In reply to Rustspecs13: Where is the best place to look for cams and who makes good ones for a decent price. I'm not sure when, if ever, I will boost the engine. I am assuming I need to remove the head and take it to a machine shop to get everything checked out though. Sorry for the questions, I am just learning all of this as I go.
The hot cam swap is just OEM cams. Stock s13 engines have 240deg intake and 248deg exhaust cams. S14 engines have 232/232. Yet they make the same HP. The s14 upper intake manifold also has no butterflys right near the valves, which should be good for a little top end.
The hot cam swap is putting the s13 exhaust cam on the intake side for a little extra power. A guy on nico did a huge comparison with every useful cam swap. Its really cool, if you cant find it I'll look for it. Brian crower and kelford, jwt, all make cams for it if you want a real cam upgrade. But some will need springs, and with out a REAL header it wont make too much more power, like 7-15hp. Its a pretty decent flowing head as is, so its kinda hard to make power.
Stock KA's do 125-130whp, and 130-175ish whp is pretty typical of modded ones. Torque is great, and usually close to peak HP as well. Only a few get to the 200whp mark, and they use sohc pistons or aftermarket ones to bump the compression. Biggest thing is hardly any one actually tunes their NA KA. Nistune is decently cheap and is basically software for the OEM computer and it works great.
KA-t.org is another good site for KA specific info.
~Alex
my .02 don't upgrade the front brakes unless you do the rear at the same time, I upgraded my fronts and now the car has too much front brake bias. I'm still looking for a cheap rear setup that isn't 5 lug. Rear brakes should be larger the fronts by 11% IIRC to keep the bias neutral.
I'm using the Q45 brakes. Or I was, I parted that car out. Still have the brakes but I need to put them back on. The Q45's are much nicer, but you need a drum style ebrake. That means you need the Q45 backing plates and drum hardware, and B13 sentra ebrake cables from a drum car. Then it should all work. I got the drums installed then got lazy and parted out the car a few months later.
Amazing difference, and you can still mount 15in rims on the car too. I had to redrill my rotors, but thats easy enough.
Next time I do it I'm actually going to use J30 rears. Same specs but they have vented rear rotors VS the Q's solid ones. IIRC. Its been about a year since I looked into it though. J30 and Q45 brakes are all very similar and all bolt on.
~Alex
I've got Q calipers up front with altima rotors.
I'm not a fan of re-drilling rotor bolt patterns, I'm always worried of throwing off the balance.
I may just resurface the rotors or buy some good blanks and get some EBC or Hawk pads instead of going all out on a brake upgrade now. Don't get me wrong, that is close to the top of my mod list. Right now though, she just needs to be road worthy.