Ron the SE

[track_addict]

So here is the story of my SE and the sorry state that it is in now (see pic).



I bought the car back at the end of November 2013. The car had 59,000kms, clean title, stock as a rock. The perfect base to start modifying from. Silver wasn't my preferred colour but it was the only car local to me and the other cars I was looking at interstate would of cost the same to get it on the road here in SA. I'm the third owner of the car and have details of the first two owners and full log books. This is what I was looking for when picking an SE.

This is the day I picked the car up.



I was determined to drive the car for a while without bolting the goodies I took off from my NA. I wanted to do this to get a feel for the car so I could gauge the changed my parts would make. Well, I wont lie. I lasted not even 12 hours. I bolted in my fixed back bride the next morning. Being 6'2" and having the stock seat fitted was not fun. I love the look of the stock SE seats but when your head makes a dent in the soft top and your eyes are looking at the top of the windscreen surround, its not fun. Plus the bride is the most comfy seat I've sat in. Over the xmas break I bolted on my Ohlins DFV's, BD bar, racing beat end links and racing beat sway bar support blocks.



Like many, I wanted to use the car for track days as well as my daily run about. I didnt want to take it to the track til I have done some work to the brakes at least. So I did a motorkhana early in 2014. I had done some hill climbs and sprints in my previous NA so wasn't quite sure what to expect from a motorkhana. It was great fun to be honest. Its a long day with not much "action time" compared to a sprint but fun since its very different driving. The car was great to learn in with the torsen. Made it very controlable and easy to around and out of a cone. I tried a few different lay outs and some suited the car perfectly and some were far to tight to try get the car around (good work on that "quick rack" mazda) or the car would fall off boost and have no power. We all know how bad the power delivery is on a stock SE or even with basic bolt ons. Here's a pic form the motorkhana.



Not much happened for the next few months other then buying bits and pieces. I put in some A1RM's and did the regular servicing bits. I also added a FM catch can check valve.

I was looking for some 15's with tyres so I could loose the shitty stock wheels and go racing. I bought davekmoore's 15x7.5 6UL's and started doing some hill climbs.

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I was having a ball at this point with the car. The engine was still stock and felt strong compared to my old NA6. I didnt like the power delivery but overall it was better. The chassis is so much stiffer with less rattles and I was racing with no issues. Happy times.

Not long after buying the wheels I bought dave's hardtop as well. I asked what else he was selling at the time and he said he had a hardtop in sunlight silver. I wasnt looking or wanting to buy a hard top after just buying wheels. Since it was the same colour as my car, I figured it would be difficult later on to find one in my colour so i bit the bullet and bought it. I do love the look of the hardtop's and I use it through the hottest part of summer and the coldest part of winter.



I think it was around this point, that I was doing an oil change and noticed a funny looking line through one of my sway bar link ends. I looked closer and noticed that it was actually cracked. I took it off for a closer look and I was very surprised by what I found.





I emailed racing beat with the photos and they sent me a replacement with out any issue. Very easy to deal with form the other side of the world.

By this stage I was wanting some more power from the car as I had done my first sprint in the car and real;y wanted to smooth out the power delivery a touch. Luckily Dann had just opened a GB on his parts. I took the chance to buy one of his damn nice 3" TBE with inconel studs. I waited about a month and got it the week of the next sprint. As luck would have it, my stock exhaust sh*t itself the weekend before the exhaust arrived. I was out for a drive in the twisties when I was mid corner and I heard a loud thud and all of a sudden the car was SUPER loud. I slowed right down and headed for home. I could hear a knocking noise the whole way home and all sorts of ideas were running through my mind. I got it home, stuck my head under the car and found that the mid pipe had failed through a weld on the hot dog. No wonder it was so loud!



Here's how I fixed it since I knew the new exhaust was coming in a few days.



I really didnt want to lay on the ground swearing at an exhaust for a day installing it so I had my mechanic do it one Saturday. Since the mechanic is only around the corner I made him give me a call before he took it off the hoist and did the first start up. I got the call and went down to have a look. It was such a shame to cover up the beautiful exhaust with all the braces and never see it again. Anyway, I started it up and grinned like a little child! I'd never put an exhaust on a car before so this being a first in that respect, then hearing the car really come alive was wonderful. I warmed it up and took it for a quick spin. Wow. That 5 min drive was one of the most memorable drives. The car had much more mid range and was LOUD. But it made a good noise. I was loving the car even more.





