Porting and polishing?
 

So there I am sitting in traffic and day dreaming about giving my 2005 MCS some due attention and maybe treating it to some new go fast parts. Its bone stock now, but I've been playing with the idea of biting the bullet and putting a 17% pulley on it. I live at 4800ft and have started to notice a drop off in power. At 127,000 miles its also time to service the Supercharger.

Later at home while searching for a gasket kit and other miscellaneous parts needed for the repair, I noticed that WMW has some ported and polished intake manifolds for sale. I thought that might be nice to install while I'm in there. They claim a preliminary 12% gain in flow, but what does that translate to in HP? Does the power band move? Of course I realize that I would also need to port match and polish the head to realize the full potential of this mod. I would also be interested in knowing if using a ported supercharger would further increase these gains and by how much?

I know that simply adding the pulley should get me very close to the 200HP mark (at sea level). But I'm kind of hoping that the additional machining will get me to the 225-250? Has any one tested which of the exhaust systems or Mods achieves the best exit flow? With all of this I would expect a tune would be in order as well.

Pulley, plugs, injectors and a tune should get you 200whp. If you're wanting 250whp you need a big valve head, cam and a header.

I make 227whp with a pulley, cam injectors and tune. The intake tract is stock and is not holding the motor back. It's the header that's holding it back right now. I know of other minis with more power than mine with stock intake manifold and blower.

My mechanic had his r53 ported and polished by "a guy"...
Car is pretty damn amazing... So it does lots...
Buy cost per HP gained...its not the lowest hanging fruit...
Dave...on here and the " other" motoring site most of the time has been running 250 for years...lots of RMW stuff.header, tune, etc...still has s stock blower. Has been a good car for him...very few issues. So if the motor is healthy, no reason why you can't....
He does use meth to prevent detonation and add HP at full throttle...but 250 reliable HP says it all IMO!!
Me...I have 200hp....and don't have the $$ to spend on roasted tires...I got to where I was happy...and decided more was just bragging rights....a 100 foot burn out is good enough for me....(I have no LSD, and don't want to bust CV joints and clutches on a regular basis)...
Jcw 210 cars had 210 to the CRANK....so going bit over that on all stock is fine...but using that 250 regularly....can get $$$.

Just gotta learn to roll into the throttle. I can't use much more than half throttle in 1st. Unless I just want to spin the tires. After that it's all good.

Some of the reason for the way mine acts is the 17%pulley and Dominator cam. The cam makes more torque lower in the rpm range and the pulley turns up the boost earlier. The car is snappy. And it doesn't run out up top either.

I think there's more parts that are a better hp per dollar than porting and polishing. That being said, it might eek out a few more hp when you get to the point of diminishing returns.

OP, there are tons of threads on "what mods to do first", a lot of good info here.

In my opinion, porting/polishing is FAR down the list of priorities AND not a high "bang for buck" ratio.

I think it would smooth out the torque curve a bit, and give better breathing up top, noticeable difference, doubt it


if theres a lot of other work such as a BVH cam injectors and tune, it will make a difference