Now this may seem a little stupid, but I know that Im not the only teenager with a thirst for cheap speed.

I was wondering if anyone had any recomendations on power upgrades for my car. Im perty good with the other stuff (ie. I know i need a clutch kit and brakes, and suspension, etc.). I just dont know what does what with the power of a car. No offense to Mazda, but the Protege 1.6L is kinda slow (105hp in the engine... are you serious!?)

So far my car has a cosmo racing SRI, aftermarket spark plugs and wires(forgot the brands) new egr (i know it dosent make my car faster but the old one died), and other than that, Its all stock (unless i forgot something).

Im getting paid 8 an hour and all i spend my money on is gas, 30$ once a week. all the rest I can save so i have a small yet growing budget. Im getting more and more into automotive and have some great connections to cheap mechanic work where I can sit in and watch them install whatever i dont know how to.

My car is a:

2000
Mazda Protege
DX
1.6L
4 Cyl
Fuel Injected


Anyone with suggestions, feel free to let me know. Any help is good help. And by the way, I found a place near where i live that will custom build an exhaust for my car for about 250-300$ + the price of a muffler. Good deal or No?

Thanks for any help!

~Greg~

 

that is a really good deal on the exhaust. a full exhaust system for your car would be in the $500 range. the one thing that i have to say about exhaust is that bigger isn't necessarily better all of the time. since your car is naturally aspirated, all that you need is a 2.5-2.75 inch exhaust. any more than that would cause more harm than good. the engine works on exhaust pulses and back pressure. in the optimum power band, one exhaust pulse will disipate just in time to draw another one out. it makes the engine not have to work as hard which frees up some horsepower. the larger the exhaust, the higher the RPM where the power band sits until it gets big enough where the power band disappears completely. this is different than turbo cars where a 3-3.5 inch exhaust is a really good upgrade. just a little n/a knowledge for you.

a good mod in addition to what you are doing/have done would be a header. these can get pricy, but will be the most horsepower that you will gain out of the intake/header/exhaust install.

 

I was lookin for headers but so far the only one I found was the one on protegegarage.com. Its 239$ thats not too bad, but I want to find a few different modles to compair.

Do you by chance know what stock exhaust size is?

and what about a mid-pipe. would that also help the "breathing system" of my car? Protege garage has a mid pie that i was looking at as well.

Anything else I could do for a quick HP boost. Im thinking that this sumer I will start saving for a turbo set-up. That will be like several thousand though, and all for a car that who knows how long it's got left to run. Might do it anyways. resale on turbo aint too bad so why not.

If anyone has any good HP ideas, let me know!

~Greg~

 

greg you and i should get to know eachother...same boat as you (teenager and only paid like 10$ and hour) ....honestly i think that we wouldv'e been better off w/ a name brand intake...and so far during my months of research...i have decided to just leave the protege alone...our 1.6 is really too small to do any major changing...personally i'm just gonna save up and try to buy a motorcycle....but if you really want to keep going on the protege....i would say go w/ a header anda new exhaust....http://search.stores.ebay.com/Tuning...sofpZ0...there is the website for an ebay store w/ a cheap header...your welcome....and i would go to protege garage for the exhaust...after that you need to buy an ecu upgrade chip...afterrthat your leftup to looking at a turbo(kinda pricy)...buy the throttle body off an 1.8L...get an njection system(only if you plan on keeping the stock exhaust for a while) because it losens up all the gunk in your engine....after all that your looking at about 1.5K if you have it all professionally done...about 1k if you DIY....

 

Haha well that makes 3 of us now . One litlle $7 thing you can do is Seafoam it. It's not gonna make huge huge differences but it does make a well noticed difference it helped mine alot. I noticed the hesitation that the protege had go away almost completley and it idles a loteasier now too, also provides a nice smokeshow for the neighborhood .If you want more info on how to go about doing it let me know I'll type it up for you. What SRI do you have? I'm getting the Weapon R SRI shortly here and im planning on keeping that stockintake piecenear the front of the grill (I'm assuming yours came with it too idk if you took it off or not) and hooking up a RAM airkitfrom it, to the end of the weapon r filter,because the weapon r has 2 airflows that come together at the end of it to produce even more punch. Idk what SRI you have on but if you happen to have the weapon r you could follow the same pathI am with that? I think its gonna work out nicely.

 

that exhaust sounds like a good deal, but you'll have to buy one or two mufflers as well as a catylitic converter, depending on your local emmisions restrictions. but i would reccomend upgrading wheels and tires, you probably wont want to go over 17X7.5" wheels, because i went to 18's on my 2000 protege and they scrape my fenders around hard turns. but tires are probably the most important upgrade you can do. without good tires, very little potential power makes it to the ground, which defeats the purpose of doing engine mods. i personally prefer Toyo or Nankang tires.

 

well i have wanli 185-14's in my stock rims they are a cheap chinese racing tire that has supirior grip and good on dry or wet roads- really soft compound