New to the family.

DRock9

New Member
Aug 22, 2006
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I've been reading SN for about the past week now and I decided to finally register after i made the decision to get a Fox. I would prefer a 89-92 because it has the better pistons and a mass air system, but i would take an 87/88, and it has to be a hatchback. My friend has a 350z and i want to be able to pretty much keep up with/completely smoke him.

He is really into racing but no matter how much ive tried to talk him into it, he never brings his car to the strip. I chose the fox because obvisouly its very light and very powerful. I want to keep it streetable as i will be using it as my DD, gas efficiency isnt a HUGE issue but i definately dont want it really close to the single digits.

I was going to go for an intake and exhaust but after seeing how cheap parts for the Fox are, when comparing to my friends $800 headers for his Z, i had to completely rethink my idea for the car. As even with all the reading/research ive been doing i just cannot figure out a solid plan because there are just so many options for this car.

I was thinking to have exhaust put on it because i can get it done really cheap, and then saving up money and buying a cam and headers then having them install both at once. Then save up money for some nice heads and put them on and hopefully that will give me a nice ammount of HP. I was also looking into to porting my intakes, i think thats what it was.

I could spend another two weeks researching and i still wouldnt know enough as probably 1/2 the people on this board so i figured i would make a post and see what kind of answers i get. Im sure it has been answered before so hopefully someone can just link me to a thread/post where i can get all the info.

I am looking for any upgrades that i can do to my car that would give me the most "bang for my buck." I have never worked on any car, but i am very mechanically inclined as i work on my gokart a lot and...as embarrassing as it might be, i used to build combat robots to fight in an arena. My dad used to be in the autobody buisness and he is a carpenter so i have a decent ammount of tools to work with so i might be able to do some of the work myself depending on what it is. I am pretty much limited to anything that doesnt require me to lift the car or pull the tranny/engine or anything like that.

My job pays $10 an hour and as of right now its all going into the car, so i would say that my spending limit is about $2000 over the course of a month or so. Any help is greatly appreciated and thank you in advance for anyone who can point me in the right direction!
 
Welcome to the boards!

I'd first see what car you end up with and what it has. There are only like 5 bone stock 5.0's left in the world, so chances are yours will already have some mods.

You can convert a SD car to MAF pretty easily and cheaply if on the look-out.

First things I'd want to do are:

Decent oil pressure and water temp gauges. You just gotta have that to even know what's going on.

Gears will give you a great deal of bang for the buck.

A lot will just depend upon what you end up with.

Good luck with the hunt and welcome again!
 
Welcome to the forums. A good set of heads, intake, and cam would be a good start. For ease, price and performance I suggest the track heat kit from Trick Flow. They come with just about everything except lifters to rebuild the upper part of your engine. It runs about 2200 but it is probably the most complete and bang for the buck kits out there. 24 lbs injectors would be nice but the 19s should work fine. If you are going to upgrade your mass air meter I would just opt for one calibrated for the 24s and get the injectors. You might want to up grade to a larger throttle body no larger than 70mm for a NA application. Exhaust, get ceramic coated whatever. Long tubes will have more of a gain but if you need to comply with some smog, shortys are your only choice. There isn't a performance difference between equal lenght and non equal shorties. I suggest FMS shorties. They seem to fit the best. Stock H is pretty restrictive so I would opt for an aftermarket. Again depending on smog you may want to opt for an off road(no cats) H or X pipe. For a street car they both are pretty close in performance of each other. H supposidly gives you more low end and the X flows better at hight rpm... depends on who you talk to. Biggest gain is getting rid of the stock 4 cat completely or a high flow 2 cat design. Bassani and Magnaflow(also carb legal!) are pretty expensive but are up there as far as quality. Leave the stock airbox and just get a K&N filter element. It's a cold air from the factory no need to mess with it. Subframe connectors are a must on the fox to keep the chassis flex down especially if you start getting some power in it. Some gears in the rear like 3.55 or 3.73 will help tremendously too. That should be a good start.
Kevin
 
Thank you guys very much for the great hospitality! Im going to do what Sicarius said probably...filter and exhaust first. Its too bad i live in Mass as it seems my options are rather limited. Ill do my best to try to figure out the setup that will give me the best gain/sound while still being legal. Thanks again for all your help though!

EDIT: I should be able to use the stock lifters right? And what are your thoughts on a true dual exhaust? My friend has one on his '97 V6 Stang, kept cats but with no resonator and muffler, and it sounds nice...no idea about performance though. He said it was still street legal and it only ran him $440. I think he got it starting at the headers but im not sure.

EDIT2: And if this is too hard of a question to answer then dont feel the need to, but what 1/4 times am i looking at with the Trickflow Package, filter, gears, and exhaust?