Okay, I'm 19 and looking for something under 500 dollars that will add some power to my stang. Something not a pain in the *** to install. Any uh, .....suggestions?

 

I would say the most fun thing to get is a cat back, the most power you will feel, gears and the for comfort shifter. You can get the shifter and any one of the other two.

 

Nitrous... period.

 

Nitrous. Or, go with a plenum and TB package.

 

I think it is depends on what do you want. what do you drive most in your daily live? City or highway? Of course, change catback can increase a bit horsepower, but it would lose torque kg/m while in low rpm(e.g below 2500rpm), which means it is no good for driving in city. May be, most people don't really care about it. They will juz push a bit more gas and the sound from the new catback make them FEEL their car got more power..... in fact, it would be use a bit more gas and lose torque force while driving in city( many people feel their car got less power by the situation via stop-go in the city traffic light).....if your stang is Auto transmission, don't even think about changing large diameter pipe or a good catback. It will be worse than before.


Normally, the best way by increse the horsepower and also keep your car works good in low rpm is by changing the HEADER, the factory header is really rough inside. Which it is te 1st and most important part of the exhaust system. Normally people just waanna to make their car looks good by changing the mufflers or carback. In fact, the most efficiency is by changing HEADER. It is because it can good in both city driving and also in the highway. Most car engine got a better sound after changing the HEADER, too. It doesn't like the noisy mufflers' woo woo woo or annoying drone.

One thing we have to know is --> you don't change anything in your car is the best by using in city. BEST gas control & GOOD stop & go. This is the initial set up for most car factory. Sometime, especially in low rpm, exhaust system too smooth is not a good thing. There are value of the resistance in the system. ( I can explain if someone want me to)

SO, I said it is depends on how you use your car. If you use it mostly in the city, just change the filter (e.g K&N) is very enough. change the HEADER is the best way if you will use both city and highway. If mostly highway and high rpm, change the catback will let you see more result. OF COURSE, the BEST way is change both header and catback, but it cost a lot. If you do high rpm a lot, also can change short header and remove the muffler(should be very noisy).

The cheapest way to increase horsepower is by removing the factory catalytic converters. It cost the less but illegal(also should be very noisy) even though you really can see the result.

 

My suggestion is to not do any power adder like nitrous with an under $500 budget. You cant even get a kit with all of the safety features for that.

That and its probably a good idea to have some extra $$ in case something goes wrong.

Stick to bolt ons. Get a K&N filter, mid-pipe, mufflers, pulleys and insall them yourself.

or

Just buy gears and have them installed, that will tap your whole $500 or close to it.

Just my .02

 

Cool. I got the input, now all I need is the 500 dollars I was talking about. Nitrous = me dying....I'm a lead foot....period. I'll probably just go with the gears for now. Thanks.

 

Gears would be the best choice.

 

by changing the cat-back i saw absolutly no loss in torque, to the contrary i did my exhaust on a dyno. and saw 11hp and 9lbs of torque, max...my average hp went up by 5 and my max torque by 6, thats an average, i loss no torque in any rpm with my cat-back (SLP Cat-back).....now when you start getting above the cat backsuch as cat delete and headers there is a noticable decrease in torque but just as big of an increase in hp i gained 11hp from my o/r x-pipe and gained 1lb max torque and lost about 2-3 average torque numbers....havent gone to headers yet but i do see the torque being lost with the header while mated to a free flowing exhaust, but that will after my Vortech is in place...iyou want some good torque increase and nice sound..get headers as well as an off road Xpipe and keep the stock after cat...sounds nice while maintaing a nice torque curve....but for the money i got my gears for 20 bucks from a junkyard, i do not recommend buying anything fro ma junkyard unless you are experienced and know what to look for in a faulty part, i installed the gears ( 3.73's)...best difference out of anything, and the car rides a whoel lot smoother..

-Mike :blob7:

 

u gained 11hp and 9lbs of torque at the same rpm as original? did u ever compare? Everybody knows more rpm more hp..........depends on your engine can stand to it or not............ anyway... it's in another topic.....

juz wanna know did you get those 9lbs in the same rpm as original or not...

 

one more thing----------> number is kind of meaningless........ sometimes.... The most important for tuning is BALANCE~............... Juz raise up NUMBERS is meaningless....... Eveybody knows that the highest hosepower form by a engine is take off all the exhaust system........ the thing is.... you can't ever driver it on road.......... The least rpm to keep the engine on at least 2800rpm......... -_-"

 

Welcome to today, buy a programmer for that car, whether automatic or standard you can get more performance, quicker shifts, higher rpms, and bye bye to rev limiters for about 400 bucks. They reccomend exhaust and intake modifications but they pretty much say that to cover their buts in that 1 in a million freak accident

 

500 bucks get out of the power adder section

 

whoa whoa, what do you mean the highest hp just take off the whole exhaust of the car?...that would cause your hp to go down unless you're pushing some serious 800+ power...that would relieve the car of all positive and negative pressure...the needs positive pressure, and needs to get rid of negative (backpressure)...and i know pek hp numbers are pretty meaningless that why i was including average hp...and the hp i gained was at a higher rpm, at the same rpm, i only gained 1 more hp..

-Mike :glasses1:

-Mike :glasses1:

 

you know the old backpressure theory is a complete myth right

 

no the backpressure theory is not a myth.....There is a common misconception that engines need backpressure in order to run properly, generate low end torque, etc. That is simply untrue. Backpressure is a bad thing. Always. Take a look at a top fuel dragster...how much backpressure do you think those zoomie headers make? Very little, and those engines produce 6500 hp.

