TICO the SE

[tomli123001]

I think Sway bar is not crucial in suspension set up to me.

I have seen books explaining suspensions and set up. A lot are on forums here and other websites. The general thinking is bigger sway, after market sway the better.
I do NOT agree at all.

The bigger sway gives driver a feeling that the car is more flat, so they are more confident and thinking handling is improved. But the car can off balanced easily, simply because everybody's tyres, shocks and chasis are different. How can a sway bar manufacturer know which one you have. What they have tested the product based on could be very different.

In simple term,
the softer the front, you will get more traction front, and reduce understeer
the harder the rear, you will lose grips earlier at a hard turn at rear, and will induce oversteer more easily.
Vice versa

The reason being a car over or understeer, is because the front and rear of the tyres walk at a different pace in reference to each other.
This is why Charlie's NA6 had NO rear sway bar, so it will give him more grips at the back. My mate was a racing mechanic when younger, it was a common practice to remove rear sway bar in really wet condition also, so more grips in powering wheels.

As for front, the bigger sway, it will cause little roll. But a car need suitable amount of roll to have good traction and weight transfer. This will result in more understeer in my opinion.

Before spending money changing sway bar. I think you can use your adjustable shocks to find your preferences.
That is you can make your damper harder or softer to simulate a bigger or smaller sway bar installed. Not exactly, but close, as less or more roll will be introduced.

Then you can decide if you need to go bigger. When you get the right sway bar, you can then put the damper setting to normal.
In this way, during normal straight driving, you do not get the harsh feeling, but at corner, you get the benefits of the tuned body roll.

Above is just my opinion and I got them from trials on my own car physically. I could be wrong in theory, but I am just reporting what I found in my garage build process.

[tomli123001]

I have your old (well, not that old when you sold them to me ~1000kms) Yellow Speeds.

Great handling, but I do find them harsh (16F 12R settings).

Good to know the comparison vs the BC,

Love the stance/look and also the handling, but Sydney roads are sh*t and at times, I wish they were more cushy whilst also providing the aesthetic look I want.

I think YellowSpeed performs well on track, according to Mania's report and on its sponsored drivers.
But on streets, there are a lot of imperfections.

But don't forget, yours and my old car are NA. My new car is more than a decade younger and a lot smoother. So the comparison may not be exactly right. NB is a lot smoother than NA in a lot of terms.

I am glad the shocks are performing well for you.

[MrRevhead]

I think Sway bar is not crucial in suspension set up to me.

I have seen books explaining suspensions and set up and a lot are on forums. The general thinking is bigger sway, after market sway the better.
I do NOT agree at all.

The bigger sway gives driver a feeling that the car is more flat, so they are more confident and thinking handling is improved. But the car can off balanced easily, simply because everybody's tyres, shocks and chasis are different. How can a sway bar manufacturer know which one you have. What they have tested the product based on could be very different.

In simple term,
the softer the front, you will get more traction front, and reduce understeer
the harder the rear, you will lose grips earlier at a hard turn at rear, and will induce oversteer more easily.
Vice versa

The reason being a car over or understeer, is because the front and rear of the tyres walk at a different pace in reference to each other.
This is why Charlie's NA6 had NO rear sway bar, so it will give him more grips at the back. My mate was a racing mechanic when younger, it was a common practice to remove rear sway bar in really wet condition also, so more grips in powering wheels.

As for front, the bigger sway, it will cause little roll. But a car need suitable amount of roll to have good traction and weight transfer. This will result in more understeer in my opinion.

Before spending money changing sway bar. I think you can use your adjustable shocks to find your preferences.
That is you can make your damper harder or softer to simulate a bigger or smaller sway bar installed. Not exactly, but close, as less or more roll will be introduced.

Then you can decide if you need to go bigger. When you get the right sway bar, you can then put the damper setting to normal.
In this way, during normal straight driving, you do not get the harsh feeling, but at corner, you get the benefits of the tuned body roll.

Above is just my opinion and I got them from trials on my own car physically. I could be wrong in theory, but I am just reporting what I found in my garage build process.

