Project Purple Nurple
 

So I finally got ahold of an FC to start a decent project with. The car I bought is an 86 base model N/A, but has a recently rebuilt street ported 13b along with a lot of other misc goodies such as a decent syspension system, and some other small mods. I chose the name Purple Nurple well.... for obvious reasons.

Finally got around to getting my rear strut bar installed today. A guy I work with let me use his cutting wheel to get the rear speaker towers out. After him watching me butcher one of them he took the other one out much more cleanly, and in about half the time. Also the steering wheel was some ratty aftermarket one the previous owner had installed and the cover was rotting off, so I made a psudo Mazda racing wheel out of an old no name brand wheel I got from a friend, and an old wheel center cap.

so what are your overall plans?

I have a lot of different ideas Im considering. Eventually I plan on going turbo with ITBs. The motor I have now was actually built to be a turbo 6port so Im not sure if I want to spend the money involved turboing this one, or get a turbo motor and go from there. Right now Im mostly planning maitnance upgrades like a new trans, a new set of injectors, and a few other things. After that I want to get an exhaust and some other things I can keep when I figure out what I want to do long term.

How was it "built to be a turbo 6 port"? I would definitely just swap the 4 port turbo in and call it a day...

From my understanding all the internals are upgraded to handle some boost, not a lot but enough to give it some decent power. The problem is Id like to eventually put in a RE motor so Im not sure if I want to spend the money doing a Turbo-II swap only to yank the motor back out again in a couple years. Right now its just one thing at a time until I get to that point though.

turbo 4 port could be a T2 or RE block :) both are easy swaps...

Purple cars make me weak in the knees. I look forward to watching you update and mod the car! if you ever need a hand for menial work or just hanging out, let me know!

Deffinatly will do. And its odd I originally planed on doing a completely different color scheme, but the purple is deffinatly growing on me. Im just gonna gave to get a better paint job so the white door/hood panels don't stick out so bad when I open them.

Not really an update but some good news nonetheless. Found out that I have the Turbo-II LSD rear end in my car, which makes me happy in so many ways. One less thing to have to upgrade in the future.

Did they just redrill it for the NA driveshaft?

Im not sure to be honest. I think they just took the LSD out of the T2 axle and put it in my car as I still have the stock 4lug axles... That or its also possible the guy was BSing me, which I don't want to think is the reality. Shady rotary people scare me.

I'm pretty sure the T2 ring gear won't physically fit in the N/A housing due to its larger diameter. The hubs are a separate assembly and I think all you need are the TII stub shafts nad the N/A axles will bolt to them. As mentioned above the TII pinion flange would have also had to be machined for the N/A driveshaft.

Is there any easy way to verify what may have been done to it? I guess next time I have the car up on one of the lifts at work Ill give it the ol rear tire spin test and see what happens.

I don't have a comparison picture handy but there's a pretty noticeable difference in appearance between the N/A and TII rear ends. Here's a picture of my N/A rear end when I had it out of the car:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-l...-27-05_472.jpg

The TII rear end is much beefier. If what you have looks like mine they're either straight up lying or someone's done some work. Direct swaps are the clutch-type LSD's from '87-88 GXL's or viscous-type LSD's from the '89+ GTUs. Of course there's always the Miata torsen swap (what I have). Other than that it's going to be an open diff.

Slight update. Sadly I haven't had much time to do any kind of work to the car cause we've been crazily shorthanded at work so Ive been pulling six 10hour days a week, and then putting most of the money into other necessities. But the good news is I did get some new goodies. A buddy of mine sold me a set of 12's and an amp for super cheap so now I got a little in car entertainment to make my drive times a bit more fun. Not only do they sound awesome, but fit perfectly, and I didn't even have to take my rear strut bar out.

Well been awhile since any update, but sadly due to work, and bills haven't had much time or money to do anything to the FC.

This abruptly changed when I noticed some small cracks in the ebay special steering wheel that came with the car. Went ahead and took some initiative and just ordered a cheap replacement off amazon. The new wheel is a 350mm with a 3inch offset. Went this route because I wanted a bigger wheel due to no power steering, and something that was offset from the hub a bit because Im always hitting my fingers on my turn signal stalk. I definitely like the turn out, and will help me pick out a better quality wheel in the future.

That color makes my heart pitter patter

Finally got around to fab'ing up a mounting plate for the master battery kill switch the previous owner had installed, and was just dangling down below the steering column. Now its out of the way, a lot eaisier to get to, and a bit more astetically pleasing.

Excuse the late reply, since I only came across this just now...

Yeah, I hate that cheap-ass China crap which *I* think should be BANNED, since it's a safety issue!
It's sad that eBay allows such BULLSH!T... *sigh*
I only run steering wheels that are MOMO, Personal, Nardi, Sparco, or anything made in Japan (i.e. ATC).
I understand it's tempting to grab one of those $30 specials when an entry-level steering wheel from any of the above is at least $100 - $200!
I've been in that scraping-by-with-lunch-money phase, but my first purchase was a MOMO Race 350mm that I paid $220 for...

Also, I agree with the fingers hitting everything on the instrument cluster problem...
Since "Deep Corn" type steering wheels command a premium, you can always go with a steering wheel spacer.
In addition to the MOMO hub adapter, I run a 2" spacer on top of the Tekniq Snap-Off quick release system.
With my body dimensions, this works really well for me in a comfortable seating position with the steering wheel that far back - stock was too far forward.


-Ted

Yeah the one I got wasnt quite Momo quality, but it was loads better t hen my original one. Once I got it all bolted on and everything I gave it a good amount of push/pull force with no noticeable amount of flex to it.

