^sorry thats so long (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

LOL...the quality is more important than the quantity (and that's what she said...harharhar...)

Just to confirm: you are talking ONLY in terms of turbo apps...10:1 in a N/A app is not that extreme as I recall.

Also, since most cars don't have motors capable of running large amounts of boost pressure OEM (with rare exceptions I'm sure) wouldn't it be just as easy in some cases (such as my 4G94) to get higher compression pistons, as well as some other N/A mods, and call it a day? I know that turbos are the key to LARGE amounts of power, but at the same time, in a daily driver, how much power does one ACTUALLY need?

In any of the 4G motors, your not gonna make shit going the N/A rought. The MOST you might make is 230 bhp. Even that is pushing it. That's probably around 110whp on your lancer's FWD platform. I mean, it's def better than the ~82whp your getting from the factory, but I dunno... I am going the turbo route on my 1.8. I am actually considering buying another 1.8 and going N/A with it once my turbo build is done on this car. Would be kinda cool I think. Nobody has ever built an N/A 4G37. At least not in the records. Would be a cool idea, I say. Plus, I can get a 1.8 with a blown motor for like $200. But like I said, the turbo build comes first. :thumb

LOL, its true, but I think I'd get more than 110whp from 230bhp...not by much... Even still, an increase of 20whp is enough to be useful in every day driving. Having to go WOT to pass someone on the highway, or even having to really push the car to make it through the light that just turned yellow, is annoying. I got spoiled: I learned to drive on a more powerful "boat" (2004 Ford Taurus w/ Duratec 30). So what I now lack in weight, is not really relevant, because I probably have a similar WHP/lbs ratio. :-(


You, as I recall, have the know-how to do rebuilds and such yourself? Cause I'm not so lucky...its part of why I'm trying to find the inxpensive options for gaining power...I even looked into to electric superchargers!

I have personally never done one, but I have been ressearching for years, and to be honest, I could probably drop a 1.8 motor, rebuild it, and reinstall it in a matter of a couple days. lol Even tho I have never done any internal mods myself, I know the 1. like the back of my hand. The 4G63, however, is a differnt story. I am not sure I would be able to do much with a 4G63 without some tiral and error. Also, due to me being in school and working all the fuckin' time, I am probbaly gonna be forced to pay someone to do my rebuild as well. I ma only 20, so time is a major disadvantage for me right now. I am , however, lucky enough to have a friend of my dad's who is the head mechanic at a local exxon, so he does stuff for me for... well.. not cheap, but a decent deal. If I buy all the parts for my rebuild that I need (about $969) he will only charge about $600 in labor. Which is a pretty good deal going by what alot of places chargee. So, $1569 total seems like a prety good deal to me. Now if I pick up another 1.8 for the N/A build, I will do it msyself, since I will be able to take my time on it cause I will already have a car to get myself around in. I technically have another car (its under my name) but i pretty much gave it to my brother when he got his lisence. He drives it all the time now, so I wouldnt be able to usse it as a dd.

the easiest ways to gain any power without knowing how to rebuild an engine are:
1) make it as light as possible. if those subs in your avatar are truly in the back of your trunk you are using at least 30hp to haul them around.
2) gasket match your intake manifold and throttle body. port throttle body
3) FULL exhaust. header, 2.5" high flow cat, 2.5" high flow muffler and 2.5" piping
4) remove A/C
5) CAI
6) lighter wheels

Except you are forgetting again that this is a DAILY DRIVER. I like the sound system. I'm not interested in pure performance. If I was, I'd rather be saving the cash and getting a better car, or a second car.

And I highly doubt it takes 30hp to haul my subs. Its two 12s in a small box, 60lbs at the most, which is nearly a third of me. And I still have the majority of my trunk as being usable. Yes, if I'm going to a track day, I'll leave them home...but for my daily drive to school, and my habit of going on road trips, they are a nice thing to have.

The Header-Back exhaust is the plan for when I have the money, except I'll be doing 2.25" piping because RRM has a cat-back system that I like. The header will come after that, followed by the high-flow cat. The SRI (CAI won't fit in an Auto-Tranny '05 Lancer b/c of the transaxle) will be done before any of those. After that I'd do a ported throtle body and intake manni.

