I was at the American Le Mans Series race at Laguna Seca this past weekend, and Mazda had a V6 Mazda6 on display. I did a thorough look over, inside the cabin, under the hood, and under the car.
As far as the engine upgrades...... It appears the MAF is integrated with the airbox, so for cold air intakes, the MAF "guts" will have to be unscrewed from the stock housing and the intake piping would need to be made to accept the "guts" of the MAF.. But there doesnt appear to be much room under the hood for a true cold air intake anyways.... Once we can get a car in our shop then we can take a closer look....
For exhaust... It appears pretty restrictive. The exhaust manifolds are as bad as they are on the other 3.0L Duratec engines (Taurus, Escape, etc). the three exhaust ports enter into one channel....and at the far right is the down pipe.....There are small pre-cats in the Y-pipe which make it very restrictive as well. The headers and Y-pipe that we make for the car will not be "street legal" but it will still pass the sniffer tests of even states like California. We cant make the headers CARB legal because we are removing the catalytic converters....Any time you move the stock cat location, forget about getting CARB approval. But I would expect gains of 20hp to the engine with the headers and Y-pipe alone. Throw on a higher flowing intake and a less restrictive exhaust, and a conservative estimate of 30hp gains at the engine are likely....
After the Y-pipe it goes down to 1 pipe and then splits back out into 2 tail pipes....mostly for looks, not performance...It appears there is room under the car to make a true dual exhaust with an X-pipe to make even more power.....we will test this out......
Again...the sooner we can get a test 6 into our shop, the sooner we can get parts out for them....
Nikolas
As far as the engine upgrades...... It appears the MAF is integrated with the airbox, so for cold air intakes, the MAF "guts" will have to be unscrewed from the stock housing and the intake piping would need to be made to accept the "guts" of the MAF.. But there doesnt appear to be much room under the hood for a true cold air intake anyways.... Once we can get a car in our shop then we can take a closer look....
For exhaust... It appears pretty restrictive. The exhaust manifolds are as bad as they are on the other 3.0L Duratec engines (Taurus, Escape, etc). the three exhaust ports enter into one channel....and at the far right is the down pipe.....There are small pre-cats in the Y-pipe which make it very restrictive as well. The headers and Y-pipe that we make for the car will not be "street legal" but it will still pass the sniffer tests of even states like California. We cant make the headers CARB legal because we are removing the catalytic converters....Any time you move the stock cat location, forget about getting CARB approval. But I would expect gains of 20hp to the engine with the headers and Y-pipe alone. Throw on a higher flowing intake and a less restrictive exhaust, and a conservative estimate of 30hp gains at the engine are likely....
After the Y-pipe it goes down to 1 pipe and then splits back out into 2 tail pipes....mostly for looks, not performance...It appears there is room under the car to make a true dual exhaust with an X-pipe to make even more power.....we will test this out......
Again...the sooner we can get a test 6 into our shop, the sooner we can get parts out for them....
Nikolas
