did a little search and came up with squat, so here i am. what kind of numbers can you expect from a well tuned NA 2.2? if that's a little to general then would it be possible to get 250whp outta this puppy, on engine alone?

giving this NA thing some serious thought. wanted to go turbo but i'm thinking this being my first modded car i want to play with the engine and just go FI on my next ride.

 

its gonna take a lot of moneyyy

 

CobaltCowboy: please, check your PMs and reply

 

250whp NA? doubt it...you'd be making good numbers hitting 250whp on boost.

you aren't going to get much out of a 4 cyl NA without ALOT of money...I think you'd get maybe 160whp out of this thing before you have to start tearing it open.

 

Well, il try and give you the best answer that anyone can give. Obviously, get allyour basic bolt-ons which include intake, header and a full exhaust to go with it (cat-back). The next best thing you can do is port n polish your head, then to make full use of that new port job, throw some more aggresive cams in there. If that doesnt cure your need for speed, you could always opt for some high compression pistons, usually anything 10:5.1 and up. But if you just want cheap easy speed, nitrous is really the best way to go, but i would recommend you get all the suspension and other mounts taken care of so that way you put all the power your making right now to the ground better, then worry about more power.

 

building up the valvetrain so you can rev a little higher will help as well...but when you get into all that stuff you are looking at serious money and you could have gone way further the FI'd route.

 

He's got a point. Obviously, no amount of bolt-ons will give the increase in power as FI. Honestly, if you want more power, that is the only way to go. If you want more get up and go every day kinda power i think the supercharger would fit your needs, but if your looking for overall power and torque, turbo would be the better of the two. It's really all up to what your budget allows...

 

CobaltCowboy: still waiting for you to respond to PM's.. please respond or e-mail me.

 

nitrous...

 

Maybe FI later but internals are a must! Everyone knows bolt on power, the nweight reduce then mess with the computer by that time...then FI.

 

http://www.ecotecpower.com/forums/re...&i=3929&t=3929
this is all n/a. there are some subtle differences in the engine, but nothing too extreme. 245hp, pretty damn good if you ask me.

one thing to note is that this guy increased compression, something that isnt desired when going to forced induction.

 

I'm gonna try and give my opinion without being biased (because I'm turbo'd).

The problem with 4 cylinders running higher powered naturally aspirated is because we don't gererate enough air flow into our motors like V8s or even Inline or V6 Motors. You can open up everything inside your motor, still won't generate anything close to theirs. Because of this, we try to make up the lack of cylinders and air flow by utilizing RPMs. If you don't believe me, look at a tachometer of an old school muscle car and compare it to ours.

Like I was saying, we need RPMs to generate power. I'll give you an example of Honda motors. They utilize 3 things:

1. High RPMs
2. Variable Valve Timing (V-Tec)
3. Higher flowing cylinder heads

So right there, the higher you rev, the more air you need and with the variable valve timing they are able to throw a higher volume and a higher velocity of airflow when reached in their powerband. These motors would be perfect to run naturally aspirated because of this, more so because of the VVT. Honda motors have their downfalls (mainly in the torque department) but overall, you can make great amounts of power because of that.

Now, our motor, we can't necessarily do the same thing so easily. Our motors were designed to be lower RPM based, torquey and to have smaller cylinder head ports (your basic non-VVT DOHC motor). Now with that said, you have to take that and TOTALLY convert that into what it wasn't made for...to make N/A power you have to get rid of the limiter and rev pass 6,800 RPM and still make power in those RPMs, use a high grind camshaft because of the lack of VVT and upgrade your cylinder head (port and polish and replace your retainers and springs to be able to rev higher reliably). You're basically turning yourself into the engineer and hoping that you'll actually generate a good amount of power by doing this but still, the lack of some type of VVT will hurt us...AND THIS IS JUST THE VALVETRAIN!

