Project Conception

So this brings me to the point of this blog. My answer for a more balanced car, that has enough power to match the performance in all other areas of the car. I tossed around the idea of turbo charging but I never liked the feeling of the turbo surging in during high speed corner exits and not having enough power at low rpms to get the turbo going. This feeling of boost climbing requires extra thought that could be used for other things. Turbo charging makes alot of power and torque but the way it delivers the power progressively after a 1-2 second wait is not my idea of a fun balanced car to rip thought the mountains with. However getting to the mountains would take much less time.

I then thought of a supercharger, all that great torque of forced induction and a linear power increase as rpms increased. Superchargers that work well on these cars are the famous Eaton superchargers, MP45, M62 and M90. The M45 was the original supercharger of choice for aftermarket Miata supercharger systems making around 145whp on the 1.6L's and 160whp on the 1.8L's. After good success with the M62 on Honda 1.6 and 1.8 liter four cylinder engines, companies started to apply them to Miatas. They produced around 190whp and had plenty of room to make more power if you decided to raise the boost. The M90 was never offered in a kit but a few people install them with homemade parts. These produced around 270whp @10 psi and over 350whp @20psi. These are large numbers and I think the M90 would just upset the car too much for mountain runs. Making a custom M62 setup was going to run me over $3,000 to build and was just too much to spend on my car at 1 time. It would be a lot of work, time and a lot of money spent to barely use the supercharger since my power goals are not that high. So this just wasn't for me.

I am not looking to swap an engine from another car due to too many changes to the car to really be cheap and reliable. There is a hidden cost to engine swaps to get them really "right" and I am not looking to sign my only car over to such a long and expensive process that is know as the "swap".

So that leaves me to making good ole, simple naturally aspirated power. I would like to see an increase from 108whp to around 155whp without getting into the internals of the engine. Once this car is used as a dedicated racer I will be doing internal work then. But until then I will be using it as a daily and weekend mountain goer that I can still enjoy having ac, power steering and cruise control. It will need to be able to idle well at a reasonable rpm with no phantom stalls, since it will be driven in town. It will need to be able to have a smooth throttle tip in at low rpm but still have high rpm throttle response. And most importantly it will need to be able to supply enough power to the tires to make the car throttle steerable and more fun on the corner exits.