Building the Boosted Smurf

[psulja]

Small update since Friday was more of a garage cleaning day. Pushed the car out to clean the garage up since it looked like a bomb went off in there since the car was originally pushed in



Got the car back in and sealed up the fan shroud with some self-adhesive and expanding weatherstripping. I hope the adhesive on here will hold up to heat, it was super sticky so I'm not too concerned but it'll be something I keep an eye on as time goes by. Also did a strip at the top of the rad and rad support to seal that up. Need to work on sealing everything else up between the bumper, intercooler, oil cooler, and radiator.






Battery and meth pump mounted.




Started going through the old harness labeling all the connectors and started peeling back the old loom and electrical tape.

I've been trying to decide the best way to do this harness. The fact that our cars don't have a separate engine harness is kind of annoying because I really don't see a need in messing with the chassis harness, it's just my engine harness I wasn't happy with because of how many times it's been spliced into and the unreliable signals I was getting (like my super noisy TPS that couldn't be fixed before).

I also do not need any of the airbag wiring which runs through the entire harness so that's another thing.

Now I'm not even going to try to hide the fact that I'm new to wiring. I've done little things here and there but I've never done anything this major. But what I'd like to do is run all new wiring for everything from the firewall forward and then obviously wire up gauges and switches on the interior on a separate sub-harness. Basically I want to end up with a separate engine harness if possible, or as close to that as I can get.

This will also let me delete any unnecessary wiring and hide/cleanly run any wires that I actually need.

I have no idea how long I should expect this project to take me but it is the last step in this entire build so I'm really excited about that.

Got the harness all labeled, peeled back the old tape and loom, and took out all the airbag wiring. Tomorrow I'll probably start de-pinning the connectors I'll be using and maybe start running the new wires.

My "workbench" for this entire process. Would be nice to have something a bit bigger but it'll do


Stripped down OEM harness w/ out airbag wiring


The pile of garbage that came off the old harness. This is just the tape, loom, and airbag wiring. There will still be a bunch of wiring that'll get deleted since I don't need it anymore. (potatocam)

Still need to
- respray and actually install VC
- brake lines
- clutch line
- fuel pressure regulator & lines from rail and to return - all fittings ordered
- [S]turbo water lines[/S]
- [S]seal the fan shroud[/S]
- finish up catch can lines
- fire sleeve heater core lines - DEI fire sleeve ordered
- [S]mount battery[/S]
- [S]mount meth pump[/S]/run meth line
- [S]crank sensor & [/S]modify CAS
- spark plugs & wires

[psulja]

DEI fire sleeve showed up today so I did my heater core lines, turbo water lines, and a section of fuel line just because it would rub against the upper rad hose and I had some left over fire sleeve. I have some left over 1" sleeve that I might use on the oil drain just to be safe. But that's a lot of effort so we'll see lol



Also got an air filter from Vibrant so figured I'd toss that on, except I need a small straight section of pipe to get my catch can line in there. (I think that's where it's supposed to go from what I remember)



And more wiring things. Just been separating the engine harness from the chassis harness, eliminating all the wire that will be replaced by the new harness. Very time consuming and I really hope I didn't accidentally take out a wrong wire lol. A friend is bringing over a bunch of wire he has tomorrow after working so I might be able to start running some wires.

Bigger pile of garbage.


Also on the lookout for a '99 valve cover since I think I'll just run a 99 cam sensor rather than messing around with modifying the CAS.

[psulja]

So I just spent way more money than I wanted to on connectors and terminals. Ordered extra pins/seals from EasternBeaver just in case. Then I searched around and found out OnlineComponents was the place to get ECU connectors and the pins for them, except they have a $50 minimum order. So I ordered 6 of both the ECU connectors with enough pins to terminate them all. So if you want ecu connectors and terminals lmk.

Whenever all that stuff gets in I can hopefully terminate all the connectors and get that all sorted. Just waiting for the wires to show up to route all the wiring.

Also finished up most of my fuel things. Just need to figure out how to mount the Walbro 450 since its huge.

Bulkhead at the sender. All AN everythang


FPR mounted and the line from the rail to the regulator done. Just waiting for 1 fitting to get the return finalized.


And because I like looking at this so much

[psulja]

Went over to Detroit today to pick up a bunch of stuff. 99 Valve cover, shielded wire, all my connectors and pins, shift light, etc.

First up was the valve cover, it is currently flat black, tossed it on there to see how it looks compared to the blue before I sand it and paint it. Thoughts?



Next is all the wiring stuffs and things. Just need to pick up my milspec bulkhead connectors from Bryan and figure out how much of what size loom I need before ordering that. DEI fire tape is on the way too so I can avoid using any electrical tape on this harness. Hoping to keep it as clean as possible.