If you were to seriously do all that work to your valvetrain, you would TOTALLY mess up your powerband and shift it way upwards...hence, being just like a typical Honda motor. What's the point of having 200 HP @ 7500 and if you have 150 lbs @ 5800 of torque (just for example)? You would be just as fast as a mildly modified Jbody or Cobalt.

With that said, now you need to make torque...how do you make torque? Higher Compression. Now you need to upgrade your pistons to raise your compression. What compression should you use...that's going to be tricky. The higher compression you run, the higher octane you'll need unless you are able to find a way to retard ignition timing. That would require something like an MSD DIS-2 (might as well get it since you'll need the better spark). Say you decide to run 11:1 compression, you need to make sure that your octane and ignition timing is on point or you'll start knocking or it won't even run at all.

There is more that goes into it but you think of it like this...if you're not building this motor yourself, you're going to be spending probably around $5,000 (+ or -) in parts and labor for the motor and that's not including non-internal parts like exhaust work, ignition, upgraded intake system etc.. Heck, I spent almost $3,000 in my valvetrain work (parts and labor) alone.

With that said, you would be spending all this money for mystery power gains and a motor that you wouldn't know how reliable it would actually be. Now there are people out there who are boosted on these motors running 250+ HP and more torque and on good amount of PSI with no internal work done and 100% reliable everyday cars. There is too much potential in being boosted that it's not even funny. I think people just fail to see the difficulty level, possible reliability issues and "guestimations" that come with attempting to have an high powered N/A ECOTEC motor.

Hope you guys understand what I'm saying and hopefully this didn't sound biased but realistic. If it helps, at one time I wanted to do the same thing but then reality kicked in lol.

 

if you follow that link, it has been done.
personally the greatest cost i see on modding a car is the labour, and since you plan on doing the work yourself, you just saved a lot of money.

CobaltCowboy, some advice, i would price out the parts yourself just to get a general idea, general opinions on how much it is going to cost doesnt account for deals that you may find.

this topic can be debated to death about whether or not it is doable, someone else has got 245bhp in that link, i would take note of the mods.

stage 2 cams to replace the stock cams would provide more lift, and provide more flow proportionately to a VTEK, variable valve timing is a mere convenience and is not a necessity for building or modding an engine.

higher rpm will not be necessary to produce more power, rather the reverse is true, to take advantage of higher horsepower, you need to raise the rev limiter. horsepower is a result obtained from two variables; torque and rpm.

GM claims the ecotec 2.2l is reliable to 250 at the crank, even though others have pushed their engines to higher limits without problems. so lets say you decide to turbo, you will wind up replacing the engine internals anyway in order to reliably put out 250hp at the wheels because i would imagine that you arent interested in pushing the limits on your engine. with buying a turbo, you would need to buy the same internals as you would for a N/A engine, although the pistons would require a different compression specification.

somehow i fail to see any reasoning that suggests building an N/A higher hp engine is more expensive than a turbocharged engine that will require internal components to be swapped.

on a note, i have seen similar posts saying "its too difficult" and "its going to cost loads of money" on a certain unrelated forum and helped two people successfully build their jbody ecotecs. i think that the real problem lies in that people usually dont choose to go this way because it takes more thought to tweak out extra horsepower when it doesnt involve turning up the boost.

 

Stage 2 camshafts on our motors aren't effective till you reach higher RPMs and would still support power pass the limiter. Also, the cam loop being longer might not agree with the computer.

Ok, that's Brake Horsepower (net horsepower), so that's about 208 WHP (if you estimate 15% drivetrain loss) and it could be more of a loss to the wheels...aren't the Speedsters RWD? I forget. Regardless, the guy basically replaced the key parts in his motor to gain about 100 HP over stock (BHP) and that's all he'll gain from there. He basically has no more potential. This is the problem with running N/A, you replace everything in there and you can't really make anymore power after that.

Also to point out, he was making 245 BHP @ 7700 RPMs, and 188 lbs @ 5000, which further more proved my point. He wouldn't have even seen that big of a gain if he tried to stay in his stock powerband level even with high compression pistons. So you saying:

Is incorrect in these circumstances. You WILL need more RPMs to produce more power...heck everything you do will require the airflow.

