Is Turboing Your Car Worth It?

The Turbo Saga of the Miata

As we sit here today, I have to admit that I'm a little concerned about the head gasket in my engine. It's 25 years old and who knows how much life it has left in it? My other concern is that I'm still running the stock cat, which is going to be a bit of a bottleneck in the exhaust system and might make it difficult to reach my power goals. Hopefully not, but I don't know.

We're trying to go to a track day on Sunday with the Miata to redeem our last track day experience, and now right now it's Thursday, so I've got today and tomorrow to get this thing tuned and then shake it down on Saturday and hit the track on Sunday. It's a little ambitious, but I think we can do it. So, we're going to get the things strapped down right now and start tuning. Start making some tweaks and hopefully we can make the track day on Sunday also. Hopefully it doesn't blow up, hopefully we make 225 horsepower - that's really hoping to pull a lot of things together.

We started by accounting for our new injectors and getting this thing just idling and running normally. Sort of like that and then we'll work our way towards higher rpms and actually making power. Alright, we just got the boost control all sorted out, we're making boost - 13 and a half pounds right now, which is about as much boost I want to run so that means it's time to make some power poles and see what kind of horsepower and torque this thing actually makes. We did it - we made 227 horsepower! Which means that we met my goal for maybe the first time ever.

But unfortunately, we're not done tuning yet. The fact is making power poles like that is kind of the easier part of tuning there's a lot of work left to be done as far as drivability goes so I'm going to leave the car here overnight with Gibby and tomorrow we'll get it on the fancy dyno and then finally, then I can drive a 227 horsepower Miata - oh baby! I'm excited.

So, we're almost done with the tuning process. The car is really drivable now we've got a lot of the little bugs ironed out and also because I'm a man of safety, I'm having Gibby make me a map that only runs 12 psi of boost - we're running 14 and a half last night that's what we're running right now. That's what we made 227 horsepower with which is awesome but I think it's probably a good idea that I have a little bit safer of a map than that also for things like uh track day you know because I do want this thing to not blow up so we got a few things left to wrap up on the dyno then we'll get it off the dyno and finally onto the road.

I'm so excited to drive this thing! Can't even tell you - it's all coming together, baby, and just in the nick of time tomorrow I'm going to the track so I got to take this thing back to the shop, I got to clean it up because it looks terrible. Got to check all my nuts and bolts make sure everything's tight top off all my fluids and get this thing ready for the track we're going back to Willow Springs tomorrow so I can hopefully redeem myself from the first track day experience we had in the Miata. This thing is ready for the racetrack now - I'm not even worried, uh I mean maybe I'm a little worried but that's normal right?

Thank you guys so much for watching this turbo saga - the Miata is finally turboed! Can't believe it 227 horsepower baby! This thing shreds and I hope you're having a good time - I'm having a blast follow me on Instagram at Zac Job don't forget to follow Donut Media while you're there, I'll see you guys next week at the frickin' racetrack, baby.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso you turboed your car nice you're ready for some more power some big noises and lots of dudes attention that's awesome but there's more to turboing a car than just picking the right parts and getting them installed you got to tell your car's brain about the new parts so you don't blow it up i'm talking about tuning i'm zach and this is money pit and today we finally make some more power baby hopefully about 225 horses worth but before we do that we've got a few things to do first we're going to talk about the different options you have for tuning then i'm going to install boost control so we can control our boost and then i've got a few little other things left to button up so we're going to do that stuff then get this thing fired up and then we're off to the dyno let's go all right so when we're talking about tuning your car there are kind of two different options there's flash tuning and there's standalone ecu's we've talked about this on this channel before but we'll just cover it real quick flash tunes basically replace the software on your stock ecu a company will send you a little device that you plug into your obd2 port and they'll also send you a tune file that you replace your factory software with but for something like the miata there really is no flash tune option for the setup that we've got but luckily we already went standalone as you may recall that is your other big option it gives you power over everything you take control of all the controls it's kind of a big responsibility so if you're gonna go stand-alone ecu really most of the time what you're gonna wanna do is find yourself a local and reputable tuner that's comfortable with your platform and your ecu and then you're going to want to get your car to that person so they can put it on a dyno and build you a custom tune without blowing anything up so that's exactly what we're going to do today but before we do it i gotta install boost control so that we have control over our boost levels i'm about halfway there i got the wires routed into the old cabin now i just got to