- This Miata is the product
of $25,000 worth of mods, thousands of hours of wrenching,
and a lot of frustration. It wasn't easy to get to this point, but today we're gonna go over all the things we've done to
this car in over 50 episodes, to bring it from a $2,300 Craigslist find into a turbocharged daily-driver you could take to the track. Then at the end, we'll decide
if it was all worth it or not. - Thanks to Omaze for
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taxes and shipping included, go to omaze.com/donutmedia. Oh yeah, make sure you're focused, like you're pinching that muscle. - Ah. - Like you're pinching the
bicep, not necessarily a pull. - Ah. - Feel that pinch. - Three years ago I had just
moved to Los Angeles from Ohio. I was living out of an RV
and I needed a daily driver. So I bought this 1994 Miata. This car is the sea package trim which means it has a few choice upgrades from the base model, like
a Torsen limited-slip diff, leather seats, and sweet
speakers in the headrests. It had low miles and I was able
to snag it for 2,300 bucks, which is a deal you can't find today. It just so happened
that we were developing a show which would go
on to become Money Pit, and we needed a car to build out. And what's better than a Miata for teaching people how to wrench on cars? It's cheap, parts are cheap,
Mazda made a million of them, and it's just a great overall
project car for beginners. Oh (beep). With the production wheels
in motion, we needed a plan. From the jump, we knew we wanted to eventually turbocharge the Miata, but we needed to get some basics done before we got to that point. Mainly figuring out what
condition the thing was in. Luckily, the car was in a
pretty good place already but it's always good to
replace all the fluids and lubrication so we could have a nice healthy baseline before we started wrenching on the Miata. With the fluids and
everything freshened up, it was time for the first modification. One of the first mods
anyone does their cars is wheels and tires
and we're no different. So we took off the old stock stuff and installed Enkei RPF1s
wrapped in Toyo R888 tires. The stock wheels and
tires were pretty skinny, so the Enkeis with the Toyos
are a little bit wider, which gives us a huge
improvement in terms of grip. Now, the next logical
upgrade was suspension. We bought Skunk2 suspension
with adjustable damping, ride height, and pre-load
because it fit the budget and provided all the adjustability
that we really needed to make this thing
handle well on the track. After that, we installed a steering wheel. Which is a great steering wheel, which doesn't fly off while I'm driving. So with our steering wheel upgraded, we decided to upgrade the fact that our steering system was leaking, by upgrading it to a non-leaking system. I decided to rebuild the
power steering rack that's in the Miata, which turned
out to be a terrible decision. Ah. It was not only no fun at
all, but it didn't work and the leak got 10 times
bigger than it originally was. So I ended up having to buy a remanufactured steering rack anyway, but it was time for an alignment. So I went into this
episode expecting it to be a little bit tedious because
of all the trial and error that we would have to do, and
that turned out to be true. It was a long couple days of testing, but it's a good skill to have. It's obviously way easier
to just take your car to an alignment shop. But the real point of that episode was if you're a track rack,
going to the track often it's a really good skill to have to be able to do it on your own so you can try to tweak and
dial some things in differently while you're at the track
without having to leave and go to a shop and pay
them to do an alignment. Since the alignment was done we decided to turn our
attention to the engine bay, so we started out with
an air intake system. We chose a racing beat cold-air intake, not really because it was
gonna make a bunch more power because it didn't, but
the metal looks cooler than the stock intake and
the induction sounds alone, honestly make it worth it, in my opinion. (car revving) And if the intake is making
cool sounds, then the next logical step is to make
the exhaust sound cool. Stock Miata's don't sound amazing, but with this MagnaFlow we are
able to get a bit more growl out of the 1.8 liter engine. There's a little bit of a
struggle to fit the new exhaust on as it kind of always is,
but it's always good to have friends like Eddie
around to help out. Now, Eddie popped into a bunch of different Money Pit episodes. He was one of the guys that
was usually behind the camera, and behind the computer editing
making Money Pit a reality. Eddie decided that it
would be a great idea to do a flame shooter episode. So Eddie saw some video
online where some guy was shooting propane flames
out of his exhaust pipe, and much to my chagrin,
we ended up doing it. It sort of worked out. It's kind of goofy, slightly
dangerous for no good reason, but it did work out. We did shoot some flames
and it made Eddie happy, and I guess at the end of the
day, that's all that matters. So since we were done shooting
fireballs, we decided to do a real upgrade and upgrade
the old clutch in the car. In hindsight, I probably would've
chosen a different clutch. It was a three puck clutch for
a very low-power application. I thought it might feel
weird or be tough to drive but it ended up being okay. But again, I probably would've
chosen a different one, but it did work out,
and that's what matters. So next up was some new
headers, which are a pretty simple upgrade, but they are important. This is the first time we
took the car to our dyno guy, Richard Gibby, and we
wanted to get a baseline horsepower figure. So stock power came in at
a whopping 104 horsepower but after we installed the
brand new headers we made, 107 and a half. We've made about four horsepower. After the headers, we
decided to test cheap versus expensive roll
bars, which would kind of end up being one of the
sketchiest episodes we ever did. Installing the roll bar
was kind of time consuming, but not really all together too difficult. But then everything went a
little bit off the rails. (suspenseful music) Oh God. - Thought that might happen. - For the record, I knew the
forklift was gonna tip over. We had a pretty hairy setup. We got that thing back on its feet and managed to test our roll bar. Dang It was time to install one of the quickest and easiest upgrades we
