improving top end..

[supracelica32]

so after a couple pulls that i did against some friends tonight, i've found out that i really need to improve my top end. 1st gear 20 rolls is what i did against 2 bolt on srt4s, a 03 mustang GT with exhaust and another MS6 with a MS CAI. i pulled every time from the start but they'd always pull once i got into second.

so i'm now here, asking for advice. i was used to have a 8400rpm rev limit and ALL top end when i had my '00 Celica but no torque. now, i'm loving the low end, just not feeling not have any top end at all.

so here's my plan that i have for improving my top end(hopefully). feel free to recommend something if i've left out or should go with something different.

Cobb AP- will be my first performance upgrade in which i'll run the cobb stage 1 map.
MazdaSpeed CAI/?? TIP- not sure which TIP i'll be going with.
3" Downpipe- leaning towards Corksport right now as i'd like to but a electric cut out in place of the second cat/test pipe
Fuel Pump Internals

i'll also be lowering the car on H&R Springs as well in the near future.

all input is greatly appreciated.

 

[coyfish]

Yeah well your stock so you can't expect to take any of those cars right now. MS6's dont have great topend. The gearing sucks, turbo is small, and is heavier than most. AWD is our biggest advantage. 1st and 2nd are amazing but in 3rd+ im usually holding my breath.

Right now you have to make sure you are shifting properly. If your stock you should be shifting at 5600ish in all but 1st gear which you can take up to 6K.

Any mod that gives power will help you.


I would get the same brand intake / inlet pipe for best fitment.

 

[supracelica32]

Yeah well your stock so you can't expect to take any of those cars right now. MS6's dont have great topend. The gearing sucks, turbo is small, and is heavier than most. AWD is our biggest advantage. 1st and 2nd are amazing but in 3rd+ im usually holding my breath.

Right now you have to make sure you are shifting properly. If your stock you should be shifting at 5600ish in all but 1st gear which you can take up to 6K.

Any mod that gives power will help you.


I would get the same brand intake / inlet pipe for best fitment.

oh, i understand being stock plays a big roll. i know that i need mods to compete. just trying to improve it the best way possible.

my shifting, is not a problem, i can bang gears so my shifts are there. i read plenty of thread's on here and have found out by doing pulls that going to redline is pointless. i was shifting around 5500ish but still didn't help at all.

 

[KrGsMrNKusinagi]

Open up your exhaust.. DP, Straight pipe.. Get a good inlet and a good intake.

Once you open up these your top end increases well. But again your car is heavy do not expect to beat cars with similar power when they weigh so much less than yours like a SRT4 for example. Not that you cant but more than likely it wont happen.

I believe aftermarket chips or programs like Cobb also heavily increase your mid and top end performance by holding boost longer. But from my understanding a main upgrade you need as well is the Fuel pump not the intank one but the mechanical one. The intank pump is supposedly good to over 400hp?

But again thats just my 2 cents.

Major help in top end would be a bigger turbo.. GT2871R would help alot and still maintain somewhat reliability

 

[coyfish]

You don't need a fuel pump yet. The stocker is fine until about 300whp. Then you might want to get internals. If you get a bigger turbo than you would need a bigger pump. Im at 300whp and my fuel pump is holding pressure fine.

For your power goals I think you should take the same route as anyone looking for power. Plenty of threads out there that im sure you have seen.

If your after pure power than obviously a full intake + TMIC + downpipe + tune is your best best.

 

[LBV]

The Cobb AP will definitely give you the top end ... I've got a dyno on here somewhere where I gained 60-70 HP in the upper RPM's, but that was Stage 2 as well with a turbo-back exhaust.

 

[supracelica32]

from searching everywhere that sells speed6 parts, there is no CAI/TIP combo.

which would net the best gains, SRI or CAI?

i've decided on all mods that i'll be getting besides which intake set up to go with.

 

[coyfish]

from searching everywhere that sells speed6 parts, there is no CAI/TIP combo.

which would net the best gains, SRI or CAI?

i've decided on all mods that i'll be getting besides which intake set up to go with.

