How can I make my car more powerful?

N/A tech, Cold Air Intakes, Spark Plugs/wires, Cat backs, Exhaust...etc

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norbie
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How can I make my car more powerful?

Post by norbie »

How can I make my car more powerful?

I have custom air filter already, and new exhaust backbox/muffler going on this week.

Is there anything I can do to make the car more powerful? (Within a budget)
Acceleration seems slow, but this may be loss of back pressure as my current muffler is f***d
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Re: How can I make my car more powerful?

Post by JohnnyC »

norbie wrote:How can I make my car more powerful?

I have custom air filter already, and new exhaust backbox/muffler going on this week.

Is there anything I can do to make the car more powerful? (Within a budget)
Acceleration seems slow, but this may be loss of back pressure as my current muffler is f***d
I would wait until after you get the muffler fixed to start thinking about making it more powerful... but...

One thing you could do is put in some nicer spark plugs and upgrade your ignition wires. It isn't going to make a world of difference, but if you do enough small things, you will boost your power a bit. :)
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Post by norbie »

What do spark plugs and ignition wires improve then?
Is it just reliability of starting the car?
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Post by JohnnyC »

norbie wrote:What do spark plugs and ignition wires improve then?
Is it just reliability of starting the car?
From what I understand (which may be wrong)... What you'll get is a better better/cleaner burn with the stronger spark from the upgraded plugs. Allegedly this means that this means you get a fuller/more powerful burn which means a little more horsepower.
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Post by Rodd1s »

high performance spark plugs are always a good idea and they do give a slight boost in the acceleration. As far as the ignition wires go (they are the ones that actually power the spark plugs) if you replace them with better quality wires (possibly thickers ones) which allow for more electricity to go through them, causing a bigger spark, then with that and the sparkplugs combined you should see an increase in your acceleration.
What you can also do (but not recommended) is try and alter the throttle cable so that when you put your foot down it opens up the injectors more, however this would kill your milage per gallon.
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Post by daewoomofo »

the throttle cable doesnt open your injectors, it opens the throttle body which lets air in to the engine, then the computer reads the amount of air and ads the proper amount of fuel (via the injectors) in the engine, moding the throttle cable wont give you any more power
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Post by norbie »

I have some new ignition leads in there already so they're fine, how much would a good set of spark plugs cost then? Any particular brand?
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Post by daewoomofo »

ngk v groove's are suposed to be the best for the daewoos, do you have new stock plug wires or did you upgrade to some 8mm (like i did)?
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Post by norbie »

Probably stock ones - I was told by a garage mine were bad so I bought new ones from the only place I could find - they were about ?30 but I guess they're stock.
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Post by norbie »

Ok, I can get some 4 x NGK IRIDIUM SPARK PLUGS BPR6EIX for -

36.49 USD - United States Dollars
20.6178 GBP - United Kingdom Pounds
49.5007 AUD - Australia Dollars

Does that seem reasonable in your currency?
Last edited by norbie on Mon Apr 17, 2006 10:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by MMamdouh »

spark plugs and spark plug wires are a good mod for the money... having seen that you got a 1.4 then you got the option of stroaking your engine to a 1.5 by getting the crank shaft and connecting rods of a 1.5 lanos and put them on your current engine and that will be one hell of an upgrade if you can afford it (no idea about labour costs where you live).

doing that will rais your engine outputto 86HP and 13.2 Kg.m of torque which will exceed any other mod you can do to your 1.4 engine.

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Post by norbie »

lol sounds good - how much are the parts, before labour?
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Post by MMamdouh »

again no idea how much would they cost in the UK but it is not so hard to find out... it is a GM engine and i am sure you got loads of Vauxhall cars with 1.5 SOHC engines that got 81.5mm stroak.

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Post by norbie »

Has anyone here done this before?

I don't really understand the process - so parts would be taken from a 1.5/1.6 engine and put on mine?
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Post by MMamdouh »

yes... practically the 1.5 and 1.6 got the same stroak so it is fine to do that.

stroaking is getting a bigger travel crank shaft so the pistons TDC and BDC points are moved further away from each other and that causes the engine to gain more capacity and more compression.

you add to that a shorter connecting rod and that moves the BDC even further which adds to the capacity of the engine and almost sets back the TDC to where it used to be and that sets your compression ratio to what it used to be as well.

benefits are getting a bigger capacity engine (from 1350 to 1498CC in your case) thus adding HP and torque and all that work is just bt swapping parts... no machine shop reqired or custom parts needed at all.

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