The road to 200whp!

[chester_ff7]

i have a 96' 240sx, and i wanna get to 200whp without a turbo. now i have a injen intake(cold air), DCsports headers(4-2-1),cat-back exhaust(2.5 piping), KOYO performance radiator, NGK iridiums, and NGK spack plug wires. oh and the A/C unit has been removed. i have the 91' 240sx cams, but i have not installed them. now dont get me wrong my car is quick, but i know that it could be faster. my car sits on TEIN suspension(basics kit), and rolls with 18's. what can i do to make my car faster. oh and please no NOS!!

[Bronze MFP]

One thing you could do is get rid of the 18's and get a lighweight 16" wheel. unless your 18's are super light, they are slowing you down quite a bit. also see if you can track down a lightweight flywheel and a set of lighweight underdrive pullies. Port n polish the head, get performance cams (more aggresive than the 91 cams) and if you have an under hood intake, get some more piping and get the intake out of the engine bay because you're only sucking in hot air in the bay.

On top of that the only way you are going to get anywhere near 200hp is with higher compression pistons. pistons from a ka24e will bump up the compression ratio to 11.5 or 12 (i forgot exactly, but its nutty high)You'll need bigger injectors and an ECU remap as well.that should get you close to 200whp but its not gonna be cheap or easy.

[stidriver]

A lightened pulley, lightened flywheel, lightened gears (expensive), lighter driveshaft and a good ignition. These are a couple ways to free up horsepower. You'd be amazed what that type of stuff does.

[chester_ff7]

good igniting right! now i have been hearing some stuff about nology spack plug wires. how true is it that nology hot wires are not the best way to go with the KA24DE? if that is so, what do you recommand?

[nightkid86]

Personally I'd stick with NGK.

Also on the KA you will still get a little more power across the board if you upgrade to a 3" piping exhaust from a 2.5

The best way to make your car feel like it has more power is to lighten it and drive everywhere with a 1/4 tank of gas, and get very nice tires and light wheels.

[chester_ff7]

But why? why is it that people say that NGK is better then Nology? (well for the 240, at least) that is what i wanna know.

[ISUJinX]

As long as they are good quality wires, they are pretty much all identical. The biggest difference is in the use of shielding to reduce signal loss from electrical "Noise". Get shielded wires if you want best spark. For 200hp, you're definately looking at port and polish, cams, re-tune, and higher comp pistons. If you go with the KAe pistons, it puts it at 11.7 IIRC. That is just about the upper limit of compression you can run on 91 octane. If you have 93 where you live, you might be able to get 12 or 12.5 dome pistons from an aftermarket supplier. Be careful with dome pistons though, because they start to weigh more, and high rotating mass is not condusive to higher revs (which is where you will see the power increase).

[nuts510]

I have one of these motor in a 510, I raise the compression ratio using late-model stock single cam pistons, cams from Jim Wolf technology a good header 2 half-inch exhaust the ECU and intake manifold or off of a 94. the 94 does not have the flapper valves and intake and this seemed to make a really good running combination. I have never actually checked the horse power output. but I do know the car made quick work of a civic claiming that have 185 horsepower at the wheels. I also have no problems with running premium gas