Ideally I would have liked to learn to do all the software tuning myself, but I like having an engine that's not on fire, so it seemed prudent to take my new toy to a professional instead.

It turns out the guy who wrote the tuning manual for this kit lives in Livermore, so I paid a very expensive visit to his dyno. And I'm glad I did; he was very patient and created a very nice, smooth part-throttle map for me.

Not to mention that he got an additional 30 horsepower out of the car, for a total of 187whp (wheel horsepower.) 187! Out of a 1.6L!

So, how fast is it? Well, remember that power measured at the wheels by a dyno is a lower number than the power numbers that they print in the brochures, because there is a 20-30% loss between the crank and the wheels from the inertia of all the spinning drivetrain parts. So for reference, the Subaru is putting down about 195-200whp. The miata is now putting down almost that much, but it weighs about 35% less.

So it's, you know, pretty fast.

(This thing has actually created a rather embarrassing problem, which is that the gearing is far too short. The stock gear ratios have a very low top speed, because the engineers knew that it wouldn't get over 110mph unless you pushed it off a cliff. But I can now get to redline in 5th gear in just a few seconds, which means that at Thunderhill next weekend I'm going to be waving a lot of people by on the front straight when I top out, and then promptly munching them in the next corner. Thus, my hand is forced to buy a tall-ratio torsen diff. Woe is me.)