performance upgrades???

Hi, i'm new to the forum but not to mavericks. i have had my 75 2 dr mav for almost 3 years now. she is my baby!!! however she still has the origional straight 6 engine. I have plenty of tourqe but no high end spped. my car has never gone above 70 mph while iv owned it only because given the fact that the car and engine are almost 40 years old idk if she can take it. but im wondering if there are any performance upgrades i can do to the engine short of replacing the engine? if you have any ideas please let me know. Also nice to meet everyone!

 

Welcome from Nor Cal. What part of California are you located?

 

im origionally from oakdale but my family lives in Turlock area. If you dont know its about an hour south of sacramento or 45 min if im driving! What about you, what part of cali?

 

Oh yes, I know Turlock. I am 45 minutes East of Sacramento. Halfway between Sac and Lake Tahoe.

 

Welcome to the site!!!!!

 

:Handshake

http://fordsix.com/

 

i know about where thats at, i used to go up to sonora a lot for hunting. lake taho is a nice are it must be nice being semi close to it. everyone thank you for the welcome. i heard that you can put a supercharger on a straight 6, is that true or just someone at an auto store trying to rip me off?

 

to the board....

 

from Northeast Pennsylvania

 

from So. Cal.

 

thanks a lot everyone!

 

Welcome from Oklahoma.

As far as upgrades go. Let me ask a couple of quick dumb questions. LOL

1. When we the last time it was tuned? Was it tuned back to factory or did you go with hotter plugs?

2. Is it completely stock?

3. When was the last time the tranny was flushed?

Take a look at these three things and you can actually probably see a gain by simply tuning it up and maybe upgrading a little when you do. It wont be a huge jump but when you are looking at a low horsepower motor and tranny even 30 horses is huge.

Hope this helps,
Bobo

 

I would have to agree there.

If the OP doesn't want to deal with all that hassle though?.. I would do these things in this particular order.

good high quality tune up with platinum plugs
synthetic oil wherever possible
aftermaket turbo style chambered muffler
aftermarket aircleaner
aftermarket coil and wires


and after all that?.. you'll likely need to have the fuel and timing dialed in with a dyno tune due to the extra air coming into, increased combustion efficiency, and exhaust flow going out of the engine after all that.

Like was said earlier.. lower HP motors can show decent gains since it's based on a percentage of improvement from previous baseline.. but it will get pricy for the smallish gains to be had. $500-600 should net you around 3-4 MPG and at least a 20HP average gain(with peak gains going even higher in some areas of the power curve) depending on the current state of tune.

 

well as far as a tune up i dont know when the last one was. i have not tuned it since iv owned it. im in the military and deployed 9 months out of the year or on some kind of duty away. however i will be sending it into a shop when i get home. I need to have to front end bushings replaced, wheels alingment, so haveing a tune up wont be hard either. i do notice a difference in the way she drives when i use a higher grade fuel. so i always fill up with premium now. Im also having a hard time finding a certain grill i want for the car. i want a speedway style (straight bars accross the grill) and my stock grill is pretty beat up. As far as what is done to my car. It has 2 two chamber flowmasters, rear axel was repleced to handle a v8 ( the guy i bought it from was going to put an engine from a mach 1) air ride suspension in the rear and street legal slicks. other than that everything else is completely origional.

 

wow.. got any pic's to share with us? I don't see to many air ride Mav's.