1997 Mazda Protege DX Mods and questions

[theunholyl2d]

I have a 97' Mazda Protege DX that i recently bought. Its a great car love it. Its automatic I wanna change it to manual. I wanna mod it to go faster, so I was hoping u guys could give me some advisement.

Already installed mods:

Cold Air Intake
Custom Headers
2 inch piping
Borla Performance Muffler

I'm looking for a performance chip or module, performance pulleys, performance fuel pump, fuel regulator and injectors. I cant think of anything else. So i would appreciate some help.

[Turpro]

find a dohc 1.8l motor swap first....then mod that. The 1.5l z5, what ou have, isn't worth trying to squeese power out of

[irishkev90]

Theres nothing for the 1.5L. So you'd be spending a lot of money on custom pieces just to go slow. It would be cheaper just to do an engine/transmission swap. But if you want to give that exhaust system to, that would be okay too. I am in desperate need of a new exhaust, hahaha.

[theunholyl2d]

i know engine swap could be much better but i want to keep the 1.5 and besides im already eating 1.8 corollas around with my 1.5. Of course they are auto trannys too.

[rusty]

most of the work you would do on the 1.5 would be engine internals and machine work, other then just adding an intake and exhaust. For some reason teh z5 engine does not like boost. Swapping to a bp would save you alot of money in the long run if you are gonna go full performance.

[irishkev90]

Auto tranny doesnt mean anything. Don't let it shift til close to redline and you can beat almost anything with comparable performance.

[3ni_tricksta]

You mind shedding some info on the headers?
I have a z5 with a leaking header right now and i'm trying to avoid going back to another stock one.

[rusty]

not much you can do there, unless you either have a header made to replace the stock manifold, or you could even get a stock manifold and take it to a machine shop and have it ported and flowed, i have actually thought about the latter.