So many threads on this. Honestly the power difference between the two is inconsequential. Many of the highest hp msp3/6's have been using SRI's because CAI's don't fit with most aftermarket FMIC piping.

But a CAI might get you 1-3 more hp. But the SRI will give you 1-3 more tq and slightly better throttle response (less pipe). Once your moving enough air is flowing through your engine bay that it doesn't matter where your intake is.

CPE CAI and CPE inlet is a combo you can get. Other than that I would get a full cobb, cpe, or pg SRI/inlet combo.

What i mean by combo is just the same brand. Not that you get a special deal when buying both. The only combo deal I know of is the protegegarage SRI/TIP which is like 200 bucks which is cheap.

 

[SamNavy]

There are three major reasons for the car falling on it's face after 5500rpm.
1: Tune.
2: Throttle plate closure.
3: Breathing.

Your breathing mods are taken care of by an intake(CAI/SRI/TIP), TMIC, and catback. The PG Full Length Short Ram Intake is a piece that gets you a full filter-to-turbo intake tract upgrade for $200. I got an email a few days ago that said it's a 2-3week wait for shipping. That upgrade is sufficient for max gains using the stock turbo. The debate goes either way on the benefits of SRI vs. CAI. CAI types have the potential for water injestion in the wet, and SRI types will probably be seeing a bit higher air temps at the filter, but nobody has significant data on how much higher.

A lot of people argue that a downpipe is a better initial exhaust purchase than a catback, but it's also a much more involved install, and nobody is going to honor a warranty with a DP installed. A custom (your local muffler/speed shop) 3" stainless resonated catback flowing into dual 2.5" universal mufflers shouldn't run you more than $400.

There plenty of threads that document the factory throttle plate closure settings... basically, even with the gas pedal floored, the throttle never comes fully open, and as RPM's increase, it closes even more. This crushes your top-end as much as anything else. Some of the aftermarket tuning solutions will can fix this problem. It was thought for about a year that the COBB AP OTS tunes opened the plate fully for us, but that's proven to be false. Cobb has made it public that for safety/longevity, it's opens the plate significantly more than stock, but in the upper rev's, still partially closes it (I think that's right... there's a thread here somewhere that documents it). In any case, you can tune the AP yourself through software or get a protune that will open it fully if you want.

Last major hurdle to power is the stock tune. Factory turbocharged cars run pig rich on the topend and pull timing to keep things cool. Run 1-step colder plugs, lean things out, and add in timing to make more power. The COBB AP will fix this somewhat... a protune will maximize your particular setup.

For the money, I think there's a good argument to be made that the most significant top-end gains you'll see for power are: Any CAI/SRI, ETS TMIC, custom catback, Cobb AP. If you buy new production parts, expect to pay somewhere between $1500-$2000. I'd also do 1-step colder plugs.

 

[MEMIN]

and even after that you are gaining a extra 600 rpms before the falls (5500 to 6000) remember is not 8400rpms no more...........

 

[Blendercloud]

To achieve success, follow these simple steps:

1. Don't hang out with SRT4 owners.
2. Sell your MS6.
3. Buy a BMW M3.
4. ???
5. Profit


Okay, really in all honesty if you wanted to leave those guys in the dust you should have picked a different car. You could always look at a Speed3 if you want to stay with this engine platform and that would give you a bigger margin than what you have stock for stock with an MS6. Improving the top end can be achieved with the following:

Full intake/turbo inlet
Larger turbo
Cobb AP with tune
Aftermarket cams
Header
Turbo back exhaust
Fuel Pump or internals (with all that you're going to need it)

With the aid of these, you'll probably be able to push the torque curve out of the 2500-3800 range and move it toward the 3500-4600 range while making ample power through 6800 revs. You will likely run into fuel delivery issues though, so good luck.