Good to know your experiences re: sways, I was contemplating getting some.

I personally concluded that I would rather drop the same amount on good tyres and a proper alignment done by Spinning Wheels.

[tomli123001]

I then got around to my exhaust finally.
Been thinking about it for ages. But I am very very concerned about the drone sound I experienced in some natural aspirated and supercharged cars. I think I just want a car to be more civilized. Same way, as I want factory look at the exterior, I do not want my car's sound or appearance to attract any attention from cops. A nice car is all I need, but not "look at me".

So, firstly, i was wondering between 2.5" or 3" which a lot of people used here on forum.

I eventually decided on the 2.5". As I think the engine and turbo are of a small size. The back pressure theory is well and true, but the engine needs air velocity also, which in turn needs pressure in a suitable level. Just like your garden hose. When fully open, very slow flow however. When giving some squeeze, it flows much faster. Of course, when given too much, the flow weakens and will stop.

Jason at MX5 gave me a really good price for the racing beat muffler. I always wanted to support my local mechanic, so I got it off him. The good thing about Racing Beat is that they are NOT loud. Also it is of factory fitment, so will bolt onto factory mid pipe. This is inline with SMB's approach, so that I can get SMB down and mid pipe later and save a lot of money for not buying a SMB muffler SMB did exhaust for SP, so I have a good faith in their product.

The SMB will arrive in late January. Here is a photo of the muffler installed.
MX5+ did it for free for me. In saying that the tip was touch short, so they welded a section to extend it out. Apparently the rear bumper is different between OZ SE and US Mazdaspeed Miata.

Racing beat muffler tip


SMB pipes coming soon

[shuey]

… is that the RB Power Pulse muffler? i like the look of it. how much did it set you back?

[Okibi]

So lucky to have survived that roll over and upgrade to an SE instead of a wheelchair!

Looking forward to watching your car evolve.

[tomli123001]

… is that the RB Power Pulse muffler? i like the look of it. how much did it set you back?

PMed. Better not to disclose too many pricing information open, as I do get good deals around

[tomli123001]

:shock: So lucky to have survived that roll over and upgrade to an SE instead of a wheelchair!

Looking forward to watching your car evolve.

Hi Okibi, thanks for reading.
By the way, Marc and I are still preparing the reply for you. Just been very busy with work in the final week.

[tomli123001]

Sorry that I must be posting too much in just one day.
I prepared a lot of things from a year ago, but never had the chance to sit down here and post them up, so hang on and more coming today.

My bird TICO has been doing some reading too this morning. And she can talk and said hi all you guys on forum here.


SE already got very good underbody bracing to begin with. But the weakness is still the factory rails being soft and easy to damage.
Being a convertible, it is not possible to have the body as rigid as a normal car without a full roll cage. So I started by getting the FM Frame rails installed. I will leave out the butterfly brace, as I think the factory braces cover more area and probably do better job than the butterfly.

The only thing I had to consider is one of the brace across the frame rail at the back. Being bolted on top of factory frame rails, it is on the way of the frame rails.

This is the one I am talking about (photo taken from flying miata website). You can see that longest brace across on top of the factory rails.


After talking to a few people, there are 2 ways of doing it. One is to remove that long brace. The other is to cut a gap on the frame rails and keep both.
I know Lockiel simply removed the long brace in argument that it is not that important and he reckons it will compromize the frame rail strength, especially with the roll bar already in place.

I think Lockiel is right. But I really want to keep factory items where I can. If you have a chance to have a close look at that factory brace tab, they are very solid and well made. I went with the later approach by cutting my FM frail rails. I think this what BOSS Frog did on their website also on their version of frame rails.

Here is the finished project.

[tomli123001]

I did this after the frame rails.

The beetrush will connect the rear sub frame with that longitudinal rail in the centre between gear box and the back.


I did the racing beat diff brace as well.
Lockiel mentioned that it is tricky install, as you can NOT see the gauge mark on the camber after putting it on and hence can not adjust accurately both ends.
You can actually look in the back of it, it has marks there, also, so you can still adjust and mark your original position.


