How do I make my car faster?

Question

I drive a 97 acura cl 2.2 auto tranny. I have put in an air inake. and thats it. I want to make it quicker. I don't have alot of money to spend. WHat should I do.

Answer 1

Hi,

First of all, congrats on your car. Acuras are beautiful, reliable, and all around great cars. When you say "I don't have a lot of money to spend" it doesn't quite give me an idea how much money you can invest in your car so I'll share some variety of different ideas with you.

I'll share a few things for different price ranges.

The first thing I would do is get rid of unnecessary weight. Clean and empty your trunk and backseat.

Check out this weight loss guide:
http://www.superhonda.com/tech/weight_loss_guide.html

For example by removing the spare tire you can save about 20lbs.

All those things are free and improve acceleration because your car will be lighter. It also improves braking because it will be less weight to stop. Your brakes will last longer. It will also help your engine more durable because it have lesser stress. Your tire thread should also last longer because of the lesser weight. So most of the time reducing the free weight is one of the first things to start with. If you go for aftermarket lightweight parts (such as carbon fiber), try to do it balanced. Because when you accelerate, your nose goes up a bit and when you brake the nose kinda dives. So you might want to keep a balance. Usually it is better to take off weight from the front because it is heavier (due to the location of the engine).

Secondly if you NEED to replace tires soon, consider getting smaller wheels. It takes less energy to accelerate a lighter and smaller diameter wheel. I think for each pound you save at the wheels it equivalates to saving 1.5 or 2.5 pounds elsewhere in the car.

Next I would try to find the best combination of the following.

If you can afford a turbocharger or supercharger, get that.

If you can't afford that consider replacing the exhaust, header, and adding a cold air intake. However I wouldn't recommend just doing one or two of them. You should do all 3 of them, or nothing. It is that much more effective when they are compounded together. For the exhaust consider getting a custom dual exhaust (hopefully not midas, they suck) maybe 2in or 2 1/4inches each. Or just a single exhaust with 2.5in diameter. For the header consider a 4-2-1 header and for the cold air intake consider AEM, Comptech, or K&N. I haven't had a good experience with Weapon-R. Maybe some other people here can recommend good cold air intakes for your car. Now if you did those changes you'll need to reprogram your ECU to let your car run at the new equipment specifications.

If you manage to do that you might get a larger throttle body later on.

Anyways, hope this help you and good luck with that sexy Acura!

Answer 2

Any Japanese or German or Korean car with 270HP-330HP can reach up to 155mph. Today, most V6 engines in Japanese cars make that power and reach that governed limited speed. 155mph. Any Porsche can easily reach 160mph. Even the slowest and cheapest, the Porsche Boxster. For American cars, you need 400HP cars to reach 150 mph easily. They need more power because they are usually less aerodynamic and heavier. Example: The 300HP Mustang GT only reaches 146mph. Honda S2000 Nissan 350z Mazda RX-8 and RX-7. Saturn Sky Redline Pontiac Solstice GXP Pontiac GTO Ford Mustang GT500 Hyundai Genesis Coupe Nissan Maxima New Honda Accord V6 and Nissan Altima V6 and Toyota Camry V6. Mitsubishi Lancer Evo or Eclipse GT Subaru Impreza WRX or Subaru Impreza WRX STI. VW R32 VW Passat V6.

Answer 3

first put some Lucas- stop slip in the tranny, this will hopefully make it lock up better. try a K&N air filter, and maybe an exhaust system. Try a highter octain gas, or maybe even octain booster. Also, weight reduction always helps, like less people in the car, no spare tire, any extra lugage you carry around. but your overall goal is go put more air and fuel mixture through that engine, and no matter what, that requires $$$. good luck

Answer 4

The cheapest way to make your car go faster is to step on the accelerator pedal.

Seriously, think about spending some money on an exhaust system and an MSD ign.

otherwise, these are the only emissions friendly and bolt on mods you can do yourself....but they cost $$$

Answer 5

my friend has a 97 cl 2.2 as well, he added a short ram air intake, catback exhaust and a upgraded ecu, fact is your car is too heavy man, if it was 3.0 cl then it would have been much betta but ya best of luck man

Answer 6

a lot of good answers.. but the best anwers for a low budget rider is change the intake & exhaust and get a piggyback ECUs to tune up .. try APEXi S-AFC or GReedy E-Manage or any piggyback unit at the market

Answer 7

cold air intake?

what you want to do is to put most air you can in to your combustion chamber and to get it out quick as possible

so turbo? better flowing exhoust system,

put multi spark unit in it and make little bit of your fule to air ratio richer on fule so more exhoust will be there.

Answer 8

Before you push it to hard.....Help your trans. live with the added power.Automatics don't like being driven hard. Do yer transmission maintenance & add a QUALITY fluid cooler.Have ya seen what a rebuild cost?

Answer 9

Save your money and buy a turbo. Buy a chip for it, put in NOS, swap out motors for a bigger one. Put in a larger mass air flow sensor, sawp out fuel rails for a larger one with larger injectors.

Answer 10

you are not going to get any noticeable gains without spending some money. just wait and save your money. thats your best bet.