That will do for tonight. Only about half way so far. Will do the rest over the weekend hopefully.

[joshuam]

Nice! I laughed when you only got through 12 hours without mods

Second MX5 threads I always think are very interesting / valuable for others because you get to really see what the owners think is worth doing again and what isn't!

Will watch for the updates

[ManiacLachy]

Great read. Looking forward to the rest of the story

[SileNceR]

Great read so far - looking forward to the rest of the explanation as to how it's ended up motor-less.

[track_addict]

Nice! I laughed when you only got through 12 hours without mods

Second MX5 threads I always think are very interesting / valuable for others because you get to really see what the owners think is worth doing again and what isn't!

Will watch for the updates

I think it was closer to 10 hours actually haha.

I would do things differently if I was to buy another MX5. I would have to decide if it was going to be a street car or track car. Now, I have very different ideas as to how I would modify one, where as when I got my NA all I wanted to do was make it stupid low with stupid colour wheels. Thank god I snapped out of that!

Hopefully I'll get some time tomorrow arvo to knock out some more of the story. Its all down hill from here!

Here's a link to one of the sprints I did. The only engine mods done at this point were a FMIC and the exhaust.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e7zsX7wsrI

[track_addict]

Continuing on from before.

I realised I've messed up the order of the mods. I forgot about the FMIC install so I'll run through that. When I first got the car it was immediately noticeable how sh*t the stock intercooler is. I would do one, maybe two pulls and it would heat soak. It would literally feel like there wasn't a turbo after this would happen. The typical "kick in the back" an SE gives you at 5000rpm would just disappear. I got onto justjap and ordered a larger front mount not long after buying the car. Once I received it I didn't bother fitting it cause it was the middle of summer and I really couldn't be bothered doing that job in 40deg heat. I eventually got around to it following the instructions off the mazda-speed.com forum. I'm not 100% happy with the install as the core isn't central but the core isn't overly noticeable so whatever.







The results were immediately noticeable. Now, I have shitty power delivery consistently. Yay.

Next mod was the ever awesome AEM CAI. I got it off a local forum member who was selling it second hand at a much cheaper price than new. I was actually looking around for them at this point so it all worked out very nicely. Met up with him, had a good chat and grabbed myself some nice shinny bits. Luckily, he also didnt like the red/blue/other colour, charge pipes and bought the kit with a silver pipe, which is what I wanted. It was just meant to be. I got to fitting it. Took me about 3 nights after work doing a few hours each night. We all know how good these kits are. What a bloody difference! So much more power up top and now the BOV made some nice wooshy noises!



I had been using a OBD2 scanner and torque plus pro on my phone to monitor coolant temps for a while. I had noticed that at track days I could easily hit 105degc with the heater on full (with the windows up is not fun), even when the air temps were sub 20deg. Not long after installing the CAI, I did another supersprint at the end of October. It was a hot day, 32deg from memory, and I had a shocking day. The car was hitting boost cut big time and over heating within half a lap. I did two sessions and gave up. In my prep for track work I installed a Tridon high flow thermostat. It works so well and I could see on my phone how well it worked on the street, so I knew my issue wouldn't be with the thermostat. I pulled out the rad and had the tanks removed and cleaned at a well known radiator shop who deals with custom cooling set ups on race cars and trucks. Turns out the core was about 20% blocked and looked ok otherwise. So I put it back in and it worked a little bet better but I wasnt comfortable to leave it for track work. Emily had a 37mm Koyo forsale which I grabbed and installed. The install was just like putting the OEM radiator back in and it performed even better again. I went to Clark rubber and grabbed some high temp foam to do some quick sealing between the core and the radiator support area and between the core and the fans.



