I'm going to be picking up a 85 rex soon for cheap. The guy i'm buying it from was using it as a project car for a few years until he picked up a second gen. The car has 260k km's on it, but seems to be in really nice shape and he's done a major tuneup on the engine, just short of a rebuild.

Now my question is, I keep seeing various ways to improve power with the 12A engine, but never any actual HP numbers with this. I'm going to have a budget of about 1500 to sink into the engine and i'm curious as to what sort of numbers I can hope to be putting out. As well i'd like to keep all the emissions ****, unless i'm going to get a massive power bonus from removing those. Thanks!

 

Stock HP is around 100. Turbo will get you probably 180-200hp and a streetport with a down/side draft carb (and headers) will probably get you around 130-150hp. Best upgrade for the money is headers/free exhaust and a nice carb.

 

stock hp is around 95 to 110 hp... add a weber and exhaust and that will bump you up to around 150 to 160 hp.. lots of fun!!

 

hey 680RWHP, what kind of 1/4 mile numbers will that 150-160hp(exhaust and webber) get u in a 12a carb setup. What are some other mods besides exhaust, streetport carb, etc. do you need to run in the low 12's high 11's ?

 

To get those #'s you either need a large bridge port or PPort and lots of weight reduction. Or a large streetport and a turbo.

 

yup.....what he said,

 

u know wuts funny i love my 12a to death. i beat on her EVERYDAY. we visit the limit daily and she never complains. my friend has a 13b and u know he has probs like nuts. ok he might whoop me stock 12a to stock 13b, but i can boost like crazy and not need lower compression hahahahahaha!!!!

hes worried right now cuz i picked up an 81 and i think it has a street port cuz she has some serious ***** for a 12a. lookin for a ray jay blow through with all nessary equipment to slap on her to rock some hondas and Turbo II's

 

I've heard of streetport daily drivers making 160-170 RWHP, this was a EFI car that still gets 25MPG+. Ultimately this is the immediate goal for my EFI project and then once I'm used to tuning it I'll be going turbo, at that point the power is anyones guess but I'd be shocked at anything under 250 with decent tuning. that 250 may get me into the 12s if I'm lucky and a good driver.
Grant

 

25mpg on highway maybe

dont think youd get that on street

 

highway milage of course, he mentioned that it got pretty close to stock set-up in the city as long as you drove it intellegently. I have not doubt it could eat a lot of fuel but I still have not seen a high-performance carb set-up put down numbers approaching those.
Grant