As stated in my profile, my 03 cavalier is bone stock except for the plugs, and the K&N filter.
I'm looking to push 200, mebbe a lil more at the flywheel after i swap in a 5 speed gearbox, i know a good starting place is intake, exhaust, throttle body and chipping the ECU.
I'm a little leery of buying adjustable cam gears, a lightweight crank pulley is a good option for freeing up power.
I want to stay away from using forced induction, a friend of mine recently got cute and dropped a turbo on his brand new 05 sunfire, blew the #1 & #4 rods out the bottom of the oil pan.... Damn near killed me when i told him "hey now your car really looks like it has balls"
So yeah, summary, aside from basic bolt-ons, i want 200+ at the flywheel, willing to do pretty much anything short of forced induction and engine internals (pistons, rods, crank, etc)
Freakin morons.... When will they learn. Hold On Not Done Accelerating
How much boost was he pushing and what kind of mods did he have for his turbo system? Sounds like someone detonated...
Anyway... Since you're going N/A, you'll want to increase the compression. I wouldn't bother increasing the stroke or anything like that unless you're wanting to dump serious money.
Lets see... You can get a adjustable FPR, cams (not a basic bolt on), bore out your intake manifold, man there's too much to list... If you want to use cheater gas you can. (N2O). That'll get you to the 200hp mark.
Yeah but N20 misuse can blow motors also..
200 flywheel hp is possible n/a, but with a lot of work. So far, for engine mods, I have custom ram air system, modified AEM cold air intake, ported/knifed throttle body, modified/ported stock intake manifold, custom cams, ported head(shaved 0.025" to bump up compression a bit), Arospeed 4-2-1 stainless header(wrapped, and ceramic painted, cut off the 2.5" to 2" adapter on downpipe), full custom 2.5" exhaust with 2.5" Magnaflow highflow cat and 2.5" Magnaflow straight through muffler. I dyno'd my car ages ago with only custom cams and AEM intake(unmodified), everything else stock at around 165-170 crank hp, but now it's probably sitting comfortably well over 180 crank horsepower, and I'm planning on getting a PCM reflash with higher redline, tuned for GM S/C kit injectors, and an even wilder ported head with 1mm oversized valves. That should put things into the 200 crank hp region, without forced induction or nitrous..
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i know a good starting place is intake, exhaust, throttle body and chipping the ECU
Actually right, there are no "performance chips" for the ECOTEC motor. Personally if there were it's not worth getting. If you want to control your fuel, get an SAFC-2. If you want to control your Ignition, get an MSD DIS-2 to control the ignition timing. All a chip would do is tell your computer to put X amount of fuel and put your ignition timing to X amount but that chip doesn't know what you SHOULD have and if that's too much fuel or not enough Vice Versa.
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I'm a little leery of buying adjustable cam gears
Actually I've done allot of research myself and asked lots of questions and found that our stock cam timing is right on the money. No need for them (at least for N/A purposes). You probably won't need them if your boosted either but that's something you'd have to research yourself or buy it and test it out yourself when you are boosted.
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I want to stay away from using forced induction, a friend of mine recently got cute and dropped a turbo on his brand new 05 sunfire
There is nothing wrong with Forced Induction on the ECOTEC motors stock. Your friend was either putting too much boost or his turbo setup wasn't properly setup. You can turbo our motors safely but there is always that risk of something going wrong but slimmer at lower PSI. There are lots of people with ECOTECs who are boosted and no problems...talk to those people and see how they are doing to maintain their boosted car. Maintenance is VERY important. Keep your options open cause maybe one day you'll get to ride in a properly boosted ECOTEC car and change your mind (for me RSM Racing's Supercharged Road Car).
If you have anymore questions, ask away...
www.kronosperformance.com / 732-742-8837
It is too bad no one makes software for the Ecotec. In all honesty, chip tuning is the best way to tune a car. It is the way it was designed to be tuned, and will ultimately run better with its original ECM then it ever will with a piggy back or stand alone.
Also, chip tuning lets you buy someone else's hard work. Very few people have the time and resources to properly tune their car. For the typical person it would be easier just to send off the ECM to have it chipped. The power gained is also usually pretty decent, as the factory does detune their engines to ensure longer life and better gas mileage.
For both a performance chip and piggy back like the SAFC, tables are used to designate how much fuel and ignition timing are supposed to be given at a certain point. And for both cases, the ECM reads data from its sensors and adjusts the fuel and timing accordingly.
Don't get me wrong, if you're a serious tuner without a sponsor or a couple million dollars laying around, you have to go with a piggy back or stand alone. But for the weekend driver, a chip is always the best option.
But that doesn't matter because there isn't a chip out there anyway...
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mmmm.... Disco Potato goodness
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WELL, YOU HAVE TO LOOK AT WHAT YOUR GOALS ARE. I MEAN YOU CAN PUT FORCED ON ANYTHING, JUST HAVE TO WATCH YOUR PISTON/VALVE CLEARANCE, ALONG WITH YOUR COMPRESSION. YOU CAN ALSO DO BOTTOM END WORK WITH FORGED vs. HYPER. PISTONS AND RODS. E-MAIL ME IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS.
The compression ratio of your caps key is too high Jon
and what does fi have to do with valve clearance? now higher compression pistons yeah your going to have to be careful. thats why you find someone that knows what their doing. the only pistons that i have seen out there are stock 10:1, 10:1 with .20 overbore, and 8.9:1, 8.9:1 w/ .20 overbore for turbo applications. so clearance is not an issue. if you find 11:1 for the 2.2 eco post up.
