Performance is.... erm... Stately

[Louie Lungbubble 0]

Had my '91 1.8 16 valver since chrimbo and am in love with the blighter.

Spent a couple of hundred quid on the essentials (security, tyres oil etc) but never touched the engine since it ran so smooth and wasn't screaming for any immediate attention.

I'm now looking to get in there and sort out the only thing i'm not 100% happy about.

The performance.

Was never exectly blown away with my cars performance, even from day one.

But when I found myself struggling *Big time* to keep up with my mate's knackered, bog standard 1.8 mondeo, it dawned on me a good few of the 136 horses must be down the boozer enjoying themselves instead of grafting under my right foot as they should be!

 

Bottom line is, I aint got the bottomless pockets some of the people on here seem to have and need to know where the most effective place to start replacing things would be.

Plugs and air filter are obvious ones, but it's been suggested that the fuel filter could need changing too.

Are there any other Corrado power loss hotspots I could look at?

My mate's really starting to p*ss me off in that dog of a mondeo :oops:

 

Cheers in advance. Ian

[Scott 0]

Whats the mileage?

 

A new cylinder head re furb might give you those extra horses back....

 

Your mates mondeo should be left trailing with a 16V!!! - the 1.8 is a cracker when running right...

[dr_mat 0]

The new 1.8 mondeo is no power house (0-60 in 10.5!).. But 130 horses it is, and that's at 5500 rpm, not 7000 rpm.

Catch your C off-cam and it'll certainly embarass you, given the relatively small weight difference. (Coupla hundred kg.)

[Henny 0]

Simplest thing to make sure first is that you're running the KR (1.8 16V) engine on a decent fuel... run it on cheap stuff and you'll be loosing horses big time! They were designed to be run on the high octane mix that was 4star and don't really like the lesser unleaded petrols...

 

Other than that, as the guys above have said, fuel filter and a good service won't ever hurt the engine... 8) Make sure the timing is set as per factory settings, quite a few places used to retard the timing to get them to run properly on cheaper unleaded without pinking which looses quite a bit of power... :|

 

Depending on budget, there's quite a few bits and pieces you can do, depending on how handy you are with a set of spanners ;)

 

Personally, I recommend trying to get hold of a weber throttle body... there's a thread about modding these engines HERE that may be worth a quick look too... 8)

[smiff 0]

New distributer is always a must. Then the usual stuff, leads, plugs, oil change...... Then, top up the tank with good fuel (Optimax) and pour in a good splash of injector cleaner....drive carefully for a few miles and then thrash her! You'll be suprised!

[Louie Lungbubble 0]

Cheers for that lads, i'll certainly get down to my local shell garage and bang some optimax in for a kick off.

I'll see if my mate fancies getting his hands dirty with me and have a crack at the throttle body too. (had seen that thread before and was kicking the idea around already)

Failing all that, I could just let my Mondeo friend's tyres down! :evil:

 

Nice one. 8)

[aposegil 0]

All i would say is a good service does the 16v engine a world of good

 

Start of by doing a engine flush (use some good stuff not cheap crap) and then put nice fresh oil and filter on

 

Then get all the fuelsysystem parts off i.e fuel lines, metterring head, throttle, idle valve and give them a clean out with injector/carb cleaner

 

Then do the airfilter change to a nice K&N and a few holes int he airbox which one of the guys on here could point u to a thread on how to do it

 

and the car should be running great :)

 

just to give u a example when i had the old K-jet fuel system on my car i decided to give the fuel system a clean out and the car idled 300rpm higher just because everything was getting through alot smoother :D

 

just my 2ps worth and it should cost u no more than £60-70 including getting the airfilter

[coullstar 0]

This all sounds very familiar. What sort of mpg were/are you getting?

 

I am struggling to get near 30mpg and on long trip yesterday it wouldnt go above 29mpg. My car has had a head rebuild last year and the engine appears spotless. Its pissing me of as I was thinking the car does feel slow.

 

Is it hard cleaning out the injection/fuel system?

[aposegil 0]

coullstar- its not that hard to do but its time consuming i would suggest to set about 1/2 day aside to do it all properly :D

 

also readin the fact your doing a track day soon i would stongly recomend you do a complete service to make sure the engine/compnents is in the best condition for the day

 

just my 2p's worth

[coullstar 0]

Yeah I was going to do that this weekend. Might try some of that injector cleaner as well.

[aposegil 0]

yep get a couple of cans as it never does any harm :)

 

just make sure you dont lose any of the little washers lol