Small MX-5 mods

Mine was relatively linear as there was very little lag, as the mapping was done to perfection. However, of course as you get higher power with bigger turbos it's going to get more "interesting" as you say! :D

SC's are more fun on big displacement engines IMO ;)
 
Freefaller said:
Mine was relatively linear as there was very little lag, as the mapping was done to perfection. However, of course as you get higher power with bigger turbos it's going to get more "interesting" as you say! :D

SC's are more fun on big displacement engines IMO ;)
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If that wink means what I think it means then... I'd probably just get a supercharged AMG Merc which would be cheaper. Or an S600 bi-turbo, which is a genuine consideration :)
 
Yeah it was a little tongue in cheek, actually the mini coopers and mx5s I've been in that are SC'ed are pretty sweet - I think I just prefer the turbo for smaller displacement cars. :)
 
Had 4 Michelin Pilot Exalto 2s fitted yesterday, having driven a few miles on them today I am happy with them :)

Today I swapped the dark blue dials with green illumination for some white dials with blue illumination. White dials came fitted as standard on some of these cars so it looks pretty OEM and LOADS better. It also means it will match my white-faced AEM AFR and GReddy temp dials.

Hopefully I will be fitting the GReddy gauges tomorrow so I will post up some pics then :)
 
Yesterday I fitted some Lockwood white dials and a nice heatshield to go under my supercharger.

lockwooddialsint.jpg


Today, with the help of a friend I set about wiring power to the AEM wideband and GReddy oil and water temp gauges.

The AEM is fed off the switched 12v feed and as the GReddy dials only need power for illumination they would be fed from the sidelight feed.

After a bit of soldering and whatnot, the power was all done and we were ready to test fit the dials...

...only they aren't 52mm. The AEM is, but the GReddy ones aren't. ******* ****. I'll have to stick them back up for sale and go and buy some, which is massively irritating. I was irritated enough to drive to Demon Tweeks to get some then and there but they don't open on a Sunday. Even more irritating.

I put my irritation to one side and decided that in the remaining light I'd do a few more bits and bobs ready for the supercharger build.

Ready to be chopped:

SCnose.jpg


Making up a bit of a blanking plate to protect from swarf:

SCnose2.jpg


Belt and braces, I don't want any swarf ruining the innards!

SCnose3.jpg


Gone!

SCnose4.jpg


Second throttle body cleaned up and a gasketed plate put over where the IACV once was:

2ndTB-cleaned.jpg


This TB also has a dual-cable wheel - I am wondering if I can swap this over with the one already on the car to make things easier...

2ndTB-dual.jpg
 
Plenty of people that will help you along if you need it - if you didn't live so far away I'd help you out!

If you wanted to DIY with minimal skills/tools I'd suggest you go for the Jackson Racing kit which in basic form without management pop up for anywhere between £1200 and £1800 fairly regularly. In fact, I know someone selling one if you're interested :)

I wanted to get properly involved in my build which is why I chose this route, but there are many ways to skin this particular cat!
 
Update!

So, this was Friday:

AEMFICbox.jpg


FICparts.jpg


TRLparts.jpg


stockecu.jpg



That stock ECU then became a donor...

ecuplug.jpg


Building the loom extension...

loombuilding.jpg


Some of the worst soldering I have ever seen and a few hours later we have this:

AEMloom.jpg


I'll hopefully get that test fitted tomorrow...

I believe that my TR Lane inlet is the new design, which I wasn't expecting to see (the pic on the site when I ordered was of the Barry Spiers design)

TRLABSinlet.jpg


This will help massively when it comes to avoiding problems with my ABS pump but it might mean that I was a bit premature with my 135mm bent pipe order. I'll have to wait until I've bought the MINI Bypass to see where the land lies on that front.

Finally, I was impressed overall with the quality of the TRL parts apart from this bit, strange that it is "unfinished":

outletfinish.jpg



Anyways, tomorrow I will bolt these all together and see where I am with the SC itself. I'm waiting on the mounting bracket and then I will be able to test fit it and see where things go with the ABS pipework routing design for the air filter.