So after all this it was the end of last year and racing had finished for the year, so I was just driving around on the street enjoying it. I had been driving around for a while on my track wheel alignment and this had put some serious wear on my road tyres. So I went to have the tyres swaped left to right to get some extra life out of them. Unluckily for me one tyre had a heavily damaged sidewall on the inside of the wheel. The tyre fitters didnt want to fit it and I didnt want to drive on it. The tyre had copped a nail in it and had slowly deflated, causing the sidewall damage. I didnt want to buy another 17" tyre for the OEM boat anchors so I made the decision to get some decent 15's. I reaaalllyyy liked the FFD motorsport wheels in America but they didnt have the size I wanted and I couldnt wait since I was driving around on my semi's. I ended up grabbing some Konig Wideopens in gold from MX5 Parts and put my Toyo's off the 6UL's on. I'm not sold on the gold colour. I'm thinking about painting them in a gloss black.







With the track work I was doing earlier I decided to get some semi's for the 6UL's. My old man is friends with someone at Kumho so I got a set of V70A's in 205/50/15. Being my first set of semi's I cant really gauge how good they are. All I can say is they stick very well haha. Once I wear these out I'll get some NT01's.

By now it was around xmas 2014 and I was real sick of the shitty tune and not being able to track it anymore so I decided to prepare myself to put in an Adaptronic. Luckily another forum member in WA was selling his select stand alone and MTX-L wide band for much less than the price of just the ECU is new. I snapped it up. Next I grabbed a MAC 3 WAY valve, some ID1000's and a throttle body hard pipe from Emily. By mid Feb this year I began fitting all the parts. It took me about 3 weeks to get it all together just working on the weekend. Then came to trying to run the bastard thing. I just couldnt get it to idle. It would start, idle up then just die unless I kept it going with my foot. I ended up having to tow it to the tuner and have them sort ti out. I cant remember what the issue was by they got it working. Sort of.







I ended up rushing to get a boot gauge and mount the MTX-L so I just did it ghetto, thinking that once it ran nice I could sort it out properly.

Well, the tuner didnt get the car running with the wideband cause I had to get them to modify the exhaust as I couldnt actually get the thread to start since the bung was to short. They plugged it all in then couldn't figure out why the readings were so bloody haywire. They called me for something else and mentioned this. I said "did you calibrate it?" There answer, "no." I was pleased as you could imagine. They ended up making it run on the narrow band and use their sniffer to set everything up.

I got the call "cars all done and makes 153rwkw on 15psi." Awesome, I couldn't wait to get down and pick it up after work! I get there, pay them and drive off. Get to the end of the street and it stalls. Lovely. Get it through the 30min trip home and loved it except coming to a stop and making it idle. After being home for about half an hour I go to take the old man for a spin. Car wont start. Flat out wont idle. Cue profuse swearing and a phone call to the tuner. I let it sit for a few hours to cool and it starts. Ok then, it wont hot start, not to bad I guess. I still wasn't driving it full time yet but ended up going back the next week to have some adjustments done. They made some changes and it idles a little better but no where near stock like.

I ended up having them put in some ID725's and look into the hot start issue. What they discovered was the VTCS was farking up the hot start after talking with Mania I believe. I'll just add at this point that this was the last time my car moved under its own power. While tuning the ID725's they car developed a real nasty tick. I got it towed home and started my investigations. On the plus side the starting and idle was 100x better. While starting it to do my investigations, it idles flawlessly and started first go each time.

Anyway, I'm tired and this post is messy enough. I'll continue this during the week and dump a massive glut of photos into the thread.

[track_addict]

So, carrying on from last night.

Here's a video of the noise the car had developed at the tuners.



It sounded like a bottom end noise to me initially but poking around with a screw driver made the noise sound more like it was from the top end. So off came the rocker cover to have a look and see what I could see. I have a thread in the engines section with a detailed description of how I went about diagnosing it. I really, really didn't want to pull the motor out (I have a habit of ending up pulling motors out of my cars) so I tried everything before making that decision. I brought home the good boroscope from work to look in the cylinders as the tuners thought they could see something sitting on top of a piston with their shitty boroscope. Turns out what they were looking at were the relief cuts outs on top of the pistons. So after all this the next step was to pull the motor out as I was pretty sure the problem was a bent rod and the noise was something in the bottom end. Progress shots of pulling the motor.







Now, here is the state of things.