get them to the ecu now to connect them to the ecu it's pretty easy the mega squirt comes with all these leads that already have the correct connectors on the end of them so all i got to do is splice this wire to my wire from the boost solenoid and then plug it into our little auxiliary connector on the back of the mega square now to figure out which of these pins i need to use i just need to go to their website it's all listed out and it should be really easy so i'm just going to splice these together plug it in all right so at the other end of those wires we've got our boost control solenoid right here i got this from diy auto tune same folks that make the ecu and i think it's about 50 or 60 bucks and this is going to let us control our boost so i'm going to eventually get this thing mounted right here but first i got to put these little barbs on so we can plumb vacuum lines to the solenoid all right now that we've got our boost solenoid in place and all mounted up it's time to plumb our vacuum lines and this is the important part this is how this thing works i'll show you how to hook it up it's really simple all right so we've got this vacuum line connected to the bottom uh port on the wastegate uh and then it's gonna also connect to the outlet on the turbo so it's gonna see whatever pressure the turbo is making immediately okay so uh we're using a lot of adapters down here which i do hate but it's okay it's gonna work the fact is we gotta switch our vacuum line sizing the ports on the wastegate are huge the outlet port on the turbo itself is pretty small and then the barbs on the boost solenoid are tiny so we gotta go from small line to larger line so basically what we have going on here is a little solenoid it kind of goes in between the manifold pressure and the wastegate so it lets us manipulate our manifold pressure and change what the wastegate actually sees to manipulate our boost pressure so we can trick the wastegate into making whatever boost pressure we want all right now we've got our boost control solenoid hooked up and all in working order and with that we're almost ready to go to the dyno i do have a couple other things left to do i'm going to put some new plugs in this thing i'm going to gap them down and i got to put oil in it still fire this thing up and then we're on the road let's go all right so we're going to yank out the old plugs that are in here and replace them with a fresh set now it's always a good idea to have a nice new set of plugs but apart from just having new plugs we need to change the gap on our plugs because we've added this turbo when you add a turbo to a car you increase the cylinder pressure with all that extra air and all that extra pressure in the cylinders makes it harder for your spark to jump the gap in your spark plug so a way to remedy that is to make the gap on your spark plug a little bit smaller than what it should be got my slick harbor freight feelers gauge here for measuring thicknesses and things all right so the stock gap is like 44 thousands which is even bigger than the biggest feeler gauge on here we're going to be shooting for 25 thousands that's a pretty small gap but it's going to help us avoid misfires and keep our spark nice and strong that's what i want so i'm going to do that on all four with that all these plugs are gapped down to 25 000 which is great they're ready to go in the car but before i put them in the engine i'm actually going to go prime the turbo which means i need to put oil in the engine one of the most important things for the lifespan of the turbo is that it gets oil so the first time you start it up if that thing is dry in there you could really damage your turbo and really shorten its lifespan so you need to make sure there's oil in the turbo before you start it there's a few ways to do that for one i always fill this thing up even before i put this fitting on i'll fill the turbo itself up with oil sort of like one of these jobbies the next thing that i'm going to do is arguably more important i'm going to get this line filled up with oil so the spark plugs are out of the engine right now so the engine should crank really easily because there's no compression so i'm going to basically crank the engine uh which will prime the pump build oil pressure and get oil pressure to the turbo okay that's enough of that all right so now our oil system is all primed up turbo's got oil in it uh we let it run with pressure for long enough so now i got to put the plugs in now it's time to fire this thing up get it off jack stands finally let's go all right spark plugs are in oil's in turbo is primed god if i wasn't any smarter i'd say it's time to start this thing up i was trying to call myself dumb did i or did i call myself smart i can't even tell hear things turn around all right ready all right let's fire this turd up all right hmm there's a lot of smoke coming in but that's interesting i wonder if we're just dumping fuel my concern is that the dead times and stuff we put in from the new injectors like i said it was a little convoluted for megasquirt maybe i didn't do it right maybe that spreadsheet didn't be dirty so i got to figure that out all right so after our first startup uh well it runs pretty poorly it's running really rich it's running like nine to one at idle super rich uh that's because we've got our big fat injectors in there and there is a chance that i put the injector dead times in incorrectly since it was a little bit different in mega squirt but the big deal right now well we sprung a coolant leak that's not what i thought was going to happen see there's this bypass hose that goes from the heater core to the water