A NB8B Turbo progress.

The American · Postby **The American** » Thu Nov 16, 2017 7:34 am

Does it have 400hp yet?

IanR · Postby **IanR** » Thu Nov 16, 2017 8:37 am

The American wrote:Does it have 400hp yet?

Good question, I fly up to QLD to collect it on saturday. The car is currently on a safe waste gate pressure tune so no it doesn't have 400hp. :lol:

But stay tuned!

IanR · Postby **IanR** » Thu Nov 23, 2017 11:56 am

I drove the car back from QLD sunday morning no issues, it is a little different than my silver nb:

Depowered rack feels very heavy, wondering if I will get used to it, different again from the Lotus which was manual steer as well but much lighter due to various reasons such as lotus IS lighter and has the motor in the rear.

EFR 6258 seems to build boost very quickly and power builds well to redline, it is on a wastegate setting so maybe 11-12psi im not sure. Before I replaced the cat it felt around 260whp maybe a bit more. sounds about right all things considered.

Std NB8b seats feel like lounge cushions after the exige seats...

Hardtop whistles like a tradie at bondi... needs to be sorted, i will be going back to a soft top asap anyways...

This week I have had the noisy wheel bearing replaced, the brake test done for engineering. The 200cel cat has been replaced with a euro4 cat to pass the im240 gas test next week.

Interestingly the exhaust system was built as 3" at the vband dump down to 2.5" for the old cat and 2.5" through a small hot dog and med sized magnaflow rear box. Its very quiet, full sleeper really which is a good thing in many ways but its all turbo noises with hardly a whisper of exhaust.

Had a wheel alignment done this am to see if the castor could be dropped to lighten the steering inputs...turns out the rear wheels had 5mm toe out each side, and the fronts where toed out, explains the hard steering! feels a fair bit better with below specs:

camber front 1.5" rear 2deg
castor 4.5"
toe 0 front rear 1/16" or 1.5mm

Car is now with my local dyno tuner preparing the tune for the im240 gas test, he will also run it with more boost for some full power runs. It will be interesting to see what the efr can produce with the 2.5" system.

Sorry no pics yet...

IanR · Postby **IanR** » Thu Nov 23, 2017 12:05 pm

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ManiacLachy · Postby **ManiacLachy** » Thu Nov 23, 2017 1:19 pm

I'm very interested to see what the dyno tune can pull out of it. It's a great car, and with a little TLC it should be a beast.

StanTheMan · Postby **StanTheMan** » Thu Nov 23, 2017 1:50 pm

I love the NA/NB's with hard tops....

kinda gets me into that mood

turbo you say? meh.... :lol:

IanR · Postby **IanR** » Thu Nov 23, 2017 4:19 pm

Hardtop does look good I admit, but from the drivers seat roof down is the business.

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IanR · Postby **IanR** » Fri Nov 24, 2017 8:23 pm

StanTheMan wrote:I love the NA/NB's with hard tops....
kinda gets me into that mood

turbo you say? meh....

Postby **beavis** » Sat Nov 25, 2017 4:43 am

Is this Kirks old car???

IanR · Postby **IanR** » Sat Nov 25, 2017 6:09 am

beavis wrote:Is this Kirks old car???

TimK did the build and then it was also Kirks as well, the seat has felt mucho fartus, on the drive home I heard it reply many times “ahh don’t worry I’m used to it” . :lol:

IanR · Postby **IanR** » Wed Nov 29, 2017 12:03 pm

Little update, passed the im240 gas test today first go. Needed a euro4 cat and Dave at gforce to tune the ecu for the emissions test. Turned out the ecu was only running all the base tune tables and had no values in the ve table. I also made an air box out of 2mm alloy plate, getting a local guy to weld the two pieces together. I have raised the ride height to 105mm as well for safe measure. Off for engineers tomorrow then can rego this thing.

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timk · Postby **timk** » Mon Dec 11, 2017 7:03 pm

Woohoo glad to see some new life in this car!

IanR · Postby **IanR** » Sun Jan 07, 2018 8:58 pm

Got some updates coming.

Car has been engineered and registered in nsw, cost breakdown for those interested.

Euro 4 Cat supplied and fitted by local exhaust shop $400
IM240 gas test free if using rms station but for me $350 here in newcastle
Engineers $880

I needed to make an airbox so:
2mm alloy sheet $20
welding services $120

I chose to get the tune touched up for success at the IM240 and spent $500 on not sure what, but it all needed so be done again (will detail in later post)

Blue slip was $64 plus $45 for extras

Thankfully I cannot add up, so who knows what it has cost me.

Now though the car is legal and can I can now progress to make this little green mx5 shake its tail.

IanR · Postby **IanR** » Sun Jan 07, 2018 9:42 pm

My local tuner was pretty busy, like all of us prior to christmas break so did the best he could to get the car drto pass the gas test for engineering, problems was that the ecu was still running the base tune fro adaptronic and once the tuner started to play with it the drive ability went south, once I has passed the gas test I took it back to get it running better.

After another attempt to make the car smoother of idle and behave itself it was not really much better, just my bank account lighter...time to look for someone who knew what was going on.

I then contacted Anthony at https://www.facebook.com/tunedbyanthony/ as he tuned my old silver NB mx5.

Within 3 minutes hooked to his ecu he was able to tell me that the MAP sensor was out off calibration and needed to be replaced... yep that makes sense for how the car was driving. It was super jerky and hesitant off idle and kicked a bit under load. Back off the dyno and drive home.

Andy at Adaptronic shipped up a new map sensor which is integrated into the ecu main board, at no charge...not even for postage. Talk about looking after his customers and their customers. I have heard nothing but good about Andy and the Adaptronic ecu from those who use them, I have a mate who raced 2 seasons on the base tune out out of the box.

It arrived within the week so booked in with Anthony for the weekend. The new map sensor fixed the drive ability issues immediately as it should and then to tune the VE map for full power and everything in between.

This is where the problems started... this is what it made.

IanR · Postby **IanR** » Sun Jan 07, 2018 9:45 pm

My local tuner was pretty busy, like all of us prior to christmas break so did the best he could to get the car drto pass the gas test for engineering, problems was that the ecu was still running the base tune fro adaptronic and once the tuner started to play with it the drive ability went south, once I has passed the gas test I took it back to get it running better.

After another attempt to make the car smoother of idle and behave itself it was not really much better, just my bank account lighter...time to look for someone who knew what was going on.

I then contacted Anthony at https://www.facebook.com/tunedbyanthony/ as he tuned my old silver NB mx5.

Within 3 minutes hooked to his ecu he was able to tell me that the MAP sensor was out off calibration and needed to be replaced... yep that makes sense for how the car was driving. It was super jerky and hesitant off idle and kicked a bit under load. Back off the dyno and drive home.

Andy at Adaptronic shipped up a new map sensor which is integrated into the ecu main board, at no charge...not even for postage. Talk about looking after his customers and their customers. I have heard nothing but good about Andy and the Adaptronic ecu from those who use them, I have a mate who raced 2 seasons on the base tune out out of the box.

It arrived within the week so booked in with Anthony for the weekend. The new map sensor fixed the drive ability issues immediately as it should and then to tune the VE map for full power and everything in between.

This is where the problems started... this is what it made.

Way under expectation, and no matter what we tried it wouldn't budge...

Back to the garage to look for the source of the lost boost.