I got a couple of mates around one Sunday morning and pulled the motor and box out as one unit. Once it was all out we pulled the head off and as you can see from the above photo, one piston was not standing up as straight as it should! The piston did not change its position in relation to the piston next to it indicating it was in fact a bent rod, not a bearing which sh*t itself. I left the car alone for about 6 weeks as I was going to Japan and had lost interest/was angry with the car. Once I got back from the mother land I was full of ideas and motivation. I went and bought myself an engine stand and set about getting the sump off. I have some photos on my phone which I will post up another time. Basically, cylinder 3 rod was bent. Well and truly bent. Bent in two directions, which I was most impressed with. When the piston was at BDC the skirt was hitting the oil squirter quite hard. This was also the tight spot the engine had developed. What a surprise! I also discovered the compressor is very damaged. Like its been sand blasted. I'm not sure what I will do with this. I have heard rebuilds are expensive and I don't want to spend lots of money on a shitty little turbo that will be upgraded. On the other hand I won't have the money to do a rebuild AND upgrade the turbo how I want it, so I may have to either live with it or find a second hand replacement.



So this is where I am at. The car pulled down to many small, useless parts and one massive repair bill coming my way!

[track_addict]

There's a couple of bits I have left out so far, those being a mod list, mods for racing and details of my racing escapades.

First off the mods carried out. The bride fixed back, while a perfect fit and the most comfortable thing ever, didn't protect my head when I had my helmet on. My helmet would actually rest on the roll bar. I didnt like this so I went on the hunt for a new seat. The local race shop had a special on Velo seats so I went and grabbed a GPT-1 as it had a higher back and I thought it may fit. I had also purchased a PCI set back V2 mount in preparation. Turns out that seat is way to wide in the wings to fit and wouldn't fit the seat mount where I needed it to be for my long legs. So I had to regrettably sell it. Luckily I made my money back cause it was heavily discounted when I purchased it. Lucky. I unfortunately ended up having to buy a sprint V. Do not rate. Steel frame race seats suck. But it fits the car and mount perfectly. Yay, I guess? While installing the seat and mount I also purchased a Velo 6 point harness for some extra safety and support. What a difference a harness makes on the track!



This is the only photo I have but we can all imagine what a sprint V looks like inside a MX5!

I also bought a dorian off a clubman forum for much cheaper than a new one. I couldn't fit it in the mount of the car like the other racing guys do and I didn't want to put holes in the SE front lip. So I mounted it behind the left rear wheel in a nice location which I was happy about.



I changed the gearbox, diff and brake fluids and off I went. First up was a couple of hillclimbs. I had done one hill climb in my old NA which was great fun. The SE initially didn't feel much faster but did feel more solid and the torsen made turn one great. The car was about 1.5 seconds faster off the bat so despite the seat of the pants feel of not being much faster, the clock doesnt lie. My PB in the NA was a 41.22 up the 630m track. The SE first day out with no engine mods was doing high 39's. I went back a month later and had the exhaust. This made getting off the line much, much better but it was a very very cold day. Track temps barely broke past 10degC so the semi's would not work and I had a sh*t day, way of my times. Went back 4 weeks later, again, but on a much warmer day and I kept taking a few tenths off each run. One of the changes I made for this day was to run my street tyres (toyo proxes R1R) which I think is an excellent tyre. The V70A's simply dont work quick enough but the street tyres work from the get go. I ended the day with a new best of 38.55 seconds.

I was sick of Collingrove by this stage, 3 days in 2.5 months was enough and I was sick of waiting over an hour for 40 seconds track time. So I organised to do some super sprints. Again, I did one sprint in my NA and ended up with a best of 1:34.44 around Mallala. The NA was great fun accept for boiling my brake fluid. This is the car that taught me that Dot5.1 is NOT the best brake fluid . Again, more torsen preaching. I love it. The NA could spin the inside wheel out of turn two with a gutless 1.6 and I quickly learned to hate it. But the factory torsen in the SE makes that a thing of the past. The SE doesn't feel as pointy or stable in the corners for some reason when compared to the NA but the SE definitely feel quicker through all points of the track.

First day at Mallala with a stock engine and just coilovers and semi's as the major mods, I managed a 1:28.36. Had a blast but was not enjoying the power delivery. The turbo did mean my Vmax down the back straight was about 15-20km/h higher than the NA.

