Ever since I got the Miata, I’ve been itching to put a turbo in there.  Yeah, the car is a pleasure to drive, handles wonderfully, beautifully designed, etc.  But it is sorely lacking some grunt.  120bhp just will not cut it here, and imagine, a car that does not have the go to match its looks.  I mean, what, it takes like 10 seconds to do 0-100km/h… seriously.  I am getting overtaken by Toyota Corollas on a daily basis!!

So, it’s been determined that the car was going to be turbocharged.  Now wait, since we are going to put a turbo in there, why not just put in the newer 1.8L engine in there as well?  In conjunction with that, we can also put in the later model 6 speed transmission.  Considering that we are going to do so much, might as well go the whole nine yards and drop in the LSD in the rear as well so we can have a little sideways action occasionally.

Oh, I wasn’t quite done there when I was mentioning all those modifications that had the domino effect; one after another.  Consequently, I just had to rip out the complete motor and send the car for a thorough paint job.  Being the anal self I am, instructions were given to the painter that every nook and cranny had to be covered with the new color.

In addition, I do not want the car to be  heavy-ful of putty and filler, all dings and dents on the car body needed to be pre-prepped by Master Craftsman Mr Lye of Lye Designs.  He painstakingly massaged every imperfection and returned me a car with all the panels dent-free! So there you have it, a simple turbo bolt on job has totally evolved into rebuilding a perfectly good road going car.  Ahhh…. but that’s just us at DrivenCrazy; a bunch of motorheads that just cannot leave their their cars alone.

Car being prepped for paint

Minimum putty and primered.  The car was given a couple coats of primer and then sanded down for a perfect finish.

Ahh… finished product

Here are the parts for the engine and drivetrain.

2000 NB1 half cut, crashed but in otherwise good condition.  Comes with the variable intake manifold but no VVT.

Bilstein shock absorber in the fronts

Bilstein shock absorber with Autoexe lowering springs in the rear

I do not understand the different springs… perhaps the Japanese swapped out the front Autoexe springs to use them in their Giant wastegates to run more boost pressure.

Complete rear subframe with LSD

Hondata Intake Manifold Gasket to keep the intake temps in check.  I just had to have some Hondata products in the Miata, ultimately am still a true Honda fan at heart.

Turbo Manifold

Rebuilding the engine before putting it back on the car.  Notice the VICS intake manifold, made gobs of torque in the mid range when having it switched on or off at the right RPM.

Type R Style Red Valve Cover

The car makes about 250bhp now, a far cry for the paltry factory 120bhp.  It’s such a blast to drive now.  The Corolla uncles are much less successful now when they try to accelerate to close up the gap with the front car to refuse me a chance to merge into their lanes!!!

Happy Lunar New Year to everyone.  Hoped you had a good one!

It has been a relaxing one for me and having nothing much to do, I decided to install something new to my car.

Nothing fancy, nothing too technical, just some simple 12 year old technical class tasks.

The car this time is the 2001 Mazda MX-5.  This car has a room light so dim, its basically useless.  When its dark, you can forget about tearing coupons, looking for Touch’n'Go Cards if you dropped it, or something essential like reading your map when lost.  Sure, we all know the MX-5 is not the most practical vehicle to own, but come on, Mazda could have put in a couple more lights couldn’t they?!?

Anyway, since we have a full warehouse of car accessories, I basically have access to numerous types of super bright LEDs at my disposal.  This was something that I have been wanting to do since early 2009, but well, procrastination is always good…

so that I can work on other MORE important stuff.

I chose these

Small and bright enough to fit on one of the panels on the dashboard.

Of course, just a good dose of double sided tape will work well enough to have them fully functional and connected to a on-off switch.  But if that were my standards, I’d rather die or just put something like this instead, something we use in the house.

NO!  I will not have any of those slipshod work… I just got to have them the best, the neatest and something that will make me smile every time I use it.

While surfing Yahoo!Japan, I came across this used switch.  Originally used to disable power to the windows, but it will work for my application too!

Now, time to get the hands dirty and start working.

Firstly, we drill a small hole.

Then get a hole saw the right size and drill it to suit.  Since it is the Lunar New Year, and none of the hardware shops are open.  I just have to use the closest sized hole saw I have.  It would have saved some time if I got the right sized one as I can just drill it through and have it fit perfectly than having to port the hole to get the perfect size.

After we are done with that, time to port it so that it matches perfectly and the LED will sit flushed with the surface.

Trusty Standard Abrasive Head Porting tools to the rescue.

Perfect fitment!

With all that hard work out of the way, time to wire up the car.  Since these LEDs sap very little power, I just thought that its easier to wire the 12V power direct so that I can have it working as and when, rather then having to switch the ignition to Acc.

Some simple wiring work, and everything was hooked up nicely.

Factory style switch.

Super bright footwell!

A shot at night, man, I need shades!

Now, this was how the MX-5 should have come right from the factory.