Oh yeah Corky Bell has told me that the Cat is not the bottle neck that the cat structure is actually very free flowing its the collector at the bottom of the cat that is the restrictor.

 

chdesign,
On your list of mods, I see "full ICE". Would you tell me what that is? Thanks.

 

Which is why I opened mine up! I notice a big difference in the way the car revs now with the larger cat opening, the 2.25" pipe to the second converter and the 2.5" to the rear. The header is halfway done at this point and I'm happy to say that I've managed to get 22-23 inches of primary length on all 4 tubes. The only thing it interferes with is the snorkel for the intake over the radiator. That needs to come off to make power anyway so no loss. I'm making the initial prototype out of steel and will test it on the dyno that way, but if I decide to produce these, I'll probably switch to stainless. I can't find a place anywhere near me that will ceramic coat and the by the time I shipped it somewhere to coat it, paid for the process and shipped it back, it would be prohibitively expensive. The stainless will be bad enough.

 

Dynamho, you're right on with the handling, and the P/W ratio, but with a limited budget and the limited after market support for the FS-DE, I'd say your $1000 is best spent on handling right now. There's still room for improvement there, parts are available, and your return on the dollor in terms of satisfaction is going to be better. If you think the Pro handles good stock, you'd really like the way it drives when set up. What you lack in straight line speed you'll at least make up for in the corners. Trust me on this.

You're best investment may be a good set of light weight wheels. By saving just 4 lbs per corner you'll be reducing the equivelent of fly wheel weight and some real unsprung weight at the same time. Alloy lug nuts will save another lb or two. Straight line acceleration will improve as well as handling.

You can always start chucking weight to improve the ratio too. I'll bet there's an easy 100 lbs on your car you don't need.

 

Zeus, well said. I've read some of your other posts and you seem to be quite knowledgeable not only about our cars but also about what you want out of your car.:coo:

Your words almost convinces me to redirect my efforts into veering away from my initial intent which was to have confident passing power on the freeway using 5th gear. After reading what you said, I almost wanna strap on a helmet and go autocrossing. Hehe.

BTW, would anyone know how much our stock 15" and 16" alloys weigh? This info would be good to know.

The consensus seems to be that I can't do much with a grand, so perhaps I should save up considerably more and strap on a 6 psi blower before I add any more parts. I'm closely following Traveller's adventure with his Eaton M62.

 

lighter wheels will also improve your braking, well to a certain point as much as your tires permit.

I still thikn that if you got your cams, intake and exhaust, you would be looking at an easy 150hp.....

 

I see. I gotta agree on the need for passing power, but it still seems expensive to get solid power without making too many other sacrifices for a small amount of money right now.

Maybe when there's a good conservative turbo or blower on the market that has been shown to be reliable I'd go for that.

 

Almost a sure fire way of getting power is to get a set of cams custom made from one of the big cam shops. They currently don't have an off the shelf cam, so you'll have to have one made just for you. Almost all of them will do this for $500-700.

I wouldn't bother with the cams that are currently available, because while they have a small gain, I don't believe that they are worth the price or the hassle of putting them in, when cams have so much more potential.


What do you do to open up the bottleneck? Have you described this in a post previously?

 

the thing to remember when getting cams made, is that you really need to have the head flow tested to make sure you are getting the most out of you engine. you could easily get 10-15 hp gain is you match cams to the flow characteristics of your head.

 

From what I've read - the SECONDARY cat can come out and you'd pass every emission test in the states except Cali. Rather than make 2 versions of the car though, Mazda just went ahead and put the secondary cat on all mazdas shipped to North America.

Here in Canada you can go completly cat-less if you want - no emissions laws (yet) - but you'll probably be pulled over for driving a noisy *** car around...