StacyT

I recently purchased a 2002 S281 Saleen. As far as I know is pretty much completely stock as far as performance mods go. The only thing ever done to the car from what I can tell is an alarm and stereo system. Reading through here I found some discussions that the only mods done to the S281 was a CAI, a PCM flash, and the pulleys.

I had been debating on some mods and was wondering about a tuner, but not sure if I would gain anything? I just started to have the check engine light come on and the shop I stopped by said the code meant the car was running lean. They cleared it and it went away for a couple of weeks and then came back on. I was debating on ordering the tuner so I could either look into diagnosing/repairing the car myself as well as tune it.

If I won't gain anything from the tuner what other mod would be good? I live in CA so the exhaust options are limited. I'm looking more for some bolt on options that would be easy to do like maybe throttle body? I like the gear ratio like it is because I spend a lot of time on the highway. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

WhiteFaleen2001

Is your car auto or manual? If it is stick, the tune really won't help you that much right now based on the mods you currently have. Since you like your current gear ratio, I would look at exhaust (changing your midpipe and catback). Your other option could be adding a new plenum and throttle body.

As far as minor bolt ons are concerned, that's pretty much it. As long as you have cats on your midpipe, you should pass smog. If not, you might have to put your stock midpipe back on for smog tests.

Your other option for trying to improve performance would be an aluminum driveshaft and getting rid of useless weight (spare tire, tire iron, rear seats if you don't use them ever etc). These won't give you more power, but by freeing up some weight, you will reduce the power loss a little.

Ideally, you would want to put a supercharger on the car but it really depends on what money you want to spend.

StacyT

Yes it's a manual I should have provided that info. I didn't think a new tune would give much of a performance increase since I figured Saleen already came with a better PCM flash over stock. However I went ahead with the purchase since I needed to do some trouble shooting, and I'm also going to go ahead and do a few other mods so I figure I'll need to do some tuning when I add the mods. I'm going to go ahead and get a new plenum and throttle bottle in a couple of weeks after I figure out what's causing the service engine light.

After that I'll consider some of the other mods. I'm not sure about the exhaust, but I think that the previous owner may have put a cat back on it already. I like the idea of the drive shaft. I may do that next.

Thanks for the input :-) I should have some of these done here in the next month or so.

tbar

A new tune will be an improvement.The Saleen tune is pretty conservative because they had to offer a warranty with the car.