Mazda MX-5 NA 1.8 1994 (Turbocharged) [27-FV-TV] - Sam van Noord

Time of Ownership:	September 2024 to January 2025
Did I enjoy it?	Yes, SPEEED
Country of origin:	NL
Related webpages:	https://flyinmiata.com/products/flyin-miata-stage-1-turbo-system-1994-95
Last update:	11 Dec 2024

A purchase decided within 24 hours, and picked up the same day. Always a great start to a story.

The ass in the picture is my friend, who saw this car online. It was listed for €5.5k and had a full 1.8 turbo setup on it, boost controller and the whole shebang.

“Nah, I don’t need it, its better to do it some other time, and so I don’t blow all my money in 1 go.” was my first answer, a day later we picked it up.

This was of course with a creative plan:

Buy it, take it home to my workplace, and get working on it. Take the 1.8 out from the red mx5, take the 1.6 out of my white mx5, and swap them.

I’ll have have my first car finally turbo’ed, and I’ll have a cheap mx5 I can sell my friend. Win win!

So, we did the deed, went there and bought it, and drove it home. The rear tires were bald, no APK (Yearly inspection) on it, but lets send it through its whole speedometer anyways (See video, and of course it was on private property ;) )

It survived the test ride magnificently. Some of the steering is not to my liking, as its on lowering springs instead of coil overs. Some of the suspension is jut a tad wonky, it needs different wheels and rubber, but the engine, phenomenal.

Here she is, her new home for the coming time.

And here she was already gutted, all of her intestines had to come out.

Getting it out went quite well. About 2 days of slow and steady work. The front bumper almost took more time than the entire engine.

I like seeing the engine like this, it reminds me of how it is actually the heart of the car.

But with all this work, and having taken out the 1.6 engine too, it ended a bit in a bummer.

We found out that the wiring for a ‘91 1.6 and a ‘94 1.8 is quite different. Putting the 1.8 into the 1.6 would be easy peasy, but the other way around, not so much…. The cable loom had it’s injectors moved a few pins to the side, ABS was on the 1.8 too (different computer, but still some mixed cables) and to top it all off, the loom also seemed to go towards the steering column and other parts. (but please, don’t quote me on this).

Final decision? Guess we just do the big maintenance, and put it all back in place like it was. No 1.8 turbo in my white mx5, for now….

And the end result, my friend is buying the car off of me.