Opel Astra Performance Upgrades!

Hi, there is this friend of mine who has an Opel Astra Club. He wanted to upgrade the performance of the car. But I don't really think the Astra responds well to performance modifications. He is stubborn and wants to make this a fast car. So we went ahead and fitted the usual cold air intake, free flow exhaust and a racing clutch. The performance has improved a little bit but no enough. Now he's so messed up in the head that he wants a turbo kit, racing cams, different gear box, etc, etc.. I personally don't think its worth spending so much money on an Astra. But looking at his Determination I really want to work on his car and make it a lot faster. It has a Single Point Fuel Injected Engine.

1. Is it worth spending so much on the car?

2. After the mods, will the performance gains be lot?

3. What performance mods is possible?

4. Are the parts easily available?

5. What would be the cost estimate?

Regards,

Torque350

The problem with these kind of cars is cost. The cost of the Astra spares is to high, so the overall expense cannot be estimated.

Being Single Point fuel Injection, it isn't that worth. The main problem he will face is efficiency. I have seen many people suffering when they did a lot of changes to their Palio. (Luckily I didn't do many).

IMHO Astra is a quick car, but if anything goes wrong, with sparse availablitiy of the spares and cost will be too high, and the Astra could end up giving a mileage of 3-4 km/l.

A friend of my did a very few changes and his Astra returned 5km/l.

A better way would be to change the car engine itself, and put something packing much more power. That and stripping the car of all non-essentials would do the trick.

But your friend may be treading onto a slippery slope, where an obsession consumes a person's finances, time, social life, career... Good for those who find an employment doing it as a professional, but for others it is a rather gloomy picture...

Yeah, it pays to pay heed to the law of diminishing returns.

@Torque - ask your friend to be a bit reasonable while spending money. In some cases it might be better to simply go for a new car. If, after changing everything all his car has from the original car is its body then IMHO its a waste. As per Krishna's comment a different engine would be a good idea...however it won't be a cheap exercise (both time and money wise) - though will (or should) cost less than a new car. In my view, if one changes the engine you have changed the car itself (something like body & soul ).

For now all the changes he has done are practically feasible - exhaust, cold air intake. However IMO the cold air intake won't help much if the air is not compressed - so the last practical thing to do would be to install a (electric) supercharger (turbo would be harder to install) which feeds the air cooler. This is as far as you go practically. Beyond this better buy a new car. Work out the cost before buying anything - that will tell you if its worth at all...

Yes Rachit, Being a Single fuel injection, will have its advantages and limitations.

Better to go with CRDi technology and make it sporty as you like it... Surely, it will whroooom...

MPFI my friend. CRDI is diesel technology.

Posted by Rachit Hirani
MPFI my friend. CRDI is diesel technology.

Whatever, Rachit, you could as well make it a diesel if an engine change is on the cards.

BTW is the Power/weight for CRDI better than a MPFI petrol?

@Rachit - well I wasn't aware of that...I always thought that cooling works best with forced air induction systems. BTW where should the cooler be located - before or after the air filter?

It is usually a combination of turbocharging (compressing the intake air) and intercooling (cooling the air that has heated up because of an adiabetic compression) that yields good results. cooling atmospheric pressure air won't help much.

Also be very careful when altering the manifold - it's shape/size/orientation affects the engines power characteristics.

Thanks a lot for the replies I'v tried talking to him about buying another car( like an Esteem or a City VTec ). The more I tell him, the more stubborn he gets. Now the plans are fixed and there's no turning back. So a new car is out of the question

@Rachit- Wat is IMHO Astra? 3-4km/l is way too less. There is no point having a fast car with that kind of figures!

@Krishna- Is there any direct engine swaps without any major modifications? Else reliability will be an issue!

@Rohit- Well according to my knowledge there is only one supercharged car( a white City Vtec ) in India whereas there are loads of Turbocharged cars. What do you think is a better option and what about the performance gain difference?

@Rohit- The intercooler is located between the air filter ad the intake. So its after the air filter.