pump inlet and you have to move that to get your exhaust manifold on or off well i guess that little o-ring in there wiggled its last wiggle and now it leaks this is the way she goes baby the way she goes all right so i called the dealership back to buy the parts that i need to fix the coolant leak and they were like oh we actually have one in stock so i just went and got it uh it's only a couple hours later and i think i fixed the leak took everything apart put a new o-ring in and i think we're back in business she's bone dry baby she's bone dry i think the coolant leak is fixed which means there's nothing stopping us from tuning this hog except for getting it to the dyno still gotta do that cue the tow truck montage all right we are back at my friend's ef1 motorsports we're ready to get this thing on the dyno and actually tune it make some power make all 225 of those horses i hope i do have a few concerns uh first off i'm a little bit concerned about the head gasket i mean it's 25 years old in there who knows how much life it has left in it my other concern is that i'm still running the stock cat so that's going to be a bit of a bottleneck in the exhaust system and it might make it difficult to make my power goals hopefully not but i don't know we might have to fab up a test pipe real quick my other concern is that i am kind of cutting things a little close uh we're trying to go to a track day on sunday with the miata to redeem our last track day now right now it's thursday so i've got today and tomorrow to get this thing tuned and then shake it down on saturday and hit the track on sunday it's a little ambitious but i think we can do it so we're going to get the things strapped down right now start tuning start making some tweaks and hopefully we can make the track day on sunday also hopefully it doesn't blow up hopefully we make 225 horsepower we're really hoping to pull a lot of things together right here so wish me luck all right so the first thing we're going to do is account for our new injectors and get this thing just idling and running normally sort of like that and then we'll work our way towards you know higher rpms and actually making power all right we just got the boost control all sorted out we're making boost we're running 13 and a half pounds right now which is about as much boost as i want to run so that means that it's time to make some power poles and see what kind of horsepower and torque this thing actually makes we did it we made 227 horsepower which means that we met my goal for maybe the first time ever i've never been so excited about 227 horsepower in my whole life but unfortunately we're not done tuning yet the fact is making power poles like that is kind of the easier part of tuning there's a lot of work left to be done as far as drivability goes so i'm going to leave the car here overnight with gibby and tomorrow we'll get it on the fancy dyno and then finally then i can drive a 227 horsepower miata oh baby i'm excited all right so we're almost done with the tuning process so the car is really drivable now we've got a lot of the little bugs ironed out and also because i'm a man of safety i'm having gibby make me a map that only runs 12 psi of boost we're running 14 and a half last night that's what we're running right now that's what we made 227 horsepower with which is awesome but i think it's probably a good idea that i have a little bit safer of a map than that also for things like uh track day you know because i do want this thing to not blow up so we got a few things left to wrap up on the dyno then we'll get it off the dyno and finally onto the road i'm so excited to drive this thing i can't even tell you i can't wait yeah baby this thing's finally quick oh it's all coming together baby and just in the nick of time tomorrow i'm going to the track so i got to take this thing back to the shop i got to clean it up because it looks terrible i got to check all my nuts and bolts make sure everything's tight top off all my fluids and get this thing ready for the track we're going back to willow springs tomorrow so i can hopefully redeem myself from the first track day experience we had in the miata this thing is ready for the racetrack now i'm not even worried uh i mean maybe i'm a little worried but that's normal right so thank you guys so much for watching this turbo saga the miata is finally turboed i can't believe it 227 horsepower baby this thing shreds and i hope you're having a good time i'm having a blast follow me on instagram at zac job don't forget to follow donut media while you're there i'll see you guys next week at the frickin racetrack babyso you turboed your car nice you're ready for some more power some big noises and lots of dudes attention that's awesome but there's more to turboing a car than just picking the right parts and getting them installed you got to tell your car's brain about the new parts so you don't blow it up i'm talking about tuning i'm zach and this is money pit and today we finally make some more power baby hopefully about 225 horses worth but before we do that we've got a few things to do first we're going to talk about the different options you have for tuning then i'm going to install boost control so we can control our boost and then i've got a few little other things left to button up so we're going to do that stuff then get this thing fired up and then we're off to the dyno let's go all right so when we're talking about tuning your car there are kind of two different options there's flash tuning and there's standalone ecu's we've talked about this on this channel before but we'll just cover it real quick flash tunes basically replace