Everything backordered arrived at FM today, card charged. Crossing my fingers on getting shipped tomorrow.

Let us know when you are track ready so we can hook up with you.

Scheduled to be shipped Monday, arriving next friday. All it's going to take is a little slip up to prevent a successful installation and I'll miss the event, and there are quite a few opportunities for that. I'm going to cancel the event registration. I'd rather have everything go smoothly and miss the event but have my money back, than have something go wrong, miss the event, and lose the registration fee.

My wife's irritation factor is climbing :)

Understandable. We will follow your progress here and see you at the next event.

The FM2 installation manual for the MSM leaves out a few fairly important items I'm finding. Some of them are available in the "All Cars" installation manual version, but not all.

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The assembly is on the studs, need to hook up the oil/water lines and figure out how i'm going to fit the pipe to the intercooler between the turbo outlet and the lower radiator hose (which gets zero reference in the instruction manual, despite FM including a replacement because the stock hose is in the way of the turbo itself)

Any idea when you will get back on the road?

It should be this week. The turbo assembly is completely in, water and oil lines run, downpipe and cat in. EGR delete is mostly done. Fabricated a block-off plate on the intake side, picking up a diesel oil pan drain bolt from Advance later today to plug the exhaust side.

Basically, I need to finish the whole clean air side of the turbo. Filter to turbo and turbo to throttle body. The turbo to intercooler pipe is the challenge at the moment (not that i spent much time on it, late sunday night by the time i got to it), it's 1 piece formed silicone so getting it woven correctly through the maze of AC, PS, coolant, and oil lines is a challenge. Once that's in, then I re-install the sway bar, intercooler to throttlebody pipe (brackets dependant on each other), then mount the intercooler. I'm going to need to fabricate new mounting brackets for the intercooler, as I dropped the height of the intercooler 1.5 inches.

Then re-install the accessory belts and tighten down the various alternator and power steering pump bolts. Install the ignition, install the radiator and fan upgrade, re-connect the wiring harness snake to all the sensors and solenoids, double check grounding points

Then fire up the car and see if anything is leaking (coolant, oil, air) :)

If not, then bumper, wheels, underbody bracking, and put it on the ground. If there is a leak, tear out my hair and go fix it. I've been using thread sealant on a couple threads of every threaded connection, but I've had literally every possible connection in the breathing path, oil system and coolant system removed/disconnected, and all of the seals on the front of the engine block out/replaced. Then there is praying that my cam timing isn't off... (shouldn't be, I validated it, but....:dunno:)

I'll be disheartened but not shocked if there is something I have to go back in to fix.

If everything is solid though, then I'll start all the software side of the upgrade, new base map, new firmware, new software version. My ignition upgrade finally has a solution, the vendor is sending me a replacement igniter module. Then once that is all set, schedule for tuning.

This turbo should easily hold boost to redline. I should pick up a bit of peak torque down low, but won't have the torque fall off that I did on the stock turbo, so my whole HP line should get angled upwards. My tuner installed this turbo on another MSM and got 270-275whp from it. I've got all the same hardware, except perhaps better ignition once that igniter module shows up.

I'll be running at wastegate boost (6psi) on the track, though that stands a reasonable chance at beating my 12psi number on the stock turbo which was 197wtq/202whp. This one flows so much more, both the turbo and all the piping.

Running into a problem that I haven't been able to solve. The pic tells most of the story. Need somewhere to host it.

that's pretty kinky

I might have it figured out. There are several versions of the installation manual, which is really thorough, but unfortunately the 2 MSM versions don't mention that radiator hose at all. The installation manual for the normal 1.8L does mention it, and says that the hose will probably need trimming, depending on what equipment you have installed.

I'm partially inclined to investigate adding an elbow to that block side pipe, to turn it downwards toward the route it's going to need to be on anyway. Even if I trim this hose, it is still angled upwards instead of downwards, and will have to immediately turn and twist.

The engine front cover is all buttoned up, belts on, wiring harness and sensors all reconnected.

Intake sealed up from the turbo to the throttle body, new intercooler brackets made.
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Radiator in and cooling system is sealed up. Sides and top of radiator sealed to frame rail/braces/whatever_is_there
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Filled it with water, immediately found a leak at the block end of the lower radiator hose, the point i've been fighting with periodically for a few days. Pulled off the driver's side fan to get the power steering pump bolt out, then moved the power steering pump out of the way to get to the clamp on the hose. Loosened it, adjusted, and really tightened the hell out of it. Hopefully i got it this time. Stopped leaking at zero pressure. Not sure about when it gets pressurized.

Will see if any more leaks show themselves by morning.

Oil system is next, then I'm going to be priming everything, then firing it up and letting everything warm up and see what leaks then.

Really missing my '04 Ti now! Great thread.

The car lives...ish.


I fired it up earlier today, immediately had disconcerting rattling and knocking sounds from the top front of the engine. Several more attempts to find the problem finally revealed that the cam gear bolts were backing out and the timing belt wasn't tensioned properly. So the cam gears were-a-rockin and the timing belt was-a-slappin.

All fixed, car idled warm, revealing a burping problem with the coolant system, but no more leaks yet. Several more issues i had to deal with, have a rather large email pending to FM about the problems. I frankly expected better, and was let down with the completeness of the kit. Fortunately I have some leverage, since I've spent over $12k with them in the last 12 months. The last remaining issue with the kit is that there is no plug for the recirc fitting, and no recirc hose. My recirc hose from before isn't nearly long enough either. So I have to solve that.

Car is still in the air, braces, bumper, wheels, and brakes off. Brakes are next, then braces, then bumper then wheels. Everything looking good though.

Lots of pictures later.