[theothersawyer]

I like the blue valve cover, but it is kind of a lot of blue...I don't know how I feel about the black though, maybe some accent color instead like a gold or something?!? Either way, that is one beautiful engine bay!

[riefdaddy]

I like the blue cover. The engine bay looks drab with the black cover. Like theothersawyer, I'd go with either blue, or maybe yellow. Nah, I'd go blue.

[psulja]

So I actually did stuff on the car today surprisingly. It was a nice day out so I figured I wouldn't totally waste the opportunity.


Got some paint stripper for the 99 valve cover


Still did some more cleaning after this point but didn't take a pic


awww yisss




Also ground off the double timing marks on the 99 cam gear and finally installed that/reset timing. Hopefully everything is good.





Getting bungs welded on to the intercooler piping tomorrow for my IAT sensor and meth injection nozzle and picking up my install kit for the Walbro pump.

After I get all that stuff on I think all the mechanical stuff will be done. All that'll be left are the brake/clutch lines and wire harness.

[psulja]

Had a couple bungs welded on my coldside intercooler pipe for the IAT sensor and meth injection nozzle and put that back in



Meth line running to the intercooler pipe


Then I had some friends come by to help me finish up the brake lines. I considered routing them through the car but didn't want to deal with pulling the dash in case something went wrong with one of them. The come back out on the other side of the engine bay and just run down the firewall.






Then I finally did some more work on mounting the fuel pump. Looking for opinions on this setup. I wanted to run 3/8 line from the pump to the rail so that meant finding a way to get 3/8 line coming off the pump.

It goes from the pump into the rubber line that comes with the install kit, into a 3/8 line that goes into the bulkhead fitting with a brass crush fitting that is supposed to seal it. Then from there it'll go into the -6 AN line to the front of the car.



Not a great shot but gives the idea of the bulkhead


Now all that is left is dropping the pump into the tank and the wire harness which I'm too uncomfortable with to actually trust myself to do lol

[psulja]

Randy told me to update this so I'm going to update it lol... Nothing has happened in the last 6 months. But back in July/August I did a little bit of stuff. Just going off what I see in my imgur album that I don't think I posted here yet.

Wilwood 6 Piston BBK up front


15x10 Jongbloed's w/ 245/40 Maxxis RC-1 tires (still haven't put them on the car)



Had a friend start helping me with the wiring but that didn't go anywhere so I called up Fab9 and told Bryan the car was going over there to get finished. This was at the end of August and the goal was to have the car done by October but that didn't happen. It is still there, just waiting to hear some updates about it.

Getting ready to send the car off







------------

Once it became evident it'd be a while til the car was done I gave up on it. Left it at Fab9 and went out and bought myself a new car. 2016 VW Golf R




Mod bug hit right away as usual. Tinted the windows ^, short shifter, clutch delay valve delete, jb1 piggyback tune, p3cars vent gauge, wheels w/ winter tires, opened up the stock intake, and HKS SSQV bov.








Current 0 to 60 time:


Also ordered a 3" downpipe and lowering springs to hopefully install sometime soon.


As for the Miata; I sold my megasquirt and bought an AEM EMS-4 since Bryan says he is more familiar with that so hopefully that'll get the ball rolling and I'll have the car in time for spring. I am seriously considering parting the car out though because of how weak the Canadian dollar is. If I parted it out to all you American's I would be getting 40% more with how terrible our dollar is. That could get me a downpayment on a house and go Stage 3 on the golf if I wanted to lol

[Greasemonkey2000]

A part out would be sad given the level of meticulous attention to detail but i can understand your frustration. Golf looks sweet! I love how the German cars are typically detuned from the factory and begging to be unhinged, especially the FI ones.

[theothersawyer]

Don't part it! It is gorgeous! I stared at the engine bay for like 5 minutes!

[Hyper]

Is it a sweet car, please contact me if you decide to sell the front brake set up. and TII Transmission with the related components

[psulja]

I ended up buying an AEM EMS4 for the Miata since Bryan @ Fab9 is much more familiar with AEM than MegaSquirt.

Most recent update I have is that he has completed all the engine wiring and is trying to go for a first start. Unfortunately the starter isn't doing anything. I'm kind of concerned because of all the changes made to the chassis harness; I kind of feel like something may have been missed in there so troubleshooting is going to be a huge pain!

I also officially bought the flares and wheels that I was on the fence about, so when the car comes back to Canada I can go ahead and put those on.

I'm hoping I'll have the car back this weekend if he can get it started so I can start putting the rest of it back together over the long weekend. Not getting my hopes up though.

[psulja]

Pictures of the test fit for the wheels i just bought from back in the summer:

[Hyper]

no!!!!