The guys at FM just sent out a great Black Friday teaser and new turbos are in stock tomorrow. As I get older the thought of a V8 swap seems more painful and a simple FM stage 1 turbo seems more desirable,
On the fence... I wonder if anyone can push me off one way or another. I just got a raise at work and some silly CC company is always offering me 0% for 12 to 18 months.
I strongly support the purchase of a turbo :)
Seriously, though - V8s are awesome. Obviously, since I have one and I'm going to build myself another. But they're an all-or-nothing thing. With a turbo, you can start small and build up. Get a Stage 1. Then maybe throw in some injectors and engine management, and now you're at 240 rwhp with a drivetrain that's proven to last for decades. Then you can build the engine and bolt on a bigger turbo and and and...or you can stop wherever you want.
The best thing about the Stage 1 is that it's just so easy. No messing around with tuning, no worries about breaking anything else or failing emissions. It just works.
Keith Tanner said:I strongly support the purchase of a turbo :)
The best thing about the Stage 1 is that it's just so easy. No messing around with tuning, no worries about breaking anything else or failing emissions. It just works.
That is kind of my thinking right now. It looks like the easy button for more Miata, and I can keep the Miata trans and shifter which are the best. It is very tempting to jump in since I'm already pledged to sell my race car this winter. A turbo Miata, stock WRX and OBS truck seems nice at my age and I can devote more time to other stay at home hobbies.
In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :
My '96 has on older FM supercharger on it and makes about 235 rwhp / 185-190 lb-ft of torque, with a big fat curve. It's pullied for a maximum of 10 psi boost.
The V8 is a recipe for wonderfully wretched excess, but the numbers my car makes are a hoot for 95% of the driving you are a ever likely to do - and it's doing it on a stock 1.8 bottom end.
In reply to Duke :
How has the driveline held up? How many miles on the combo? I'd like to drive mine about 10k a year or so.
We have a customer who's had an FM II on his Miata since 1991. The powertrain is stock other than the clutch - although I'm not sure what he's got for a rear diff.
The car has over 500k on it now. I think he had to do a valve job sometime in the 400s. The clutch pedal broke in half at 300k. That's a 1.6 with 230-ish hp.
In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :
Boosted MX5s still offer a really sweet value proposition. I'll have one one day - especially after hearing numerous stories of very high mileage variants.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
So an NB with a stage 1 turbo and routine maintenance should outlive me and can be inherited by my kids? I've sold too many Miata's in the past so this one stays.
In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :
No comments on your personal life expectancy, but the car should last a long time :) It won't be the turbo that kills it.
AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to Duke :
How has the driveline held up? How many miles on the combo? I'd like to drive mine about 10k a year or so.
Negative perspiration. Currently has about 115,000 miles on it. Probably 40,000 miles and 15 years on the blower install. Starts right up, idles like a champ (OK, it idles at about 1000 rpm, but pretty smoothly). I only drive it a couple thousand a year, but if it was a little less autocross-y, I wouldn't really be worried about driving it 10k a year.
It's got an uprated ACT clutch to go with the extra torques, and a Torsen. Both tight as drums.
And remember, this was state-of-the-art stuff... in 2006. The art has moved on quite a bit since then.
In reply to Duke :
Yes it was some of the new kit upgrades without a huge price increase that piqued my interest: Improved castings, cerakoting, and a proven performer.
If you haven't purchased a turbo yet, there's one NB kit left. They're selling like crazy. NA8 are gone.
I'm working on the 1.6 ones, had a technical problem.
All of the talk above makes me believe that I need a FM turbo kit to breathe some new excitement into my stock 1.6L powered Exocet. I agree with the post above about advancing age making the prospect of a larger scale engine swap less interesting than it might have been ~5 years ago!
Next step is to scare up the funding ...
Keith Tanner said:If you haven't purchased a turbo yet, there's one NB kit left. They're selling like crazy. NA8 are gone.
I'm working on the 1.6 ones, had a technical problem.
Holy cow! I got an e mail at 10 am for restocked. A little over 2 hrs later they are sold out. When does the next shipment occur? Do I need to take the day off like new video game release day and join a que? Congrats on the sales, but dang!
Can I preorder one? Can you hold one next shipment and I will pay the same day?
And clearly I should've checked my e mail sooner.
They were selling at a rate of about 1 every 3 minutes. Obviously, there was some pent-up demand.
On the NB, we ran out of manifolds. Specifically, we ran out of manifolds with studs in them, and we're waiting for more of the custom-made Inconel studs from ARP. We may have those tomorrow if the ETA in our system is accurate - and then they have to be assembled. Given that our shipping department has to pack and ship a few dozen turbo kits over the next few days I can't make any promises as to when that might be. Hopefully before Black Friday, because shipping gets really busy then too.
Then we'll run out of downpipes, but they're overdue so hopefully we'll see them soon. Trying to manage a product with hundreds of parts - many of them small run custom parts - and dozens of suppliers is a challenge.
We don't take pre-orders, unfortunately. That's got a bunch of potential pitfalls attached to it.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I resubmitted for notification.
I literally checked this thread, went to watch a retest of equipment at work, checked the thread, saw your post, went to site was pricing options (trying to decide if I want coolant reroute) and poof refresh and gone. Then I checked e mail to see if I got notification. 2 hrs from e-mail to sold out. That's pretty impressive.
Yeah, we knew they'd go fast. That's because we haven't had turbos available to sell for over a year. There were two major things that happened - our foundry (a small family operation in Utah) shut down, and the fellow who designed and built the Voodoo Box passed away. It takes a while to get a new foundry online.
The Voodoo Box problem meant I had to recreate the product based on the contents of someone else's hard drive, which meant redrawing all the PCBs, figuring out the software and how to compile it (it's in assembly), hand building prototypes, testing them, finding manufacturing and getting the production lines going.
Both of those have been sorted out. We have lots of Voodoo Boxes on hand now. Manifolds and turbine outlets are on the shelf with more rolling in. So the long drought of years past is over.
Anyhow, we did our best to give everyone a heads up. I knew they'd go up around 9 AM, but given the lag time in having various software systems synchronize we knew we couldn't give an exact time. Heck, I didn't manage to unlock most of the 1.6 units until about 2 pm.
Our goal is to have them on the shelf in the near future. We're going to have unnaturally high demand for a while, but the goal is definitely to make them a normal product again. Sorry you missed out!
Who is casting your manifolds? What alloy and process are they?
I have to admit I don't know the specifics of the material or process. Not my area :). They're cast iron, and it's almost impossible to find a domestic iron foundry. We've had to go to Taiwan now that we've lost the Utah source. We took advantage to redesign them - more flow and lighter - and started Cerakoting them at a local shop.
In reply to Duke :
Which blower is on your BP again? MP62?
Captdownshift (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to Duke :
Which blower is on your BP again? MP62?
It's a cold-side Whipple twin scroll, about 1.2L. The old FM Ubercharger U3 kit.
Happy FM1 kit owner here. Boosted about 10k miles. Voodoo box runs rich, I assume for safety
No love for the NC platform out there. I'm hoping that changes so I don't have to find one of the old supercharger kits.
Is the lack of boost available for NCs because the 2.5 swap is so popular?
In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :
We have an NC turbo kit that's just wrapping up development and is moving to production.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Turbo 2.5!!!!
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