 

[KrGsMrNKusinagi]

To achieve success, follow these simple steps:

1. Don't hang out with SRT4 owners.
2. Sell your MS6.
3. Buy a BMW M3.
4. ???
5. Profit


Okay, really in all honesty if you wanted to leave those guys in the dust you should have picked a different car. You could always look at a Speed3 if you want to stay with this engine platform and that would give you a bigger margin than what you have stock for stock with an MS6. Improving the top end can be achieved with the following:

Full intake/turbo inlet
Larger turbo
Cobb AP with tune
Aftermarket cams
Header
Turbo back exhaust
Fuel Pump or internals (with all that you're going to need it)

With the aid of these, you'll probably be able to push the torque curve out of the 2500-3800 range and move it toward the 3500-4600 range while making ample power through 6800 revs. You will likely run into fuel delivery issues though, so good luck.

True but I have seen two MS3s blow up with just boltons as in RODS go through the block. I am willing to bet the internals are different on the MS6 than an MS3 and that the MS3 has a weaker block as in bottom end on the early models

 

[supracelica32]

To achieve success, follow these simple steps:

1. Don't hang out with SRT4 owners.
2. Sell your MS6.
3. Buy a BMW M3.
4. ???
5. Profit


Okay, really in all honesty if you wanted to leave those guys in the dust you should have picked a different car. You could always look at a Speed3 if you want to stay with this engine platform and that would give you a bigger margin than what you have stock for stock with an MS6. Improving the top end can be achieved with the following:

Full intake/turbo inlet
Larger turbo
Cobb AP with tune
Aftermarket cams
Header
Turbo back exhaust
Fuel Pump or internals (with all that you're going to need it)

With the aid of these, you'll probably be able to push the torque curve out of the 2500-3800 range and move it toward the 3500-4600 range while making ample power through 6800 revs. You will likely run into fuel delivery issues though, so good luck.

lol, 5 of my closest friends have srt-4's, so can't do that. i've actually decided that i'm not going to race my speed6 like i did my celica. s**** too expensive to fix on this thing. just going to do basic bolt ons to it and call it a day.

but i could sell it and make a profit as i only have 7k into the car, which i've thought about doing but doubtful.

 

[8.5MS3]

just to give you an idea of the awesomeness of the mazdaspeed top end

heres a before and after ap dyno, literally 10 minutes apart.

EDIT: I DO NOT RECOMMEND AUTOMASTER AMR FOR TUNING PURPOSES

 

[Blendercloud]

True but I have seen two MS3s blow up with just boltons as in RODS go through the block. I am willing to bet the internals are different on the MS6 than an MS3 and that the MS3 has a weaker block as in bottom end on the early models

Before making that assumption you have to consider a couple of things. First, the MS3 caters to a MUCH different market; mostly twenty-something males. Second, there are a lot more MS3's out there than MS6's. The production numbers for both years combined for the MS6 barely break the 8,000 car threshold. In comparison to the MS3, I believe they've been pumping cars out at capacity (5,000 per year) since the car came out.

Basically what I'm saying is just because you haven't seen it in the Speed6 doesn't mean it doesn't or hasn't happened. If you go through the loads of old posts in the MS6 section (from 2007-ish) you'll see some enthusiasts who were having fun with this car. You'll see some folks who got pretty bent out of shape when they popped an engine expecting that this car was a poor man's Skyline.

lol, 5 of my closest friends have srt-4's, so can't do that. i've actually decided that i'm not going to race my speed6 like i did my celica. s**** too expensive to fix on this thing. just going to do basic bolt ons to it and call it a day.

but i could sell it and make a profit as i only have 7k into the car, which i've thought about doing but doubtful.

Yea, you could sell the car and make some money. If you don't need AWD, then that may be the way to go. However, if you do need the AWD you would be hard pressed to find anything newer (last three years) that can offer you AWD and some fun on the side for the price of an MS6.

 

[supracelica32]

not really a needed thing, it was more of a want. if i do sell it, i'll either go back to a celica or an NA supra.

for now, i'm just going to enjoy it.