I just got my CAI installed and I love the sound and can definitely feel the car a little more rev-happy at the upper RPM's. I'm looking to put a magnaflow cat-back and an AEM header in the near future which will give me a nice jump in ponies, but I feel like there should be some way to get a few more of them ponies to the pavement.

With all the talk I've seen on this forum about the 25% loss of power to the wheels in the PR5's, I'm surprised there haven't been more discussions about the drivetrain. Is there any way to modify the PR5 drivetrain to make it more efficient? Most japanese FWD vehicles out there can usually claim as low as 10-15% loss to the wheels. This sort of improvement could easily give an extra 10-15whp to our vehicles giving a good kick in the ***. It does somewhat bother me that there are other cars out there with smaller motors and less power to the flywheel, but push harder merely because of the sub-par drivetrain in the PR5's.

Any thoughts or ideas on how to tighten up our vehicles? is there possibly another tranny that could be connected to our vehicles with better transfer characteristics?

 

quick question.....what is an AEM header?

 

Good catch....misread my list of perfromance parts here. I was looking into the AEM intake...OBX header is what I have planned....Any reccomendations would be well taken.

 

W.O.M.P. that Protege!!

 

hell yeah....I'm going to include "business cards" in the kit so when you smoke someone you can hand them a card that says "You've been WOMPed!!"

 

In regard to original question - the internal tranny would be the last place to try to 'squoze' a little more performance. Exhaust (pardon the pun all bolt-on mods first. After the CAI:

-header
-ud pulley
-Outlaw engineering intake manifold insulators
-fuel mgmt/tuning or MP3 ECU swap
-cat-back exhaust

(In *my* order from reading these posts)

 

you should try the AWR motor mount it realy tightens the car up, the stock mount is pretty weak

 

How much of a difference can the motor mounts make in the cars performance? Does it affectively help to put more power to the wheels?

 

it allows the car to put the power down better w/o axle hop and tons of drivetrain lash

 

we had a big problem with the protege when the first came out we kept ripping them at the drag strip, the problems lies when the mount tears it causes the motor to move around up to 5 inches, with the new mount it puts the power to the ground, and the only cost $64.00

 

Get the mount and dont ask questions.

 

How about the 'fill the air gaps of the stock mount with clear RTV' mod? Does it last?

 

nope, but I did something similar.

I bought a prototype from Corksport that is a front mount INSERT. It basically is 2 polyeurethane pieces that fill in those gaps and makes the mount solid....I like it a lot..no more wheel spin, no axle hop EVER and no noise...every now and then I get a soft clunk ou of it but I may just need to tighten it up more.

 

to bad they dont market those, I'd get one...the insert that is

 

yeah, I think they were too expensive...the AWRs are a great product at a lower cost.