HELP! Ford Zetec Performance

With a "small budget" any gains you find will be minimal, it'll also cost more to insure which could eat up a lot of your budget. Save the money until you can afford a faster car.

Buy a bigger engine.

want the hassle of finding a decent engine when there's no problem with mine.

throttle body, injectors, etc.). Can anyone who has actually done this, or very similar, give me confirmation on this?

Forget it. If you've got a small budget, the gain you get won't even be noticable. Sell the car and buy one with a bigger motor in it.

it will also come with the apropriate brakes and suspensin designed to go with that size and power engine it's sucks i know, but save the money and buy a bigger engined car sorry o be a spoilsport but it's true, been there done that

Ask Burgerman - he can show you how to set up a nitrous injection kit for about =A3250. You'll see 25 - 50bhp increase.

My local scrappies had 3x 2.0l Zetecs to choose from last week, most expensive was £250, under 60k miles and could be seen running. I'd imagine there's not many people who've tuned the 1.6 or 1.8...

For about 150 you can get 140bhp extra.

Or you could just skim about 2mm off the head and use premium fuel, and get about 10 percent extra everywhere...

the 1.6 is a no go area the 1.8 has LOADS of stuff thrown at it the 2.0 is most common in the ZVH conversins

Forget increasing power at the flywheel, concentrate on increasing effective output at the road.

So be thinking along the lines of swapping standard steels or heavy aftermarket alloys for lightweight alloys. Think along the lines of OZ Superleggeras. Failing this, OEM alloys tend to be light.

Then think about lowering the gearing. Establish what final drive yours has and find a gearbox from another Fiesta with shorter gearing. That'll improve acceleration right across the rev range.

Dump any excess weight in the car.

You may also consider having the flywheel professionally lightened, too.

There's loads of stuff you can do before touching the donk...