Forged NB Roadster

conorwilson93

conorwilson93

Member
Oh hai.

Better late than never, I've been wanting to do this for a while now as I would like to document progress as the car gets built. Whether people look and read it I don't mind, I'm doing this more for myself.


First off its a 04 MX-5/Roadster/Miata (where're you from fam?) with a currently standard NA engine.


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^PhotoMakeBridle^
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I'll put some more images at the bottom for those who are interested.


I've had my fun for over two years with the NA power (140hp 15 years ago) but I've decided now it's time to hunt for more power and inevitably ruin my super reliable daily drifter


The plan is forged rods and pistons with to hold up a T28. Spec of the engine should be something like:


Supertech pistons (84mm oversize with a compression drop from 10:1 to 9:1)
Wiseco Rings
Manley rods
Boundary oil pump
Competition Clutch Stage 4 6 puck clutch


With an end result of having (around) 250/270whp.


I'm using an offline engine so I can still daily the car in the meantime. The strip down of the engine began mid/late December and I PLAN (because plans always work right?) for it to be in and ready for mapping by the end of March.


At the moment I'm waiting for the block to come back from the machine shop and we'll go from there. It's worth noting I definitely am not a mechanic, I've never built an engine. Apart from the basic/easy stuff I haven't done anything like this before, see me doing something stupid? lemme know.


Here is the spec of the car as of now:


Exterior:
WORK Kiwami CRKai 15x8 et15 (I think)


Bomex front bumper
Unkown front canards
Bomex Skirts
Zeromotive rear canards
Carbon Miata roof spoiler
Super wicked dope paint


Engine:
K&N intake
DW Supercool Rad


Exhuast:
IL motorsport mid pipe
MX-5parts back box
(quiet as fuuuu)


Interior bits:
Nardi Classic 330mm
Sparco bucket seat
Roadster chequered floor matts
Jetstream shorty console
Carbing shifter
GC1 half cage/roll bar
Jazz ebrake button


Chassis:
DW rear upper control arms
Racing beat rear anti roll bar
Powerflex rear lower control arm bushes
Powerflex front anti roll bar bushes
Flyin Miata extended lower ball joints
HSD Dual tech coilovers




Think that's about it for now. Peace!


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^Paterson Photo^
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^DZE^
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^Paterson Photo^
 
Big fan of this car mate. Seen it quite a bit on the interweb. Have had 4 of them now and alway end up back with another. In fact I did also have a mk2.5 and bomex, but not a patch on this.

As for the engines dude you can get round 250whp on stock internals and a td04 or t25 ;) they are forged from factory. If you are overboring it etc it'll be rude not to go for a bigger turbo and take a pi$$ on that 300hp figure ha!

Keep it up though, it looks amazing
 
Thanks man appreciate it.

I thought the mk1s had a forged crank but didn't think the mk2s had any forged internals, especially as they bend rods at around 220hp.

My idea is to build an engine that can take way more power than I'm actually going to run so it SHOULD be reliable. In theory it should be capable of around 350ish until you start getting issues with the head so 270whp should be decent if possible.

Due to Rockingham just announcing their outer paddock day at the end of March I may delay the build for a couple weeks, I don't want it interfering with actually driving the car haha.
 
Very good call with the event mate. People normally want to rush the job and get it ready but rushing isn't the right thing to do if you've just spent out on expensive parts. Na my mate was running round 260 in his NB. But having it built as you are will last years ;) Sounds great, and you have the exterior on point :smokin:

Check out Dennis Köhler's old mx5 for a big powered turbo build. He has a v8 in it now, but was 350+ from an 1800 :wack:
 
Al_E11evens said:
Very good call with the event mate. People normally want to rush the job and get it ready but rushing isn't the right thing to do if you've just spent out on expensive parts. Na my mate was running round 260 in his NB. But having it built as you are will last years ;) Sounds great, and you have the exterior on point :smokin:

Check out Dennis Köhler's old mx5 for a big powered turbo build. He has a v8 in it now, but was 350+ from an 1800 :wack:
Click to expand...

