3 Times a Charm

So I’ve posted a couple pics of the project Miata (or the engine) a while ago. That was the 1st manifold, I believe. Long story short, we’re on the third one.

Here are the three manifolds lined up all pretty like.

One thing I've noticed about people in this industry (myself included) is that many of us don't take our own advice. It might be with the frequency of oil changes, the amount of boost we run, or going cheap on a manifold... whatever. Maybe this is because the labor is free. (not really free, but there's no out of pocket expense) I don't know. But for whatever reason, most mechanics will try a part out on our own car that we'd tell a customer to NEVER under ANY circumstance even think about buying. Well this is what happens when people don’t take their own advice… Twice…

Here's the first manifold. It's a see through...

You can clearly see daylight through the manifold... but wait, there's more!

And another crack. This manifold lasted a little over two months before it gave out.

Here's the "upgraded" version of the last one. There were a couple of extra ribs and gussets that made this manifold a little more promising, but looks can be deceiving. This one lasted a whopping TWO WEEKS!

As you can see in this picture, the revisions designed to stiffen up this manifold didn't quite hold up. I just couldn't keep the day light out and the exhaust in.

After all this, the owner of the car, Take of Tamacy Tuned, deciced to finally take his own advice and go with a cast manifold. He found one on ebay with a T3 flange.

We searched the shop for a turbo that would work, but we came out empty handed. Since 200hp was the goal of the car and we had a SR20 red top turbo laying around the shop, we decided to weld a T25 flange on the manifold and call it a day.

I'll have more pics of the making of the downpipe and what-not as soon as we get to it.