Well as the title states while its down time I want to make sure my car is ready for next season. I was NA for a while and the car was great. As I bumped up a couple of classes I ran into some issues staying with the higher horsepower cars. I did research and decided to go with the Greddy Turbo. I thought this would be ideal as I could keep it in a higher gear and the full spool at 3k would be great as the power delievery is very subtle. However I know with that there are issues with heat. I already have the J's Vented hood, Mishimoto radiator, and Spoon thermostat. I was looking as to what other precautions some of you guys have taken. After reading some horror stories I am almost consumed to the point of selling it and going ITBs. The tune on the car is very conservative. I guess I was wanting to know what else to look for. List of current mods plus pending mods ordered;

Current- Vented hood, Mishimoto radiator, Spoon thermostat

Pending-J's oil catch can, Greddy Oil Cooler

Thanks for any input!

Bobby

 

There's always someone faster.

 

Yep hence why I didnt go with 500hp+.

 

For the past two years I have been trying to fix overheating issue on my Greddy S2000. For regular driving Greddy turbo kit is perfect, I wouldn't even get enything else if I was to do it over again and use the car for street driving only. Greddy turbo can not take being on the track for too long. It is an oil cooled turbo, and so oil just gets crazy hot after about 15min of driving the car on the track. I have tried running an oil cooler and it helped a little, but did not eliminate the problem completely.

I finally decided to take the turbo off this past month and take the car to the track in NA form. I did not regret it one bit! The car felt amazing! Yes, it wasnt as fast in the straights, but it was just as fast in the corners, if not faster since I removed some weight from the front. The throttle responce was instant, I did not have to worry about the car overheating on me either!

My advice, stay NA, or go with oil/water cooled turbo or a supercharger.

 

Thanks this is the info I needed and may end up doing what I originally wanted!

 

oil cooler does wonders on a FI car. but most builds with too small of fittings (small cooler is fine). get one with fan on the cooler to help cooling on in lap and around pit, that's when you need it the most. make sure you feed air to it by fabbing a tunnel to it. and enclosed around the cooler. most just stick it in air flow, that doesn't adequately cool it. air will just go around it.

make sure you seal around the radiator. probably the most important thing to do. just get some cheap closed foam, and seal around it.

do you have a shield on the front bottom ? you want it covered as much as possible.

how big is your intercooler, is it blocking the radiator ? fab something dedicated to feed air to the radiator, but not through I/C.

are you running 100% distilled water with water wetter ? run minimal coolant to survive your local winter.

short shift - it makes a big difference on how hot the engine runs.

a/c condensor - removing makes a big difference. or at least move it forward enough to have enough of a gap to the radiator, and fee air behind it.

run E85. it will drop your EGT by 200F. engine will run a lot cooler. whole engine compartment temp also drop. you also get ~10% more power.

there are 2 350whp+ Miatas running in SOCAL. tracking w/o any issues. usually setting top time of the day at tracks. cooling formulas has been worked out after many years of blown engines.

 

This awesome info. I guess there is always two sides to every story. I really hate to get rid of the kit but want the reliability (use that loosely) I can somewhat depend on. i dont feel like pulling over every 15 minutes to cool down

 

like someone else mentioned, have you also looked into possibly selling just your greddy turbo and swapping it for a comparable water cooled one? That way you can keep the rest of the kit, and in conjunction with the other items listed above, may have a pretty reliable setup. Just dont cheap out on things like hoses and clamps. Another big issue is having them blow off on you or leaking.

 

I have thought about going water cooled on the turbo. Wasnt sure how everything fitted into place or how what turbo would fit onto my manifold without having to go through a whole new setup. I love my Greddy kits power band for what it is. Its perfect. Just not sure. I am thinking about trying it myself and seeing what I experience myself first hand and try whats listed above. Thanks again for everyones help

 

Like others have said a water cooled turbo is highly recommended. I ran the ptuning kit hard for 25 minute sessions and had peak oil temp of 229 and peak coolant 190. Plus the power is very linear instead of peaky.