UNLESS it works out to be cheaper to do a turbo. That's what I'm trying to figure out. Will the gains from a turbo be better than the N/A mods without costing me significantly more money. Its why I'm so interested in this thread: I already know the entire work-up of N/A modding the engine for max gains...its the turbo end of the spectrum I wanna know about.

make up your mind, daily driver, or modded car? You wanted to know how to make your car faster, if you don't like the suggestions, buy a faster car or deal with the fact that you drive an N/A lancer. the turd of all mitsu's. Even the colt can run 10 seconds

weigh your subs in the box once. most 12's weigh 25lbs a piece if they are good ones. the box, even if its small, weighs at least 25lbs also. thats 75lbs. Youre right, maybe 30hp was an exaggeration but stop asking for more n/a power at stop lights to beat those honda guys if you are going to haul things in your car.

if you really want to know about turboing your car.............it can't be done without rebuilding your engine. The rods are pencil thin, the pistons aren't made for the heat, and the fuel system will take a shit before 8psi. You are looking at $4000 minimum if the aftermarket even supports your engine.

I want a daily driver with some kick to it. As we're discussing this more and more, I'm realizing that turbo isn't really what I want. I'm looking to get more power out of the car without spending so much cash that I may as well have traded the car for something better. I'm gonna take the parts of your advice that don't remove the DD bits of the car: SRI, Header-Back w/ Cat, eventually maybe even ported intake mannifold/throtle body.

Thanks for the help none the less. If anything, its been a learning experience. And if there is more to be explained, I'm still interested, because hopefully I'll be able to get a weekend warrior car that is just street legal enough that I don't have to tow it to a track. :-)

after those "bolt on" steps the next step further would be a slightly more aggressive cam. If you don't go too big you can use the stock valve train and will get a slight boost in power

Piostons rods cams, valve springs none the less cost money. ALOT. Its cheaper to go turbo.

Hey, so I still don't know what I'm gonna end up doing, but I have another question, and was hoping we could return to the education on "boost" with what the hell the difference between a Supercharger and a Turbo was?

Turbochargers run on exhaust gasses and can reach speeds of about 35,000 rpm (most common OEM ones, at least. Others can get much higher) and a Supercharger runs like a camshaft or alternator, which means, off a belt driven by the crank. There are 2 kinds of superchargers, Roots-type and Centrifugal-type. Roots-type, also called a twin-screw for the 2 rotors with lobes that resemble screw threads, are the type most often seen and easily recongnizable. You know them V-8's with the HUGE blowers? That's a Roots-type. The centrifugal type is the more compact design, and resemples a turbocharger, but is still belt driven. Superchargers only spin at engine speed, so to produce more boost, you change out the pulley and adjust the ratio to the crank pulley.

Also, a supercharger is available throughout the entire RPM range, from 700 to 8,000 and beyond. A turbo, because it runs off of exhaust, must wait until the pressure is built up enough to push the turbo into an effective range, which is characterized as turbo lag.

And, as others are more educated that I on turbos, as they have experience, I am sure someone else can add more!

to reinforce what ^he touched on is that turbos use exhaust pulse energy, that would have otherwise been wasted, to provide power.

superchargers use crankshaft energy to make power robbing some "overall" horsepower from the engine. This has been a huge debate over the years of modding 4cyls. the old V8 gearheads are more stubborn and don't like to embrace new technology IE turbo, so they stick in their ways with the supercharger. Younger gearheads embrace technologies and use turbochargers because we typically use smaller engines to create comparable power.

The biggest reasons we don't usually use superchargers are:
1. turbos make cool sounds
2. turbos are compact and fit in our engine bays better than most superchargers
3. turbos came on our cars from the factory
4. a n/a 4cyl makes only 140bhp, if your lucky, and if a supercharger draws 30hp to spin then your really putting a hurtin on your gains. N/a V8's can start out in the 350hp range and don't really blink when a supercharger draws 30hp.
5. turbos have a larger range of adjustability. most can go from 8-30psi with the addition of a $5 bleed valve from lowes (cheap mans MBC). superchargers need a different pulley and different belt to make more pressure and are still limited by how fast that pulley can spin.

Ok, in keeping with the spirit of me being a bit of a novice...

Intercoolers: what do they do? Are they necessary? What's the difference between front, side, and top mounted?

some one correct me if im wrong
a intercooler acts as a cooling device for the air that goes from the turbo to the intake manifold
and i think side front and top are just different places to mount it.
the front mount i would imagine cool the air off more and you would want a bigger front mount for a bigger hp/boost builds. top mounts are used on things like sti's so that hood scoop is actually functional.

^ dead on (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Just like he said, where it mounts doesnt mean too much. The problem is size. The small SMIC of a 2g or 1g eclipse can be overrun very quickly. thats why people upgrade to a FMIC. There is more surface area in a larger FMIC than there is on a SMIC to keep the air charge cool. That's also why some people go with the supra SMIC upgrade instead of doing the FMIC right away. It's not that the side mount is bad, its just too small for the amount of air going through it in some applications, and there really isn't much room over there to make things bigger.