Mallala is a track thats very very hard on brakes. There are 3 corners one after the other that are big stops, the worst being the northern hairpin where I would be going 170km/h and have to slow down to 50km/h braking at the 200m marker. For this reason I was keeping a close eye on the brakes. After the first sprint I was having pedal issues. The pedal was going all the way to the floor but the car was still pulling up and my lap times were falling through out the day. I had already put penrite super dot 4 in and the A1RM's but thought I may need to do more bleeding and bleed the ABS module. So I put another litre of Dot 4 through and bled the ABS. The fluid which came out looked fine, still nice and clear with no bubbles. No obvious issues.

So back I go to Mallala a few weeks later armed with my new NitroDann exhaust, fresh fluid and some braided brake lines. Exhaust smoothed out the power delivery some what and the noises were very joyus. The brakes held up for the first two sessions but the pedal went soft again after lunch. I had borrowed a mates digital thermometer to check brake temps after each session. The fact they were all smoking, even with a shitty pedal, made me realise that something was still happening as it should. Rotor temps on the front were around 680degC after me rolling into the pits, getting out of the car and doing my tyre pressures before checking the brake temps. Would it be safe to say rotor temps would be close to 800degC on track in braking zones? Or maybe higher? I think my issue with the brakes is the master cylinder. The pedal would stay really long and soft for a few weeks after a track day but would bleed itself back up and feel normal after 2-3 weeks. Very strange. After this day I ended up taking a further 2.8 seconds off my PB which I was pretty bloody happy with! Heres a video.



New PB of 1:25.5.

Next mod was the AEM CAI. I could tell this was going to make a big difference to my lap times so I was very keen to get out there. Changes to the car for the next sprint were the CAI and the Koyo rad. The day was hot, 32degC and I knew I was going to struggle. From my first warm up lap I knew I was in for a bad time. Boost cut for days! Anyway, Line up for the first session, take off and get about 3/4 of a lap around and coolant temps have cracked 100. sh*t. Did another half a lap and ended up at 105degC. Cranked the heater and tootled around for the remainder of the session. Go out next session, heater cranked and roof down so I dont die from heat exhaustion! Boost cut ruining all the fun and I hit 108degC within the first half a lap. Do one cool down lap, pull in, pack up, go home. This was the last sprint for the year so I was going to take my time making it run properly. My best time from that day though was a 1:26.2 which I was pretty happy with. Being with in 7 tenths of a PB with only getting one full lap in and lots of issues seemed pretty good to me.

One final mod I missed was the track dog racing splitter. Im not sold on the looks of it. From straight on I love it. Makes the car look like a mini Dodge Viper I think. People who think this creates meaningful down force are kidding themselves. Sure it can pull the front lip out the front bar but the front bar has a bunch of plastic clips and a few bolts holding it on. That down force is not making stuff all difference. It does provide good protection for the OEM lip though.



Mods list.
Engine:
- Nitro Dann 3" TBE.
- AEM CAI.
- FMIC.
- Flyin' Miata check valve.
- ID725's.
- MAC 3way valve.
- Adaptronic.
- Nitro Dann throttle body hard pipe.
- Turbo smart dual port BOV.
- Innovate MTX-L.

Suspension:
- Ohlins DFV's.
- Racing beat adjustable end links.
- Racing beat front sway bar support braces.
- AFM A1RM's.
- Braided brake lines.
- 15x8 +25 Konig wide opens (street), 15x7.5 6ul's.
- Toyo R1R street tyres, V70A kumho semi's.

Body/interior:
- Sprint V.
- Velo 6 point.
- BD roll bar.
- PCI V2 set back seat mount.
- Trackdog racing splitter.
- Cheap boost gauge.

So there we are, up to date I'm pretty sure! If anyone has some advice for my engine build for parts to use or not to, who to use etc, feel free to let me know. I will update here as things happen.

[Roadrunner]

That's disappointing about the engine and other dramas you've been having, but good to see your getting it all back on track.
Do you know what bent the rod? Too much boost? Tuning related issue?

