Doc's MX-5 Turbo

Doc's MX-5 Turbo

I remembered saying Subaru TS with Auto transmission is one of the most difficult rides to tune. Seeing doc's car, it reminded me of trying all my techniques in tuning, and to no avail. Yes, it reinforce the fact that sam loves to emphasis, tuning can only be good if the hardware is setup as good.

First night of tuning came to a unexpected stop when sam stopped by the roadside, winds down the windows and listen attentively to the engine, eyes gazing to the unknown, he revs the engine to detect the slightest form of engine damage. Muttering something under his breath, I could bearly make out the words, "...pinging..." I responded with a puzzled stare at him, not knowing why he is diagnosing the car for no apparrent reason.

He immediately alight, pops the bonnet to give a visual inspection on the engine bay. I couldnt believe what I heard from sam, that the engine is destroyed, while Sam was on the line with Doc by the roadside, deep down, I believe it was something else. He continues to check and he began to show signs of relief when he seem to have found the cause of his discomfort while tuning. The breather hose has disengaged itself while tuning. The engine bay has been smeared with oil coming off the breather hose, especially during high revving.

We continued to tune, using all the known techniques I have accumulated over the years for piggyback ECUs, I am baffled and dissappointed as I wondered what is the cause of this engine wierd reactions to my inputs. For a moment, I felt Doctor has created an abonimation, Frankenstein.

Sam gave me the half time gesture, and told me to continue tomorrow, a quick exchange on what should be done to the hardware setup, tuning will start all over again tomorrow.

Doctor was there that evening, reading "Mayo Clinic", I reckoned it must be some kind of literature which requires some amount of memorising before flipping the page, I came to this conclusion because I saw him reading the same book 3 months ago... Sam says I only read those thing I feel like reading, and I only absorb 10% of everything my eyes lay upon, grinning and proud of his analysis, I told him better than some people, never read at all, "CB" is the only reaction from Sam that evening... hahaha

Sam lost his cell phone that evening... hahaha... careless mule...

Next day, things went as per normal, we were at 40 tiang dragging this fabulous ride. MX-5 comes with Bose sound system, bucket seat for track day and very clean interior. You know, sitting in a doctors car feels really different, you would be curious what songs this special breed of humans listen to, no it wasnt cuban or latin hahaha, what they have in their car and stuff? When you peer into the engine bay, you will be able to find the Gucci and Prada of car parts installed for this doctor.

The newest entre in this mX-5 is a New upgraded turbo. Something he got from the USA himself. Tuning went perfectly after sam fixed up soemthing on the engine bay. This time round, it was simple and straight forward. No major chemistry was required to tune this ride and everything went perfectly. This turbo spools up at 3500 rpm and produces so much torque that made sam felt this ride would win his Civic turbo by far.

Overall, this ride now boast a very strong high end and a very smooth spool up. Low end wise, it will be a little laggy as compared to his previous turbo. But, we felt this would do just fine for now. At 1 bar of boost, the effects of a stock restrictive exhaust started to reveal itself and to make matters worse, because of the upgraded turbo, 1 bar this time was totally impossible. The last time this thing happened was on Lawrence's WRX at 1.9 Bars of boost on stock wrx exhaust. We lowered the boost slightly to the limits of the exhaust system.

Tuning this mx-5 requries everything from the tuner. Truly a challenge to make this ride function properly, extremely satisfying for me. For sam, this ride is a headache la... for anyone who made him work so hard, he would curse and swear like what we would do to our bosses in office.



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Subaru TS 1.6 Automatic Turbo charged