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On the right track I think..

302 Views 6 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  rowanhealy
I was looking for an mr2 turbo for months and not finding what I wanted. Some evening I came across a video on turboing an mx5 and I started thinking maybe that would actually suit what I want more than an mr2. I ended up watching the broke and boosted series on the car passion channel that night for 8 hours or however long it is.

So after deciding if made more sense to buy a turbo car I again gave up and bought a 1.6 NA without a turbo. I live in Ireland so both cars and parts are more expensive and harder to come by..

There is oil leaking from the cas o ring, I got a timing belt kit with the car so the first thing I am going to do is change the belt, water pump and the cas o ring.

I am planning on buying the following

Bofi td04 turbo kit with me221
Meisterr coilovers
Coolant reroute kit
Completion stage 3 1.8 clutch
Competition Lightweight flywheel


This is coming to around 5k sterling. I think it makes sense to put in the coolant reroute while doing the timing belt and everything is disconnected. Then either do the clutch and flywheel or possibly pay someone to do that, if like to do the whole thing myself, this just seems a bit more daunting to do on the road outside me house then then rest of it..

Then for the turbo install,

Remove the exhaust manifold and downpipe, I'm expecting this to be messy and difficult, hopefully they come off ok..
Drill the sump
Put together the turbo and manifold and install it.
Connect the oil and water feeds and returns.
Install the intercooler and connect the piping, install the dump and and iat. Install body solinoid. This bit im a little unclear on, seems to be covered less in guides I have to seen.. vacuum lines and parts potentially missing from the kit.


So just doing a bit of a sanity check, have I missed anything major, more so overall rather the the turbo install, I know there are a lot of steps im glossing over. The car came with maxspeeding coilovers, after hours of reading about DIY bilsteins I decided on meisterr zetacrd suspension though I think that's another conversation..
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Coolant reroute is a good idea on the NA or NB (not the facelift NB though).

I have no experience with the Bofi kits, if it were the Kraken ones then I could guarantee it'd be missing a tonne of stuff XD, but I think Bofi are pretty good with it and I'd be surprised if there were any issues. They've always been super helpful if there have been issues.

Random things to note:
-You'll need injectors (likely in the kit)
-By body solinoid I assume you mean a boost solinoid, which is most likely going to be the 2 port, of which bofi have instructions here - MAC Boost Control Solenoid EBC For Mazda MX-5 | BOFI Racing it comes with everything you need, basically just a mount and the solinoid with fittings.
-You'll need a wideband with the ME221, and you'll need to go through wiring it in. There's actually quite a bit of faffing about with wiring for things like the EBC, wideband, other gauges you might have, IAT sensor, etc. My advise is do it right, heat shrink and tape things to prevent shorts, don't mess with OE wiring if you can help it and instead use add-a-fuses to take fused ignition power. The IAT, wideband, and EBC can all splice into where existing sensors where though so make it easier.
  • Make sure vac hoses can't rub on anything that might nic them, especially when passing through the firewall, and make sure they can't get kinked.
  • Do not forget to pre-oil the turbo by dropping some oil into it and turning the blades a few times.
  • Before first start remove the injector fuse and crank the engine until you see oil pressure on the gauge to ensure the turbo will get oil once when you do a first start (a feed line of air isnt great for it).
  • Check for leaks around the oil lines after a first start.
  • It is worth considering a 36-1 or 36-2 timing wheel to allow much greater timing resolution. This would be a lot safer on the engine. I actually have one for sale if you are interested, I bought a 36-1 but it turns out you can only use these on the mk1 and mk2, the VVT engine I have needs a 36-2 only to be able to retain the use of the VVT.

As an FYI I've been looking at the same kit as you recently and Bofi's prices have gone up quite a bit, I paid £50 for that solinoid just a few months ago for my gt2860rs based track car, and it can still be found for that online. I also don't think there's much of a discount for buying everything as a kit from them, it's more they just put all the parts in a "one click" to purchase place. Have a look about, I can guarantee you can shave a few hundred off the price by looking elsewhere. Also be aware Bofi orders can often be waiting on just one or two items to arrive with them before they send out the entire order, so thinking "at least i'm getting it all at one from one place" isn't always a good thing.

Lastly, don't pay the ridiculous £420 for one of their effectively Ebay TD04s. Yes it's new and being journal bearing should last a while but there's literally no point. I just picked up a genuine TD04L-13T for £70 with literally no play. Even if you get one with play you can buy a complete balanced CHRA to swap in for £120, so effectively a brand new TD04 for under £200. You can get that G19 manifold and downpipe £100 cheaper than they charge as well.

