Intake manifold modifications

[NoDOHC]

Are you eventually going to turbo this motor?

I definately intend to put a turbo on the engine. In fact, it should be turboed right now, I was only going to run it 3,000 miles (breakin) and then add a turbo. I have over 5,000 miles on it and I still haven't found a good deal on a dual-disk turbo clutch (I refuse to deal with a 6-puck, I drive this car every day). I have a stock clutch in my garage, but I don't have the ambition to take the engine out twice and the stock clutch will never take 15psi boost (I have NA drivetrain in the car for now, will put the turbo drivetain in in one swoop).

If I was staying NA, I would have used 9.7:1 rotors (which I have been accumulating for years) and I would have given the engine more port overlap when I streetported it. I certainly would not have polished the rotors to the extent that I did, either.

Peak acceleration should coincide with peak power.

You are right, peak acceleration should coincide with peak torque. The G-tech measures acceleration, thus it displays torque. It is not that accurate however, as the dyno run would indicate.

It's also really -really- far advanced from what I've heard of anyone running, even up at the redline. If you got 13WHP from retarding 10 degrees, I'd say you're way advanced. On an NA 13b, while on an engine dyno, I've never had to advance past 40, and that was a motor that was already on the down-slope of the VE curve. I seem to make pretty good power on most port configurations around 30+/-5 degrees BTDC.

Something is wrong. You should be more around 25-30* BTDC. As far as you are advanced, you should be igniting on the compression stroke which will want to spin the motor backwards which is very bad. Hopefully your numbers are off somehow. I would make a pull at 25* and 13.1 AFR and see what happens. If you're way down on power than maybe your numbers are off but the motor is seeing the correct timing.

The timing is my fault, I knew that the rule of thumb was 26 degrees, but I thought that the engine seemed to pull harder at 60 degrees. I think that it must have made more noise and maybe shook a little more, which seemed like power to me. The dyno is definately informative and a great learning experience for me.

One more thing, you seem too focused on torque numbers. I don't know if this is because the g-tech only gives torque numbers but horsepower is what makes the car fast.

As to horsepower making a car fast... I will have to disagree on that one. My Rotary makes about 230 Hp, I have a friend with a 302 Ford in an RX7 that makes 230 Hp, that car is WAY faster than mine (the only difference is torque 210 lb-ft vs 360 lb-ft).

I like torque because it indicates the engine's Volumetric efficiency and combustion efficiency. You can always get more horsepower by porting more overlap and revving the engine higher, but you have to do careful tuning to get more torque.

Basically, my car makes 210 lb-ft of torque at the flywheel. Compare that to a stock 88 TII and you will see what I am talking about.

My goal is not to make a watchwinder, but rather to make a daily driver that has lots of low end, is very driveable and will still accelerate very quickly if it needs to (about 6 seconds 0-60). The total power number is not as important as what I learn and how pleasant the car is to drive.

Since I am stuck NA for a while, I figured I might as well benchmark it and see what it would do.

The timing that I am listing is definately right, I had a degree wheel on it.

In that case, also check your fan clutch. =cP

I know the fan clutch is bad, the car was referred to as the airplane at autoXs because all you could hear was the fan (I have the '91 for autoXs now, factory electric fans are awesome). I would take it off, but I think that is cheating, so I am leaving it (that and I don't want to overheat).

This may sound stupid, but I don't care what the number I put down is. It really isn't important, All that I care about is what kind of power it made NA so that I can baseline it against the turbo numbers. If I hadn't been seeing such increases last time at the dyno, I would have been happy with one $70 expense and called it 186 WHp.