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I wanna go faster!!

2K views 5 replies 3 participants last post by  CrocKing 
#1 ·
Hey everyone,

I have a 1997 Cobra. The only mod to it is Flowmaster dual cat-back (unsure if it is American Thunder, Force II, etc...) Under the hood/everything else is stock. I would like to make it so that my Cobra can keep up with modern 5.0's, but I don't want to put a supercharger on it. I've seen hundreds of post about different mods that people have done to their 97 Cobra. I'm just curious what all of you think I should do to it first? Air Intake, Tune, X/H pipe, crazy things that I don't even know about, etc...???
 
#2 ·
Air intake- no unless you're talking about an intake manifold. If you mean "cold air intake;" open the cone that holds the air filter. Pull the filter out and set it aside for a second. If you look inside the cone air box towards the inner fender you'll see rubber air silencer. It's towards the bottom of the cone and part of it goes into the fender well. Pull that thing out, you might have to remove the upper bolt that holds the air box to the fender to get the silencer out. The silencer will look kind of like a rubber funnel and when it's removed you see a decent sized hole in the fender. Put the air box back how it goes and put the filter back in. Now you have yourself a "cold air intake." If you want you can put a k&n in but it won't make a noticeable difference. Aftermarket cold air intakes don't really do anything for these cars.
Larger throttle bodies and Mass air flow meters won't help either unless you're making over X amount of power.
If you were to get a new x or h pipe and a tune you might see a 15-20 hp gain and the bulk of the gain would be from the tune. A mail order tune might gain less than that and may or may not come with issues. If it has issues you have to sort the issue out via email and hope for the best.


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#3 ·
Suspension mods will take you further on a budget than bolt-on horsepower mods. $1k plus spent on bolt on power mods might gain you a tenth of a second in the 1/4 mile. A good set of rear control arms can knock off a fair amount of time for less than $1k.
Subframe connectors are also a good mod and probably one of the best all around for every type of use. They won't break the bank either. Labor is the expensive part though if you don't weld.


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#4 ·
Thank you!

I'm just wondering why SVT didn't do some of these things during production? Would it not be ideal for SVT to give the Cobra the best/max tune when they made the car?

I've also heard of people changing the gear ratio to 4:10, putting long tubes on, changing to a short shifter, swapping for a light-weight flywheel, putting underdrive pulleys on, etc...What are your thoughts on these mods?
 
#5 ·
They kinda did put the "best tune" from the factory. The main gain from a "tune" on a stock motor is a little more timing advance. Cars that have distributors can advance the timing for free. It's good for a little power but not much really. All "tuning" really is is get the air to fuel ratio and timing advance to a safe optimum. From the factory it isn't that far off from optimum, and bolt-on stuff don't really add any more air to where the stock "tune" can't compensate. If you were to change heads or cams, or add a supercharger, the motor would be getting a bunch more air and stock "tune" would be able to compensate. So a new "tune" would be needed to tell the car to add more fuel.
All of the things that you listed will help but not nite and day. I'm not a fan of under drive pulleys. I had them on my '90 and they didn't do much except for make the headlights dimmer. Parasitic horsepower loss is overrated really, especially for a street car.
Gears might make you a few hundredths to a tenth quicker in the 1/4 mile. I went from 2.73's to 3.73's in my '95 and I'm not that big of a fan. $500ish spent on parts and labor and it was still slow, only I was shifting sooner and I'm wishing I had a 6th gear when cruising on the highway.
Bolt-on stuff kind of gets expensive and they're capable of making your car faster but not by much. If you bought every bolt-on in the catalog you'd have spent $2k or so and you might not be full second faster.


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