Here are the installed photos

[thelaughingman]

wow that's amazing. Best of luck with the future!

[tomli123001]

Wanting to install the fender brace afterwards. But always hesitated between Boss Frog and some cheap ultra white.
However, while browsing the web, i came across the Garage star unit while on the US forum.

The guy from Garage star was very friendly and useful. Since I was getting a few things off him at the time, I went and got the fender brace also from him.
Sorry that I did not have the my own install photo here, so I borrowed this one off Garagestar website.

It is similar to boss frog with 4 mounting points. The ultra racing one is much worse quality, with just 3 points, but much much cheaper.
Garage star helped organize shipping by Fedex, surprisingly cheap also. Only $100 for fender braces, tow hook, radiator cover and wiper cowl cover. That is 3 parcels all up. The guy also said he could help me buy other things of US and combine shipping.

I forgot his name now, but you can just use garagestar's contact function on the site. Could be helpful to some of you here wanting to get things off the States.

http://garagestar.com/blog/?p=999

[tomli123001]

One day chatting with Lockiel, I got some of his old bits at an amazing price, including the AEM, GFB BOV and lots of other nice bits and pieces.
So I should now be in par with Mania's stage 1 SE upgrade kit and more, except only cost me less than the fraction of the money.

Thanks Lockiel.

The engine bay still looks very nice an factory and I like that black color radiator cover.



The manual boost T


The factory has this very funny oil catch can here. It drain oil back into the sump. But heard that the oil can flow into wrong place during hard corner. So I will try to get an oil catch can sometimes and put in series before the factory unit.

[tomli123001]

When in factory form, the boost is controlled by a Solenoid at the middle of the CAM cover edge.
Although very limited to just 7PSI by the ECU, it does its job nicely in this limit. i.e. providing a smooth PSI boost.

The factory car certainly drives nicely and with good predictable reserves, although admittedly slow.

When the Boost Tee was intalled and reading was taken just before the intake manifold, the car was Dyno at GT Auto next ot MX5 Plus on the butt Dyno.
It did return a healthy 135kW at the wheel in line with everybody else at 10 PSI (was not lean with the sensors on Dyno), but the whole car started to feel like a pig.

I did not know why. But the car felt like had NO power at all, until you redline the thing over 5000 RPM in 1st gear, then finally something.
But then it shoots through its last 1500RPM range in a flash onto close to 7000RPM, the whole engine started coughing due to the 6500 RPM fuel cut.

Then 2nd gear, RPM drops and slow again. Then repeat above again.
The whole process was coarse and unsatisfying. I could feel the power there, but never get to use it. I really hated the way it drove now. It represents nothing what you would expect from a supposedly fast spinning small turbo.

According to Jason, it is because of the factory ECU. Mazda designed it to be no boost, until very late in RPM range.
Then there is this famous SE "bog" between 4 and 4.5k RPM, when the ECU is switching between close to open loop.

So I must decide. I really liked the way Mania did it via adaptronic. A lot of people are doing so already.
BUT the biggest issue to me is the electrical, idle, cold start, AC and headlight driving at night issues, I heard way too many from MX5 plus and forums.

Sure it is about the tuner and tuning, not just because of the hardware. But I just want something to work nicely without headaches, as I am busy and do not want to spend time fixing things a lot.

Eventually I turned my head to ChipTorque. The guys who helped develop SP tuning.
So here I go, heading down to Gold Coast with a set of RX8 injectors, cleaned and tested from MX5+.

keep in mind, the manual and auto RX8 came in different power ratings and different injectors.
You want the manual version and yellow units. They are 440CC

[sailaholic]

Changing your rim size (when done correctly) makes no difference you the gap between wheel and guard. It just makes the tire sidewall taller. Ie drop 2 inches in rim size, your tire side wall will be 1 inch taller ( remember sidewall is on both sides of the rim so only changes by 1/2 the rim diameter change. )


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