So, what is backpressure? Any fluid flowing through a pipe experiences drag on the walls of the pipe. This depends on a number of factors, including the diameter of the pipe, the smoothness of the inside of the pipe, the viscosity of the fluid, and the velocity of the fluid. This drag results in a pressure drop through the pipe. In order for the fluid to flow at all, the pressure on one end of the pipe must be higher than at the other. In an exhaust system, that pressure drop is what we refer to as backpressure. It's pretty obvious that the engine has to produce this pressure differential, so the less power it has to spend making pressure to push the exhaust out, the more power it can send to the wheels.

Given that exhaust pipes are pretty smooth, and that we can't change the viscosity (thickness) of the waste gas being forced through the pipes, we are left with basically 2 parameters we can have any control over: The pipe diameter and the gas velocity.

Unfortunately, the pipe diameter controls the gas velocity since the volume of gas is prescribed by the engine. So, we really only have one thing we can change. So, bigger pipes allow less pressure drop for a given volume of gas because the velocity is lower. The pressure drop (backpressure increase) is proportional the gas velocity squared, so if I double the gas velocity (by reducing the cross sectional area of the exhaust pipe by half) then I quadruple the pressure drop.

Well, there's an easy solution for that: Just make the exhaust pipe bigger. Bigger pipe, lower gas velocity, less pressure drop, so less backpressure. Wow, that was easy. After all, this is the way it's done for basically any type of commercial plumbing system. Need less pressure drop on a chilled water pipe or a natural gas line? Just make the pipe bigger.

But wait, there's a problem....Having a huge exhaust pipe has killed my low end torque!!! What's different? Oh, there's no backpressure!! Therefore backpressure makes torque!

Wrong.

An exhaust system is different than just about any other plumbing situation. How? Because the flow is pulsed, and this turns out to be a big deal. Every time a pulse of exhaust gas runs through the pipe, a strange thing happens: it as it passes, it has a little area of vacuum behind it. Just like a NASCAR stocker running around the track, the pulse generates a little bit of a vacuum behind it. In NASCAR, a driver can take advantage of another driver's vacuum by getting right behind him and driving in it. The wind resistance is drastically reduced. This is called drafting.

Well, how big the vacuum behind each pules is depends on the gas velocity. The higher the velocity, the bigger the vacuum the pulse has behind it.

Now, this means that I can "draft" the next pulse, just like in NASCAR. In NASCAR, it's called drafting, in an exhaust system, it's called scavenging. You've probably seen this term used when talking about headers, but the same concept applies in the pipe.

I get the maximum scavenging effect if the gas velocity is high, so the pipe needs to be small. By maximizing the scavenging effect, I help to pull pulses out of the combustion chamber, which means the engine doesn't have to work as hard to do that.

This has the most effect when there's a bunch of time between pulses...in other words, at low rpm. As the revs rise, the pulsed flow becomes more and more like constant flow, and the scavenging effect is diminished.

So, at low rpm I need a small pipe to maximize scavenging, and at high rpm I need a big pipe to minimize pressure drop. My exhaust pipe can only be one size, so it's a compromise. For a given engine, one pipe diameter will make the most overall power (i.e., have the largest area under the curve on a dyno chart).

So, the loss of torque has nothing to do with backpressure, and everything to do with gas velocity. So you need exhaust components that are not restricive (manifolds/headers, mufflers) and that are sized correctly for your application.

To further dispel the "backpressure is necessary" theory, try this if you want. If you have access to a vehicle with open headers, make a block off plate that will bolt to the collector. This plate should have only a 1" hole in it for the exhaust to flow through. That will give you PLENTY of backpressure, and zero scavenging. Then you can report back on how much low end power it has.

The one exception to sizing an exhaust is for turbo cars. Since the turbo is in the exaust stream, the gas flow spinning the impeller tends to come out of the turbo with the pulses greatly diminished. In this case, you can get away with running a larger pipe than on an equivalent HP N/A engine because you can't take as much advantage of the scavenging effect........................................Ther e you have it. :violent1:

-Mike :toothy10:

 

you said im wrong, then agreed with me by using a long detailed reponse. ??? i am saying back pressure is a bad thing, and the statement that cars need backpressure is, in fact, incorrect.

 

Jesus...that was a long read, but Dom, I think he is in fact agreeing with your statement that backpressure is not needed. What he is saying is that the velocity needs to be higher, more so than the backpressure needs to be low. He's giving a different perspective on backpressure and header primary/ collector sizes.

Think of it in terms of intake manifolds...smaller, longer ports create higher velocity for more low rpm torque, where as larger, shorter, stack type ports give you high RPM HP. Am I following you correctly Mike?

 

i understand. he was giving a nice (long) description of what backpressure was, and how the statement that it is needed it incorrect, and how scavenging plays a role in power production. damn my eyes hurt

 

ha..i never said you were wrong but then again you just said the "Backpressure theory was a myth"..you didnt specify what you meant by that...but yes i am completely agreeing with you...people think that cars need back pressure and they in fact do not......just explaining for thsoe people that are "learning" about cars and how they work.

-Mike :tongue8:

 

gotcha. we really took this thread for a ride haha.

 

That was a good read and I read similar comments elsewhere, though I can't remember where. Seems like people can reffer to something for the wrong reasons, but still be right.

In other words, I could say, "bigger exhaust pipes result in a loss of trq because it causes the festzer vale to run low on fluids." Wrong reason...correct conclusion.

I spent some time on the phone a while back with an SLP engineer. The ehaust system needs to be properly tuned for the application and designed to work properly with the particular car. Also, you need to consider the driving application. This is one of the reasons why I am no fan of mixinbg and matching exhaust components. You know, BBK X pipe with SLP catback.

 

good thing dom gave cliff notes of that story. i dunno about any of you but i skipped right on over that whole reply.
:icon_bigg

way too long to read right now.