Help!!! Im Doing Some Mods But Wanna Make Sure If Its Worth The $$
 

HEY GUYS i had my 8 around 4 months now. Anyways i wanted to make some mods to my car. I was thinking about putting the AEM CAI for $270, JIC Magic Exhaust stainless steel w/titanium tips for $400, and the piggyback ecu for my car for about $400. So in total i would be spending $1070. Do you guys what im getting in my car is worth the amount of money? i dont want to turbo my car because of damage to my engine etc. so if you guys have any other ideas as in what i should get instead. Please feel free to help a fellow 8 owner "ylsuper:

Lightweight flywheel and 4.777 gear will give you a lot more bang for the buck than what you describe above. Put in the ECU and a straight pipe and you're about as good as you'll get without FI.

Thats dirt cheap for that JIC exhaust.

Id say, exhaust, high flow cat, intake. and A piggy back if you want.

May not make the most power, but it will sure sound wicked :)

sorry for being such a newb at this, but what is a "lightweight flywheel and 4.777 gear"??

A 4.777 gear is the "final drive" ratio of your car.... think of it as just changing your gearing in your car. A lightened flyweel is replacing your cars current flywheel with a lighter one, thus less rotational intertia, allowing your car to rev faster.

So basically, doing a flywheel and final drive will give you the most acceleration benefits.

wat does the high flow cat do? will it actually make a difference if i put it in or not? because i dont really care much about the power but i do want SOME gains... i do care A LOT about sound tho :ylsuper:

oooo... haha very helpful. thnx a lot!! i guess fellow 8 owners are nicer than i was expecting. hahah

The AEM intake (or Racing Beat Revi with the Ram Air Duct), RP hi-flow cat, & the piggyback ECU (then tune it for you car) for the best hp gain. Add the cat back not really for hp, but if you want the sound.

The lightweight flywheel is nice, but just realize that you have to drop the tranny to install it, and even for a able bodied mechanic that is usually a good $500+ for install.

Gears will also give you better acceleration, but will reduce your gas mileage a bit, and driving around at cruise your revs will increase. I like the notion of gears, but I usually cruise the freeway at around 75 mph, at that spped the revs are already high, the last thing I want is for it to be higher.

A hi-flow cat has shown to be one of the better power adders to or cars. Will give you about 5-8 hp, which is about as good as you are going to get with this car. Intake will give you about another 6-8, piggy back tuned with the other parts included have shown about 20-25 hp total.

my comments are

1 lightweight flywheel
2 hi flow cat
3 hi flow exhaust
4 revi and duct

5 piggyback ecu for 400 bucks, wtf are you talkin about willis.

6 cepterx.

beers :beer:

how much would the tuning of the ecu cost?? o yea btw thnx for the help. this is actually very helpful:)

do you think i should be getting the revi w/the duct or the aem? which one would be both better in performance and sound?

About the same hp wise. Sound, the AEM would be a bit louder than the enclosed RB unit.

It would cost you probably a few hundred to dyno & tune your piggyback.

Anyway to change the final gear for a taller 6th so lower the revs a bit when cruising at 75?

Wow, and I've always felt this car was geared a little short already - 4000 rpm at 80 mph is rather busy! What does it turn with the shorter ratio? Isn't the factory rear end like 3.2 or so? (or was that the beer I just bought ...?)

there's a 4.1 and a 3.9 for sale in one of the vendor forums for $750 + core. made to order.. that will make ALL the gears taller...

Found it, Here's the link.. https://www.rx8club.com/mazmart-88/improved-fuel-mileage-4-1-here-78759/

factory is 4.44

would that hurt acceleration time? Would there be any significant increase in mpg?

yes, and possibly. it was a while ago, so i'm hoping i'm remembering this correctly, but i calculated the difference in time with a taller final gear, and with the 4.1 rear end, i think it worked out to be ~0.5 sec slower in the quarter, which put the 0-60 time in the high 6s (real world, low 6s for C&D).

and it might help out with fuel economy, especially at highway speeds. but i can't say for sure how much it would help. there's just too many variables to say for certain. hell, even on stock rx8s, there is a huge variance in fuel economy.

nope, its not worth the money. you spend a lot of money and get very little power in return, if any. after market sucks for the 8

hahaha wow. a lot of replies:) anyways wats all this gear talk about?? im lost?? wats the gear for?? im a newb guys:)

Gears help determine the RPM a car is at a particular speed, and how fast a car revs up (layman definition). So we have a stock 4.44 gear (which is already pretty aggressive), hence if we went to a 4.7 gearset it would improve your acceleration, but the downside is that it also increases your revs correspondingly...for example if you are driving 70 on the freeway & you are currently doing about 4000 rpms on your stock car, with new gears you may be doing 4300 RPMs at that same speed. For a gearset of say 3.9 vs. the stock 4.44, now it makes acceleration slower, but instead of doing that 4000 rpm at 70, you are only doing 3700 RPM (and presumably saving a bit of gas). You have to figure out what is right for you, and which direction you want to go. I could get much more technical, but like you said you are a newbie, would you really read articles on this, or just want a basic gist of what gears do instead.

Being a recent newbie myself, I can tell you there is A LOT to read and learn in this forum. Do some searches and read through the threads, you can gain a lot of knowledge. IMO, I wouldnt do something involving gear ratios or aftermarket ECU until I knew plenty about it. As far as performance mods, like everyone has said, you wont gain much, if any, from an intake. Don't think its worth 300-500 bucks personally. TurboXS catback and midpipe seem to be the best performance wise, anywhere from like 20-25 whp increase I think. A lot of people don't like the way the tips look, and it is very loud. Do some reading and you will be amazed how much you can learn. Good luck!

Hahahahaha, did you forget a couple decimal points?

Ok, TurboXS claims a 25 whp increase with their complete race system. Better?