Fishey

I am just curious on the exuses of why the P-car owners cannot build a decient Turbo, Or N/A engine..

We have 3.0L N/A's and noone can get any power out of them without sacraficeing reliablity? I mean my car for example is 13years old... what was highproformance then lacks today... So we upgrade intake, Exaust, Chip, cam's, P&P, Maf, go to something like MSD and we make 15hp? that doesnt seem right to me..


Are we being modiest or are they being retarded? I mean something has to explain this...

led

I would have to say the reason lies in that it's an NA. Upgraded intake and maf will reduce the air flow restrictions but it's still an NA and it just doesn't pull enough air, contrary to a turbo which has more air flowing and restrictions become more noticeable. MSD will maybe make the car run smoother and burn gas more efficiently but in the end that doesn't make it at all more powerful. The exhaust I would call a light upgrade since the stock manifold is way better than any one that comes stock on today's car's, on a turbo however less restriction means more spooling power for the turbo.Chips might adjust the fuel map a bit and provide some power but since there isn't more air, like in a turbo, what's the point?

Wow, my longest post ever, a 4:40am and probably worthless :P

hoffman912

i would say its in the fact that the dont necessarly know what theyre doing, or that they may know how to build more simple engines, but not porsche engines.

the tolerences, the setting, & bores must be precise. they need to be completely balanced to exact numbers, should be machined with out any single error and everything needs to be perfect and precise and unless you account for everything, and everything is exact and precise, youre engine wont be worth a bottle of ****.

let the pros do it. unless you are a pro. or really do know what the hell youre doing, and very few do.

Sami951

I would hardly say changing a chip or an aftermarket exhaust is "building an engine".

The reason why such bolt-on stuff doesn't add much is because the items they replace were quite good to begin with. Unless there's an obvious bottleneck somewhere, you're not going to see any real gain just by improving items one at a time.... maybe, just maybe, if somebody were to build - for example a 3.0l S2 engine - from ground up, with upgraded everything, they might actually see more HP. Porsche did it with the 968 engine after all

I assume the 944 S2 engine is very good at what it is - a relatively large displacement motor with a wide, smooth powerband. I'm no engine builder but from what I've understood, if you want more you'll have to compromise the low end torque a bit. With big pistons and heavy bottom end, it's not going to be easy to get more RPMs out of the engine, but maybe, with proper lightening and valvetrain modifications, something like 7500 would work? Or even 8000? Then aggressive cams and modified intake / exhaust (short runners, 4 to 1 headers...), who knows?? It might be able to make sweet HP numbers.

billybones

Drag car prespective. 1/4mile as fast as I can in the shortest possible time.. mega torque..decent RPMs... starting from a standstill...Track Car.. minimal torque.. mega Rpms.. better to accel out of a corner. car is already moving.. Handling, Drag car... do not care.. Track car.. difference in winning and losing,, see Nascar.. somewhere in the middle is the daily production car.. one leans to track (our car).. one leans to drag.(5.0 mustang modded). You can not have it all.

nascar engines 800 HP.. decent Rpms... rebuild every500 miles.

Irl great Rpms low torque.. rebuilt every 500 miles.. some times earlier...

phantom309

It costs too much.

RSflared72e

I feel comfortable in saying only a relatively small percentage of owners truly have their engines' internals worked on to increase performance. These cars are getting downright old and there aren't that many out there in the first place. So it's probably tough to say just what level of reliability true engine builders are getting on average in today's technological environment. With a reasonable budget, in the hands of a good shop, probably damn good reliability. But given these cars' low value and low numbers, how often do you see someone willing to spend the money on them? The low numbers make any findings anecdotal.

Lousailor

What you have to fall back on is the basic design of the engines involved. Our water-cooled P-cars were way ahead of their time. They were also purpose built to be sports cars, and guess what; "German engineers are good at this!" So there is very liitle that's even possible to do to increase the engine's designed output, except to take some modest shortcuts, where compromisies were made wrt reliability and emissions. Compare this to a stock economy car or peolpe hauler, where performance was not even part of the engine design equation. There are all kinds of costly bolt-on short-cuts to make with a late model rice econo sedan. I can't see spending and additional 20K after purchase to make a oriental version of what I got a year ago for under 3 grand. Besides the nameplate says it all. Where do you want to be.

