Newbie--97 M---coldside vs hotside

[97 M SC]

Hi folks,

I've made arrangements to test drive a SOT car in Greenville, SC. I'm really excited to see what a hotside SC from SOT (BR Performance/ FM) I'm sooo new to forums and SC that I'm hoping someone out here might be able to suggest what I should 'look for', 'listen for', or be aware of since it will be my 1st time seeing and hearing a SC.

I'm very curious about idle droop and how a SC miata changes character with an SC as well as stop and go traffic.

Any tips or pointers I should be aware of... I'd appreciate it... I think i'm also getting a tour of the shop/distribution center. Any thing.. i should pay attention too would be greatly appreciated.


Forgot to mention.. I'm getting closer to purchasing a SC but I don't know the first thing about the advantages or disadvantages (FM vs FSS) or (coldside vs hotside) or why some folks at FM seem to have a bit of issue with the coldside (5th injector). I've read a little bit and Tom has been soo helpful to a newbie...I've posted a thread to Gord that explains my desire. I've also been on miata.net and it has been helpful too.
I'm lookin' to give a 30-70 whp bump to my 1997 M-edition. I've got an FM race radiator and RacingBeat PowerPulse catback (2.25").

I appreciate everyones time and input. Thanks in advance.
Chris

Thanks all for
The time.

Chris:1eye:

[FormerDatsun510Man]

The best answer of course is to see both systems in person, drive them and then you have a much clearer idea of what you want. IMO, you can't really go wrong with either. When I first got a test ride in a Hotside, probably making around 170rwhp at the time, at BRP (predated SOT) back about 7 years ago I was completely in awe of the magnitude of acceleration. It is just no comparison to anything you could throw at the car in the form of normally aspirated mods. I went through a lot of iterations on my Hotside MP62 setup on my '00 Miata. What I learned was that boost is addictive, and costs a lot of money. The Hotside can be made to be very powerful, but from what I experienced, there is a price to be paid. I ended up with a balls to the wall setup making 240rwhp. The car did 13.3 at over 109mph in the 1/4 mile (when it had 220rwhp I never tried dragracing it at 240rwhp) and would pull through 4th and 5th gear like 2nd and 3rd when it was normally aspirated. However, I spent a lot of money and time fixing issues that cropped up. These issues all resulted from the one thing that you need to add to a Hotside to make big power... a front mount Air/Air intercooler. The problems included cooling issues (bought better fans along with numerous ducting experiments), idle and AC performance (bought R4 manifold). Recently, I had to remove the Hotside and go back to normally aspirated due to financial reasons. I really didn't want to have to pull it off. But the difference in driveability was sort of shocking to me. The first week driving my Miata "stock" again I was sort of surprised how the throttle seemed overly sensitive and so light. I also marvelled at how smooth the AC operation had become. My instinct before of giving it a little throttle when putting the clutch in and coming to a stop I saw now caused the car to simply rev up... oops :). I was also surprised how the steering lightened up (I have a manual rack) and even the handling improved in that it didn't dip as much in mid corner bumps.

With the Air/Air IC up front, as great is it is in allowing the blower to make a lot power and torque, it started a chain reaction of issues with cooling, AC performance, idle dip and weight. I fixed it as best I could and had it running pretty well I thought. But after driving Tom's Coldside I reconsidered it. For that matter, when I drove Tom's Coldside I thought the throttle seemed too touchy, but when I had my car back to stock again I thought the same thing. The result is I think the Coldside maintains the same driveability as stock, just a lot more power and torque.

This is just my biased opinion :), but if I did it again I would either go with a base non-intercooled Hotside and forgo all the bells and whistles or get a Coldside. Personally, I like the Coldside better because it completely replaces the entire intake system of the Miata and is also lighter in weight. The drawback of course is that you can't run an air/air IC with it to make big power. However, after my experiences I feel on a daily driver one is better to just go with the power level that an air/air IC is not needed and live with it. 200rwhp isn't at all that bad :).

Bill

[99mx5]

I agree Bill, I had my setup unchanged since installation. 200WHP was just right for me. Traction as is was a problem, more power wont help that.

I also pulled my kit and I'm back to normally aspirated power levels. I haven't driven my car yet since the uninstall, but I expect it to be underwhelming ;).
I will post it for sale when everything is organized.

