For the racetrack, not the road. Thats why i said it is not recommended. For the road there is barely anything you can take out to reduce weight. You could put a spacesaver, maybe take some carpet out or clean off the dirt and crap from under the car but this would save you at most about 20kg. For the track though you can take out the rear seats, carpet, jack, spare tyre, roof lining, sound deadening and fit lightwieght seats or panels (if you have the money). Engine rebuilds This is another thing that is not recommended for a non mechanically minded being. If you know what you are doing, go for it but there are many mistakes that can be made when taking an engine apart or putting it back together. Everything has to be torqued to spec and installed correctly as well as actually having all the equipment to do so. --- Post updated --- Just looked up 2003 jetta kerb weight and apparently it wieghs roughly 3000 pounds or around 1350kg. Thats quite a bit for a car that has 115hp. As always i will bring my car into it, a 99 hyundai excel x3. It wieghs about 925kg (1000kg with me in it) and the engine in mine makes 99hp. That is about 9.3kg per hp. The jetta on the other hand is 11.7kg per hp. I took my excel for a quick squirt the other day to celebrate getting my P's and i have to admit, it is quite zippy at under 70-80kmh but as it starts to go over that, it really starts to become sluggish. If you want a fast car, a 1.35 ton (unloaded) behemoth is not the right way to go.
That was not my point at all. A 2003 jetta ecu has quite a few sensors. Pulling the cat will mess with those and force it into limp home mode where it barely makes enough power to hit 30mph. Pulling cat is a horrendous idea and also illegal in most countries. My personal opinion is that if you love your car enough to want to pour effort into modifying it, you also love it enough to keep it road legal. A high flow cat can reduce exhaust restriction and keep things legal at the same time.
You could put on a throttle body spacer. High flow air cleaner/ cold air intake. Tighten the throttle cable so it doesn't have slack. Lighter wheels and tires. Spark plugs and wire-set were mentioned. That's all I can think of that is cheap and easy to do.
Or you can buy a tuner like the "hyper max energy programmer" for around $300-400ish and it's a cheap way to increase power!
As a Mechanic here.. i would have to say because its a 2.0 Gasser vw motor there are a lot of of things you can do to make it have some more horses and also make it faster... if its an automatic which i'm guessing it is.... u can install a shift kit.. this will boost line pressure give you stronger more direct gear changes... then there's mods... High flow fuel pump and then larger injectors and some tricks with the maf sensor.. there are different intake manifolds and exhaust manifolds as well... i would remove the stock exhaust manifold and get an better aftermarket one... removing the Converters is also a plus... but that's what i do with any car i mod.. my car stock is Nissan 2.4 automatic with shift kit/big injectors/better pump/HKS exhaust manifold/HKS intake manifold. stock i was gettin 154hp/155trq at the dyno. i now get 181.xx hp and 182.xx ft-lb torque at 30-31mpg im not complaining.. oh and one thing that does help is premium fuel i use 91-92 octane only i run a 3.25ich exhaust straight to a stock muffler.. my other trick is i use a mass airflow from early 2000's Sentra se-r.. i also run mega squirt for an ecm.. no stock ecm is used. the budget of this was under 2500 bucks and was done in my garage with a case of beer as my wife held the flash light and helped too...
No use fluffing around trying to make a car faster by doing engine swaps. Its better to just keep that car for awhile then upgrade to something with more power(and better engine) later down the line.
So the lesson here is even a modest increase will run you 2500 bucks. If your resourceful you can probably run a nice 75 shot of n20 for a grand less but you still need to tune it. I also don't believe in spraying nitrous wet so unless your ecu can compensate with bigger injectors like ours will (Hondata s300) don't bother. If it's your only car than leave it alone or go in with twice the budget you think you'll need. Early on I was constantly getting in over my head and borrowing my mother's car for work here and there. Don't be that guy like me. If you need something capable of an 11 second pass for 2500, do what I did and get a bike.
Why would removing the rear seat make a car unsafe for the road? I've considered doing it myself a few times; I rarely carry passengers and never more than one at a time.
It's not unsafe but if you suddenly have a need to carry 2 passengers your in the shit. A rear seat in most econo cars would weigh at most about 25kg.
Honda back seats are an absolute joke. Maybe 10 or 15 pounds tops. I'd have to tell you that maybe it wasn't the most cost effective way to be in possession of a fun daily, but hell if I don't love ruining these happy little economy cars for my own amusement. I wouldn't swap a jetta tho. Drive the car until you have 5 or 6k usd and than come back and we'll help you create a monster.
the intake and headers were about most the price and then $140-160 per injector... i needed 4 thats 640 right there and the fuel pump was 185 bucks i got on ebay... the exhaust i welded and done myself to save money... the computer setup was not too bad... i forget to mention a high flow oil pump is also in there... i had a few laying around... so 2900-3800 depending were u get the parts from and the brand.. and if you tune it yourself to exclude a shop doing it for you.. if this was turbo setup then atleast 6-7k you would be putting into the motor to replace the internals for the boost... cheapest to go for little fun can be under 2000 if u know what your doing.. i don't do nitrous oxide...thats how u blow up a stock motor... the stock rings cannot handle nitrous.. they will expand under heat and break the piston once the ring gap closes..