did, which also meant one of the quickest and easiest
episodes we ever shot, the installation of the short shifter. It took like four hours total, start to finish, to make an episode. That's pretty dang good. So after the shifter was done, it was time to put real
racing seats and harnesses in the Miata, so we could
take it to the track. Brings us to the track day, which was one of the worst track days I've ever been to. It's not totally true, it
was just incredibly hot. It was like 105, 110 degrees, which I guess is what
you get in the desert. But the Miata overheated all day. It was still on the stock cooling system but that's just what
happened, overheated all day. I couldn't even finish a full fast lap because I'd have to let
the engine cool down about halfway through a lap. It was kind of stupid, but I kind of expected that to happen. And then we knew that we
needed to do a pretty big, pretty substantial cooling
system upgrade at that point. So, as you might guess, the next thing we did
was upgraded the radiator and the cooling system in general, especially once you
start making more power, it becomes really important to make sure that your cooling system can
handle the power you're making to keep your engine cool. So I installed a Flyin'
Miata kit, which included a radiator from Koyorad,
a coolant rerouting kit, which reroutes the path of
the coolant to cool better, and a small brushless fan to suck a bunch of air through that new radiator
and keep everything nice and cool so we could finally
finish a lap at the track. You know what's cooler,
being able to stop. So next up was a big old break set up. We went with Wilwood's four-piston brakes and BP-10 compound pads. I got this kit from Flyin' Miata because they sell a bunch of
great upgrades for Miatas, and because Wilwood makes awesome breaks, but also because it came with
a special purple bracket, and I really, really love
purple anodized parts. These brakes have an
adjustable proportioning valve, which is convenient when
you're tuning your car at the track. This lets you kind of dictate
how much breaking power goes to the front brakes
versus the rear brakes. The install was super time-consuming, but a really quality improvement
over the stock brakes, even if the pad compound
does squeak a little bit under normal driving, but I would say one of my favorite upgrades
overall on the car. so the brakes would be the last upgrade before the point of no return. That's when we installed a standalone ecu, which is the point of
no return in my mind. The ECU is basically the brain of the car. And if you're putting in
an aftermarket computer, that means the Miata's no
longer technically street legal. But if we wanted to make more power, there's no two ways about it, we need an aftermarket ECU so
we can control all the things. This is a plug and play ECU
with downloadable tunes, so overall it wasn't a huge headache. We took it back to the dyno
where our boy Gibby tuned it, and we ended up making
a whopping, and in fact, an insane 112.75 horsepower
to the rear wheels. So with that done, it was
time to do some more upgrades. So it was time to modify the engine, if we wanted to actually
start making some power. So the next logical step was
to upgrade the intake manifold. So we picked a Skunk 2 intake manifold which had longer runners than stock, which means a little more
airflow and velocity, and it also lets us run
a bigger throttle body which is important when
you're gearing up for a turbo. But, you gotta keep in
mind that all of this was happening during a
pandemic, and we were having a hard time getting the
car parts that we wanted. So while we waited for our turbo parts, we fixed the cracks in the
dashboard in Miata and my S14. We put some nice new bright
LED headlights in the Miata. We did some suspension bushings. So as we were doing all those
episodes, turbo parts were showing up and they were finally all there and ready to install. So, since it was turbo time,
we had accumulated our parts. So I took what I could get, and that was a CX Racing turbocharger kit. CXRacing isn't really known
for super high quality parts, but they are pretty
cheap, so that worked out. It came with the turbocharger,
the exhaust manifold, the inner cooler and charge
piping, blow off valve, and I think that's about it. So on top of the CXRacing
kit, we also had to source some fuel upgrades, like a fuel pump and fuel injectors, but got it all done and
took it back to the dyno. My boy, Richard Gibby, spun the rollers, and we made a whopping... (suspenseful music) We (beep) did it, we made 227 horsepower. So with the turbo kit all
installed, making power, it was time to take the
car back to the track. And honestly, this was a day that cost me a lot of sleep thereafter. We went to the track,
started making some passes, and started leaking a bunch of oil out of, basically, every crack
and crevice of the engine. But the fact is, I
really just didn't notice something pretty obvious,
which was a plug on top of the breather cap for the crank case, which was not letting
our crank case breathe. When you add a turbo, you
end up putting more pressure into your crank case and
that needs somewhere to go. And if you got it capped
off, it's so only gonna come out all the cracks and
crevices of the engine. So after figuring that out
and not sleeping forever it was time to install a
proper catch can set up, so that our crank case could
actually breathe and installed that and the car's been
running great ever since. And that brings us to today. So the question is, was it all worth it? Was it worth it to spend
$25,000 on this '94 Miata? Well, yeah, I think so. I think the answer is yes. I mean, first off, we over
doubled our horsepower from 103 horsepower to a whopping 257, which I gotta tell you, feels fantastic in a tiny car like this. So yeah, I mean, $25,000 is a lot of money but the fact is you
could do it for cheaper. And I think the real takeaway here is that anytime spent with
your friends in the garage tinkering on a car is
gonna be time well spent. So it's always worth it, in my opinion. Thank you guys for watching. I hope you enjoyed Money Pit on the Miata and if you haven't seen
it, why don't you go back and watch all those episodes, all 50 plus. I'll see you guys later. (bouncy music)