The Three inch offset had deff been a huge plus as well once I got used to it. The only real big is I have to reach a bit more when activating my high beams, though this just leads to me flashing people less to let them know they can pass me.

how do you like the miata diff?

Is thats what in that thing? I was told it had an upgraded LSD diff in it, though never any specifics on it. Either way it works good. Ive had some fun playing around with some rear end steering.

And how the hell do you know what diff it has in it? Im guessing you know Roy then?

Update time.
Had a minor setback, went to go for a drive the other day and discovered my pulsation damper was spewing fuel. Luckily though this is a pretty easy and cheap fix. Though not being able to leave things alone I also ordered a megasquirt standalone aging with some gauges and other random goodies. Hoping to have it all installed soon.

Parts started showing up today, the fun begins!
On a side note since I'm ditching the stock ecu can I remove the stock water temp sensor and replace it with the AEM one? Hoping the good weather sucks around do I can get some work done this weekend.

Getting closer to install. Gotta finish removing emissions and cleaning up the engine bay and modding throttle body, then start pulling out the stock harness and ecu.

Big update time. Finally got around to getting all the old wiring out of the engine bay, along with removing all the unnecessary emissions crap. MS system went in fairly easy, just took a bit longer then expected due to some unforseen issues. Ended up having to also replace a bunch of my fuel lines and some other stuff. Finally got it all wired in and it actually started on the first try. Made a few short trips to the gas station and such just to test my tune out and make any necessary changes. Then disaster struck, due to a fault of my own one of my MS boards got fried and is now neededing to be replaced, but should all be finished here within a week. Below are some pictures of all the Megasquirt setup, and some of the engine bay pre clean-up. Plan on getting some more tomorrow after I finish taping up all the new wiring.

Havent made any updates in awhile, but mostly due to laziness and not lack of progress. Got my Megasquirt installed and running pretty good. Still doing some tuning to it to get everything tweaked just right. One thing Ive discovered is just how prone to line noise the stock CAS system is so now Im going to get one of the trigger kits with the Hall sensor from FFE and installing it soon. Also been working on the interrior some and have the rear half of the car basically stripped. Plan on spraying the body black so the white doesnt show through so badly in any gaps of the stock plastics. Also going to attempt to dye the plastics black as opposed to just painting them and having to worry about the paint flaking off in the future. Got a bunch of other things planned coming up so hopefully I can get some go fast goodies installed to help the ol 6-port breath a little better.

Woohoo time for lots of updates, though none of these are in any kind of significant order. Finally got my new Megasquirt box and plugged in. After some fiddleing around with my tunerstudio settings I got it all started up only to discover I was getting some really bad line noise issues through my CAS wires that were causing my engine to run like crap, after trying to rewire it multiple times I just decided to ditch it, and went with a FFE trigger kit with the hall sensor, and went ahead and got a new wiring harness as well since the old one was my first ever attempt, and I figured I could run everything a bit cleaner looking the second time around.

Install of the FFE kit was amazingly simple, whole thing took less then an hour, and along with my new harness the engine is running much, much smoother, idle AFR's sit at a stable 13.5 once warmed up, and the car pulls great through all gears, just now have to get my ignition timing set and everythign will be good to go.

Also while the car engine was down I decided to do some cosmetic work. Finally got my old cracked up windshield replaced, which I shouldnt have to say makes driving allot nicer. Also picked up an entire grey interior from a friend of mine and put all that in. While I had all the rear carpets/plastics out I sprayed the interior body metal black so that the original white body wasnt so obvious showing through any gaps in the carpet/plastics. Also took out my old messed up black dash and put the grey one in. I cant believe how much better it all looks, and even the two tone black/grey interior looks allot better then I though it was going to be.

Next up once my tax refund gets here is to finally get my header and RB exhaust hooked up, hopefully it'll sound gobs better then the stock system, and will give me a little bit more get up and go.

Moar pictures

I noticed that you're not running the stock engine pan plastic cover...

Be careful with debris being kicked up from the road.
"Metallic pieces" can get attracted to the mag pick-up's and / or a big enough piece can knock the trigger wheel / sensors / wires which could cause instant shutdown!
The (old) Electromotive ignition triggers are run like this and have that same problem...


-Ted

You mean the plastic belly pan? If so I have mine installed. Happen to have a picture of what you're taking about?

I was just looking at your ffe2.jpg pic...


If you reinstalled the under plastic, then disregard... :)


-Ted

Ah yeah, I had to take the fan shroud and some other stuff off in order to get the trigger wheel on.

So I havent updated this in a long time, lots of things are to blame, but mostly laziness. Car has sat mostly unmolested for quite awhile. Finally picked up a 3" RB Turbo-II catback I got from a friend of mine, paired it up to a 2.5" Pacesetter header and midpipe. I expected a nice change afterwards but nowhere near what it actually delivered. Car was much more fun to drive both in how it sounded and power. One of my bosses at work told me "Sounds like its been cammed out." Which just made me laugh.

Also made some cosmettic mods, Ive always wanted a FC2000 front end after seeing one on a friends car 10+ years ago. Finally found one for a good price and while yes it is a knock off, I was pleasently surprised on the fitment and given the price Im not complaining at all. The pictures I got are of it just sitting on the car not bolted up or mounted at all. Im sure once I get everything attached it will look alot better.

Next up Im hoping to take it over to Glenn Price @ Illicit and have him properly tune my Megasquirt for me and see what kinda numbers I can actually put down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9QJfu3ut2o

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