Any issues feel free to message me. My gt2860rs build is literally just ready to tune, first start and a perfect idle just yesterday so all my experience is still fresh in my mind. Will be swapping my M62 supercharged car to a TD04 G19 turbo kit soon.
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Thanks, those are some good tips, and yes boost solonoid, that was my phones auto correct.

I had decided to get the ME221 and not get a wideband as I will get a tuner to do the map on a rolling road and they have one they can use. I am a bit unclear on the nessesity of having an AFR gauge, I get the impression its more something to worry about than actually use and if the map has been done well it shouldn't be an issue, what has been holding me back on buying everything was really just choosing between the ME221 and ME442.

The other main thing was trying to figure out is buying the kit essentially wasting money, I have two issues though, one is import duty / vat, even on used items from UK I would likely get charged random amounts of money and things could end up doubling in price as im in Ireland.. The other is knowledge, I was looking at turbo's on ebay and came to the conclusion I would likely end up with junk as all of this stuff is very new to me. I think it probably makes sense paying slightly over the odds to get the kit. I am buying everything from a seller in Northern Ireland who is getting the kit from Bofi, this avoids customs and he is doing me a small discount on the bulk purchase. That said paying 20% for a similar turbo also makes sense, perhaps I will have another look..
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Thanks, those are some good tips, and yes boost solonoid, that was my phones auto correct.

I had decided to get the ME221 and not get a wideband as I will get a tuner to do the map on a rolling road and they have one they can use. I am a bit unclear on the nessesity of having an AFR gauge, I get the impression its more something to worry about than actually use and if the map has been done well it shouldn't be an issue, what has been holding me back on buying everything was really just choosing between the ME221 and ME442.

The other main thing was trying to figure out is buying the kit essentially wasting money, I have two issues though, one is import duty / vat, even on used items from UK I would likely get charged random amounts of money and things could end up doubling in price as im in Ireland.. The other is knowledge, I was looking at turbo's on ebay and came to the conclusion I would likely end up with junk as all of this stuff is very new to me. I think it probably makes sense paying slightly over the odds to get the kit. I am buying everything from a seller in Northern Ireland who is getting the kit from Bofi, this avoids customs and he is doing me a small discount on the bulk purchase. That said paying 20% for a similar turbo also makes sense, perhaps I will have another look..

What you want to do is perfectly fine and will work. AFR gauges do add some worry as you mentioned, but there are some advantages. As you can see your AFRs you have visibility of if they are incorrect which might allow you the chance to fault find before something breaks, the widebands like the AEM UGEO actually have a controller in them that can feed back the actual AFR to the ECU which can then use this information to make corrections to your fueling (closed loop) to help account for minor changes in running, this can be useful for accounting for how things like hot and cold weather might impact your tune and keep it safer. The down side is that things like exhaust leaks, or wideband sensors failing can cause the ECU to see incorrect AFR values and incorrectly adjust the tune. The AEM gauges do have self reporting on failing sensors to alert you to this but it is't fool proof, however generally the ECU is set to only make a max of 5-8% change to the fuel vs the VE table anyway so should be safe regardless of if the sensor fails. If you don't have one the ECU will fuel the car based solely off the VE values in the fuel table (open loop).

Duty can be a killer. It might be worth looking at what you can order separately under the threshold to save some costs. For the items that will exceed it you could put them through as one order from Bofi so they all arrive together as you'd be charged the same anyway. As mentioned I dont believe the kit bofi sells is discounted vs adding all the individual parts into your basket separately so this might be a way to avoid some duty.

Looking on ebay for a turbo, or facebook should be pretty easy. For the G19 kits you just want a TD04L-13T, the ones with a subaru flange. You can assess play quite easily, there should be no forward backward play at all. The side to side play should be fairly small, there will always be some play as the journal bearing needs to allow space for oil to pass around it, and when running actually sits on a film of oil, so any play is actually taken up once pressurised oil is passing through the turbo. As long as the play isn't enough to allow the fins to contact the housing it should be fine.
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The other main thing was trying to figure out is buying the kit essentially wasting money, I have two issues though, one is import duty / vat, even on used items from UK I would likely get charged random amounts of money and things could end up doubling in price as im in Ireland..

take a weekend trip over the water to collect, avoiding duties :unsure:

Rich.
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I am a man though you would want to be careful these days with those assumptions! 😂

I am going to just buy the kit, likely would save money buying bits from different places but I think the cost of shipping plus customs/vat could cut into the savings enough to make it not worth it, I also like that everything is supposed to work together rather than finding out mid build i am missing things or got the wrong thing etc and it being drawn out for weeks while waiting on things to be posted. Going over the UK would be worthwhile if I could find an entire turbo kit for sale used but they all seem to be partial kits and mostly with Chinese turbos etc.
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