I am going to be getting on the road soon. (yeah me!) As far as all out insane mods go, i got none. Just a couple of bolt-ons. I got a racing beat header, the one with the duel exits at the end. I had a custom mating made to connect to the stock cat to the header. I got a MSD 6a for direct leading ignition. I also have the sping cut a little on the vacumm secondaries. I got 4 new sumitomo tires. In a week a new paint job.. crystal black (ppg) and custom graphics (metallic silver ppg). I have driven a few here and there but by far the hardest pulling I ever felt was in my brothers 3rd gen. Anyway, I drove my friends 2nd gen, it wasn;t modded that much just racing beat exhaust. It spun the tires beatifully. Preaty fast but a lil slow in the start. Then I drove someones early toyota with a really sick 12A bridge ported with holley 600. Even though the gas pump was half dead.. i allmost pissed myself (when I drove my brother's car i did.. lol) I then drove my friends '79 virgin rx7(note: virgins = )

I did some searching and couldn't come up with a " if I do this mod this much power is expected " thing. I wonder what I can expect from diging around the intake and exhaust ports.

 

20-25 hp with the header, since you are keeping the cat, and air pump, I hope.

Digging around the intake and exhaust ports will get you dirty, nothing more. Now if you are looking into tearing down the engine for a rebuild, and porting while it's apart, depends on which port style you go with and your supporting mods.

 

i want to bridge port or half bp when i do my first rebuild
would bridge be killer for highway?

 

BPs are a challenge to drive on the street. Mine is only a 1/2 bp and it takes a different mindset to drive around town. Depending on gearing and speed, they aren't bad on the highway, but downshifting is more frequent for low rpm hills.

 

i guess i wont go to town

 

The exhaust ports in 12a engines are restrictive for emissions and noise purposes. You can make a very nice, driveable 160 flywheel hp with a freeflow exhaust and exhaust porting.

 

Now if only there was a way to port the engine without cracking it open. . .

 

if there was every member on this site would port the exhaust

 

Personally, 20-25hp is being optimistic. I would say that if you had the whole exhaust custom made without any cats, but as long as those cats are in there, the header will only be good for 10hp mabey 15. The MSD 6A is only good for mabey 3 or 4hp. Mostly it will just increase fuel economy, throttle response and smooth out the idle.

 

I suggest 15hp gain would be realistic if everything else is performing well.

The problem with estimating the impact of such low lwvels of modification is the results are too small to show up significantly in a dyno test or timed run. I had a friend with a dyno shop who used to calibrate his machine with his wife's car. His own was always being modified of course! Over a nine month period he found the dyno results from her car varied plus or minus 6%.

To get 160hp out of a bolt-on only set-up would require a very optimistic dyno. With one of my engines, every bolt on improvement was made from performance carb, freeflowing muffler, deleted rats' nest, deleted air pump, etc etc. Calculating from a stock engined dyno result, the maximum power was 152-154 flywheel hp after spending much money and time to reach the ultimate. The loss to rwhp was around 18% at that power level.

Interestingly going from a just legal noise level to a racing set-up added only an insignificant blip to the dyno results 2-3hp at most measured one hour later. I lost faith in the Honda exhaust test, the louder it sounds the more powerful it is.

Once the basic mods are done it becomes very costly to add just a bit more power

 

Even though I planed on keeping the cat or cats.. i did gut them. So basically its a straight through exhaust. I am looking into getting someone to port the engine out. I just want it done properly. I got another 12A thats in very good condition, I am going to rip that one apart and work on it myself. The engine that I want ported is the one that comes with the car, its got 77000 miles.

Maybe I should wait untill I rip apart the one thats out of the car allready and check the housings and rotor bearing. That way if that engine is in great condition then I guess it would be cheaper to build that one up. Yeah, I know more than likely the better one to build would be the one with the known milage.

Anyway... back to what I want to find out. What else can I bolt up that is going to give me ppppooowwweeerrr. (i know a t2 is basically a bolt-in)

 

you can bolt a nitrous kit to your car and get LOTS of hp...woooot

 

but thats cheating... anyway

so basically, direct ignition + RB manifold + gutted cats + vac spring cut so the secondairs will come on earlyer.. will net you 15 to 25 hp at the wheels. is that correct?

 

Another thing to consider is reduction of friction losses through the drivetrain. Royal Purple is very expensive but a very effective lubricant in the engine, transmission and differential. HorsepowerTV showed an improvement of 8hp at the wheels in a Camaro by swithing to RP in the diff, trany, and engine.

 

lol how is nitrous cheating? its no diff than bolting a turbo on your motor...if you lie to ppl and say you are running all motor and you spray that could be cheating

ive seen alot of ppl bitch about getting beat by a nitrous car..but there is alot of work that goes into setting a car up to take nitrous with out blowing up...also if a nitrous car runs allmost and dose not spay it runs like **** caz it has to be detuned to use the nitrous

NITROUS IS NOT CHEATING

PaTricK

 

anyway, up here stateys live to pull over rx7s. they catch something like that in my car. good bye. I don't want to have to worrie about something risky. Yes I know that you can hide it. I have seen stateys pull people over and arrest them in Nissans cus they got those "red top and blck top" sr20t engiens. Those engines are illegal in street applications. I am sure they would know what to look for under a hood for something like a NOS system. I am looking at it from the,"I think I can get away with this.." approch.

 

i know in my state it is legal to have nitrous in your car..but it is legal to use it in the street..it is for track use only...i dont see how they could give you a ticket or take you to jail caz you had nitrous in your car and you where going to the track or comeing home from the track...i know they still like to give ppl a hard time Fin cops

cheers PaTricK