Main points to get good power out of a N/A engine

[bbq1988]

Whats the main points guys? letting it breath, cams bla bla?

[Dell'Orto]

Pretty much summed up by let it breathe. The easier/faster it can get air/fuel in and exhaust gas out, the better it will go.

[spencer]

as above, tuned inlet, tuned extractors, head work depending on what it is, cams to suit head etc and where you want your power. But its alot more complex than that

[bbq1988]

cheers

[RomanV]

How do you make an NA car go fast? Work on the car, not the engine.

Get the lightest model of the car that you want, that you can get. (eg. no sunroof, wind up windows, no powersteer, no aircon, etc)

Then remove most of what's left. The sound deadening, remove aircon, fit the lightest wheels you can get, go on a diet, get rid of heavy sound systems, remove spoiler, get carbon fibre bits, light weight seats, etc etc etc.

Weight is the enemy of the NA engine... once you're past the basic mods, the next best way to improve the power/weight ratio is to lose weight, rather than gain power.

After that, it's a lot of expensive engine rebuilding and tuning.
I'm assuming you're talking about your gen 3 3SGE....
I'd get a caldina GT gen 4 engine, whack that in instead, do intake/exhaust, and thrash the shizzle out of it all day long.

[pc]

Also put the engine in a car with really low air resistance (drag). It takes more power to push a brick through the air than something that is more aerodynamic.

[Cakky]

Also put the engine in a car with really low air resistance (drag). It takes more power to push a brick through the air than something that is more aerodynamic.

I still don't think my dad has realised this lol at volvo

[strap-on]

Fuel only has so much energy per drop so essentially there are two things you can do to make your car faster.

A) put more fuel in, this can be done by turbo (more air = more fuel) or by making the engine bigger.

B) the second is to make it as efficient as possible so that it is using as much of the petrols energy as it can. That being said someone correct me if im wrong but an I.C. engine is only like 5 % efficient or something.

The suggestions here are very good ones losing weight is usually a lot easier than gaining power, and it makes your engine a lot more reliable too.

When tuning N/a's its not so much as how much power as oppose to WHERE you want the power, all the intake, cams, exhaust etc allow maximum efficiency at a very small band of the rev-range, if you make them work togehter then you can increas power at that point, but it is a lot of maths and dicking around.

Best basic mods i can suggest are:

-AIR filter getting lots of cold air
-Nice free flowing exhaust, possibly with heat wrapped extractors as this keeps the gas hot + increased velocity.
-Increased Compression Ratio
-After market ECU + good tune (good gains to be had here most ecu's are programmed for economy not performance)

Anything other than that and you are getting yourself into a lot of maths and makign your enginge unreliable.

BTW this is all inof i gathered from reading TS over the years so if anyone thinks imt alking out my arse tell me so.

[Loudtoy]

The suggestions here are very good ones losing weight is usually a lot easier than gaining power, and it makes your engine a lot more reliable too.


BTW this is all inof i gathered from reading TS over the years so if anyone thinks imt alking out my ar*e tell me so.

Dude you talking out your arse. Cams change power band defintaely but in new power band which is genereally higher up ower is greater, more torque in said rev range as well. Changing cam's helps because car manufacture's (apart from some crazy european car makers) build there motors with nana in mind. Now when was the last time you saw nana rev to above 3 grand whislt driving, baring her atempts at hill starts or at traffic lights etc, you never will and cause nana wants her little bit of power below 3 grand thats where the cams are tuned for roughly. This is why vtec is quite good actually anything with variable lift cams in it is reasoably helpfull for performance people. Hence why when vtec's ave had basic exhaust, intake etc done they go better but when they get cams done they only get 5-10kw on average whilst most others will gain anywhere from 10-30kw depending on other hings like head work etc. The point is that vtec is tuned for both ends of rev range, other motors for low middle power not all out top end.

BTW When has taking weight out from the inside of a car changed the engine dynamics to make it mre reliable, sure it's pushing less weight around but it's not any more reliable than the day before when it had all the weight in it - it's jst not working as hard, if it's going to go bang it's going to go bang weight or not. Maybe helps things like clutch and gearbox etc

[mister2]

Generally the cheapest way to improve an NA engine is to do an engine swap to the highest spec model available. In your case you'd go to the BEAMS.

Then it is just revs - optimise camshafts, head porting, intake tuning, exhaust tuning for a decent powerband in as higher rev range as your internals can take (= what you can afford).

There are plenty of books availabe on tuning NA engines ("books? but I have the internet!") check your local mechanical engineering library if you have a decent uni nearby.

Cheers

Nick

[strap-on]

yeah i did forget about cams ha!