Also, before you pat this guy on the back, I'd like to see what kind of 1/4 mile times he's running.

Pff...yeah ok...there are plenty of people making 220-250 WHP and are totally fine. That's GMs way of "playing it safe".

Sort of. You don't NEED to buy them untill you reach a certain power level. As long as you keep your air/fuel ratio in check, you should be fine for a reliable 13 to 12 second car. It has been done and can be done over and over. If you're inspiring to run 11s (even though there is 1 person who has broke the 11 second barrier with stock bottom end), than yes, I would suggest replacing them.

So you're saying that you have to be a genious to run Naturally Aspirated and make power from it? No. Intelligence doesn't even play that much into effect, it's all about common sense. Turning up the boost as you put it isn't as easy as you think. You think someone can just say "hey, I don't want to run 5 psi, lets put it 10 psi"? NO. You have to make sure the a/f ratio levels are going to be maintained properly, you have to make sure that your injectors are properly sized to handle sending that much fuel etc etc. There is way more monitoring of things when you are boosted than you think and that you are giving credit to.

I will say it again, if you are not working on the motor yourself, it will cost more money to build the motor and buy the parts than it is to boost a motor (some cases it will cost the same)...but for the money and gains, what would be more worth it?

 

nope they wouldnt, so theres some reprogramming, and until now, there has been no mention of tuning and the fact that there is nothing out for tuning the cobalt yet. i dunno your experience with cams, but my experience shows that the ecotec seems to like the cams around the 2500-3000rpm mark to start. at 6500 at the limiter, it seems to show some good gains, and would continue doing so until approximately 7000 which isnt a lot higher.


thanks for the lesson, glad to see you caught that the number was bhp. so how do you know that there isnt any more power to be gained? there is plenty to do, bolt ons werent mentioned, they might help, there might be a more ideal grind on the cams, gear work. point being that there is always something that could be improved and there wasnt much information shown on what he did. and what relevance does the speedster being rwd have? none, no mention of tranny work here.


actually i believe what i said was the reverse was true, get over the flaming and quote ALL of what i said. higher rpm, no doubt, doesnt say anything about lower rpm, its not a dyno sheet. at higher rpm, parts reach terminal rotational velocity. raise that limiter as far as you want, its going to only go so fast, assuming the engine could take it.


funny, i thought this was a thread about a N/A 2.2L, not about making a 2.2L drag racer. if there was a problem with his quarter mile time he could change his gears to compensate for the high end power and the shitty low end torque.


???

Funny, did i say that it takes a genius? i dont see where i said that. all i said is that its harder to find information because people dont go this route.
i am so ******* sorry that i didnt sit down and figure out a list of parts that a modded car will need. engine management isnt a problem with a N/A car versus a boosted car, it just might not be easy to find something prepackaged and require SLIGHTLY more effort.
this is a matter of preference, its not your preference to go N/A, right on, congrats. contribute to this guy's question, hows this:

245bhp is possible, think you can get 13% more to compensate for drive train losses?


so what parts would you need on a non boosted engine that you wouldnt need on a boosted engine? a spare head i could see, but you could buy one off ebay for less than $500

 

Never said he can't replace it but I was assuming that if he stayed with the same parts, he has nothing else to change or work on to increase power tremendously.

And the relevence of RWD is that they lose more power to the wheels than FWD vehicles.

You don't have to have a drag car to race a 1/4 mile. Comparing 1/4 mile times is a good way of seeing power gains.

[quote=Civic Killer]GM claims the ecotec 2.2l is reliable to 250 at the crank, even though others have pushed their engines to higher limits without problems.

????
[/qutoe]

It's called agreeing with you...

You said nothing about finding information. If you did, I wouldn't have quoted you and I would have agreed with you. You typed it as "even a retard can turn a knob and turn up boost but it takes intelligence to build a motor".

