I'm gonna get prepped up to rebuild my first engine. Its from a 87 GXL N/A, soo like S4. I'm gonna get one of the Atkins rebuild kit when I tear apart the block but I got some questions.

1. I plan to use Rtek, but when I checked out their site about the S4 N/A product, and I looked at the models section, it says "planned", and "in development". So should I just go for something else?

2. While I'm selling my MG parts, I found a weber carb i don't know much about. Can I make a manifold and hook it up to my block?

3. I can't find were I can do the water-jack mod, is there a tutorial?

4. What other stuff can I do to make this engine even more reliable to meet my demands? My demands are that I can autocross, drift, drag, and still drive it home.

That is all I can think of now, Thanks for the advice!!

 

I'm getting a street port template from pineapple racing.

Also, I'm a very concrete person.

 

My goal is 200 ft/lbs of torque.

And to keep the reliability:

I should switch the N/A stuff to the TII right? I haven't found alot of threads that made people switch the transmission and driveshafts to TII. There are a couple, but in their cases they were making a bunch of torque. There was one were the U-joint caused massive vibrations and then broke, but mine is in working order, so I don't have to worry too much.

For the mounts, I researched a bit on solid and stock replacement, and I'm going to keep the stock because this isn't big track car, so everything doesn't necessarily need to be stiff.

My bushings are definitely going to be changed when the engine is out.

I don't know if I should put an E-fan on, but if I do, its going to be like Hyperteks. His was very well thought out, and cheap E-fans don't give any hp gains, but cool very slightly better than the clutchfan.

I found a couple of pictures on the waterjacked mod, but no tutorials.

My weber carb will work, and Mazdatrix has what I need.

Also, the big one. THE LSD!! A bunch of threads that explain the difference between 1-way, 1.5, 2, and of course welded. But I found like under 20 that had really good information to go off of, the rest were opinions because they know only of what they got. Which would be the "iron triangle" for autocross, drift, and drag, I don't drag much at all, so I should look into 1.5 diff?

A, I think cross directional radiator, because it cools the coolant as it goes up and down?

I'm gonna do more research tomorrow, gives these a thought, Thanks!

 

what else should I search?

 

I believe if you wanna make 200 torque to rear wheels your going to have to at the least go with tII swap or turbo up the engine... or supercharge the engine. No way you will hit 200 torque without this or an extremely awesome tune.

Also with the carb you won't wanna do a turbo, maybe a supercharger, but turbo most likely not. From what I have ever read the carbs are more of racing straight line kinda thing, and not street kinda drive, most of them make the car idle kinda crappy and not fun to drive... Someone correct me if I am wrong.

I did a stage 2 street port with the road race true duals from Racing Beat and I maybe gained like 20-30 hp to the wheels... if I am lucky.

Which reminds me I need to find a tuning/dyno place to get into... Anyone know of any in Michigan?

 

First off thats actually a pretty big number to be shooting for especially on an N/A motor on your first rebuild. If you want to get close to that number you definitely need to look into porting, streetport would probably be your best choice. I'd also look at getting a lightweight flywheel, headers, exhaust. Search through the Naturally Aspirated threads there's a lot of people that have dyno numbers and what they used to get that far.

I don't know much about the RTEK for the S4 N/A, a lot of guys use the Apex'i SAFC NEO I wanna say? It's a simple fuel controller but does good work, and would be perfect in this situation.

Alot of guys switch out the housings from N/A to TII because the TII housings have no diffuser in them, making it easier to port. Yes people run TII transmissions on N/A, but if you're going to do that the driveshaft wont mate up to the stock N/A rear end so you can either buy a TII-NA driveshaft, auto driveshaft, or your smartest bet would be to switch the full drivetrain to turbo.

Mazdaspeed solid motor mounts aren't that expensive, $59.00 from Corksport, but as long as your stock mounts are fine you should be good.

Good choice, bushings are defintely a good thing to replace after 20+ years.

I'm going to be running a Fiero e-fan, its going to make things cleaner and simpler in my opinion, its really a preferance thing.

What waterjacket mod are you talking about?

Yes, there's quite a few guys who have carb'd FCs, again its somewhat of a preferance thing, people will always debate which is better.

If you use the TII transmission and rear end then you'll have a viscous limited slip with 4.10 final drive gears which will be more then enough if you make it to 200 torque.

For the power that you're speaking of having the stock radiator will be more then efficient.

I'd research a little more into the exact parts you need to get to that number, on an N/A you're talking about spending a pretty penny to get there again on your first rebuilt. But, it can and has been done, but alot use them for just racing at those numbers.

 

In most of my research Carbs do make a higher idle for daily driving. But I bet they may not be necessary for me plan.

200ft/lbs of torque is a bit much for N/A because in the Natural aspirated section, 180ft/lbs of torque is a big deal. A person made 280 with a 13b-re, but I don't want that. I could make alot, but that would require a lot of rotary knowledge, and one knowing exactly what they need to do. Which I don't.

I thought about swapping a TII, but I still want to rebuild an engine. I don't want to have a TII because they seem difficult to me. I want to work with what I got. I just hate swapping to TII because of the part were I have to change out a bunch of N/A stuff to TII.

Reliability is still my main goal, so if I get a TII, or rebuild my N/A, I still want it to be bulletproof.

The waterjacket mod is when you put little grooves through the water-cooling holes, and it should prevent detonation. I saw it looking through the photo albums. The 13b-re has it.

I want to have a little power. Basically, it gets daily driven, then when the time comes I can show people "the business".

I'll look up more. Thanks for the input! I appreciate it.

 

The guy in the N/A performance section made 230 HP with a street ported 13B-RE. The 13B-RE has much larger runners and ports which help to that power goal. That is about 140 ft/lbs of torque on the high end.

To get to 200 ft/lbs of torque you are gonna need some serious bridge/peripheral port and a very good tune. This style of porting is not going to be streetable at all. Maybe a mild bridge but a p-port is going to be the biggest cop magnet in the world.

200 hp sounds like a much more reasonable number which you can do with some good porting, new/very good used housings, and a tune.

 

alright, I definatly don't want to attract attention! Than I'm gonna go for 200hp at the flywheel. That should be enough.

So, to get this new goal that has been done before, I'm gonna need a...I'm gonna search.

Thanks solareon!