[97 M SC]

The best answer of course is to see both systems in person, drive them and then you have a much clearer idea of what you want. IMO, you can't really go wrong with either. When I first got a test ride in a Hotside, probably making around 170rwhp at the time, at BRP (predated SOT) back about 7 years ago I was completely in awe of the magnitude of acceleration. It is just no comparison to anything you could throw at the car in the form of normally aspirated mods. I went through a lot of iterations on my Hotside MP62 setup on my '00 Miata. What I learned was that boost is addictive, and costs a lot of money. The Hotside can be made to be very powerful, but from what I experienced, there is a price to be paid. I ended up with a balls to the wall setup making 240rwhp. The car did 13.3 at over 109mph in the 1/4 mile (when it had 220rwhp I never tried dragracing it at 240rwhp) and would pull through 4th and 5th gear like 2nd and 3rd when it was normally aspirated. However, I spent a lot of money and time fixing issues that cropped up. These issues all resulted from the one thing that you need to add to a Hotside to make big power... a front mount Air/Air intercooler. The problems included cooling issues (bought better fans along with numerous ducting experiments), idle and AC performance (bought R4 manifold). Recently, I had to remove the Hotside and go back to normally aspirated due to financial reasons. I really didn't want to have to pull it off. But the difference in driveability was sort of shocking to me. The first week driving my Miata "stock" again I was sort of surprised how the throttle seemed overly sensitive and so light. I also marvelled at how smooth the AC operation had become. My instinct before of giving it a little throttle when putting the clutch in and coming to a stop I saw now caused the car to simply rev up... oops :). I was also surprised how the steering lightened up (I have a manual rack) and even the handling improved in that it didn't dip as much in mid corner bumps.

With the Air/Air IC up front, as great is it is in allowing the blower to make a lot power and torque, it started a chain reaction of issues with cooling, AC performance, idle dip and weight. I fixed it as best I could and had it running pretty well I thought. But after driving Tom's Coldside I reconsidered it. For that matter, when I drove Tom's Coldside I thought the throttle seemed too touchy, but when I had my car back to stock again I thought the same thing. The result is I think the Coldside maintains the same driveability as stock, just a lot more power and torque.

This is just my biased opinion :), but if I did it again I would either go with a base non-intercooled Hotside and forgo all the bells and whistles or get a Coldside. Personally, I like the Coldside better because it completely replaces the entire intake system of the Miata and is also lighter in weight. The drawback of course is that you can't run an air/air IC with it to make big power. However, after my experiences I feel on a daily driver one is better to just go with the power level that an air/air IC is not needed and live with it. 200rwhp isn't at all that bad :).

Bill

OH MY GOSH BILL!!!

Thank you soooo much. This is the exactly the kind of information I am seeking. You've pretty much nailed my desire. I simply am seeking a 'bolt and go' solution to offer a bit of bump in whp. I want a daily driver that behaves. I must confess that if my little car doesn't produce decent A/C in south carolina my girlfriend will kill me. ha ha

It is ever so important to me to know that after you chased all that whp that really you would have been happy with a coldside or a non-intercooled hotside without all the bells and whistles. I'm thinking small.

In your opinion what are the advantages/disadvantages to a simple SC hotside or coldside? If you had to do it all over again would go with FSS or with FM. (sorry Tom.. i just gotta ask).

I can not thank you enough. Chris

[FormerDatsun510Man]

Well, since I am now an FFS employee, I know that my opinion will seem biased. But well before I was hired, or even knew it was a possibility, I had already decided to go Coldside if I got the funds together to get boost again. Partly because I also had already experienced the Hotside with everything you can throw at it and wanted to try something new. Also because I never was quite 100% happy with the Hotside. Got close, but just not quite.

I think for non-intercooled boost, the Coldside is a better design because it fits the blower on the colder side of the engine away from the exhaust heat and also because it uses a specially designed manifold. No stock part on the intake is left in place. Since you are not intercooling the charge air, to maximize output you want to have the most efficient flow and minimize the amount of heat that the system absorbs. I just don't see a better way to do it than the Coldside for this purpose. Additionally, the weight added is minimal. Since you are replacing the stock intake manifold, which is a fairly heavy piece, with a lighter, better flowing and simpler intake manifold and the blower is simply bolted on top of this the setup is kept lightweight. I believe Tom quoted the total weight gain on the Coldside system is 15lb. Since the blower itself weighs around 25lb and you are losing weight with the manifold this doesn't surprise me. I recall the total ship weight for my intercooled setup was over 100lb. Some of that was packing material and an extra intercooler, but I wouldn't be surprised if it added at least 70lb to the front of the car. A base Hotside would add less, but the thing here is you still are only adding weight because you keep all the stock bits (intake manifold and all) in place. The quoted 35lb weight gain for a base Hotside seems accurate. One other thing with the weight, for us left hand drive people the Coldside adds the weight in the best place... the passenger side. The Hotside adds more on the drivers side.

The other area to compare the two is with the power output and torque curve. Here, I think it is even depending on what you are after. From the dynos I have seen and tested, running the same pulley ratio, the Hotside does seem to have about a 5-10ft-lb advantage in torque at midrange rpm (3500-5500rpm). However, the Coldside makes a similar higher horsepower (5-10) with the same pulley. I will be able to give you a lot more comments on the Coldside when I have one on my Miata in a few days :biggrin:. I do know that they have improved in the output quite a bit since my BRP days when I thought the Hotside was better. A lot of that had to do with advances in piggyback engine management. Specifically, the PC Pro.