Calm down and be mature. No need to curse. This is a discussion, if you don't want to continue, I'll stop.

Once again, you didn't understand what I was saying. I was saying to BOOST a car, hence put a turbo kit on or supercharge a car ALONE w/no motor work, compared to going 100% n/a and replacing every major part in your motor and you not being the person who is working on the motor, it will cost you more or about even BUT comparing price per gains and potential, I personally don't think it's worth it.

 

learning a lot here. thank you gentlemen and please for the sake of disscusion civility is key.

 

yeah but in this case it is irrelevant because we were not referring to 245hp at the wheels.


i disagree with you, because there are so many factors other than just engine horsepower in quarter mile runs. but i agree that the information can be useful when building a car.

yeah i just failed to see how it could have been possible that you would agree with me.


actually i believe i referenced another forum that had people shooting down someones idea to go N/A, yet not a single person provided him with any useful information other than "it costs too much" "how much do you want to spend" "you need to do a lot of research"

then keep it a discussion and stop trying to pick apart every little word that i am saying. he wants to build a N/A car, help him do so. dont make comments like i am trying to talk down, when you know i am not. even though it may not take a genius to build a car, not everyone has the luxury of experience under the hood. i have helped a couple of people in building their cars.

but yet i fail to see where you would need more than you would to boost to get to the same levels. personally i do not desire to push GM's 250HP claim so what i am saying is that if i was going to turbo a car to get 250 WHP, i would swap out internals anyway.

 

without N20, super, or turbo......200 tops.

 

I know you didn't bring up the wheel horsepower thing, I did. I brought it up for a reason because ultimately, that's what matters and that's how much power is actually being used.

Yes, it can be useful but not the best way to see how much power you gained. I was mearly saying that if you were running 15.3 before and now you're running a 14.2, a drop in a second is a good way to compare how much faster you have gotten and also a way to compare your car to other cars if you wanted to.

Maybe so but that had nothing to do with me or what I said and honestly, that's another forum. If you were to say this before hand, I would have understood what you meant originally.

I only pick apart things because you're doing the same thing. If you didn't read my original post in this thread, I told him exactly what he would have to do to build a proper N/A ECOTEC motor with a realistic point of view. Unlike others who just say "n/a isn't worth it", I told him from a real life point of view and even put that at one time that I wanted to build an n/a ECOTEC myself. I've done the research and know what it would take.

Overall...listen...I don't care what he does to his motor. If he wants to go N/A, god bless him and I wish him luck. I pointed out the realistic possibilities and amount of work & money he would have to do compared to going boosted.

This is a discussion on an online forum and nothing else. If you don't like what I have to say, either reply to what I have to say with logical reason or click the X button. If what I say offends you to the point of wanting to curse torwards me, well maybe you shouldn't be involved in logical and mature conversations...take that how you want it. I will continue to help others and show them realistic natures of their decisions or future decisions and will show everyone respect as I'm doing so as long as they show respect back.

That's all I have to say...

 

i would agree 200hp is the max n/a probably and also the stock motor cant handle anything past 250hp realiable b4 it starts having problems on the rods....im also fixing to do a few things to my 2.2 sedan to put it around 180or 190hp something to get it moving some....i plan on doing :;already got a sri::exhaust,header,cams, and adding springs for suspension, and doing the urethane motor/tranny mounts

 

Don't believe everything you read from GM. There are plenty of people who are boosted running 250+ WHP on stock internals and very reliable.

 

im just quoting what the gm performance build book says

 

Oh I understand and I'm not trying to bite your head off, just stating that there have been many to prove that # to be incorrect. Like I said before, that's an estimated number and a safe # for GM to use. Also, I believe they broke the rod at that horsepower rating while using nitrous...like 100 shot or something of that nature. Instant sudden power like nitrous hitting puts way more stress on your connecting rods than gradual power like boost.

 

yea it was gm using the 100shot on the car