Hey everyone. My engine has 105,000 miles on it and I was thinking about rebuilding with the stroker kit from howell. I was wondering what compression ratio I should get, I dont ever really plan on going turbo, so I'd like to get as much N/A power as I can with the rebuild. I was thinking 12.5:1 but around here I can generally only get 91 octane gas. Will this be a problem, or do I not need to worry about it if I'm not going turbo? I'm pretty new to the whole working on my car scene so I'm also wondering if I could manage to pull off the work with myself and some friends or if I should have someone else do it. I would really like to learn about the car, but I dont know how difficult the job would be. Well let me know what you all think! Thanks a lot,

Ben

LOL Yeah, i was thinking about doing the same thing becuase my engine died.

I think with that high of a ratio you will have to run higher octane. like 93+ some kind of booster.

Shouldn't 93 work?

it would work but your going to get all kinds of knock (detonation) and your going to blow something up. Even my celica which has 11 or something doesnt like 91 octane, and Toyota states nothing under 96 should be used. So I couldnt imagine what a higher compression motor would need.

You can do 12.5:1 compression on 91 octane gas if you buy an MSD or Crane ignition system that cal pull back your timing a few degrees. If you retard the timing, it is easily possible to run 12.5:1 on the street on pump gas. When you want to make a real showing, throw in some 104 or 114 and drop the timing retard. Go. ;-)

See http://www.2gnt.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=3096&forum=DCForumID13&viewmode=threaded for more info from Gary Howell himself.

Now I guess my next questions is this: Is it just plain stupid to go all motor? I'm not too worried about having the fastest car on earth, and for some reason it seems to me that the all motor project would be kind of fun, if even to only go down a different path than most others. How much power do you think would be generated with the 12.5:1 compression and the 2.2L? I'm also thinking maybe I could just stay at stock compression and get the stroker, and then maybe upgrade to the turbo later on. Would the stroker work well with the turbo? So many questions lol...

Ben

is not stupid at all to mod your car, but you can do this, put everything you need to go all motor, how much money would be?, and how much power you will get.

Now add everything you need to have a FI car? How much money would you pay? And how much power?

soa ccording to that post, you get 4 percent increase for every point of compression? Doesnt seem worth it to me. If that figure is correct you are looking at no more than a 20 hp gain. Which I suppose would be better than nothing if you are going all motor, but how much money are you going to have to spend for that 20 hp gain?? Now put the same amount of money into a turbo kit. Stage 1 (according to hahn) gives you 200-225 hp at the crank. Thats a 60-85 hp increase, and you don't have to worry about detonation. IMO it doesnt make sense to go all motor in our cars. The best bang for the buck is turbo without question. (or nitrous, but thats a completely different thread.)

Well the thing is I dont have enough money for both the turbo and the rebuild at the same time :( So I dont want to have the lower compression while waiting to save up for the turbo. Could I get away with like 10.5:1 compression with a turbo? That sort of seems like a good compromise, but I dont know if it would cause too many problems.

Ben

so dont rebuild right now, you can go up to stage 2 and get anywhere from 250-275 hp. Unless the motor is shot right now, dont worry about the rebuild until you need to. You said yourself your not looking to break any records or anything.

Yeah I think I'll just get the turbo and wait for the motor to go before rebuilding. It still seems to run pretty strong, so I'll get a compression check and then worry about the rebuild later. The real challenge is going to be saving up all that money :)

Ben