Ah nice, yeah I'll check that out for sure!
 
Hi Conor, as you've seen micks 1.6 with a t25 has made 255 at the fly on 10psi
You should have no problem with making the power you want.
You are quite committed as far as I can see, the mapper said to us the weakest leak was the rods in the 1.6 and there wasn't much need for the pistons to be changed, however your there and going for it.
Will follow this.

I made a 2.5inch down pipe and centre for micks, apparently ideal size. Worked.
 
Thanks man.

Yeah the pistons weren't 100% necessary but it was a combination of 1. There was an ever so slight amount of scoring on 1 or 2 cylinders (I can't remember) and 2. The downwards spiral of "Well whilst I'm in here I may as well..."

The oil pump is also something that fails above 250 due to the extra vibrations. The new Boundary pump is higher flowing and has billet gears so that should cope with no issues. Yeah I believe the plan is a 2.5 inch down pipe too :)
 
Small update,

I measured the ring gaps last night but thought I would do a double check tonight.
https://pixxxels.org/

Unfortunately I found some inconsistencies from my checking last night, mainly annoying because it shows that I'm not concentrating as much as I should be, any how we'll be triple checking them before we make any adjustments.

At this point it's worth noting "we" will usually mean myself and Luke from Drift Limits Performance, this is where most/all of the work will be carried out for the most part, I'm lucky enough to be able to use the garage in my own time and I'll get his advice and help as of when I need it/he is available. If it wasn't for Luke and the garage I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am now.

Anyway... Shiny things..

https://postimage.org/


After checking and making note of the gaps I moved onto some general cleaning, getting old gaskets off etc etc so when the time comes to reassemble I wont have (as many) annoying set backs.

https://postimage.org/

I'm trying to keep the asthetics up as much as I can, and sometimes that means painting engine hooks in my free time.... haha

https://postimage.org/

Fortunately Adam of Retroshine will be sorting me out a fancy rocker cover which I can't wait to see.

Garage cat seems to approve so it's a thumbs up from me
https://postimage.org/app.php

A couple things I forgot to mention before:

Head has already been sent and returned from the machine shop which as been skimmed, rebuilt with new valve seals and clearances checked.
I've cleaned and refurbished the rx8 injectors I'll be using.
I'll be using ACL race bearings.

In the last couple days I also ordered the intercooler, oil feed line, ECU and boost controller which I'm eagerly awaiting.

I'm hoping to spend some time this week getting the bottom end assembled but for now I'm gunna catch up on my reading so I have a fighting chance of not completely getting this all terribly wrong.

That's all for now ;)
 
Have you got to gap the rings yourself dude?
If so and you haven't got anything to do it with, I have the tools from when I done wiseco on the NSX and the dragster!
 
Cheers Marg but Luke from DLP will be giving me a hand with the ring gaps, we have the right equipment too but thanks for offering :) appreciate it.

So not much of an update. Oil feed line, intercooler, and boost controller turned up. Still awaiting the ECU from ME. I've measured up the intercooler and luckily enough it fits really well, no serious chopping required which is awesome and I get to keep my oem bash bar. I'll just need to cut two holes in the under tray for the piping. I'll be ordering the piping when payday comes in a couple days. Attached a picture of it where I want it to sit, just need to make up some brackets for it

Yesterday my front left caliper decided it didn't want to hold fluid anymore which was annoying, luckily I was able to get hold of a spare whilst I rebuild my old one so that took up the little available time I had to work on the car yesterday.

I've sent my fuel rail to Dan from Destroy or Die so he can make it a dual feed. He's also helped me out with a T28 AND he's making my manifold, bit of a legend.

Luke's fortunately able to give me a hand on Wednesday evening with rebuilding of the bottom end so I hope to have some more impressive updates then.

Peace
 

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Small update.

Managed to get the crank in last night. We got the plastigage out and checked all the clearances which came out a little larger than expected but after a lot of reading on the interwebs and a couple phone calls we decided we could work with what we had and it shouldn't be a problem.



