Thread: New to sr's w/ LOTS of ?'s

Hey,

I apologize if this irritates some people based on how simple of a search it would be for them to find answers to my questions, but I dont know what key words to search and every forum I stumble upon doesn't quite answer my questions.

I've owned a form of muscle car my whole life but just recently purchased a 98 kouki with a 93 black top sr20. From what i understand the motor is a complete "bolt on" (?) motor. Its got an s15 turbo with full exhaust, 550cc injectors, and a 300zx maf and a godspeed fmic with much more. Its got a greddy e-manage ultimate piggy back (which i've heard isn't that great of an ecu upgrade from multiple sources) and quite a few other bells and whistles.

I'm sending the car into my local shop which deals with sr's and getting it tuned tomorrow. I'd like to get a nice reliable daily driver with 360whp which I occasionally take to the track. Is that a realistic number given what i've listed? or would i need to do internal work? Primarily want a showcar status s14. Not a drift slut.

Also, Is it realistic to push 18lbs w/ the t28 on a stock internal sr as a daily on pump gas?

I know I'll probably need to be more specific with what other parts are on the motor...But I feel this is a good starting point.

I appreciate any positive feedback

The first question I want to ask you is what made you want to switch from muscle to jap cars.......

Like you said, the piggyback isn't doing you any favors, but your main bottleneck at this point is the S15 turbo. It is good for about 320 WHP at the ragged edge. And you won't want to stress it like that on a daily. You'd want to keep things at least around 300 WHP or a little less. That is usually around 15-16 psi.

You don't have to even begin to think about internal work on that motor until you get well past 400 WHP. And even then you're only really thinking about cams to make more power. Pistons/rods and such aren't exactly needed until over 500 WHP.

See above. Engine is up to it. Turbo is not.

upgrade the turbo to the GT2871R and add some 260 cams and 550 injectors. chip the stock ecu or get a PFC for the 180sx since u have that year red top motor in it. Also this forum is mostly FWD but still good turbo info here.

He has 550cc injectors already, and he said he had a '93 black-top.
For 360WHP you could be better off with the GT2860R or GT2860RS turbo. Smaller compressor than the GT2871R and better matched wheel sizes, more efficient, faster spool, etc.

The 93 black top and the red top are really the same motor. He can use a PFC from the redtop but he has to change I think it's the injector pin 3 and 4. Fark it's been so long I forgot.

I genuinely appreciate all the input. Thank you. My bad on the RWD questions for the FWD forum though.

I switched to japanese cars simply cause i wanted a change and a new challange. Also I was tired of muscle car quirks like waiting 5-10min for the engine to warm up before actually driving, needing to press the gas while going around hard corners while braking to prevent car from dying...non intermitant wipers haha.

I didn't know about the motor internals being able to withstand up to 500hp. Thats actually a huge potential headache relief. What about a HG though? wouldn't I want to replace that at some point before 400hp? 500hp? ...360hp?

And Ben fanner. The advice on the smaller compressor was HUGELY helpful.

Thank you everyone

Yes you will want a metal head head-gasket I used an Apexi one and some ARP head-studs.

One thing to note is while the engines will handle 400 whp all day every day for years, the transmissions do not and will make noise like all SR trannies are prone to do.

So get a new tranny? or upgrade internals?

what fixes this? and also the noise i assume is bad = eventually breaking if not fixed?

OEM paper head gaskets are good to above 500 WHP as well if your tuning is on point. Much less if not. There's no need IMO to even think about a MLS head gasket until you break 425 WHP or so.

You're forgetting he has a RWD transmission right? The RWD transmissions are fine for 500WHP. I don't think they have issues until 700 WHP or so?