OK, If i have a limited amount of money to spend at a time for my P5 what should i do in what order....

Intake (AEM or Injen)
Jspec Cams
Msp highcompression pistons
racingbeat exhaust
Jspec Throttle body
ECU ($$$)
Turbo?
Suspention stuff
LSD

Anything else you can think of?

 

If you are going to go with a turbo you can crap most of that stuff, the intake, exhaust and cams won't do you ant good. The pistons will have to come out as well unless you are gonna be tunning it very well and keeping the boost relatively low. You might want to think more about what you want down the road first.

 

well first decide if you wanna go NA or FI. if you want NA, go with intake, a good 2.25" exhaust, modify some probe headers to fit, camshafts, intake manifold, high compression pistons in that order. you can also look into haltech or some other fuel management to tune your car which will help with power a lot. if you wanna go FI, look at spool turbo or the FM kit. if you go turbo, you will want a good 2.5 inch exhaust, but you can scrap the rest of the stuff on the list.

 

why do you scrap the other stuff (ie cams, pistons) if you decide to go turbo? doesn't the higher compression & better timing help w/ a turbo also or is there something i don't know about turbo?

What about the throttle body?

 

Actually, you want lower compression with a turbo. High compression + Turbo = Boom. Protege stock compression is fine for turbocharging. Notice that most stock turbo cars have 8.0:1 to 8.5:1 compression. Boost basically creates the compression in your engine. The cams actually will help a bit with the turbo. The thing about that is that it isn't really necessary. A well set-up turbo will make more than enough power on its own to overwhelm the transmission without changing the cams. Our cars can only reliably handle about 200hp mostly due to transmission restrictions.

If it were me, I would go: LSD, Performance Clutch, Flywheel (all at the same time for ease of install). Then Turbo, Intercooler, 2.5" exhaust, and a Haltech. Then Wheels/Tires, JIC coilovers and AWR Sway bars.

This is all assuming you have 10 grand to drop

 

I talked to the Mazda dealer and he said that all the msp stuff (pistons, cams, intake manifold, etc) may be covered under warrenty vs. a turbo which would not,

would a NA have as much punch as a turbo of the same HP rating? because with all those things listed i think you could get it up to 200 hp NA and if thats where the tranny craps out, i would think that NA has a more consitent (flatter) HP and torque curve + the possiblility of warrenty coverage

 

High compression pistons make detonation (pinging) more of a problem when the fuel requirements (octane levels mostly) are not met. When you add forced induction there is such a huge amount of stuff being compressed compared to Naturally Aspirated. To make this sort of simple, think of cylinder compression as how squished the Air and fuel mixture gets before the spark plug fires. With a naturally aspirated engine, the vacuum(sp?) of the intake stroke is what pulls the air into the cylinder, so you are not pulling a sinfully large amount of air into the engine. Read some tech articles on the next part if you ever plan on tuning your own engine. When the engine reaches the compression stroke, it begins to cram all that Air and Fuel into a smaller and smaller space, and the higher the compression of the pistons, the smaller that space gets. Detonation occurs a number of different ways, but to keep this simple I will leave it at the "the higher the compression, the faster the burn of the fuel/Air Mixture", and if it burns too fast, espically towards the end of the reaction, it results in pinging.

When you add a turbo the the air is "forced" into the chambers, a lot more air enters then with just the naturally aspirated engine. So applying the **** above, you actually have a much higher compression than before. The piston still travels the same amount of distance and has a set TDC and BDC, so it will have to cram the larger amount of fuel and air into the same small space. Obviously it will create a much faster reaction, and will result in a ping without proper tuning.

Don't confuse the numbers though. 10.7:1 for those Mazdaspeed pistons refers to the pistons, not the actuall amount of **** being compressed. They simply make a tighter space in the cylinder before it ignites. The actual amount of what is being compressed (the A/F mixture) will not change, though different amounts maybe needed to get the most power out of the new set. IF you add a turbo there will be much more air to be compressed, so in short you don't need higher compression pistons to get a powerful reaction...

 

Also the intake and exhaust cams will do you good, do a search and find Edwin's low compression FS-ZE dyno results thread. They move the power band up a little and will prevent grip burning surge of torque at boost, keeping the power and torque more linear, which is good in a FWD...and get the ECU upgrade before you do anything with pistons of FI depending on which route you take...

 

I've decided to keep my car NA for sure, but anyways..

with a good ECU/stand alone, what is the highest compression pistons I could have custom made without presenting a serious threat to engine damage, or decreasing engine life drastically? Or if you could, point me to a tech article so I could read more in depth of how this stuff works so I could draw some conclusions, that would be much appreciated, too. Thanks.

 

so let me get this straight, turbo is a much better way to go; don't install high compression pistons, what about the intake manifold w/ a turbo? good idea? no diff or what? what other things would you need to change in the engine to make it able to stand up to a higher psi turbo then the MSP one?

 

you guys should really try a search. this has been talked about alot and you may be able to get some good information off of previous posts so you can better understand. neither turbo or na is better, they are different. before seriously modding your engine you need to pick one. Z me Pro, you can use the FS-ZE intake manifold with a turbo and it would be good. as for other things to make it run better, some sort of engine management would be great. you can run higher boost and see better gains with haltech or a similar setup. if you go turbo, get a good intercooler and a nice thermal 2.5in exhaust. you can get things like boost controllers and turbo timers to help your setup too. theres almost unlimited options and it all depends on how much you wanna spend. if i were you guys i would really read up on old posts and learn a little more before spending any serious money or making any decisions. look at www.spool-turbo.com for some basic kits for the fs-de.

 

Keep in mind, Installing pistons will be VERY expensive unless you know how to do it yourself or have a friend that does. It pretty much involves removing the engine from your car. The cost to get 200 wheel hp with a N/A engine will easily be double the cost of getting 200hp with turbo. The Tripoint engineering cars don't make much more than 200hp N/A and the engines cost $17,000 a pop!

 

Sometimes pre-detonation is caused simply due to extreme heat in the combustion chamber. Higher compression creates more friction between the air/fuel particles and this causes the pre-detonation. Often times, the plug doesn't even get to fire before the air/fuel ignites due to the heat/compression. When the explosion happens well before the approach to TDC you will get pinging or worse! Higher octane fuel is required for high compression applications because it can withstand more heat before it ignites.

 

In the very near future I will have my hands on the shop manual, and with experiened help I will install the pistons myself. I can get 93 octane fuel at my local station. Any ideas on how high I can take the c/r?

 

Yeah, sorry about reposting that about the cams, you nailed it before I did. I just noticed a post above that said they weren't needed for a turbo

And the intake manifold is not completely needed to make maximum power a pro can handle. if you want 200whp, you only need a turbo and needed crap with that, ECU upgraded, and a fuel system to handle over the 8lbs of boost or so. An intake manifold that breathes better may allow that hp number with less boost, or it could help smooth power delivery out, but it is not needed to overwhelm the gearbox...

Jesse, thank you for posting about the *header*, referring to a header as in a singular device. You don't need "headers" for one engine, you need "a" header. A lot of people say that and it sounds ignorant...