Long time no update. I got a little distracted and built a different car for some reason. It's running and driving now, so i'm hoping to get back to the NC swap.


Got this car running and driving over the winter

New wheels and a swapped hardtop

While futzing around with that red NB, i sort of piled some stuff up on the NC and forgot about it for the winter. The sun's coming out now, so it's time to get back into working on this car. I had to take some inventory on what exactly was required and clean the garage up enough to actually get some work done.



a sorry state of affairs for the NC

digging it out of the hole

this is as it sits today.
I'm sort of scared of the wiring harness issues i've left for myself, so i'm going to have to dig up my notes on it. I've been very much considering buying a standalone for this car just to hopefully save myself some work but i don't know yet. i was hoping the to stick with the OEM ECU to keep things easy to debug on first start but i'm on the fence.


a bit of CAN hacking




Anyway, over the last weekend or so i had a bit of a session with hacking the EPS into working without the ECU. I found one person selling a custom controller for it, but at $250 + shipping or whatever, i thought i could just design one myself.

so i did. I'm still waiting for it to be delivered, but i tested it on breadboards and confirmed it working. i'll be making it an open source design so no one else needs to pay $250 for one man's afternoon of hacking.



Hope to have more updates coming pretty soon. I have to do some maintenance on my NA before i can get much more done on the NC, so hopefully it goes well.
Until next time

 

Just got back from Miatas At the Gap with a new found motivation to work on this project. Unfortunately for me, before i left, i left a bigass mess. Forgot to grab a before photograph, but here's the after anyway.


cleaned the garage up before starting more work

I didn't know exactly where to start since i've kinda forgot exactly what's still needed so i just started with what i could immediately see. What i found was that the PPF didn't quite fit and the driveshaft was hanging out of the trans with not enough engagement.
Upon further inspection it seemed like my the entire engine was not quite seated where it should have been. Pulled the engine (thru the hood might i add ). I'm not exactly sure what was causing the issue, but when i put it back,
everything lined up right.

engine had to be lifted to do reposition the engine mounts

Now the PPF fits great, the exhaust clears the body, the trans is centered laterally in the tunnel etc.

driveshaft and PPF installed

I think i've posted a similar photo before, but the shifter doesn't sit directly in the center of the hole. I think i know how to solve this problem, but im gonna save it for much later since this isn't going to prevent the car from running. Eventually i'll make up a new shaft, but with an offset. Should be a fun project.

Also, please ignore the cut up hole. We're not gonna talk about what happened here, but know it ended with an angle grinder. .

shifter position

After wrestling the engine, trans and ppf into place i yanked the harness back out. I've decided to go standalone instead of the OEM ECU. because of this, i'm just going to do a custom harness for the engine + ECU. Another unfortunate problem i have is that i did not take good notes about the harness. there are a lot of wires that have some function, but i cannot remember what they are. Luckily i have a stack of OEM full service manuals about it, just need to do some digging.

chassis and engine harness separated

By deciding to go standalone, i'm gaining the ability to delete a bunch of components from the engine bay. This means that i don't need the air pump. Eventually, i'll make a custom header, but for now i'm gonna run the OEM one. I wasn't planning on
removing the header, i was just going to remove the air toob and whip up a quick block-off plate for the air pump tube. The bolts were absolutely wrecked and i didn't even try to remove them with the header in the bay. I think i have better access to the header bolts
in the NC than one would in an rx8. i was able to use the impact driver for 3 / 6 bolts, had too do the remaining 3 the old fashion way. Anyway, still can't get the bolts out, so i'm just gonna slice the toob off and weld it shut.

removed rx8 header

 

lucked into finding a running/driving rx8 i can use for parts for $2k. Only bad thing was i was out of town when it popped up, and they don't last here, especially when they're this cheap. bought it sight unseen, sent a friend to pick the car up.
Now i specifically wanted a running/driving car so i didn't have to mess with a trailer and all that business, but for some reason the friend i sent to pick it up, trailered it anyway. I have no idea why. In doing this, the man lost the keys to the damn car somehow in driving it 10 feet onto the trailer.
I just got back into town yesterday and got the car into my garage which was kind of a nightmare being that the steering wheel was locked and my driveway is like a 65 degree incline. .


parts car acquired

ready for disassembly

Anyway, the car made it in, not so gracefully. One of the main parts i wanted (aside from a spare running and supposedly rebuilt engine) was the wiring harness, so i was super stoked to find the cigar port was cut and twisted back together. There were also wire nuts holding all the speaker wires together for god knows why.



The coolest part i've found so far was this tho. I ran out of time last night when chasing the harness out, but it seems to go down into the footwell, implying it's for heated seats maybe which i won't be using anyway. I will know for sure next time i get out there.

some very epic wiring

i don't even know what to say about this

 

Sounds like an amateur stereo installation was in the car. Kind of like how a 17 year old would install it (if I remember correctly).

 

Oh yeah definitely. the guy i got this car from was a young kid, there's all kinds of wacky stuff in here that was certainly amateur. Stuff i would have done to my first car if i'm being honest.