As far as 5th injector or E-Cool goes, I think that it works quite well. The key here is moderation. For 180-220rwhp I think it is perfectly safe and here again with the Coldside manifold, which is designed specifically for supercharging (whereas the stock intake manifold wasn't), the 5th injector probably works better. But even on the Hotsides running 5th injector I didn't see a problem as long as the power level was kept in the 220rwhp max range. When I went to 240rwhp on my Hotside, I went to 4 additional injectors to ensure I wouldn't have problems. Some may argue a standalone with 4 bigger injectors would have been better. Maybe, for ultimate output, but this was my only car and I couldn't afford to have any sort of problems on the road.

Bill

[99mx5]

One note Chris, another important factor to consider aside from the kit itself is the support. From my experience, the customer support from FFS is second to none.

[97 M SC]

The best answer of course is to see both systems in person, drive them and then you have a much clearer idea of what you want. IMO, you can't really go wrong with either. When I first got a test ride in a Hotside, probably making around 170rwhp at the time, at BRP (predated SOT) back about 7 years ago I was completely in awe of the magnitude of acceleration. It is just no comparison to anything you could throw at the car in the form of normally aspirated mods. I went through a lot of iterations on my Hotside MP62 setup on my '00 Miata. What I learned was that boost is addictive, and costs a lot of money. The Hotside can be made to be very powerful, but from what I experienced, there is a price to be paid. I ended up with a balls to the wall setup making 240rwhp. The car did 13.3 at over 109mph in the 1/4 mile (when it had 220rwhp I never tried dragracing it at 240rwhp) and would pull through 4th and 5th gear like 2nd and 3rd when it was normally aspirated. However, I spent a lot of money and time fixing issues that cropped up. These issues all resulted from the one thing that you need to add to a Hotside to make big power... a front mount Air/Air intercooler. The problems included cooling issues (bought better fans along with numerous ducting experiments), idle and AC performance (bought R4 manifold). Recently, I had to remove the Hotside and go back to normally aspirated due to financial reasons. I really didn't want to have to pull it off. But the difference in driveability was sort of shocking to me. The first week driving my Miata "stock" again I was sort of surprised how the throttle seemed overly sensitive and so light. I also marvelled at how smooth the AC operation had become. My instinct before of giving it a little throttle when putting the clutch in and coming to a stop I saw now caused the car to simply rev up... oops :). I was also surprised how the steering lightened up (I have a manual rack) and even the handling improved in that it didn't dip as much in mid corner bumps.

With the Air/Air IC up front, as great is it is in allowing the blower to make a lot power and torque, it started a chain reaction of issues with cooling, AC performance, idle dip and weight. I fixed it as best I could and had it running pretty well I thought. But after driving Tom's Coldside I reconsidered it. For that matter, when I drove Tom's Coldside I thought the throttle seemed too touchy, but when I had my car back to stock again I thought the same thing. The result is I think the Coldside maintains the same driveability as stock, just a lot more power and torque.

This is just my biased opinion :), but if I did it again I would either go with a base non-intercooled Hotside and forgo all the bells and whistles or get a Coldside. Personally, I like the Coldside better because it completely replaces the entire intake system of the Miata and is also lighter in weight. The drawback of course is that you can't run an air/air IC with it to make big power. However, after my experiences I feel on a daily driver one is better to just go with the power level that an air/air IC is not needed and live with it. 200rwhp isn't at all that bad :).

Bill

Thanks Bill. Great information. Do you know of anyone within 5hrs of Hilton Head Island, SC that has a coldside that would let me drive it. :biggrin:

I'm looking at staying 'conservative' as far as SC are concerned. I'm not greedy and I plan to follow your advice (since it is in fact what i've wanted all along... and that is to seek conservative power gains).

What can you tell me about idle droop? I've gotten some private messages that I should be especially 'aware' of idle droop with any SC. Got any tips/extras i should keep in mind to purchase or do to prevent it?

Thanks
Chris

Chris

Le

[97 M SC]

One note Chris, another important factor to consider aside from the kit itself is the support. From my experience, the customer support from FFS is second to none.

Hi 99mx5

I appreciate your comments..and would love to hear your specific story regarding support.

I'm so new to this that support is key. I notice this forum is a bit more 'free' with thier thoughts/rants and I want to be sure that i'm hearing lots of folks inform me rather then just 3 or 4 tell me all the good.

I'd like to here about the good and the bad. The right and the wrong.. and the limits/issues of an FSS SC.

thanks for your story in advance.

Chris

P.s. your private inbox is full.

