spoon?

Well, when a turbo and an engine love each other very much they form a symbiotic relationship.  The turbo latches onto the engine and the engine's love for the turbo makes the turbo's insides spin with joy!  That joy goes into the engine and the engine feels that joy and goes "Wheeeeeeee!!!!!"

Mr_Asa said:

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

Baby sized spoon?

Well, when a turbo and an engine love each other very much they form a symbiotic relationship.  The turbo latches onto the engine and the engine's love for the turbo makes the turbo's insides spin with joy!  That joy goes into the engine and the engine feels that joy and goes "Wheeeeeeee!!!!!"

i laughed hard enough i just about pissed myself....

i had meant for spoon feeding me information. this is my second turbo car ever. the other one is the stock turbo baja....

The wastegate operates with pressure, probably won't start moving until 5-7psi.  It's going to have a righteous amount of spring tension pulling on the rod, pressure pushes it out.

What do the second fuel rail look like?  I wonder if it had a water injection setup.

I'd chime in, but I'm betting Keith will and he knows way more than I do.

Noob here as well, but here goes:

-Hella score on the Garrett/FM manifold. Might be worth thinking about their molded hoses and intercooler. They've done the engineering, and are maybe the only true bolt on kit. I assume Challenge budget will be far in the rearview before first drive.

- My MS PNP had a serial # that made it pretty obvious what it was for (serial# 9495 for a 94-95 Miata, as I recall.

-Just a thought- You might be able to trade that 6-speed for a 5-speed. I understand (but have no first hand knowledge of) the 6 speed being not ideal in auto cross. Something about having to shift up to third to get past 60 mph or something. I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will turn up directly.     Side note-In my napkin calculations for a similar, yet much more ghetto set up, the 5 speed and tall rearend will work out well gearing wise.

- What is the deal with those injectors? Paul, were they ever hooked up when you owned it? 

-To my poorly trained eye, that looks like a 99/00 intake.

Very cool project. I kind of hate to see the V6 go, but as far as a nice, quick street Miata goes, It is hard to argue with the FM setup. I will follow.

So that intake manifold/fuel rail setup is from a very early NB Flyin Miata/BEGI turbo kit (back when they worked together), circa 2001 or so.  At that point there was no plug-n-play NB ECU available, so they used a Link piggyback ECU.  It ran alongside the stock ECU, would read MAP and RPM, and controlled 4 auxilliary injectors in a second fuel rail, could retard timing from whatever the stock ECU was putting in, and had a boost controller.  The aux injectors were 400-ish cc/min Ford ones, I think, and it ran them in batch mode.  It had its own harness that tapped into the stock one by plugging into some of the sensor connectors at the front of the engine near the throttle body.  I don't see that on this car, so I suspect the piggyback electronics are long gone. 

The piggyback computer was good at getting the system up and running quickly, but it was difficult to fine tune so you had to leave a lot of margin for safety, run it lowish-boost and rich without a lot of timing.  I made 220 at the wheels on mine with a GT2560 turbo, which was about the most it would do.  The aux fuel rail was not the most reliable, the tabs on the mounts had a tendency to crack and a couple people had it down the intake side of the engine with fuel.  AFAIK none of them ever caught fire, but...

The AEM makes me think someone decided they were done with the piggyback and retrofitted another computer.  You had to send back in the original lower intake manifold after buying the kit though (as a core so it could be modified for the next customer), and I'm guessing they kept the rail, injectors, and bracket but disconnected from fuel just to plug the holes.

That could well be an MS PNP (can't tell if 2 or 3), yes.  That's not the Toyota COP conversion, perhaps it's the Fab9 one?  I'm not sure.  Do you have close-up pics of the other ECU?

Is it being driven in the current state?  If so, that's not great for the turbo.  Since it's not hooked up it's like it's got a massive boost leak, so the wastegate won't ever open and it's easy to overspeed a turbo doing that.

I'd guess that's a 2554 turbo, but I'm not sure.  Might be one of the older sleeve bearing T25s.

The powder-coated intake plumbing is old-style BEGI, but the manifold and downpipe were replaced at some point with newer FM pieces.

Is there an intercooler in the nose?

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

Its being moved in and out with it like the pictures show. But woth no radiator, or intercooler, im hesitant to run for more than a few seconds at a time. 

Ill get better pictures of the other ecu, but i found no identification on it anywhere. Just a featureless black box. 

Im trying to work out the intercooler and plumbing while i wait on my radiator to come in. That way i have a plan in place. I have a couple of boxes of aluminum tubing and silicone couplers picked up for ree at one of the challenges, and a handful of random intercoolers obtained the same way. But other than turbo outlet-intercooler-throttle body, not sure. Theres no place for the blowoff to dump other than atmosphere, no vacuum to the wastegate, etc. 

How do i learn more about the aem? Like, what it is and what its doing?

Should i worry about removing the extra rail and injectors and welding up the holes? Or switching to the "96" intake?

