Time to document the conversion of my 1990 time attack car from the current 1.6L turbo to the new-hotness LFX 3.6L V6 and drivetrain.
The donors; A bit of this, a bit of that:
Now is a very exciting time for Miatas, lots of options and knowledge for making horsepower in various flavors. The 1.6L motor has served me well, but to be competitive in the “run what ya brung” time attack structure open to any chassis/motor, more power is needed.
I’ve been carefully weighing the options for a long time. I’m looking for ~40% more power than current turbo setup while hitting these marks:
*reliable
*smooth power delivery (consistent lap times)
*low weight/good weight distribution
*low heat
*low replacement cost
*robust drivetrain
I’m not the type to gamble on things, and this is certainly the path less traveled, but after a lot of research and discussion with V8R, everything looks really really good on paper. I’m going for balance over sheer gobs of horsepower. Expecting that my weight balance will actually improve over the car’s current config.
One of the biggest reasons for taking this direction is to preserve the recipe I’ve ran for years where I utilize a motor straight from the junkyard. Think of this as the same recipe as a SuperMiata, but with double the horsepower and torque; Engine and transmission drop in straight from the junkyard. Trans and diff are overrated for the power output of the motor. Run till it won’t go no more, then get another one. Going rates on the longblock and transmission are only about 25% more than an NB1/2 motor and 6 speed.
Here’s the kicker, relevant to some: V8R is working on CARB certifications for their kit. This could mean big things for those in certain states, especially all of us here in CA.
This is my personal car, but development transfers directly to new products and knowledge for Good-Win Racing and Singular Motorsports. If the kits get CARB cert then we’ll be working with V8R to sell these to our West Coast customers, so this car will give us the opportunity to work through the swap process first-hand. There are a couple things I’m already working on and working with other companies to create solutions where current options either don’t tick the boxes we need or don’t exist at all.
This will serve as an information dump where everyone can follow along with the progress. I’ll try to thoroughly document weights of everything coming off and going on as well as scale the car before/after the swap.
Feel free to ask any questions, contribute information, discuss anything related to this swap, etc. We have a solid plan in place for the overall process, but there will undoubtedly be lots of things that we will just work through and find solutions for as we progress, so if you have a question right now for “how will X and Y work together” the answer may be an honest “Not sure yet!” but we will figure it out.