What is the cheapiest way to increase power ~25% for my car without forced induction?

getting more than 200crank hp (even 190) from a KA is pretty tough honestly, but you can get close.

I would do:
aluminium pulleys
cone air filter
header (4-2-1)
minimum 2.5" exhaust mandrel-bent (ka loves the 3" too but its kinda loud, performance is pretty much equal) with high-flow catalytic converter
and the most important, ecu retune with high octane, so you go get the most of the modifications

gotten that pretty much from here :

http://www.club240.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30440

he got ~165 wheel hp with 106 octane fuel

ive seen guys putting ITB's on the KA too, so thats something else to do (but expensive)
after that you can swap the cams, but thats REALLY not cheap and the gain is not that impressive

going this route, sure you can get some hp from the engine, but it'll be maxed out. after that, if you want more hp, you have no choice : turbo it or swap it.
 
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I would turbo the KA before swapping in a SR.
 
These days you can pick-up SR20 swapped 240's for less than $2k. A friend of mine picked one up for $1200, owner thought the engine was blown, just needed a head gasket.

Why not look on the billions of 240 forums and see what can be done to a KA? I would assume the factory intake manifold and exhaust manifold/system are exactly optimal.
 
Last but not least --> do you really need air conditioning?
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Yes, absolutely. It gets stinking hot here in summer.

Thanks for the suggestions. So, the answer is basically: there is no way to have a noticeable increase in power without forced induction.
 
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I'm not Takumi said:
Then crack your windows.
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:yes: I haven't owned a car with A/C in ... geez 3 years now. It stays in the 80s and 90s here for what seems like half the year, with seriously oppressive humidity. It's not as bad as you'd think, but then again if I had a car with working A/C, I wouldn't take it out :lol:.
 
www.ka-t.org is your best bet for turboing the KA. its ALOT cheaper.

i know ALOT of guys on there getting close to 500hp on their KA's.
 
I'm not too keen on nitrous. Reason being is that you can still blow up your engine with little effort, nitrous isn't exactly cheap, and you have a finite supply. With forced induction you don't have to worry about a bottle running out, the power is always there to be had.

Let me paraphrase Gale Banks: "Unless you live your life 7 seconds at a time, save up your money and supercharge or turbocharge the damn thing. Then start thinking about nitrous."
 
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How about ethanole conversion? Both Lotus and Koenigsegg makes about 25% extra in their Exige 265E and CCXR respetively. In theory, switching to fuel injectors with about 39?5% better flow should be enough, although I'm not promising anything :p
 
epp_b said:
Yes, absolutely. It gets stinking hot here in summer.

Thanks for the suggestions. So, the answer is basically: there is no way to have a noticeable increase in power without forced induction.
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Well you could look into getting the head reworked. I'm sure there is some shop there that has an idea of what to do with those cylinder heads. Shave it (for compression), port and polish, etc... along with the bolt on header, intake, and a custom exhaust.

Honestly though, the idea of "cheap hp" and "paying someone else to do the work" just don't work. Labor rates are to high, here in the US they are right about $100/hour.

http://www.racetep.com/240sxna.html

http://www.nismoparts.com/catalog/?section=324
 
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crashmaxx said:
SR swap is one of the easiest out there and complete motors are cheap. I wish my car was half as easy to swap. You 240 guys barely have to touch the wiring, I need to merge two different harnesses together or change out all the wiring in the car.

Seriously, you'll blow way more then the $2-3K for a swap doing N/A stuff.
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Yeah, engine swap is the best idea. SR20DET or CA18DET, but I remember that CAs are more expensive than the SRs, and i've heard SRs are as tough as nails.

What's it got in there now? KA24E?
 
I would do the standard I/H/E mods and then add a cheap piggyback such as unichip, you'll get about a 15hp increase
 
sephiroth99 said:
minimum 2.5" exhaust mandrel-bent (ka loves the 3" too but its kinda loud, performance is pretty much equal)
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Minimum?!?! How dumb are you people, just because it isn't rocket science doesn't mean its kiddy addition either. Plus 2.5 exhaust sounds terrible on anything not making at least 250 solid hp, and even in that case 2.25 sounds/works better.
 
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