In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) :

It'll be challenge budget. Thats one of the main goals for this whole deal is to get the miata a return to the challenge. 

As far as gearing goes, i have 4:10, 3.90, amd 3.63 here. I loved the six speed in my nb2, and actually hated the five speeds in my other miatas. Go figure. 

It's hard to tell from one picture but the box looks like an AEM F/IC-6 piggy back controller. 

To the OP, I'm  not sure what that AEM box does, but hopefully it keeps working, because... AEM was recently bought by Holley, who made many changes to the product line, including ceasing production on a number of products.

I'm pretty sure the AEM is a piggyback, not a standalone. 

Dusterbd13-michael said:

Its being moved in and out with it like the pictures show. But woth no radiator, or intercooler, im hesitant to run for more than a few seconds at a time. 

Ill get better pictures of the other ecu, but i found no identification on it anywhere. Just a featureless black box. 

Im trying to work out the intercooler and plumbing while i wait on my radiator to come in. That way i have a plan in place. I have a couple of boxes of aluminum tubing and silicone couplers picked up for ree at one of the challenges, and a handful of random intercoolers obtained the same way. But other than turbo outlet-intercooler-throttle body, not sure. Theres no place for the blowoff to dump other than atmosphere, no vacuum to the wastegate, etc. 

How do i learn more about the aem? Like, what it is and what its doing?

Should i worry about removing the extra rail and injectors and welding up the holes? Or switching to the "96" intake?

It shouldn't overspeed at < 2K RPMs, but personally I would start it as little as possible.  You could try taking the little clip out that holds the wastegate rod to the actual flapper, see if that will unstick it, and if so then wire it open would be safer.

As far as the manifold goes, after I dumped the piggyback I ran mine as a staged injection system for a while.  Later I went to a normal 1-per-cylinder setup and plugged the holes using some bolts (long ones with unthreaded portion, but cut short), O-rings, and some other hardware to press them into the ports.

At some point after that I sold the piggyback kit (including the modified manifold) and bought a junkyard intake manifold to replace it.

AIUI, a 96 intake will not fit an NB head, the port geometry is different.

I don't know much about AEMs.  At one point it was semi-popular to buy cheap used Honda AEMs and use them to drive turbo Miatas by building an adapter harness, so maybe that's what it is?

If you can get the cover off the box and take a photo of the circuit board inside it's probably possible to determine if it's a megasquirt or not.

Codrus has it, that was originally a 20 year old FM2 running the Link piggyback. That was an emissions legal setup for certain model years, but it definitely had some limitations. Boost control was almost impossible to set up :) Anyhow, about the only part left from that original kit is the intake manifold and the throttle body inlet pipe, as the turbo manifold and downpipe are newer. If you had the turbo inlet piping, the bypass valve would make sense :)

I'd recommend this kit to get rid of that throttle body inlet tube and give you an intercooler and a better place for the bypass valve: https://flyinmiata.com/products/new-style-fm-intercooler-upgrade-for-nb. You can fabricate some of the other pre-turbo plumbing, I can send pics. Or we send you everything you need. That will not likely be compatible with a Challenge budget, it's the "I want this car to be good and easy" option ;)

I can probably ID that turbocharger from the A/R on the compressor housing, but I'll bet it's a GT2560. Doesn't look small enough for the 2554. 

I wouldn't concentrate on the coil on plug setup unless the car has a coil failure. 

You can put an NB manifold on an NA head and vice versa if you move the mounting points on the flange. Pics in "How to build a high performance Mazda Miata". They'll bolt up, but the ports are misaligned unless you modify the flange.

Dusterbd13-michael said:

As far as gearing goes, i have 4:10, 3.90, amd 3.63 here. I loved the six speed in my nb2, and actually hated the five speeds in my other miatas. Go figure. 

6-speed with 3.63 gives a pretty close approximation in total ratios to a 5-speed with a 4.3, plus an extra overdrive gear.  That's what I've got in my car and it works well -- at least with a big turbo.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

That link makes the plumbing make a lot more sense, but pictures would definitely be much appreciated sir. 

Is there any way to get pictures of the turbo that will help with id? 

And that 96 manifold will be going away.

Codrus: ill see what i can do when i get home, and get pictures of the guts of the black ecu, as well as possibly drop the plate the aem is mounted to and see if there's more identification. 

Thanks for all the help, everyone. I really, really appreciate it.

The AEM box is an FIC6 piggyback they work really well for what they are but are a bit of a chore to tune/tune around pretty solid piece for a challenge friendly ECU. That said the MS3 is way way superior. 

In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) :

Drive it hard have fun you will find the weakest link. Fix it have more fun repeat.  Eventually no more week links. From what I understand that is how Miata's work. 

In reply to dean1484 :

That's how I have been treating the v6 combination. I expect no different from the turbo!

Radiator should be here this week, as i need one regardless for the green car. Tonight will be Working through my bins and stash to see what all i have for piping and intercoolers  for a temp setup for testing. 

And getting ecu data.