the software on your stock ecu a company will send you a little device that you plug into your obd2 port and they'll also send you a tune file that you replace your factory software with but for something like the miata there really is no flash tune option for the setup that we've got but luckily we already went standalone as you may recall that is your other big option it gives you power over everything you take control of all the controls it's kind of a big responsibility so if you're gonna go stand-alone ecu really most of the time what you're gonna wanna do is find yourself a local and reputable tuner that's comfortable with your platform and your ecu and then you're going to want to get your car to that person so they can put it on a dyno and build you a custom tune without blowing anything up so that's exactly what we're going to do today but before we do it i gotta install boost control so that we have control over our boost levels i'm about halfway there i got the wires routed into the old cabin now i just got to get them to the ecu now to connect them to the ecu it's pretty easy the mega squirt comes with all these leads that already have the correct connectors on the end of them so all i got to do is splice this wire to my wire from the boost solenoid and then plug it into our little auxiliary connector on the back of the mega square now to figure out which of these pins i need to use i just need to go to their website it's all listed out and it should be really easy so i'm just going to splice these together plug it in all right so at the other end of those wires we've got our boost control solenoid right here i got this from diy auto tune same folks that make the ecu and i think it's about 50 or 60 bucks and this is going to let us control our boost so i'm going to eventually get this thing mounted right here but first i got to put these little barbs on so we can plumb vacuum lines to the solenoid all right now that we've got our boost solenoid in place and all mounted up it's time to plumb our vacuum lines and this is the important part this is how this thing works i'll show you how to hook it up it's really simple all right so we've got this vacuum line connected to the bottom uh port on the wastegate uh and then it's gonna also connect to the outlet on the turbo so it's gonna see whatever pressure the turbo is making immediately okay so uh we're using a lot of adapters down here which i do hate but it's okay it's gonna work the fact is we gotta switch our vacuum line sizing the ports on the wastegate are huge the outlet port on the turbo itself is pretty small and then the barbs on the boost solenoid are tiny so we gotta go from small line to larger line so basically what we have going on here is a little solenoid it kind of goes in between the manifold pressure and the wastegate so it lets us manipulate our manifold pressure and change what the wastegate actually sees to manipulate our boost pressure so we can trick the wastegate into making whatever boost pressure we want all right now we've got our boost control solenoid hooked up and all in working order and with that we're almost ready to go to the dyno i do have a couple other things left to do i'm going to put some new plugs in this thing i'm going to gap them down and i got to put oil in it still fire this thing up and then we're on the road let's go all right so we're going to yank out the old plugs that are in here and replace them with a fresh set now it's always a good idea to have a nice new set of plugs but apart from just having new plugs we need to change the gap on our plugs because we've added this turbo when you add a turbo to a car you increase the cylinder pressure with all that extra air and all that extra pressure in the cylinders makes it harder for your spark to jump the gap in your spark plug so a way to remedy that is to make the gap on your spark plug a little bit smaller than what it should be got my slick harbor freight feelers gauge here for measuring thicknesses and things all right so the stock gap is like 44 thousands which is even bigger than the biggest feeler gauge on here we're going to be shooting for 25 thousands that's a pretty small gap but it's going to help us avoid misfires and keep our spark nice and strong that's what i want so i'm going to do that on all four with that all these plugs are gapped down to 25 000 which is great they're ready to go in the car but before i put them in the engine i'm actually going to go prime the turbo which means i need to put oil in the engine one of the most important things for the lifespan of the turbo is that it gets oil so the first time you start it up if that thing is dry in there you could really damage your turbo and really shorten its lifespan so you need to make sure there's oil in the turbo before you start it there's a few ways to do that for one i always fill this thing up even before i put this fitting on i'll fill the turbo itself up with oil sort of like one of these jobbies the next thing that i'm going to do is arguably more important i'm going to get this line filled up with oil so the spark plugs are out of the engine right now so the engine should crank really easily because there's no compression so i'm going to basically crank the engine uh which will prime the pump build oil pressure and get oil pressure to the turbo okay that's enough of that all right so now our oil system is all primed up turbo's got oil in it uh we let it run with pressure for long enough so now i got to put the plugs in now it's time to fire this thing up get it off jack stands finally let's go all right spark plugs are in oil's in turbo is primed god if i wasn't