Nice build. I also sold my 8 few years ago and replaced it with a Mazdaspeed Miata shortly after. Just doing intake, DP, FMIC and ECU bandaid to get to around 200whp. I don't have the power ambition or the fund to do what you're doing, but it's cool to watch somebody do it.

Glad to hear progress is being made. How is the FM customer service? Are they usually pretty helpful?

I don't really have a power ambition either :lol: 202whp is plenty for me. The FM2 upgrade is almost entirely because it solves a number of other problems all at the same time. Yeah, I'll end up with more power from it, though I suspect that for the track I'll be driving down at wastegate pressures. I already was on the stock turbo, but on the FM2, that is likely to be more peak power. Probably a bit less torque, given the wastegate drop from 8.5 to 6

They are top tier. Think BHR, if BHR had 15 employees, a huge shop, lots of funding to develop top quality parts, and a small racetrack literally on their shop grounds.

I've run into quite a few issues with this kit, which has been rather surprising, about to the degree that it would be if BHR shipped someone an ignition kit and midpipe and neither of them fit properly. This turbo setup is what they are known for, and they sell 150+ kits a year easily, since there almost always seems to be a queue for the core parts. Granted, I have a rare and unique car with a lot of unique things that makes it different from the standard 1.8L Miatas of each generation, and most of my issues stem from that, but still.

Well, it's on the ground, and I took it out for a drive last night. I didn't get into boost more than 1-2psi, because I still have to load up the base map for the turbo, but it's also going to roll in 16 firmware revisions and 3 software revisions, so I want to make sure that if I run into trouble, that it's from the software/firmware side, and not the hardware side. The current map loaded is safe for any non-boost, maybe faintly leaner, but not a problem as 14.7 is the target anyway. The more boost comes up though, the leaner I would be, so staying out of it for now.

No odd noises, rattles, shakes, or whatnot while driving. I actually had trouble getting the car up to temperature. The 180F thermostat let the temp climb to 198 on the first warm up before the burping was able to get some of the bigger air bubbles out, then the 50F radiator water brought that plummeting to 162F. It took 20 minutes of idling to get the temps to hover around 176F, where the fans kick on, and I think the thermostat is partly cracked open. While driving, the temps never got above 179.8F. Dropped slightly a bit after I let off the gas, but would slowly climb back to 179.8. I'm probably "over cooled" for the street at the moment. Once I can add boost to the mix, we will see where I am at.

I found a hissing radiator hose connection at the top of the radiator from a slightly too loose clamp. Replaced it with a constant torque clamp and anchored that down. Otherwise things are looking good. Still need to re-check for leaks this morning.

A later drive had the wastegate actuator arm pop off for some reason, had to grab some clips to re-secure.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-j...409_142627.jpg

I also rerouted several of the vacuum lines, and took it for a drive. Boost gauge still reads 5psi, though i may need to re-clock the gauge face again, since the wastegate is set at 6psi, and I don't detect any other signs of a boost leak.

Boost sure comes up fast, really responsive. Though i'm getting more lift-off high pitched flutter from the left side, the intake, rather than the right side where the BOV is, so I'm wondering if I'm getting compressor surge on lift off. Also, on off throttle coast down in gear, from around 2,500 to 1,500rpm. I get a high frequency low pitch vibration noise, like an unloaded bearing is off balance a bit. Might be more related to the timing belt replacement though.

I think I'm going to take it to work tomorrow. Forcast is 66F and sunny. Crossing my fingers that nothing goes wrong :)

glad you are getting it worked out pearl. cant wait to go for a drive in it. btw adams sways are still at my bros shop. next time we meet up grab them

Drove it in to the office today, THEN realized that I didn't bring the soft top latches, so it's sitting with it's top down all day, crossing my fingers that no one messes with it.

A few issues popped up, one being that the rubber shield around the SS oil feed line is melting from proximity to the wastegate dump, so getting rubber smoke slowly. My ignition coils, that i know to be failing, are breaking up at higher RPM noticeably. I really want to get the ignition upgrade working. Going to bug the vendor again today for when the replacement module is going to arrive.

A 3min video of my suspension in action, looking for a clunk I've been hearing, but may be of interest to people. The camera isn't actually shifting as much as it seems, YouTube's image stabilization is needed to remove most of the vibration, and it gives the appearance of the camera changing angle a lot.

Clunk heard at 1:39 and 1:41, plus a few other harder to hear ones occasionally.



Still no real progress on the Fab9 ignition kit, so ordered everything needed for a DIY LS2 conversion.

And the LS2 coil relocation is complete...mostly :) It's been running for about a week with a SIGNIFICANT improvement in power, now that the fuel is being combusted rather than choked on and spit out. I can actually hold boost/power to redline now, where I couldn't before, and rolling into boost is no longer shaky. Mazda coils are generally substandard across the entire line, not just the 8 :)

However, just to get the car running, I had to mount the coils in a rather embarassing and ugly way and location, so I've avoided taking any pictures of where it was. I have completed the relocation in time for this weekend, so I won't be embarassed to have people looking at the engine bay at Lime Rock.

The tray is too flimsy for my preferences, but it is far more stable than where they were mounted, and it looks far cleaner. I'll be remaking it in the near future with thicker metal. I really wish I had a welder to work with/practice with. It would make things like this so much easier.

The plug wires are custom Magnacore wires, straight from Magnacore, and unfortunately I somehow screwed up my measurement and they are about 6 inches too long. So I had to route them across the firewall to "use up" the slack, rather than along the strut bar like originally planned. Oh well, better too long than too short.

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RIWWP,
Nice work. What is the black cylindrical thing between the relocated coil and the strut bar?

looks like a cruise control module... i could be wrong though

Sorry, I missed the prior comment, yes, it's my cruise control vacuum reservoir.