Atomic Robot Posted September 9, 2004 Share Posted September 9, 2004 I've had my wagon for about 9 months now and have noticed some discrepancies in performance compared to my '93... Mainly, the '01 is a dog "off the line". The '93 had a 2.2L 130hp engine, the '01 has a 2.5L 165hp engine- both auto trans. Weight:horsepower ratio is pretty much equal, but I'm convinced that the '93 would kick the '01s butt in a drag race. What can I do to give this thing some more "pop" from a standing start? I LOVE the way the '01 corners, and am actually looking forward to winter (which will heretofore be known as POWERSLIDE season). I'm just wondering if there's anything I can do to give it some more guts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Setright Posted September 9, 2004 Share Posted September 9, 2004 Scrap the intake silencers. Those would be the network of pipes and boxes that live ahead of the MAF. If your engine bay looks the way I expect, there is an air filter box attached directly to the throttle body? Leave this one box in position, and attach a pipe from this and run it into the fender cavity to draw in colder air. Make sure the pipe has nice trumpet/velocity stack opening to avoid turbulence. This will not interfere with the PCV system. Feel free to drop in a K&N or similar panel filter - I did :-) Getting a performance silencer for the exhaust will also free up a few horsepower. Bear in mind, more power gain means more noise and drone on highways. Also, stainless steel looks cool, but is louder than mild steel. (Stainless tends to "ring" like a crystal glass.) Bigger bore muzzles, very popular these days, will give a very deep tone, that will vibrate the cabin at low engine speeds. Stay away from anything larger than 2.5inches - trust me, been there done that and couldn't stand the noise at cruise. With both these mods you are likely to see a maximum gain of about 10hp, which isn't much, but the throttle response will improve and the soundtrack livens up! For real gains, you need to look at equal length exhaust manifolds and a catalyst with better high speed gas flow. After that, the bolt-on tuning stops and you need to look into new camhafts, bigger valves, higher compression pistons..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atomic Robot Posted September 13, 2004 Author Share Posted September 13, 2004 Thanks for the input! Sounds like this may be what I'm looking for- more responsiveness would be great; it's always felt a bit mushy... I've seen a few posts on this type of mod before- does it always result in an eternally lit CEL? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Setright Posted September 13, 2004 Share Posted September 13, 2004 No. If you restrict yourself to a panel filter in the stock air filter box and only work on getting cold air up to that, you will not have any problems. If you post or send me photo of your engine bay, I could give you more specific advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charlierh2 Posted September 14, 2004 Share Posted September 14, 2004 cleaning up the engine with some sea foam might give you a little more zip.. it did on the 97 legacy(2.5). for this you need to run sea foam through the vaccum lines not just in the gas tank. hope it works for you like it did for me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atomic Robot Posted September 28, 2004 Author Share Posted September 28, 2004 cleaning up the engine with some sea foam might give you a little more zip.. it did on the 97 legacy(2.5). for this you need to run sea foam through the vaccum lines not just in the gas tank. hope it works for you like it did for me I did the tank and oil treatments not long ago, but will try the vacuum lines at some point. anybody got pics of this proceedure? I wouldn't want to dump the stuff in the wrong place... The cold-air intake mod is on hold (for now anyway) as I recently had to deal with a dead battey and this actually led me to fix some of my hesitation problems. The original battery was not holding a charge. When I removed it I found that the stock positive battery connector is very flimsy with very small surface area (2 strips) contacting the battery post so I replaced it with a big, solid one ($1.50 at WalMart). This was easy to do because it's a bolt-on; no wire stripping involved. The negative connector is only slightly better and I'm leaving it alone for the moment since I'll need to cut and strip the terminal wire to replace it. Since I was dealing with electrical stuff, I remembered a post about checking grouding points, so I removed the connector from the fender by the battery. Again, very little contact area, so I scraped the paint from under the grounding screw down to bare metal. Something made a difference- maybe it was just the battery, but performance is much better now; no more hesitation off-the-line and better overall responsiveness. Thanks for all the suggestions; I'm still interested in the cold-air mod, but unfortunately I don't have a digital camera to post pics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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