348 performance

Testpipes, spacers, and a good downhill drive with a tailwind.

 

Ditto

 

Tritto

(unless you are good friends with any dentists and have 2K to spare)

 

sure, here are a few other suggestions:
Kevlar clutch. Ceramic coated, custom designed JE racing pistons. Worked heads and valves. Bigger injectors run my a custom MOTEC map. Capacitive discharge, 8 coil to plug ignition, with solid silver core wires, twim garrett turbo chargers, with a water/air intercooler. Yahoooo!
yeah.

 

Easy mods or balls-to-the-wall mods?!

For "easy," after bumping up your fuel pressure just a bit, swapping out your stock spark plugs for Splitfire platinum or NGK iridium will get you a small improvement. K&N airfilter, of course. Red Line shockproof gear oil in your tranny (better for shifts, better for heat, better for anti-wear). 40 Below or Red Line's Water Wetter in your radiator (for anti-heat). Adding a heat sink wrapped around your oil filter (~~ $20 or less from JCWhitney.com - search under "cooling") further cuts your engine oil temp, too.

Adding a Durable1.com shift bushing on your tranny will likewise improve your shift speed and shift smoothness for a mere $18...and a slickshift gate will then cut your shifting delay times.

Cutting out the stock factory seal overlap from the intake gaskets that blocks part of your air intake opening will also give you a pleasant boost.

You can do all of the above for less than $200 (way less).

Durable 1 may even have a Krank Kase Vent for the 348 now to add 4 more HP for a couple hundred Dollars.

You can have your air intakes ported and your inputs expanded to 70mm.

For a little more you can upgrade to two high-flow catalytic converters such as from hyper-flow.com/348.htm (expect to spend about $2,000 with shipping and installation).

Others might add a spacer between your engine trumpets and intake (or simply upgrade to the taller Euro-size intake plenum).

Lighter weight wheels will help, too.

Past that, you could have your engine bored out to be a 4 liter, add a turbo charger or two, change cams and heads and upgrade ECUs (or at least ECU mapping).

Somehow Ferrari got 360HP out of their Euro-only 348 Competitizione 3.405 liter V8, so we can too, and Ferrari didn't use many (if any) of the tricks above.

Larger header pipes might help, too.

As would NO2.

 

All I did was a Superchips ECU mod, Tubi w/test pipes...........and lost roughly 200 pounds. But the real secret was lot's of track time and driver's schools. Now the car outruns 355s and hangs w/360's

 

Hello... probably I'm not the mechanic you are.... can you please be a bit more specific about this ?? (I have an EU car of course)

THANKS !!

 

There's a gasket behind each throttle body on our 348 air intakes. Often that gasket spreads into our air intake area when either the factory or a mechanic is tighening the bolts to install or re-install our throttle bodies.

Cut out that part of the gasket to keep our entire air intake clean and open...and you gain performance. It's got to be one of the cheapest performance boosts next to adjusting to just the right fuel pressure.

More here: WWW.Durable1.com (pictures of before and after).

 

Here are some shots of the same principle, but applied to the gaskets above our intake runners.

http://www.durable1.com/Images/GasketShields/injectorgasket1S.jpg

As you can see by the illustration of what actually happens when the stock runner gaskets are compressed, just as they would be when installed, they have a nasty habit of “squishing" into the runner area itself. The turbulence caused by this protrusion into the runner is clearly evident by these photos taken of a just-dissembled, 2-valve motor.


http://www.durable1.com/Images/GasketShields/runner1S.jpg
The dark areas shown above are where the flow was disrupted by gasket protrusion. The natural flow in such cases is unable to keep the runner clean. Note that the areas that didn’t have any gasket in the way are bright and shiny, as the incoming charge will tend to keep them clean as a natural part of the flow. Dark areas show clearly how that seemingly small bit of gasket overhang disrupts the intake flow, causing a loss of performance.

 

Another "free" 348 performance mod is removing the wire screens on your MAFs.

Our two MAF sensors for our 348 air intakes each have two wire mesh screens, one on the front to protect the delicate sensor wires and one in the back to protect your engine in case any of the MAF sensor wiring/construction itself falls apart.

Of course, removing those 4 wire mesh screens increases your personal mechanical risk factor; you've removed protections built in to your car.

But...those wire screens are also blocking some 15% to 20% of your potential airflow into your engine...airflow that *could* be unleashed for some added power if you are willing to risk losing those 4 levels of protection.

 

without changing anything else, I'd NOT change the injectors. Unless you're going to change the amount of air you feed the engine, why change the amount of fuel you'd send it? Also, of course, if you were to change the amount of air you could get to the engine, (ie forced induction, or cam change), then you'd need an ecu that could compensate in all areas to make it run right in the entire map. Do you see the can of worms you'd be opening?
You have to upgrade the entire system for the car to be right, not just change one component.

 

You don't necessarily need to change fuel pressure regulators (though the Weapon R generics will do the job if you do: http://www.abtivan.com/weaponr/weaponr_fuelpressureregualtors.htm), but you do need to have your exhaust sniffed to insure that your fuel pressure is high enough to give you an A/F ratio of between 12.7 and 13.2 to 1 if you are going for max performance (i.e. this thread) or between 14.5 and 14.7 to 1 for max economy (sort of defeats the whole point of a sports or race type car like a Ferrari, though).

You need to know your A/F ratio. You need to check it after every change to your system, too (e.g. new type of air filter). The more air that you get into your system, the more fuel pressure you'll need to maintain a performance A/F ratio (i.e. 12.7 to 1).

If your A/F ratio is outside of that 12.7 power to 14.7 economy spread, then you are either wasting gas or losing power or both (or worse). That's the entire "Acceptable" range. Inside that range, you are "tuned." Outside of it, you are not.