How can I get more from my top end? I raced a Honda civic hatch last night and I kept up w/him, but it felt like he could get me in the high side...Any insight?

 

search for the man's thread on intake and exhaust cams, they seemed to help him pull in the higher rpm range. It just depends on how much cash you got.

 

I have the FS-ZE cams from the sport 20 and they helped a lot in the top of the rpm band, doesnt lag to redline as much. If you get a cam gear for the intake side you can tune the power curve a little better, I dont have it thogh. You cannot put one on the exh side, or cant do it easily i should say.

Kyle Lancaster--Double Agent Salesman

 

and why not? tripoint has working cam gears now

 

Because with the factory cam sensor on the exh side it cannot be added EASILY with the factory ECU. All the World Challenge cars use Mazda's Motec system from Mazdaspeedmotorsports.com Are you always so **** retentive? Man, just trying to help people out and you always have to include some type of smart *** remark.

Kyle Lancaster--double agent salesman

 

Try adding a less restrictive intake (Injen, AEM, etc.) first and see how you like it. The 1.8L responds quite nicely to this... much better revving above 5,000rpm. I kept hitting the rev limiter the first day I had my Injen CAI. Then, if you want more, start looking at exhaust, then cams, etc.

 

Don't want to jack the thread or anything, but how would custom made cams affect performance? It seems the jspec and mazdaspeed ones are too mild. What if we got more aggressive ones made? Thanks for the input.

 

I did the jspec & Mazdaspeed camshafts, with intake, header and exhaust and did lose some low end, but not enough to make that big of a difference. My torque number is still higher than my horsepower, so I'm happy.

 

gcs118- If you become a Motorsports Member you can get unground cams with just the journals ground so you can custom grind your own. The j spec are the equivalent of crower stage 1. you could talk to them about custom profiles. Your main gains would be 5-9k RPM so you will have to address other issues, retainers, valve springs ect..

Kyle Lancaster--Double Agent Salesman

 

I heard that the ZE's cams were about as aggressive as you should go with the stock ECU...

The FS's are undersquare, and generally an undersquare engine will have good low end grunt with some trouble breathing in higher RPM's. Boring the engine will bring the engine nearer to square (or oversquare depending on how much of an increase, don't have time to do all the math right now), which could help with breathing. You would probably need to do some ECU work to get any decent power gains, however. The cams and ZE intake manifold supposedly help a bit without ECU work.