All the clearances were the same which was ideal. So we bolted it down and by then it started getting on a bit so I put the oil squirters in and called it a night.

https://postimage.org/

Not sure when but the next task will be getting the rings gapped correctly and getting the pistons and rods in. In terms of what ring gap we'll follow the chart from Wiseco and go for the Street Moderate Turbo/Nitros size.

Really cannot wait to get on with this but I know I can't rush it haha.

I managed to get a Rockingham outer paddock ticket for the 30th March so a bit of prep will need to happen between now and then. I should hopefully have a pair of the new Destroy or Die adjustable front lower arms which I can't wait to try out.
 
RIGHT, getting closer.

This evening we got exciting/nerve racking.

Firstly we sorted the ring gaps.

IMG_8740_1.jpg


I don't have the specs to hand but if anybody wants to know I'll dig them up. I sucked at using the ring gap tool, just pussy footing it. It would have taken me probably about 5 hours if I was doing it by myself so I let Luke take care of most of them. I think I ended up doing one ring which took me about 25 minutes haha.

After that was sorted we got the rods and and pistons together, all pretty easy apart from the pin clips being a bit tricky but sods law I got the hang of it on the last one.

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And the rings on... This was pretty stressful as I know it would be typical for me to snap something at this point but with guidance it wasn't too bad. Lubed up and seated the bearings all good.

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and then placed the rings in the correct positions and together we got the pistons and rods in the block and torqued to the crank:

IMG_8753_1.jpg


Stoked! Massively stoked.

After about 10 minutes of gazing at it I packed up and went home. Can't wait to get this finished now that most of the scary stuff is over. I would like to say I did all of it myself and that I've been an engine builder from birth but Luke stepped in a fair bit making sure I was doing it right. One of the main reasons why I wanted to do all this was for the learning aspect of it, good fun just super stressful.

Anyway I hope to be down the garage most nights now trying to get this finished. The target is still the end of March and I think that's pretty achievable.
 
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Sooooooooo been an exciting week.

After the bottom end went in the rest is down to me pretty much. So firstly I just got the rest of the old gaskets off the intake and exhaust whilst the head was easy to move around.

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Looking at this now I really need to clean the side of the head hahah damn it!

Fitted the cam pulley seals and got the pulleys back on only to realise I missed the backing plate. Glad I realised this now and not in a weeks time. Also got the thermostat housing on too after giving it a quick freshen up.

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I air blasted the block and all the channels and head bolt holes and made sure it was all clean and ready to go. Locating dowels and gasket on. Hopefully the last time I'm having to look at this......

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It started getting late at this point and my tiredness started to show seeing as I just couldn't seem to get the head on the dowels and at the time I was convinced it wouldn't be possible with the water pump on which was pretty stupid seeing as I previously took the head off with said water pump still attached but as I said I was getting tired and just wasn't concentrating. Anyway I took the water pump off and the head went on with ease when I stopped being retarded.

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Called it a night there. Next evening I lubed up the head bolts and washers and got them torqued down and that was it as I went to see Joe Dunlop to see how he was getting on with his SRFC which was cool

Sorry Joe but if you wont update your thread thought I may as well let people know it's still going haha
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This evening I've just been fitting the little bits such as the water pump, new boundary oil pump (shiny shiny), belt tensioners, crank pulley and key way, thermostat, PAS pump brackets and just general checking over my old work making sure what I've done already is correct.

A lot of brackets, bolts and pulleys have got some surface rust on from where my super awesome super air tight super water tight labelled zip lock bags got moisture in so a lot of time on this rebuild has been spent wiping/sanding stuff down to make it look more presentable.

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And this is now how it's sitting

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Decided to wash the actual car the other day too! I can't wait for summer

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Now I'm just waiting for my rocker to come back from Adam at Retroshine, get the flywheel skimmed and get the belts on and continue putting on the little bits. I'll be travelling up north on Sunday to see Dan from Destroy or Die to pick up my adjustable lower arms, manifold and turbo :D Engine to be built by the end of March is still on schedule I think.
 
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