any smarter i'd say it's time to start this thing up i was trying to call myself dumb did i or did i call myself smart i can't even tell hear things turn around all right ready all right let's fire this turd up all right hmm there's a lot of smoke coming in but that's interesting i wonder if we're just dumping fuel my concern is that the dead times and stuff we put in from the new injectors like i said it was a little convoluted for megasquirt maybe i didn't do it right maybe that spreadsheet didn't be dirty so i got to figure that out all right so after our first startup uh well it runs pretty poorly it's running really rich it's running like nine to one at idle super rich uh that's because we've got our big fat injectors in there and there is a chance that i put the injector dead times in incorrectly since it was a little bit different in mega squirt but the big deal right now well we sprung a coolant leak that's not what i thought was going to happen see there's this bypass hose that goes from the heater core to the water pump inlet and you have to move that to get your exhaust manifold on or off well i guess that little o-ring in there wiggled its last wiggle and now it leaks this is the way she goes baby the way she goes all right so i called the dealership back to buy the parts that i need to fix the coolant leak and they were like oh we actually have one in stock so i just went and got it uh it's only a couple hours later and i think i fixed the leak took everything apart put a new o-ring in and i think we're back in business she's bone dry baby she's bone dry i think the coolant leak is fixed which means there's nothing stopping us from tuning this hog except for getting it to the dyno still gotta do that cue the tow truck montage all right we are back at my friend's ef1 motorsports we're ready to get this thing on the dyno and actually tune it make some power make all 225 of those horses i hope i do have a few concerns uh first off i'm a little bit concerned about the head gasket i mean it's 25 years old in there who knows how much life it has left in it my other concern is that i'm still running the stock cat so that's going to be a bit of a bottleneck in the exhaust system and it might make it difficult to make my power goals hopefully not but i don't know we might have to fab up a test pipe real quick my other concern is that i am kind of cutting things a little close uh we're trying to go to a track day on sunday with the miata to redeem our last track day now right now it's thursday so i've got today and tomorrow to get this thing tuned and then shake it down on saturday and hit the track on sunday it's a little ambitious but i think we can do it so we're going to get the things strapped down right now start tuning start making some tweaks and hopefully we can make the track day on sunday also hopefully it doesn't blow up hopefully we make 225 horsepower we're really hoping to pull a lot of things together right here so wish me luck all right so the first thing we're going to do is account for our new injectors and get this thing just idling and running normally sort of like that and then we'll work our way towards you know higher rpms and actually making power all right we just got the boost control all sorted out we're making boost we're running 13 and a half pounds right now which is about as much boost as i want to run so that means that it's time to make some power poles and see what kind of horsepower and torque this thing actually makes we did it we made 227 horsepower which means that we met my goal for maybe the first time ever i've never been so excited about 227 horsepower in my whole life but unfortunately we're not done tuning yet the fact is making power poles like that is kind of the easier part of tuning there's a lot of work left to be done as far as drivability goes so i'm going to leave the car here overnight with gibby and tomorrow we'll get it on the fancy dyno and then finally then i can drive a 227 horsepower miata oh baby i'm excited all right so we're almost done with the tuning process so the car is really drivable now we've got a lot of the little bugs ironed out and also because i'm a man of safety i'm having gibby make me a map that only runs 12 psi of boost we're running 14 and a half last night that's what we're running right now that's what we made 227 horsepower with which is awesome but i think it's probably a good idea that i have a little bit safer of a map than that also for things like uh track day you know because i do want this thing to not blow up so we got a few things left to wrap up on the dyno then we'll get it off the dyno and finally onto the road i'm so excited to drive this thing i can't even tell you i can't wait yeah baby this thing's finally quick oh it's all coming together baby and just in the nick of time tomorrow i'm going to the track so i got to take this thing back to the shop i got to clean it up because it looks terrible i got to check all my nuts and bolts make sure everything's tight top off all my fluids and get this thing ready for the track we're going back to willow springs tomorrow so i can hopefully redeem myself from the first track day experience we had in the miata this thing is ready for the racetrack now i'm not even worried uh i mean maybe i'm a little worried but that's normal right so thank you guys so much for watching this turbo saga the miata is finally turboed i can't believe it 227 horsepower baby this thing shreds and i hope you're having a good time i'm having a blast follow me on instagram at zac job don't forget to follow donut media while you're there i'll see you guys next week at the frickin racetrack baby