Hey guys

I have just bought a 1998 Nissan Maxima 2.0L V6, in the States they sell it as Infinity i30. The car is great and in great condition.

I would like to do some performance upgrades and wondering what you Professional think would be a good starting point.

Things I want to do and questions on those points:

1. change the exhaust and the branch (headers I think). If I do this what size should I ask our local exhaust guys to put in?
2. Performance chip. I don't know if the maxima can take a performance chip and a plug and play system so any advice here?
3. Custom cold air intake

Anything else you guys think I should do or any advice would be great. Looking forward to hearing from the Pro's,

Cheers Guys

 

I always suggest addressing the suspension and brakes before digging into performance mods. Looking forward to seeing your progress. How about some pictures of the car?

 

 

 

New members always ask for performance mods first and foremost. You have a smaller engine than most of us, so I undrstand.

The first place to start is to give the car a tune up and clean up. Like new spark plugs, injector cleaner, clean the throttle body. Is your air filter clean?

do you have any check engine light codes?

Don't really know about performance mods for the 2.0 engine.

Most of us have the 3.0 engine.

 

 

If it's a 2.0 L engine then it's probably the VQ20DE engine. Most everyone on this forum has the VQ30DE 3.0 L engine or the VQ35DE 3.5L.

You're going to most likely run into the problem of poor aftermarket support for the engine you have. I couldn't find any help on Google about tuning but I assume you would need a Nistune type solution. On the other hand in the 4th gen classifieds section I have a 72k miles VQ35 Engine Swap in one of my cars with everything for it but so it's just a plug n play. I assume you have at least twice that mileage and it would be an instant boost of almost 100 horsepower, more than you'll get out of any bolt ons and you'd spend twice as much turboing even after shipping. Its got a few mods installed already and be much easier to get support on here and for aftermarket parts.

 

I'm an old guy (64) . My terminology and words are from an earlier era. A tune up meant replacing the spark plugs, cleaning the carburetor throttle plate or throttle body, and dealing wit the distributor which the older cars have.

I didn't mean chips in the ecu or anything like that.

As far as I'm aware, the 3.0 engines in North America don't have this option.

I suppose that you could buy a wrecked maxima which ha's the 3.0 engine and wire harness and ecu. Then you could install that engine in your car.

I guess it comes down to how badly you want the performace, and what gasoline /petrol prices are in South Africa.

I'm not the most knowledgeable person on this forum regarding performance stuff. I'm more into maintenance and reliabilty.

I do find it interesting that we in North America have other members in South Africa and New Zealand, and can still help each other.

 

 

Please let us know how your project and efforts are going. We all learn from each other.

 

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First off you want the Dyno tune to be the last thing you do because the rest of your mods will alter the airflow and therefore the air fuel ratio mix. You'll get the most out of a tune after doing everything else. Secondly you might run into issues with finding a tuning solution for your ECU I don't think there's much of an aftermarket for this engine. You're also really limiting yourself on power by sticking with this engine. All the money you put into mods could pay for an engine with much less miles (kilometers) that even stock would be putting out more power than you'll get out of all the mods combined.
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I did every natural aspirated mod to a VQ30 3.0l and wished I had started with a vq35 3.5l swap. And you're starting with a 2.0l with little aftermarket support.

My 3.5 setup would probably be somewhere around the price of just a full exhaust even without the Dyno tune+hardware and software to tune the ECU. And you still wouldn't be putting down the same numbers and I'm assuming your engine has twice the mileage/kilometers on it. Idk how much it would be to ship an engine there but even a couple hundred in shipping would be worth it to make a lot more power and have a much more youthful engine more aftermarket support and more potential overall. That's my 2 cents on the matter

 

Check out Nistune for ECU support.

Assuming you have the same ECU type as we do, you can only use a VAFC MAF translator type device, E-manage Ultimate or Nistune.