[OHC230]

I've heard headers dont give that much of a performance gain unless you're above 5000rpm.

Hmmm, never heard of or seen that in my experience.

On the contrary, a well designed header will promote scavenging of exhaust gas even at low RPM. Scavenging helps to draw the intake charge into the cylinders during the camshaft overlap event. The header tube diameter, tube length, collector size and shape and the point at which the pipes merge together, all play a part in how a header will function and at what RPM. This is one of the reasons you see headers on just about every new factory performance car on the market these days.

Here is a link to a good header>
2.3 Ford Pinto Late Model Headers

I have an MSD 6AL and coil. Quite frankly these won't do much for your 2.3, unless you have a carb'd version and you run a fairly radical cam profile. I would suggest upgrading a half dozen other things first, before spending money on your 2.3 ignition. That's speaking from experience!

[BossHoss]

That's what I did to mine,Ranger header,2-1/2 catback exhaust,FloPro muffler,home made c.a.i into the fenderwell,Mobile 1 in the engine,then added a MSD 6 and a Blaster coil.
As you stated,doesn't add much HP ..but all the mods upped my mpg's 2-3 more miles per gallon...my best being 30...depending on how I drive.

[Cgross609]

Excellent. Well thanks for the advice. I might have to run out and grab a pinto header lol. Would it be much of a boost from my 93's stock manifold?

[zonker]

Originally Posted by darionvowels@gmail.com oopps sorry it works on mine well try this link out P1020523.jpg picture by darionvowels123 - Photobucket

where's the maf sensor? are u running without it?

[zonker]

Originally Posted by OHC230 OHC230, that's pretty much how mine looks, except I still have the rubber elbow by the air box also. That sounds fine to me. We dyno tested a bunch of this stuff one day on a customers car that had low miles on it and was in excellent condition. I was surprised to find that after removing the intake muffler baffles, everything we tried afterward, made little to no difference, even when we changed fuel and spark trims. We tried every trick in the book and a bunch of air intake parts. HP climbed slightly when we removed the air filter element all together and had no noticeable drop after installing the K&N filter element in the stock air box. We came to the conclusion, that unless the cars engine was highly modified, there was no need to change the stock air box. At 207 HP I am probably reaching the limit now.

I'm getting ready to remove the silencer on the intake as well.

To compliment the tube upgrade, i was thinking of:

1. removing the screen on the maf sensor
2. halving the TB butterfly shaft
3. blocking the hot air tube passage to the airbox

think that's a good plan of attack?

[OHC230]

Unfortunately, halving the TB butterfly shaft really won't be a worthwhile endeavor. I have never seen significant increases in HP even when switching to a larger throttle body on N/A 2.3 engines, with the exception of full race motors. The TB just isn’t a significant restriction in these engines unless engine speeds exceed 7,000 RPM.

The MAF screen removal is easy to accomplish, I don’t see a great deal of harm that will occur if you do this, but on the other hand, I have had discussions with other engineers who claim that the screen acts to stabilize airflow in small diameter MAF’s. Removing it could result in an inconsistent signal generated by the sensor and a loss in flow.

I have stated this before, a bit more subtlety: If you are looking to increase the performance of your 2.3, your money should really be spent on the head. I have been on and off the dyno more times than I can count with these engines in various vehicles and as disappointing as it is to say, most bolt on parts, with the exception of the exhaust system, don’t really do much for power, because the major restriction in stock 2.3’s is in the cylinder head ports.

When I tell people this, they seem to be turned off by it. Somehow the cost per HP dollar doesn’t add up. I contend that it does and I have seen N/A 2.3 engines, stand toe to toe with modern multi valve counterparts and pull away!

DIY head porting is within the reach of the average 2.3 owner. I am working on a tutorial for accomplishing this. There are some proven methods for improving gas flow through the 2.3 head that can be performed by you, with just a tiny bit of help from a competent machine shop. I should be able to outline some simple steps to improve head performance without going into debt.

The picture below is a scanned image of a 2.3 combustion chamber. It is one piece of a composite parametric model I am using for analysis. This technology is amazing!!

[zonker]

i hear what you're saying about what it takes to make a real power difference, i have that exact same conversation with a lot of my online customers about how to make power on their zetec motors.

on a zetec, the cams matter more than the head, with 20hp gains on cams vs. perhaps another 10 on a reworked head. i typically discourage the zetec guys from doing headwork and tell them to do cams only, since if they lunch a motor in most cases all they need to do is pull the cams and throw them in another used motor, instead of crying in their beers how they just toasted their $1000 cyl head.

so a good roller cam will be a good stage II mod to this car if i ever get that far.

As for stage one of this power wakeup, a real sleeper mod i found on the zx2 vct motors is modifying the ect and iat signal resistance.

i dyno'd over 16hp just by tricking the pcm it was 100 degrees cooler outside. it retarded the exhaust cam, added fuel and ignition advance, and shut off the radiator fan (reducing alternator load).

i then made a circuit to enable this resistance change to occur only when the TB voltage was 3volts or more, so at part throttle and idle, the pcm reacted (and burned as clean) as stock, and at greater than 75% throttle, it would trick the pcm into making dirty power.

now i know the 2.3 is not going to see the cam timing gain, but it might also benefit from a more aggressive spark timing curve and a little more fuel as well. I might have to rey one of those "black boxes" on this car and see if it helps.