Sach951

Given that I spend a great deal of time with Honda tuners I would have to second phantom 309's comment. For example, you could make a great deal of power with an all-motor 944. It just wouldn't be cost effective. For the same money, why not buy an S2, or a Turbo, or supercharge the beast? And supercharging, though nice, is far from cost-effective as well. Let us see... Perhaps we could do a complete build like a Honda tuner: Lighten the entire drive train as in crank, fly, pistons, rods. Light forged block, forged and lightened valves, flash valve springs, modify our new pistons and rods to produce a 1.75 R/S ratio or something close to it, build a high-revving, close ratio track tranny, lighten tranny components, torque tube, and everything else such between crank and wheels. This includes the wheels, and even components such as the rotor, however small -- we are talking about wheel horsepower, after all. Custom engine management, raising the rev limiter as we were just enabled by the new r/s, valve, springs, pistons, rods, crank, block, oh yes custom timing and cams -- let us now try and rev to 10k or thereabouts... now for the 12.2:1 compression ratio... Look, we're making some serious all-motor power! Mind you you have already stripped the car, have an aftermarket efficient alternator, most parasitic functions of a daily driver are now gone and so forth... Oh wow... we just blew 10-20k, if not much, much more. Pain. What would 10-20k get you with a 951? 400-500 at the wheels...

What would you do? I hope you love winding it out... I think I'll buy a CRX HX and use Honda aftermarket components ( much less $$$ involved ). Better yet, I'll just ride a 550cc bike for 400 USD

In fact, I helped a friend rebuilding a moped for racing ( yes, a race moped ) a few days ago. You can rebuild an entire 50cc bike engine for a few hundred dollars with all new components. He spent about 1500 on a complete race drivetrain and lightened components, as well as increasing displacement from 50cc - 70cc. Well, instead of topping out at sixty or thereabouts as before the rebuild after deregulation and some tuning, he shall be doing nigh on 100 and pulling roll on wheelies three quarters of the way to his top end. Cost effective? No. Could he buy an old 600cc bike for less and outdrag most every car? Easily. Does he love racing light bikes ( 170lbs, this one ), yes! Was it worth it? Of course!

Cheers,
Sach

Peckster

Where are they racing mopeds? Any web sites? This I have to see!

Sach951

It's actually quite the thing in Italy... most performance parts come from there -- for example the better part of our Polini drive train... Pushing 20-25hp from 70cc on a 170lb frame is no joke Sure it's no Aprilia Melee R but hey...

if anyone has an interest I'm selling a stock 50cc bike. Being the model to race at the moment, it has just over 1000 miles and babied ;P Made an excellent daily driver for a while ( no $$ ), yet I intend to buy an ole' Honda 550...

Linkage to moped racing... crazy people...:
http://www.mopedhospital.com/racing/
http://www.worb5.de/pruefstand_diagramme_e.html
http://www.hambelton.freeserve.co.uk/50ccgp/50ccgp.htm
http://luzonmotorcycle.com/pages/Kymco15June2002.html

Cheers,
Sach

Fishey

Volvo guys can get Hp out of there car's.. I am seeing some honda's doing it on all N/A 240hp out of a 1.8L N/A, Even GM's new cavilers are getting near 180hp on there N/A's... Without major work... My friends focus dynoed at 140hp... With just Intake,Exaust,Chip Thats a 35hp gain people... They are getting more Hp outa less displacement but we cannot seem to get a **** of HP outa these N/A's they are usually not even running 10.9:1 pistions or anything. I am so confused.

Fishey

I guess its because everything has to be perfect on our engine's... Volvo guys know how to do it for cheap expecialy turbo's....

http://www.pbase.com/image/21510615
that is a 15G turbo its flow rate was increased to almost 700CFM! now can't we do this to some k27's.....

or like cheap intercooler that is massive....
http://www.pbase.com/image/19146262

GTZ

For how many feet? That won't last 200K like our motors will. The S2000 makes big numbers, but try shifting at 3K RPM and it's a dog.
Modern metallurgy, variable cam timing, better engine management, twenty plus years of engineering advances all add up to more HP in even GM cars. I recently drove a new Nissan Altima with the 2.5 four, automatic, and was amazed on the power and torque! Easily faster than a 944 NA.

Randy

Fishey

I wouldn't mind cashing in 50ft/tq for 50hp!