Stock engine safe to mod?
 

I just purchased a 95 FD. It came with 130k mile son the chassis and 40k miles on a mazda replacement engine. COmpression shows excellent numbers, above 8 on both rotors. I drove 3k miles back home, and the car just has some boost issues, 1st turbo not kicking in, and some other minor stuff.

My question is, is the stock engine safe to mod to lets say 250-400Whp? I will go with BNR twins, and a larger stock mount IC, like the one from rx7store.net. Or maybe a Vmount setup with as single, still undecided.

THanks

if you do it right, i'd say yes. main thing is to provide enough fuel.

lean = fail

there isn't much inside the engine that you can replace, not like a piston engine and stuff cuz we can't buy "high compression rotors", the only thing we can get are lightweight rotors from racingbeat but even those are debatable. the first thing you should get is an ECU that can provide enough fuel to the engine so you don't run lean, detonate and spew out some apex seals.

Please read the stickies and FAQ's. Lots of good info there.

Ya, the stock engine is safe. And by stock you mean non upgraded apex seals, stock ports, etc. You don't have to go BNR's. Stock twins are good up to 15psi. They might wear out pretty soon if you are boosting that much for a long period of time but you can get decent stock twins for a pretty good price. Although I don't have to much experience with stock twins my friend runs them at 15psi and he is around

your compression is above 8...what measurement is that?

the 8 and above is in kg/cm2 i believe

he has to mean 80 on all 3 sides of the rotor??

Mazda compression testers read in bar, above 8 is very good compression. Yes, you can fully modify a stock ported engine, you just will not yeaild the same HP as a streetported one. I see you are in El Paso, the very first thing you should address is the cooling system (radiator, Ast, etc) before you try to get more power out of the car. Perform the reliabilty mods, get the car boosting properly, work out any other bug, then start upgrading. Heat is your enemy, and in EL Paso you have more than your share.

Indeed I do need to take care of cooling issues first. I am looking into a vented hood and a Fluidyne radiator first. It has a Greddy SMIC, and you really can tell the difference as far as how stuffed the engine is with the stock intercooler. With the Greddy IC, you can clearly see both fans sucking air real well. We were at around 100F today and idling with the AC at level 4, I saw 200F. In my old FD, I would hit well beyond that.

As far as moding goes, I am going to make it a free flowing exhaust with the mid and DP. An later model Ypipe and maybe a larger intercooler, and of course a PFC. I would say that I can safely hit 300WHP. I will keep it like that for some time until I decide to go single, or BNR.

Thanks very much for the info guys.