W Well there you have it. I'll take your word as gospel that a stock Vw engine won't put up with nitrous (even if you tune it rich?). This guy hasn't thanked you for your expertise but I've made enough mistakes to thank you for him.
by all means a stock motor has to be built for nitrous ... but if u wanna run richer u need to tune the computer and have better air flow or u will just damage your converters with un burnt fuel... u want a good air/fuel ratio... so more fuel needs more air... and the stock intake will restrict you to whatever its limited at... and even if you got a good intake u need good headers to benefit from the good intake.. i do motor rebuilds/swaps so this is a daily thing for me.... if u have your motor done by me i certify my work... i'm located Long island,NY
I live in Queens and I used to be in the trade. I'm building a turbo Integra for a friend with deep pockets. Block is in the machine shop as I type this, should be back for assembly pretty soon. We're doing a b18c1 with full ferrea valves/valve train. 10:1 compression forged internals. I happened upon a nice set of custom Webcam turbo cams that were gently used. It's all going to be fed by a twin scroll precision 6262. I'm pming you sorry guys.
Uhh, well people above are giving some decent suggestions, but the first thing you will want to do to make any other mod worth the time is replace or trick the ecu. Depending on how much bull you're willing to put up with, you can either go with a plugnplay ecu (which will do everything you want for $$$$), "chip" it (typically people use that term for piggybacks as they are the cheepest/easiest option, but many will say that word for any ecu tomfoolery), or go to a megasquirt, which balances price with quality, but is really hard to setup. Did you get all that lol? After that you can squeeze out more power without any other mods, at the expense of emissions, fuel economy, and reliability. Once that's squared away, you can go to headers, delete the cat(s), delete a/c, delete egr, etc (screw cold air intakes, they are not worth the effort on an N/A car, and they are more of an engine safety mod that a power mod). Bigger mods would include a lighter flywheel, porting the heads, stroking it, boring it, decking it, and a bazillion other overkill mods that are in no way worth it on that vehicle. All of those would require retuning the ecu after each change, which would eliminate the option to use a chip. As for forced induction, stay away from no2, and keep in mind the the ecu stuff above is not optional. Turboing it would make the most sense, but would require a lot of custom work, once again, more that you should be doing to that car. Engine swaps will be more trouble that they are worth if you are not already an experienced custom fab mechanic. We're talking custom subframe, custom motor/tranny mounts, different tranny, a slew of custom brackets and linkages, component relocation, and probably a bunch of other stuff I'm not remembering. If you are swapping, I'd stay well away from anything VAG made. Actually I'd say to stay away from anything VAG made in general, and as such, I would not suggest that you get the jetta at all...
im only 35-40 minutes from queens.. and its funny because i just finished and sold an 86 Integra... for $9k was a California car in showroom condition with 21,250 original miles and with its stock unraped granny used 1.6 and 5spd.. ofcourse done several bolt on's... its a non turbo setup. motor is a D16A1 1.6 i did rods pistons/rings high flow fuel pump/ True Cold air intake in fabricated/welded myself i machined the head my self too.. just did the clutch few days ago for my buddy since he cooked the original factory clutch. so i bolted on a ACT Heavy Duty Pressure Plate and a stage 3 Spec Clutch kit... also installed an weapon R adapter for the fuel rail. and alot of other goodies... its pulls Very hard for a non turbo car... it almost smoked my 99 Altima and i have an automatic with a shift kit and many goodies lol so i did well.. and yea sorry everyone for the off topic talk... just a pro motor head yapping here no harm..lol other true motor heads would never have a problem with this because they understand its car porn talk lol
Off topic section, no one will enforce on us. Goes to show what kind of people play this game. I agree with you except the part where engine swaps aren't viable unless you can fabricate? Am I wrong to think you can buy mounts for a lot things off the shelf these days? K24 to stock miata Trans kit, Honda odesssey j35 to any civic or teg. I feel like you are more the mad scientist type putting big block v8s in whatever pleases you, but I think even 10 or 15 years ago that was not the case unless you were in the beaten path like me. I know for less I could have done a budget single cam turbo that would make double the power but hey screw it.
yes i make my own motor mounts and even sometimes my own sub frames if i have too.. and yeah i have jammed in V8's were they dont belong..my next plan is to fit a nissan 3.0 v6 into my altima.... not the junk 3.5.. only the bullet proof 3.0 VG30E and mod the balls off it if i can...
I'm in for that plan. Should help shift that car around nicely. I considered a v6 in my car but I'm not really cool with cutting my hood for clearance. I see guys putting the heads from a 3.2 type s on a 3.5 Odessey block and making 300whp with just a tune. Not easy to find those 6 speeds tho. I imagine it's easier to do the v6 swap to an altima.
