Cheap 4 Banger power tricks?

[85YotaMan]

I was wondering how to get more horse power out of my 22-RE with 240,000 miles and runnin strong!.....any ideas??

[BigMike]

Here are a some methods off the top of my head -

1. Lighten your truck as much as possible.
2. Relocate your battery to your drivers side, lengthen your Air Box wires to reach the passengers side, and put a Cone filter like 6 inches upstream from your throttle body.
3. Place a small hood scoop directly above your cone air filter.
4. Run a 4-1 Header for max power, or a Tri-Y (4-2-1) Header for strong mid range.
5. Run a "true" 2 1/4 exhaust system with a highly free flowing muffler, like a DynoMax, and then use a variable exhaust backpressure tip, like a Nology T.REX or a VariFlow control valve for ideal low RPM - crawling RPM - backpressure and top end.
6. Upgrade your ignition. Use some Nology Hotcore wires and some MSD/Jacobs/Excell/Crane/etc coils/cpu/etc.
7. Use Toyota Iridium spark plugs.
8. Do the Air Box mod to get a richer mixture.
9. If you dont live in Alaska, Add a shut off valve to your water jacket line leading to your throttle body. This will drop your throttle body temps by more than 100 degrees resulting in cooler intake air charges which is denser and can hold more parts of fuel per parts of air molecules.
10. Do away with the valve cover oil bypass line. Use a small dump filter or an oil catch can.
11. Ceramic coat your header. This is a must.
12. For great cooling, cut away your inner fenders.
13. Although it is not as reliable, run an electric radiator fan, I recommend the Black Widow (Magic?) fan, and get rid of that power-robbing belt driven fan.
14. Get a MSD Engine Knock monitor system and advance your timing to the max.
15. Place a simple switch controlled air solenoid on your EGR valve, disengaging its function resulting in 100% Fresh air intake and cooler intake temps.
16. If you dont care about your engine, run a thinner oil. I would not do this though..
17. Get a MSD RPM swtich and setup a very low pressure or think mist water injection system for use above certain RPM levels for hard hill pulls/climbs. This will take your actual intake air charge regardless of outside air temp down to about 40 to 50 degrees F. This alone will add about 10 to 15 HP if your fuel system is to par.
18. Put underdrive pulleys on your water pump and alternator.
19. Run an oversized throttle body.
20. Change your cam.
21. Run an adjustable cam gear. Is this even made for SOHC R-series?
22. You could always port and polish your head, or run a 20R head with the intake tig welded and surfaced to accept your EFI intake manifold, put larger 22R valves into the 20R head, and port and polish it. Make sure your polish your dome and get it ceramic coated along with the valve bottoms.
23. You could always run a turbo or fab a SC, but I suggest against this.
24. You could always squeeze some juice (aka NOS), but I suggest against this.
25. And lastly, Lighten your truck as much as possible.

Regards,
BigMike

[85YotaMan]

Thanks for the tips Big Mike

[BigMike]

Good Luck! :up:

[gferris5]

wow Mike
that was a really comprehensive list.  Have you done all those mods yourself? if so how well does it pull, just judging from that list I bet you could surprise a lot of people with a motor with all that stuff done to it.  Or at least you could make it pull like a normal car.  It's also nice that the first response to yotaman wasn't a severe flaming, the boys on POR would have ripped him apart for it.  I appreciated the list too though, thanks

[BigMike]

Yeah, but not to a truck though

All of the little mods I did to my MR2 when it was running the stock motor, and the major mods (except for NOS thank goodness) I have done one a new motor that I rebuilt.

Hey, if you want to know what kind of a difference it makes, after you drive your truck around a bit, jump out with the engine idling or off and touch the top of your intake manifold. If it in not room temperature when at an idle, then youve got room for improvement!

[crazy_toyota]

so what can u do to get more power outta 22R moter then?

[mr4x42u]

well most of the same mods can be done to the r motor as wall as the re,with the exception of the fuel injection items..But 90% of all those can be done to an r engine as well..

[Rock_Starr]

Way to throw down the heat Big Mike.  
Im pretty sure there are adjustable cam gears out there for the SOHC R-Series. (DOA)

[88runner]

has anyone tried the resistor trick?

[Rock_Starr]

Which tip number?

[88runner]

none,

I've found this trick on ebay, you just put a resistor on the air temp. sensor so that the computer think that the air that enter is cold so it let more air in, probably loosing some fuel economy but it cost like 20$ max.

just go on google and search "Toyota resistor power mod" or somthing like that.

[brainlessfool]

LC has cam gears too!

[BigMike]

BigMike brings this topic back from the dead

has anyone tried the resistor trick?

hahahahaha I did this on my ex-gf's '94 Tercel. What a POS that car was.

Well, it did seem to have a stronger low to mid range power increase, but the top end was just the same. The richer mixture is sure to get worse gas mileage and maybe even shorten the life of your catalytic convertor.

If it helps at all, then I would say it is no more than a 1 HP increase over certain ranges.

BigMike

[boggerunner]

hey big mike for # 15 cant i just run a gasket with no center hole in it to the back of the intake manifold?
and the oil lines from the top of the valve cover to the intake, what exactly can i do with these, the front one is blowin oil into my intake

[Weldo]

You can block off the EGR by fabbing up a small plate to fit the head.  Use the gasket as a template.  You can also add crankcase breathers in place of the vents on top of the valve cover.  LC Engineering sells all this stuff.  It'll keep all that nasty carbon out of your intake.  Also, you could remove your throttle body and clean it since your motor has so many miles on it.  My 22re had 150,000 miles on it and when I took off the throttle body there was about a 1/2" of black oily goo stuck on the butterfly.  Getting rid of it would certainly help.

[Weldo]

Mike, Does blocking the coolant from the throttle body really make that much of a difference?  On a 22re you could bypass the throttle body by connecting a hose from the small barb next to the thermostat housing directly to the coolant pipe coming out of the back of the water pump.

[854RUN]

Mike is out of the contry 

[Fatty]

So I don't get why I would spend so much on Nology's Hotwire wires considering I don't have a "high" performance engine.  Care to shed some light on this for me?  Why can't I just settle on some Jacobs, Excell, Taylor etc. wires?

[854RUN]

You can settle for Jacobs,Taylor, etc. they are better then cheepo wire but not as good as nology wires. Here is a good explanation from Mike in his buildup, about halfway down the page http://board.marlincrawler.com/index.php?topic=4401.msg237974#msg237974