How to make a carb engine more torqier?

So I got myself a new car. It's a Mazda 323 wagon. Mint condition etc. But the engine is a 1.5 and on the top of that it's a carburetor not fuel injection.

So, my question is, what mods can I do to add more torque to it. Something not too expensive. I'm not planning on making this a drag car also, just something that will add to the car's pull up the hill, but not too straining on the old motor. As far as I can remember, putting extractors on the carb car adds more torque.

Any other suggestions?

easiest mod would be headers, then perhaps a slightly lumpy cam, but you wont get much out of that without a head port. depends how much you want to do and how much you have to spend quite honestly, if you give it too much power top end then you have to make the bottom end more solid or you'll spit it all over the road when you hit redline. You would probably get just as much of a performance increase from putting lower profile tyres on it.

Good luck, but unless you want to spend a lot you should probably just go with the headers and a tune up.

Sweet. Cheers for that.

take the air filter out and all the pipeing hahah sounds all good

my old KE25 was carby.
gave it more power by pulling out the old airbox swapping the standard carby & intake headers to a downdraught header with a 28/36 DCD weber carby with a ramflo airfilter fitted direct to the carby. upgraded the exhaust from the headers to a 3" exhaust system with a 3.5" dumpy exhaust.

upped the power quite considerably

Yeah like the 2 above, i would go long headers 4-2-1 , a new airfilter (maybe a pod) and a quick retune of your carby should do the trick.

What am I looking to spend in terms of $ to do these upgrades?

Sorry to yank up a REALLY old topic here, but lets be honest, theres not much (or enough!) car talk in these forums.

Thing with N/A tuning (as in parts replacement for more power) as that you're seldom ever gaining torque.
As HP is relative to the torque and the RPM, when you gain HP through adding extractors, increasing cam lift and duration etc, you're just shifting the current torque to a new location in the rev range, resulting in more power, but more or less the same amount of torque.
This can be a pain, as it usually robs you of torque in the low rev range.

Eg, a standard Toyota 16v Bigport 4AGE 1.6l makes 112hp @ 6,600 RPM with peak torque 135nm @ 4,400RPM.

Compare it to the highly strung Formula Atlantic version, which is modified to hell. Higher compression pistons, huge lift and duration cams, this that and the other.
Makes 240hp @ 8,500RPM. Thats more than double the standard engine.
The torque is 184nm @ 7,600RPM. 49nm more, but at 3,200RPM higher than the road going version! At 4,400RPM, the torque would be less than the road version.

So your only viable option is to turbo or supercharge it. Emulates a bigger engine displacement by putting more air into each cylinder, meaning more fuel can be added for bigger bang!
Although thats a pain in the ass to do for a carbed engine.

Best bet is just to get it running nicely. Make sure the carb is clean and spraying properly.
Check if the distributor rotor and cap are pretty worn. Replace spark plugs, fuel filter etc. Make sure the leads haven't crapped out and are arcing against the head!
Its probably also tuned for 91 octane. If you use 95, you can advance the timing a bit and probably get a bit more grunt that way.

Hell, you've probably onsold the car by now, I just like to spill my brains sometimes

lol, I would not have looked at this, if it wasn't so slow in the Lounge today!

Cheers Adamal!