I just purchased a 1997 accord sedan EX with a five speed manual transmission. The car is completely stock and is in mint condition. It has around 156,000 miles on it. It has the 2.2 liter 4 cylinder engine (VTEC). I would like to know what my first mods should be. I want to make the car fast while keeping its reliability. I don’t care how the car looks, for now. I just want to maximize performance. Acceleration, handling, braking, etc. What should my first mods be? I would like to turbo the car at some point, but I want to know what mods I should get to get the car ready for that. Let me know!

 

Your options are:

• Fast
• Reliable
• Affordable

Pick any two of the three; simple fact of life.

 

ok, i’m set up getting new coilovers, wheels, and tires. i’m also set up getting a professional tune. but what next? cold air intake? sway bars? lmk. just want a few good performance upgrades to make the car a little faster.

 

The only thing the aftermarket CAI and tune will provide is more noise; you really aren't going to make the car much faster. In fact, typically such modifications cut the mid range torque a bit in favor of a few ponies up near redline. Said another way, the car will be a tick faster at wide open throttle up near redline, but slower in normal day-to-day driving.

If you want to make the car faster, look into a turbocharger setup, but then again, that brings us back to the Reliable/Powerful/Affordable argument.

 

ok ok. was looking into it and i haven’t found a single supercharger kit for 97 accords. link one if you find one. but i’d be just fine with throwing a turbo kit in it. any brands or websites i should look into? and i’ve been doing some thinking, and i’m definitely ok with wrenching on this thing a lot if i have too. so the reliability part isn’t that big of a deal.

 

Suppliers for turbocharger kits come and go; not sure which companies are still in business. Given how common (relatively speaking) turbocharger mods on 4-Cylinder Gen5 Accords is, there are (or were) a few kits on the market, and failing that, there are most likely some cookbooks published to allow you to build your own kit, with some fab work required.

 

It might be worth having a look on e-bay to find a kit. Just my thought.

 

Yeah, but...

If I had a dime for every report I've read regarding a Flea-Bay turbo installation suffering a failed turbocharger and/or a failed engine, I'd be a rich man.

I think the *only* aftermarket turbo kit I'd be willing to put on any car is a Flyin' Miata kit on a Miata; other than that, pass.

Is there a good possibility there are some professional installations available for OP's car? Yup, but see my original post about picking two of the three metrics.

 

Don't get me wrong, as I agree 100% with you. Most of the good kits were done years ago, so finding something these days got that much harder to do. Like you said, you'd need to work out of a "cook book" of sorts , then find all of the right bits to do the conversion. You tube was good for showing what NOT to do.