 

Started this weekend by removing every part from this rx8. What a lovely greeting to start the job with.


i am now, "bruh"


First up was the engine/trans pull. it came out easy enough, but i did manage to take a much needed bath in some ATF. The ad claimed this engine was freshly rebuilt and i do believe him. It at least looks pretty clean. i didn't get to see/hear it run before this
tho because of the mentioned missing key.


engine out




replaced all the body panels

stripped clean

stripped clean


I slapped all the body panels back onto it so i wouldn't have to trip over them anymore. Have to yank the exhaust off, then the entire car's going to the junkyard. After dragging all the wiring inside, i started building a bench-x8 on my basement floor so i can ensure all the NC stuff works before i install it.



one rx8 interior, disassembled

harness removed

stipped clean




making a bench-x8


That's where i left it this evening. lots of stuff does work
- blower motor
- hvac controls
- cluster
- blinkers
- hazards
- horn (lol)
- brake lights
- headlights
- brights things dont work
- starter
- stereo?
- locks (wrong transponder)
untested
- wipers
- speakers
- trunk release

Once i free up the spot in the garage, i'm going to pull the entire interior out of the NC and start mixing and matching parts until everything works. Not pictured, but i also built the key i believe i'll need. it has the NC transponder and blade with the manual rx8 chip. I was hoping i'd be able to "crank" with this, but it doesn't seem to be happening. I'm still using the auto engine harness with the auto computer and stuff, so i have to play around with all the clutch interlock business before it'll go. Once i confirm everything works, i'll be laying the harness into the NC and hopefully get it all working in the car.. Till next time.

 

Picked up a copy of Forscan and was able to pair my NC keys to the rx8 ECU. It's throwing a few other codes that i'm going to sort out over the next few days. I've currently removed the airbag harness entirely for now, i'll replace it once i've ensured everything else works. I'm not super interested in setting off what is essentially a series of controlled explosives in my basement by accident. Have to figure out what to do about HVAC then swap the headlights and tail lights and i guess that's it?

 

made some more progress today. everything is going quite smoothly - first up i wanted to make sure the starter would work. Currently i have all the auto wiring plugged in without the shifter. The range select switch is set to park which allows the starter motor to run, and presumably the engine to run, were it plugged in.
I haven't decided exactly how i want to deal with this long-term. i'm obviously not using the auto transmission but this should allow the car to be ran temporarily. Long-term, i'll be rebuilding my existing S1 6 port and using it's ecu and cluster etc but that should be easy in comparison. I now know i can use pretty much any key with any ECU/IC/ABS etc modules.
Want to issue a huge thanks to Rotary Resurrection who's manual swap guide gave me the confidence to actually try this all out.

now that i should be able to run the engine, i just have to make sure all the auxiliary systems work.
First up is lights.

The fog light connectors are exactly the same.
The running lights in the headlight housing are the same
The running lights in the bumper are similar, but not the same, i think the rx8 lights could have been made to fit, but my wire was worn thru anyway, so i just slapped the NC one on.
The turn signal in the headlights are the same
The brights are the same
The normal headlights are different, NC uses an H7, so i swapped to that connector.

Headlight motors for auto-leveling were simply disconnected. The module is still plugged in, but it does nothing now. And that's it, i've been dreading this job for some reason. i thought the auto-leveling headlight system was going to be way more in the way than it actually was. So far, the method of "unplug it, everything else will probably work" is proving to be the best move. Tomorrow, i'm gonna swap in the NC tail lights. i'm expecting this to go smoothly but i haven't even looked at the NC tails before. If this goes well, i'll start on the HVAC and stereo. These are both quite unknown to me at the moment, but hey maybe it'll be easy too.

 

so i bought one of these fake VCX Nano tools and totally legally obtained a copy of Mazda IDS just to see what it's all about and i can honestly say i'd rather use Forscan. this software is absolutely awful to use and was a huge pain to setup.

mazda IDS


vcx nano


Anyway i've got pretty much everything working
- locks
- power windows
- power mirrors
- speakers (with the bose setup..)
- stereo
- trunk opener
- tail lights
- headlights/brights/running lights
- brake lights
- front/rear blinkers
- hazards
- horn
- hvac
- starter
- IC

i've removed the airbag harness for now, i will be refitting it later. Also swapped out the headlight/tail lights for the NC units pretty easily. only a couple of the connectors are different. There's still plenty of work to be done before i can call it done
- worn thru wires in engine harness and pass. headlight harness.
- ABS harness extension
- 3rd brake light harness extension
- window switch relocation
- HVAC rewiring

All of that is pretty easy, except HVAC. i have honestly no idea what to do about this, the two systems are nothing alike. What i'm thinking is that i'm going to take the NC harness apart, and pull out the HVAC section of it and overlay it on the rx8 harness. This currently seems the easiest to me, but i'm gonna think on it a bit. In the meantime, i need to go strip the NC so i can remove the harness and get it prepped for the rx8 harness to be installed. Really felt closer to completion before i wrote all that out

 

Took the NC apart today, with the goal of removing the harness. This car is so much more simple than the rx8.


stripped the NC interior

harness about to come out

harvested NC harness

HVAC harness

main harness i wanted out of the NC - HVAC

goal was get the HVAC out. i'm planning on "overlaying" it onto the rx8 harness. also grabbed the hazards to hack in. Not pictured, but i also have the window switches that need to be connected up. Hoping to get it the wiring "finished" for now, so i can fit it up in the car. it feels really close to the first test fire now. hoping that the day off will get me there.

 

put in a lot of work in the last few days. finished a lot of wiring and such. project is feeling really close to first drive. i just have to put the interior back in, make an exhaust and fill all the fluids.


Car started first try once i plugged everything in. was quite exciting (and loud). I've reached my upload limit for this forum, so im unable to post progress photos from this week, but the list of things accomplished is quite long. Most of this included wiring modifications.
of note, i had to swap out a few connectors for the headlights and tail lights, blinkers etc, as well as retrofit the NC HVAC system into the rx8 wiring.

 

Well done!

 

https://www.miataturbo.net/build-thr...t-build-107305
By the way, i've moved this buildthread to miataturbo.net, forgot to cross post here. The car is running and driving now. still much to do. i'll be updating the linked thread w/ more info

 

Any update to https://github.com/ConnorRigby/rx8-e...p/commits/main ? Unless I got blind recently there's no "ecudump.exe" in that list of files.