[99mx5]

When I first ordered my kit, Fedex delivered what looked like a box that was dragged behind the truck instead of being in it. I was anticipating the install and prepped my car to install it. When it arrived it was totally destroyed. I posted my experience on the forums. Tom told me not to worry and that another kit is on the way. I expected another week delay for it to arrive. Tom asked my for my address and hand delivered the kit to me and hung around to help me during the install. I was the first to install the kit at home, since then he has visited other customers to help them too. His commitment to service has not changed.

As an early adopter, my kit was a very early version, so I had the teething pains of a new kit. As problems were found and fixed and new featured were added, Tom has upgraded those kits to make them more robust.

[Tom @ Fast Forward]

Ari let me know on a Wednesday that it arrived damaged and, if memory serves me, I hand delivered the replacement on Friday and he installed on Saturday.

[gludlow]

Want a story about customer service? Here's mine!

I decided on a FFS Coldside for my 01 Automatic. Yup, that's right; I drive an Auto Miata :stuart: Well, I called, e-mailed, and other wise contacted all the "big players" in the FI game, turbo and SC. Most were nice enough, but wishy-washy on if their kits would work with the Auto. The basic thing I heard over and over was "you can make it work." Tom was the only one who said (and I'm paraphrasing here) "I can make it work."

I was a total car novice at that point, and his re-assurance was enough. I ended up having a shop in Indy do the install, but the kit was having problems. It turned out that the PowerCard sent out a batch with some code issue, so it was flooding the engine with fuel. Tom sent me a programmer as soon as he could, worked with me to update the code, problem solved.

I still had some small issues (which turned out to have nothing to do with the kit), and he DROVE from AZ to IL to look at the car in person, no charge! He helped me troubleshoot it to the best of his abilities.

Yea, cross-country trip to help find whatever was going on with my car. We drove, tuned a bit, and I was sold on pushing FFS on anyone looking at a SC kit. I can't guarantee he'd do the same for anyone (it was a bit of a prototype being the first auto kit), but he delivered on exactly what he promised to me.

I know that if you want the best kit with the best person supporting it, get the FFS kit.

[Tom @ Fast Forward]

Turns out all we had to modify for the automatic was the throttle cable bracket to allow for the down shift cable. So, when we had it all worked out, I told the shop to make me 'some' of those brackets for stock. LOL. We are set for life on automatic throttle cable brackets. :)

[Godless Commie]

I just want to chime in about the customer support portion of this thread..

Let's make one thing clear here: I did not buy my S/C kit from Tom. I bought it used from a gentleman who happens to be a member of this forum.

Tom, aside from providing priceless advice as well as guidance over the phone and thru countless Emails, reharnessed and reprogrammed the PcPro + Timing Card + 5th injector controller combo he received from the gentleman I bought the kit from and shipped it to me before I could ever get a chance to ask him how much I owed him.
I live in Istanbul, Turkey. btw.. I could have been a deadbeat who could conveniently "forget" to pay him.

I DID pay him, of course ;)

He also offered to send me whatever he could get his hands on in case I ran into tuning problems. I mailed him pictures with a zillion questions, he answered them all with methodical patience.

As far as I am concerned, the guy just LOVES what he does.

All I can do at this point to repay at least some of the kindness and professional courtesy he has been extending my way would be to direct as many potential customers as I could in his direction.

My two cents here.
Bottomline, I would not care if Tom was in the ice making business in Antarctica. I would buy from him. Period.

[Mark]

I sent Tom a note one day inquiring how much it would cost to buy color coded wiring so that I could extend my PC-Pro's to where I can fiddle/watch them while driving and not worry about running into something. I think it was the very next day a package arrived via UPS full of wiring at no cost. If he ever makes it to northern Illinois, the first glass of suds is on me!

[Godless Commie]

Wait..
Extending the PcPro wiring?
How come I never thought of THAT?

(Where is my soldering gun when I need it..)

[97 M SC]

I sent Tom a note one day inquiring how much it would cost to buy color coded wiring so that I could extend my PC-Pro's to where I can fiddle/watch them while driving and not worry about running into something. I think it was the very next day a package arrived via UPS full of wiring at no cost. If he ever makes it to northern Illinois, the first glass of suds is on me!

Hi Mark,

I'm lookin' into the coldside $2995 (with small pully, uses stock TB, no E-cool, PC Pro, and a timing card).

With this package from Tom, do you think it's a good idea to be able to fiddle/watch the PC Pro while driving or setting up? Perhaps.. i may request that as well... I don't plan to have to mess with it too much.. but ya..never know if i start looking to increase whp...it might be a good idea.

Thanks for your 2 cents.

Chris

[Tom @ Fast Forward]

Chris,

All kits ship these days with 8' of harness. You can locate the cards almost anywhere in the cabin. In the good old days, we made the harness short but came to the conclusion that long was better as you could always roll up the wire and hide it someplace.