I'll also be fitting my AEM wideband sensor, which I reckon will be 'fine' after my high-flow cat, I'll have to take it for an absolute thrash to see what the readings are like when the cat is red hot and/or saturated. I suspect that the AFR readings should be close enough.

Getting closer!
 
With regards to the fitment of the wideband sensor, are you looking at keeping the stock narrowband sensor and using a new mounting location for the wideband? I used the stock mounting location and simply sent an emulated narrowband signal to the stock ecu then used the wideband for the piggyback ecu, not sure if this is something you can do.
 
Firestar_3x said:
With regards to the fitment of the wideband sensor, are you looking at keeping the stock narrowband sensor and using a new mounting location for the wideband? I used the stock mounting location and simply sent an emulated narrowband signal to the stock ecu then used the wideband for the piggyback ecu, not sure if this is something you can do.
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The AEM FIC can do something clever in that it can itself output an offset to the stock narrowband sensor's signal, so the stock ECU retains control of the short and long term fuel trims but you keep those trims at 0 (rather than doing what almost all other piggyback systems do which is to ignore fuel trims altogether!) by creating a map for O2 sensor signals.

I will therefore retain the stock sensor in the stock location and use the wideband in wideband mode for logging purposes and to make sure my O2 sensor map is delivering my target AFRs. There isn't any need (other than for logging) for the piggyback to see the output of the wideband at all with this setup :)
 
I'm on a very steep learning curve but I had a lightbulb moment when I read up about the O2 map table - you can create a voltage offset table and convert that directly to an AFR table (the software will do the maths for you if you give it about 20 values). That means that you can input a target AFR and the AEM will trick the stock ECU into thinking it is at 14.7 while actually maintaining your target AFR - you just have to manually adjust the fuel table to take into account some fuel trim stuff.

This is why I went down the AEM route, it is 99.9% as powerful as a standalone but maintains all of the manners of the stock ECU when starting, idling, cruising etc etc. Utterly brilliant piece of kit.

Did you use an eManage Blue/Megasquirt or were you on a simple AFPR/powercard type setup?
 
I went eManage Ultimate with a Boomslang harness so I didn't need to cut the cars loom, was tempted to go standalone but the cost was ridiculous and I had no internet guidance to use so would have been starting from scratch.

I felt exactly the same when I mapped my car, was a total nightmare to learn what to do, this is why I installed the ecu about 2 months before the supercharger so i could get to grips with it, went with an innovate wideband with the programmable digital AFR gauge, ended up taking out one of the centre vents in the dash and installing the dial.

Later on I added a MAP sensor which helped me even further, initially mapped the car using the tables which was a grid of RPM vs throttle angle, simply input the desired AFR and the ecu figured out how to achieve this, was a great way of doing things since i could mess around with the maps whilst driving and the AFR guage would tell me of any problems through the rev range.

Was such a great project to do, and i can honestly say mapping the car and learning about ecu's gave me such satisfaction; it really is a bit of a black art.
 
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RPM and TPS doesn't give you any load conditions though, which concerned me a bit! The AEM has a MAP sensor built in so I have load right there.

Boomslang didn't appear to do a harness for the mk2 when I looked but in any case they seemed expensive - I built that extension up for less than £30 all in. Like you, I didn't want to touch the car's loom at all.

I'll be fitting either some RX8 injectors or some Bosch EV14s. The EV14s flow better and have a better spray pattern so that the car should idle as OEM even with the amount of fuel they push but the RX8s should be sufficient for my needs and are a good chunk cheaper. Either way, the FIC will scale accordingly so that's good. I'd hazard a guess that you either had the RX8 injectors or Supra 320cc injectors?
 
I still have the boomslang harness which is something i need to sell, like you say it wasn't cheap but it was the plug and play option so went with it to save reading about the various wiring combinations on the stock ecu!

I went with some RC engineering 440cc (iirc) injectors, didn't really need them though, was going to fit a different snub and crank pulley to up to boost before i sold up, still got those too.

Really looking forward to reading about the rest of your build, makes me remember what i went through to get mine running, was 100% worth the effort.
 
Did you have the MINI M45 or the JR M45? The pulleys are different on the two. If yours are the MINI type and you want rid of them, let me know ;)
 
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