The V8 Owners Forum -

I am finally ready to race on sunday 28th with help from forum on various aspects, need to pick your brains again-
I have a 1989 mazda fc rx7 with sd1 fitted.
i will be up against for example toyota starlets with 200bhp red top vauxhall engines, i have got what i think is standard sd1 engine with following mods anyone tell me approx what extra bhp gained by each i am led to believe standard engine is 156bhp?
Holly carbs bhp? with
edelbrock manifold and straight through tubular exhaust with a cross piece in centre which my brother insists will gain bhp as he has seen on hotrod docs. and finished off with aprilia tuono bike cans with baffles removed.
car is stripped down to approx 900kg so power to weight should be good.
Any comments or mild tuning tips would be appreciated (inexpensive ones)

difficult to say but you will be fairly shy of 200bhp until you do some head work or get another cam in there. Very rough guestimate of 275 280 assuming the engine is in good nick and the carb is set up properly.

Si,

I saw your post in the for sale section before this one and psoted some information there.

Some basic information would be helpful, was the engine rebuilt prior to being fitted to your car if not and being 22+ years old so could be past it's best and what ever you do on the outside will yield very little benefit until you deal with the main issue of engine condition and then breathing ability.

One cheap thing you can do is optimise the ignition, you may have the advance set to the factory figure of approx 6 degrees BTDC, it will probably run a lot stronger if you permanently disconnect the vacuum advance and set the static advance to 10-12 degrees but check that you are not getting detonation/pinking and don't forget to blank of the vacuum port on the carb.

If you can get the engine running a little better the superior torque of the rover will help, but to build a competitive and reliable racing engine is never going to be cheap.

Do you have the ability and equipment to do work on the engine yourself as this would save a lot of money.

Kevin.

thanks for that, engine runs fine but faster the better, i personally cant do the work but my brother can rebuild engines and loves doing them, will try what you suggested cheers