Bolt-on engine upgrades for a beginner?
Hi, I’m not sure if this is the right community or not, but I wanted to ask about simple, begginer bolt-on engine upgrading. A CAI comes to mind, but I wanted to see what else I could do. I’m on a kinda tight budget since I’m in high school and no one in my town wants to hire. I have a 2007 Toyota Yaris Sedan with a 1.5l 1NZ-FE engine making 109hp stock. Slow car, I know, but that’s why I want to make it faster. Handling upgrades are also welcome, although I am pretty content with it’s (nice) handling.
Comments
Does it come with a turbo?
I wish. It was the cheapest car at the dealership in 2006, so it’s a little economy car.
Best cheap upgrade you can do by yourself is getting the weight down as much as you can- sparewheel and others out.. I wouldn’t recommend any motortuning by yourself. It isn’t cheap, and if you do something wrong, it gets way more expensive, than letting it do in a dealership. I don’t know if your car has a turbocharger or not, but if it has one- do some softwaretuning. You gain some hp and it drives like a completely different car after the tuning
No turbo, but it is an economy car, so I can see software tuning being beneficial for it anyways, as toyota probably uses it to get MPG’s up at the cost of engine power.
As for Bolt ons? Catback exhaust (aftermarket or custom) and intake are pretty simple.
Softwaretuning on an n/a engine isn’t effective in 99% of the cases. It isn’t cheap and you don’t gain very much.. 5hp if you’re lucky. In this case it’s better to maje sure the engine is clean und runs good.
Tuning all depends on mods. While not worth the cost of you’re only going cai and a catback. it is worth it if you go into heavier mods like cams, cam gears, headers etc. Problem here is this is Toyota. And there is no “flash” tune available like there is for subarus. So you either need a piggyback or a stand alone unit which drives the cost up significantly.
So for this particular application I absolutely agree it’s not worth the cost. But tuning is worth it on na cars if you have the right mods.
Cold air intakes rarely increase power, just noise. I’d focus on doing as much weight reduction as possible, and do some handling stuff like sway bars and poly bushings
The 1nzfe is a fantastic motor, they are capable of 550whp without blowing up.. There are tons of different kits for it.. Depends on your budget, and what you want out of it. Cold air intake, exhaust, and other crap does nothing with these cars.. You may get 1-5hp with full exhaust and intake.. But you’ll lose torque..
Ah. What should I do for torque? I’m more interested in making my car peppier/accelerate better, as I rarely push my car to (almost) high speeds.
For pepp you can do a turbo or supercharger but they arent exactly on the cheap end if you want quality
Lightweight wheels. Reducing unsprung weight will help with acceleration.
Reducing ANY weight will help with acceleration.
Air intake
There’s not really any ‘bolt-on’ upgrades that make any real power. Anything worth doing takes more money/time.
Best you can do without stripping down the block is exhaust, manifold, intake, possibly stretching as far as cams (although you’ll need the head off to do it up properly)