[track_addict]

Engine damage was a combination of too much boost and a tuner without much experience with turbo MX5's. Basically they cranked the boost to 15psi and didn't tune to power delivery at each point in the rpm range to keep it nice and smooth. The car had a huge mid range. It would really come on song at about 3400 onwards. It would kind of fall off up the top of rpm range. I had a look at my dyno charts and it went from making about 80kw at 3400 to making 125ish at 3800rpm-ish. So, as you could imagine the rods did not like it.

My advice to you, since I know you're staring down the barrel of tuning your car with some power mods, is to take it to a tuner with MX5 experience (probably not an issue for you in the eastern states) and run a max of 12psi. In my thorough research AFTER the issue (idiot), that seems to be the number many stick to. I did have a phone conversation to Deckspeed a couple of months back and they wont go past 10psi. If I had my time again I would do what you have done and just tune a stock SE. It would stil lbe an absolute ball on the track, thats for sure.

[track_addict]

Some what of an update. Engine is going to the builder on Monday. Poverty is coming my way.

Brands haven't been decided on yet but this is the break down of whats happening:
- Strip, clean, crack test etc.
- Forged rods/pistons. (Scat/Manley rods. JE/CP pistons).
- Race bearings.
- Bore out .020.
- ARP head studs/journal caps.
- Oil pump upgrade. (looking into whats available short of being reamed by the US>AUD exchange rate).
- Rebuild head and do a clean up of the ports. No major head work.
- Balance whole rotating assembly.

Using one of the highest respected builders in Adelaide, I'm leaving some of the decision making up to him. He's built many BP's/hi-po Jap stuff and even worked on the development of the MPS Mazda 6 (apparently). Thankfully, he's open to ideas on what I want done. Namely, using a early model head gasket so I can run a re-route. He is actually aware of the update Mazda made to the head gaskets for 02 onwards. The other builders who I have spoken with seemed to brush off that info as internet gospel and were not willing to listen to the reasoning behind it. So, I feel comfortable going with the advice he gives as opposed to second guessing a cheaper builder.

If anyone has some ideas or advice, please dont hold back!

[KevGoat]

If I had my time again I would do what you have done and just tune a stock SE.

Pretty much what I've been trying my best to stick to so far .... but ...

I reckon you're in good hands with the engine rebuild. They've been around a long time and have always had a great reputation for quality builds. Not sure if I missed this, but did you decide to upgrade the turbo with the rebuild, or will that still be on the "to do" list?

[track_addict]

I think a tuned stock SE with maybe just an exhaust would be much more fun and faster, then any SE with all the bolt ons and shitty power delivery due to the OEM ECU. Nothing worse than boost cut.

Turbo is on the to do list. Thats an extra few grand I can do without just now. There's another local guy with a turbo NB who has a good IHI turbo he wants to move on so I'll nab that since my turbo is damaged. Once I've got the car running and have some kilometres on it, the plan is to stick a 2560R and have a responsive 250whp. Don't want anymore and I doubt I'll need anymore.

[ManiacLachy]

Glad to see the eninge is being fixed I think you're doing it right, better spend a little more now with someone reputable and experienced than to deal with the mistakes of someone learning on the go.

Hope you have her back on the road soon!

[track_addict]

So, popped into the engine builder after work today to pick up the broken bottom end bits. Sam (the boss man), is very impressed with how bent one of the rods is. He said that normally, when they get this bad, they just snap and make a good mess of things. We agreed I'm very lucky. So, I'm going to put the worst rod on a stand. It's way too good to throw out!



There was a damaged big end bearing from the most bent rod.



They said apart from the bent rod and shitty bearing from the same rod, it all looks in top condition, which is very comforting to know. Parts will be showing up this week. SCAT H-beams and CP flat top pistons are the big ones. It's also getting bored out to 84mm instead of 83.5mm now. The shop wants to have a chat with Boundary Engineering before I order an oil pump from them, but that is likely to happen this week. ETA on the engine, pending oil pump, is before christmas.

I also had a look at the tune which broke the car. I hadn't looked at it not even once since the car broke. Probably from disappointment and laziness. Well, I was quite angry and disappointed at what I found. The boost map was set to 200kpa from 2000rpm onwards. No freaking wonder it pulled hard only a handful of times before shitting itself. If anyone wants to know where to NOT have your car tuned in Adelaide, send me a message.

Atleast I'll have a proper engine because of this f@!k up.