Hey,
Just thought I'd mention that I was watching SPEED tv the other day and they did a quick lil blurb on the Tripoint Eng protege 2.0L...they claim to have 250HP all motor...they have a custom intake manifold, intake piping,etc...headers, thats all I could really tell from the tv show...might be worth contacting tripoint and talking to them about what they've done...I believe that it is very possible as the stock 2.0L and it's ECU are very restrictive...i bet tripoint is using a tec3 system or something...

too bad mine is just a daily driver, or i'd throw a microtech on it and see how it compares to the stock ecu..

 

Yea, i saw the same thing... I think they said something about higher compression pistons, too... I don't remember for sure.

 

There was an artical about some of the SWC cars in a recent Car&Driver. Basically, the only thing those engines share with the stock protege is the block and maybe the crank. Since the protege is a weakling in street form, the rules alow a lot of customization for power to make them competative. The trade off: reliability. I think the artical said they have to rebuild the engines every couple of races, whereas the BMW's and RSX's have mostly stock engines and can run the whole season before a rebuild. The protege is also one of the few factory backed cars.

 

they also said that they go through 3 engines per season

 

I think the ECU is the least of our worries.

I'll take the custom fabbed intake manifold, exhaust manifold and cams, please.

 

Those motors cost $18,000 to build.
Mazda subsidizes the cost of the engine built-up (by Sunbelt Performance Engines) to all the Speed World Challenge teams.

The ECU is a MOTEC system. That in itself costs over $5k. The manifold is almost $2k. The head is over $2k. Custom cams, headers, valvetrain, etc.

They run something like 12.5:1 compression and are limited to 8k rpm's. I believe that they put down about 215hp to the wheels and the cars weight 2350 pounds minimum with driver. I've heard that they are very peaky (narrow powerband) motors.

 

I totally agree.

I was just commenting on the 'we need an ECU to get more power from our fart-can and no-name intake' theory which seems to be popular on this board.

I'm going to go find the thread on the BP build-up...

 

Yeah, where is this thread?? I'd like to read it too.

 

What is the likelyhood that someone will come out with a cheap way to tune the car in the near future. Any manufacturer working on a solution.

 

I posted a "NA Tuning" thread that is probably a page or two back with this very issue. A guy on the other board (protegemp3.com) named "perfworks" has a piggyback computer for ~$700 that allows full control of fuel and ignition timing and is tunable with a laptop. Also allows an additional map to switch between for road/track conditions. He primarily developed it for Forced Induction, but is planning on making some mappings for NA. He is also working on a new NA kit which would consist of an intake manifold, throttle body, header.

I think with an intake, header & exhaust, custom cams & valve springs, intake manifold you could see some damn nice games with the piggyback, and especially if you break down the head and throw some HC pistons in there and get some head work done.

I dunno, every week or so it seems somebody blows their motor from a turbo kit. If I can get my MP3 to 180HP at the crank, I think I'll be happy until I have money to go even further.

Chris

 

I'd say less than $500 is starting to get cheap. That would give 20 whp for about $1000 which seems reasonable for a 100 whp car. (It's the percentage improvement that matters to me.)

By the way, what goes into a $100,000 stand alone. I can't imagine the parts are that expensive, and I imagine a CpE grad student could whip one up without a problem. The hardest part would be the research needed to learn the undocumented interface...

 

The features and flexibility increase the price...I have never seen a 100 grand stand alone, but I have seen $1,000,000+ IFR airplane instruments available for "private" Cessna's...

Also the reliability issues of the Speed FS's most likely comes from the razor sharp tolerances...and $18,000 is extremely cheap by factory backed racing standards....Ferrari spends more than 5 million per engine for the F2003 F1 car...