Once you exeed the range of FMIC's and are still getting an intake charge that is too hot people turn to water or meth injection to cool things down. Alcohol evaporates very quickly and when that happens temperatures reduce. Physics lesson (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) . Evaporation reduces temperature, or, takes away heat. Thats why when you pour rubbing alcohol on your hands it feels cold as it evaporates or if you blow on it. Alcohol also burns at a lower temperature than gas. Water injection works by, not only reducing intake temps via evaporation, but increasing the combustion charge by adding steam energy. Rememer, its not the fire that pushes a piston down, its the expansion of gases via combustion that pushes a piston down.

so, overall, if you are running a street car you need an intercooler. If you are running a 100% methanol 1/4 track only car you don't, because alcohol runs cooler

An intercooler allows the boosted air a chance to cool before going into the engine. When air gets compressed, it heats up. Pushing it through an intercooler allows the external air, or water, to cool the air to a lower temperature. Also, there is more oxygen per square millimeter of air at 75 degrees than at 112 degrees. So, cooling the air allows more oxygen. This, in turn, allows people to turn up the boost that would otherwise cause their engine to detonate, because the hotter air, combined with the high pressure, combined with the cylinder pressure, would make the fuel ignite prematurely.

A Front-Mount Intercooler (FMIC) mounts right square in the middle of the front of your car. Right in front of your radiator, preferably, as it would provide the best cooling available, assuming you have a large front opening, as the Eclipse does.
A Side-Mount Intercooler (SMIC) is what came stock, and mounts off to the side of the front of the car, usually in line with a vent that directs air to it. Much like a Lamborghini. They can be thicker, as they don't have to worry about blocking air flow to the radiator, and on a high horsepower car, an oil-cooler, and in an automatic, a trans-cooler. But they are much, much smaller than a front mount unit.
A Top-Mount Intercooler (TMIC) mounts above the engine. Now, this doesn't make much sense as heat rises, so the heat from the engine would make the air passing through the intercooler hot right? Right, unless you had an effective hood scoop, a la the Subaru Impreza WRX STi. This works effectively for them, because they have flat four engines, so with the intercooler above the engine, the radiator can still do it's job as effectively as a non-turbo car, but still keep a cool intake temperature more effectively than a side-mount unit, though not quite as effective as a front mount unit. Although, many people end up upgrading the top-mount unit for a front mount unit when the power levels get high enough.

The common misconception is that an intercooler is required, but they are not a neccessity. You could run a turbo setup without an intercooler, just make sure you aren't trying to push large amounts of boost. In recent times, a viable alternative has been the advent of water/methanol injection. This works in much the same way as a traditional intercooler, in that it lowers the temperature of the compressed air, and as such, by some, is still called an intercooler. It differs in the fact that there is no large radiator-like structure that the air passes through, instead a mixture of water and methanol is injected and the simple cooling effect of evaporation is used. An easy way to explain it is, If you have ever gotten out of a spa, and the air seemed to be 20 below, thats because of the water evaporating off your body. Same effect. And since the water is in such small amounts, it doesn't cause hydro-lock and destroy the engine.* Of course, to get to the high horsepower numbers seen in professional level events, some people use both a traditional intercooler and water/methanol injection. If anything, an intercooler is seen as cheap insurance. You could run without it, and risk something going wrong and you losing your engine, or you could get an intercooler, and run with a bit of a pillow of variance.

*I recently read in a magazine that the muscle car people used to (and still do) pour small amounts of water down the carb to clean the cylinders before a dyno run. I'm thinking about trying that with a squirt bottle and the intake pipe off the throttle body, but I don't want to risk it, since it is the only working car right now... anyone else ever heard of this?

EDIT: Dagnabbit! I took to long...
EDIT 2: Pretty much this is all repeating what they said, except the intercooler required bizniz... yeah... I dont' feel like erasing it all...

"squirting" water in to clean the cylinders does work, BUT its a mist, not a squirt. Using water injection has been around for many many years and has been proven to work very well as long as it's misted properly. A high flow pump is vital to supply up to 100psi so the water sprays as a mist. The same would apply for cleaning out the cylinders.

my dad had a buddy that had some old muscle car i dont remember what it was but he would rev it up pretty high and hold it steady and slowly pour water in and he said it kind of steam cleaned his engine. i thought it was kind of interesting