[OHC230]

I hear what you're saying about what it takes to make a real power difference, i have that exact same conversation with a lot of my online customers about how to make power on their zetec motors.
Yeah it can be frustrating for some. The stock 2.3 heads work operate around 45% volume efficiency compared to a Zetec's 90%. A lot of that has to do with the port angle.

So a good roller cam will be a good stage II mod to this car if i ever get that far.

Yes, but I would highly recommend a compression increase along with a cam, to correct for the shorter effective compression stroke that you will see with an altered valve lift profile. Throw some minor port work on top of this and the gains will suddenly become very noticeable.

I dyno'd over 16hp just by tricking the pcm it was 100 degrees cooler outside. it retarded the exhaust cam, added fuel and ignition advance, and shut off the radiator fan (reducing alternator load).


Wow, that just goes to show you how efficient those heads really are and the great lengths that the engineers at Ford will go to, to make those engines run clean. Newer catalytic converters are very sensitive to fuel trims, so that makes perfect sense.

94 and older 2.3's don't respond quite as well from what I've seen. The addition of aftermarket cams will effectively reduce signal strength from MAF and MAP systems, which will normally result in a rich condition. To correct this some 2.3 owners will replace the original TPS with an early slotted version and then lower voltage to compensate.

The good news is:I have made dyno pulls up to 170 HP without mods to the fuel or spark trims. It is a simple formula to get to 170HP in N/A trim.

[zonker]

Originally Posted by OHC230 The good news is:I have made dyno pulls up to 170 HP without mods to the fuel or spark trims. It is a simple formula to get to 170HP in N/A trim.

I'd be happy with 130hp if i can do it without a new cam and mill work. This is going to be my daughters car and I just want it to get out of it's own way a little better.

So far I've adjusted the trans kick down to stay in gear a little longer and that helped a little...

[zonker]

well back to the intake topic of this thread lol - i removed the resonator and replaced it from the stock TB elbow to the maf with a straight section of 2.75" aluminum tube and a 2.5"-2.75" silicone coupler.

i get the feeling i lost torque below 2500 rpm and gained perhaps a tiny amount after 3500 rpm.

my guesses as to why:

1. resonator tube is not the blockage point in the intake system, since it's still larger than the maf housing opening

2. the resonator by its very shape helps to control pulsations in the maf airflow giving a clearer reading to the maf sensor which allows for better fuel and timing decisions to be made by the pcm.

possible solutions:

if number 2 above is false, remove screen on maf housing and see if things improve.

if not, or if #2 is the problem, then utilize a newer 94-up ranger or zx2 style maf sensor that has a larger opening and a different more efficient sampling tube.

the real question on doing this then would be if the sensor calibrations would be close enough to give the pcm what it needs for accurate info.

has anyone tried using a later 2.0 or 2.3 4 wire maf sensor on an earlier car??

rob

[OHC230]

Rob, I like your fresh approach to 2.3 tuning, I can tell that you have some experience in this area. Referring to your last post:

I'd be happy with 130hp if i can do it without a new cam and mill work.

I'm not really sure I understand you correctly, but I think you are asking how you can improve airflow through the engine (i.e. power) without altering the internals of the engine. The real problem with the 2.3, is that the bottle neck is in the ports, which can be offset somewhat with a cam change.

OK I'm guessing there's a cost issue at hand, I totally understand that. Here's the thing: in theory, if I were to remove all of the restrictions in front of the intake ports and behind the exhaust ports (imagine we had the perfect intake and exhaust manifolds) we would still be shy of 130 HP.

Without an increase in compression or gas flow, I don't know of a way to make more power with the 2.3, I just can’t see it.

40 more HP can be done with compression (head milling) and a cam for a fairly low cost, but not without improving exhaust flow a bit. Or it can be done with some moderate head porting, compression and some exhaust upgrades if you don’t want to mess with the cam.

You should really start with the exhaust, if you want to improve power in your 2.3. Since you are here in Cali, we have a different set of rules to live by. For now, unless you can afford to do some fabrication work, you will be stuck with the stock manifold / header, which I'm sorry to say, is a really disappointing piece, but the only 100% smog legal thing around. Ford made some minor design changes over the years on these, none of which improved their performance. The stock cast manifolds, at least had equal length tubes, unlike the Ranger header.

has anyone tried using a later 2.0 or 2.3 4 wire maf sensor on an earlier car??

Yes, it requires re-cal of the fuel trims in order to work properly.

[zonker]

This particular car doesn't have me sold yet on investing a lot of dollars into the driveline, since it will be for my daughter to drive to college.

i am getting to like the car more though, this is the second 2.3 mustang i have bought for someone in as many months. the first was a really clean 1979 ghia notchback that i found for a co-worker on ebay.

once ready to deliver this car, i might get a clean 5spd 2.3 convert for myself to play with and when that happens i'll then be more than ready to yank heads and do that "real" stuff that makes real power.